Chapter 2: The Call
“Help me get this off him,” Heather ordered, her recruiter’s command snapping into place. She peeled back the bloody windbreaker and the shirt beneath, revealing the wound. It was a nasty, dark slit just below his ribs, ugly and deep, but the bleeding had slowed to a stubborn ooze. “It’s bad, but it’s not gushing. He might have passed out from shock and blood loss.”
“What do we do? We can’t call an ambulance now, they’ll ask questions we can’t answer.”
“We patch him up. Right here.” Heather was already moving toward her hallway closet, her mind racing. “My first aid kit is from my doomed camping phase with the vegan park ranger. It’s extensive.”
She returned with a bulky plastic box. They worked with frantic, clumsy efficiency, Richard holding the man steady while Heather cleaned the wound with antiseptic wipes. Vickers moaned again, his eyelids fluttering but not opening. She packed the gash with sterile gauze, then wound a long elastic bandage around his torso several times, pulling it tight to apply pressure.
“We need to get him off the floor,” Heather said, wiping her hands on a clean part of the blanket. “Spare room.”
They hauled him up, his dead weight heavier in unconsciousness. They dragged-carted him down the hall into a small, barely-used bedroom that smelled of dust and fresh paint. Together, they heaved him onto the bare mattress of a sleek platform bed.
Heather covered him with a spare duvet, tucking it around his shoulders. In the dim light from the hallway, he looked like a sick child, his face ashen and slack. His breathing was a little easier now, a steady, shallow rhythm in the quiet room.
They retreated, closing the door softly behind them.
Back in the living room, the aftermath looked even more grotesque. The beige rug was ruined, a large dark stain blooming where Michael had lain. The metallic scent of blood mixed with the lemon cleaning products.
Heather walked to her bar cart, a sleek chrome thing, and poured three fingers of whiskey into a tumbler. She downed half in one go, the burn a welcome anchor in her throat. She poured a second glass and handed it to Richard.
He took it with a nod, his hand finally steadying as the liquor hit. “He was alive the whole time.In the trunk. On the stairs.”
“We didn’t kill him by moving him,” Heather said, more to convince herself. “He would have bled out in that alley if we’d left him. Or been shot again.” She picked up the business card from where it had fallen. “This changes everything. He’s not a mystery. He’s a source.”
Richard sank onto the oversized couch, running a hand through his hair. “A source of what? More trouble? Those people in the blue car, they’re not going to stop looking for him.”
“Which is why we need to know who he is, and what that number is, before he wakes up and decides not to tell us.” She tapped the card against her palm. “We have leverage. We saved his life. That’s got to be worth something.”
“Or he’s a criminal. And we’re harboring a criminal in your spare bedroom. We’re accomplices now.”
“We became accomplices the second we put him in my car.” Heather sat beside him, the weight of the night pressing down on her. The neon city lights through her floor-to-ceiling windows painted everything in cold, unreal colors. “We can’t undo that. So we have to move forward. Smart.”
“What’s smart, Heather?” Richard asked, turning to look at her. The nervous boy was gone, replaced by someone older, harder. “Calling that number? That seems like a spectacularly bad idea.”
“Maybe. But it’s the only idea we have. He hid it for a reason.” She stared at the digits. “It’s a direct line. To the people who want him dead, or the people he was running to. We need to know which before he wakes up and tries to run again.”
Richard was quiet for a long moment, sipping his whiskey. “We wait. We let him wake up. We ask our questions.”
“And if he lies? He’s already a stranger with a secret phone number and a knife wound. Truth isn’t exactly his default setting.”
They sat in the dim light, the silence stretching between them. The memory of the alley gunshots seemed to echo in the room. Richard finally spoke, his voice low. “You used to tell me monster movies weren’t real. That the scary part was over when the credits rolled.”
“This isn’t a movie, Ricky.” The old nickname just slipped out.
He gave a tired, half-smile. “I know. The monsters don’t wear rubber suits. They drive blue cars.” He set his glass down with a decisive click. “We wait until morning. We see if he can talk. If he can’t, or won’t… then we call the number.”
The decision sat between them, heavy as the stained rug. Exhaustion arrived all at once, a physical weight pulling at their shoulders. Heather pushed herself up, the room tilting slightly from adrenaline dump and whiskey.
“We should at least try to clean up,” she muttered, staring at the dark smudge on the pale fibers. It looked like a Rorschach test of pure regret. She bent to gather the discarded, bloody gauze and wrappers.
Richard stood too quickly, his limbs stiff from sitting. He moved to help, their paths crossing in the dim space between the couch and the coffee table. His foot caught the edge of the fallen blanket.
He stumbled forward with a yelp. Heather turned, arms flailing as his momentum collided with hers. They went down in a tangle of limbs, landing hard on the plush rug beside the stain. The air left her lungs in a soft oof.
He ended up on top, his weight braced on his elbows above her. Their faces were suddenly inches apart. His breath hitched. The city’s neon glow from the windows painted his startled expression in streaks of blue and pink. Fear, adrenaline, and the raw, strange intimacy of the night coalesced into a sharp, magnetic pull in the quiet room.
Her eyes, wide with surprise, softened. A faint, amused smile touched her lips. She watched the internal struggle play out across his face—the nervous boy warring with the man who’d just helped haul a wounded stranger up three flights of stairs. He swallowed, his gaze dropping to her mouth.
He began to lean in, slowly, tentatively. The distance closed. Heather’s eyebrow arched higher, her expression a mix of shock and wry curiosity. This was absurd. He was practically a kid. Her mind scrambled for a rule, a reason, anything but the warm solidity of him against her.
His lips were a whisper away.
A low, guttural groan echoed from down the hall. It was followed by a sharp, pained cough. The sound was unmistakably human, conscious, and urgent. It shattered the fragile bubble around them completely. They froze. Richard’s eyes widened, all thoughts of the kiss gone. He scrambled off her, awkward and fast. Heather rolled to her side, pushing herself up. The spell was broken, replaced by the stark reality waiting in the spare room.
“He’s awake,” Richard whispered, his voice rough.
Another cough, wetter this time. Then a voice, thin and ragged, edged with panic.“Hello? Who’s there?”
Heather was on her feet first, smoothing her shirt. She shot Richard a look—a silent agreement to table whatever that was for now. The moment vanished into the crisis at hand. She squared her shoulders and walked toward the hallway, her heels clicking a firm, deliberate rhythm on the hardwood.
“Just stay calm,” she called out, her recruiter’s calm smoothing the tremor from her voice. “You’re safe. We’re coming in.”
She pushed the door open. Michael Vickers was trying to sit up, one hand pressed to his bandaged side, his face a mask of confusion and pain. His eyes, bloodshot and fearful, darted from Heather to Richard filling the doorway behind her.
“Where am I?” he rasped. “Who are you people?” His free hand patted the duvet, a trapped animal searching for an exit. “My jacket. Where’s my stuff?”
Heather leaned against the doorframe, crossing her arms. Her smile was disarming, professional, and utterly devoid of warmth. “We’re the people who didn’t leave you to bleed out in an alley. Your stuff is safe. And you,” she said, her tone shifting to something softer, almost sympathetic, “are in a world of trouble, Michael. We found the card.”
His searching hand went still. All the color drained from his already pale face. He looked from her to Richard, his breathing becoming shallow and quick. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he whispered, genuine fear replacing confusion. “You should’ve left me.”
“We tried that,” Richard said from behind Heather. “Then someone in a blue car started shooting at us.”
Michael closed his eyes, a deep weariness seeming to sink him further into the mattress. “Oh, god. Then they know you saw me. They know your faces.” He opened his eyes, and they were sharp, clear. “You’re already dead. You just don’t know it yet.”
The words hung in the dusty room, cold and final. Heather didn’t flinch. Instead, she stepped closer, her shadow falling over him. “Then we’d better get undead.Start talking. Who are they? And who,” she held up the business card between two fingers, “is this number for?”
Michael stared at the white rectangle. A war played out on his face—terror versus a desperate, fading hope. “It’s a burner,” he finally said, each word costing him. “A direct line. You call, you say ‘the package is delivered.’ You get a time and a location for the drop.”
“What package?” Richard asked.
“I don’t know!” The outburst made him wince, his hand clamping tighter to his side. “I was just the courier.A flash drive. That’s all I was told. I never looked at it.”
“But you tried to run,” Heather stated. “With the package.”
“I got curious. I heard things.” He was trembling now. “They were talking about a clean-up.A liquidation. I’m not an idiot. I knew the drop was for me, too.” His eyes locked onto Heather’s. “The number. It’s not a ‘who.’ It’s a switch. You call it, you trigger the meet. And the clean-up crew that goes with it.”
Heather’s mind raced, connecting shattered pieces. The blue car. The shooters waiting. They weren’t just silencing Michael. They were waiting for the package. “So the drive is still out there,” she said slowly. “They didn’t get it.”
A flicker of something hard passed over Michael’s face. Defiance, buried under layers of fear. “It’s safe. My insurance.”
“Where?” Richard demanded.
Michael shook his head, a stubborn set to his jaw.“Not a chance. You give me my stuff, let me walk out of here, and you never saw me. That’s the only deal.”
Heather laughed, a short, sharp sound without humor. “You can barely sit up. The people who want you dead have seen our faces. We’re not negotiating from weakness, Michael. We’re negotiating for survival. Together.” She leaned in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “You tell us where the drive is.We retrieve it. Then we have something they want. Something to trade for our lives.”
“Or,” Richard added, his voice colder than she’d ever heard it, “we call that number right now. We tell them we have their courier, alive and talking. See how fast they come to your ‘drop.’“
Michael’s bravado crumpled. He looked between them, two strangers who had become his reluctant lifeline and his potential executioners. The silence stretched, filled only by the hum of the city beyond the windows.
“A locker,” he whispered, defeated.“Bus terminal. Locker 217. The key is in the lining of my jacket.” He sagged back, spent. “It’s all there. The drive. And a name. A big one. That’s why they want me gone.”
Heather met Richard’s eyes over the wounded man’s head. A silent communication passed between them. There was no going back to the bar, to their separate lives. The path forward was dark and narrow, but it was the only one left. They had a name to find, a digital ghost to retrieve, and a switch they desperately could not afford to call.
“Rest,” Heather said, not unkindly. “We have a bus to catch at dawn.”
The silence that followed was brittle, charged with the unspoken weight of what they’d agreed to do. Heather watched Michael’s eyelids droop, the adrenaline that had briefly sharpened his focus leaching away into painkiller-induced haze. She backed out of the room, pulling the door almost closed, leaving it open just a crack.
“We can’t leave him here alone,” Richard whispered in the hallway, his voice gravelly with exhaustion.
“We have to.” Heather rubbed her temples. “He’s in no shape to run, and we can’t exactly bring him on a field trip to a bus terminal. We lock him in. Take his key.”
She returned to the living room and picked up Michael’s stained jacket. Finding the hidden key was easy; it was sewn into a small, reinforced pocket near the hem, a sliver of cold metal. She held it up. It looked utterly ordinary.
The next few hours were a slow, tense crawl. They took turns on watch, listening for any sound from the spare room, jumping at the normal creaks of the building. Sleep was a fractured, impossible concept. Heather spent her watch at her sleek dining table, scrolling through local news on her laptop, finding nothing about a shooting behind the Rusty Anchor. The absence of a report felt more ominous than any headline.
Dawn arrived as a thin, gray smear through the windows. The city’s neon glow died, replaced by a muted, concrete-colored light.
Heather shook Richard awake where he’d dozed off on the couch. “Time.”
They moved quietly, efficiently. Heather wrote a note in blunt, block letters and slid it under the spare room door: Gone for your things. Don’t make noise. Don’t leave. Back soon. She heard a faint rustle from inside, but no protest.
The morning air outside was sharp and chill, a jarring contrast to the claustrophobic warmth of the apartment. They walked two blocks in silence before hailing a cab, directing it to a busy transit hub several miles from her building. From there, they merged with the early-morning crowd of cleaners, service workers, and students, boarding a city bus heading downtown.
The bus was a world of rumbling diesel and bleary-eyed strangers. Heather sat by the window, her gaze scanning every passing car, every pedestrian. Richard sat stiffly beside her, the key digging into his palm where he clenched it in his pocket. The normalcy of the commute was surreal, a fragile bubble suspended over an abyss.
The downtown bus terminal was a cavern of echoing announcements and stale, greasy air. They found the lockers along a grimy, tiled wall near the restrooms. Locker 217 was at eye level, dented and scuffed. Heather stood guard, her back to Richard, watching the flow of harried travelers while he fumbled with the key.
The lock turned with a metallic clunk that sounded deafening to him. The small door swung open. Inside was a cheap, black nylon wallet, thick with contents. Nothing else. Richard grabbed it, shoved it inside his jacket, and closed the locker door.
Their eyes met. No one shouted. No blue cars screeched to a halt. They melted back into the crowd and caught the next bus back.
Back in the sanctuary of her apartment, the door double-locked and chained behind them, the air felt different. It was no longer just a hiding place; it was a command center under siege. They gathered at her dining table, the black wallet between them like an unexploded device.
Heather upended it. A stack of hundred-dollar bills, bound with a rubber band, thumped onto the glass surface. A standard flash drive, unremarkable and silver, followed. Lastly, a single, folded sheet of lined paper, creased and soft from handling.
Richard smoothed the paper open. It was a handwritten list of dates, dollar amounts, and initials. At the bottom, scrawled in a different, angrier ink, was a full name and a title: Councilman Lewis Vargas. He’s the filter. Underneath that, another note: Green Valley Redevelopment. The money doesn’t go there.
Heather picked up the flash drive, turning it over in her fingers. It was cool and light. “This is what someone was willing to kill for. A councilman’s dirty laundry.”
A weak cough came from the hallway. Michael stood propped against the doorframe of the spare room, pale and sweating. He’d dragged himself out. His eyes locked onto the drive on the table. “You got it.”
“We got it,” Heather said, her voice flat. “Along with a name. Lewis Vargas. You were couriering evidence to take down a city councilman.”
Michael shuffled forward, gripping the back of a chair for support. “Not to take him down. To pay him. The drive was the proof of the first payment. The list is the whole schedule. My boss was making sure Vargas held up his end of the deal.”
Richard looked up from the paper, his face hardening. “So the shooters… they were Vargas’s people? Cleaning up a loose end?”
“Or my boss’s people,” Michael corrected, sinking into the chair with a wince. “The deal went sideways. Vargas wanted more. My boss wanted a refund. I was the unfortunate messenger.” He gestured to the drive. “That’s the only copy. The original files are gone. Deleted. This is the insurance. Or it was supposed to be.”
Heather leaned forward, her eyes sharp. “You were going to blackmail them both.”
A faint, pained smirk touched Michael’s lips. “I was going to survive. Now you have it. Which means you have a choice. You can give it to the cops and probably get us all buried in an unmarked hole before lunch. Or you can use it.”
“Use it how?” Richard asked. “We’re not criminals.”
“You are now,” Michael said simply. “You stole evidence in a felony. You harbored a material witness. You’re in the game. The only way out is to win.” He tapped a trembling finger on the name Marco Vargas. “He’s a public figure. He has routines. Security. But he also has a public face. You can’t just hand this to the police. His tendrils are everywhere. You need to force their hand.”
Heather stared at the name. The strategy unspooled in her mind, cold and clear. It was a recruiting problem, but in reverse. You didn’t attract the right candidate; you exposed the wrong one so publicly that no one could ignore the fit. “We leak it,” she said slowly. “Not to the police first. To the press. But we need more than a flash drive and a handwritten note. We need something irrefutable, something that launches the story like a missile and makes protecting him impossible.”
“How?” Richard’s mind was racing now, the literature student analyzing the plot. “We need a catalyst. An event.”
“A public event,” Heather murmured, her gaze drifting to the city skyline. “Something he has to attend. Where we can ensure the evidence doesn’t just land on a desk… it lands in the open.” She looked back at Michael. “What’s his schedule like? He’s a councilman. There must be something coming up.”
Michael closed his eyes, thinking. “There’s a thing… a press conference. Tomorrow afternoon. At the City Hall annex. He’s announcing the final approval for the Green Valley contracts.” His eyes opened. “It’s the deal from the list. He’s going to stand there and lie to every camera in the city.”
A cold, calculated smile spread across Heather’s face. It wasn’t a happy expression. It was the look of someone finding the only door in a burning room. “Perfect. We don’t just send the files to a reporter. We give them the show of a lifetime. We make sure that when he finishes his speech, the proof of his corruption is already broadcasting live.”
Richard watched her, this woman he’d once known as a voice reassuring him about monsters. Now she was plotting a takedown with the cool precision of a general. “How do we do that without getting caught? Without getting shot?”
“We don’t go anywhere near him,” Heather said. “We find a journalist with a reputation for being a bulldog. We send them the files in advance. We tell them exactly where and when Vargas will be lying through his teeth. We give them the key to the kingdom.” She picked up the flash drive again. “And we make sure they know that if they don’t run with it, another outlet will. We create a bidding war with the truth.”
She looked from Richard’s anxious face to Michael’s grim one. “We use his own stage against him. The second he steps up to that podium, his confession starts playing on every screen. We don’t get Marco arrested. We get him destroyed in front of everyone. The arrest comes after.”
The room fell silent, the audacity of the plan settling over them. It was dangerous, messy, and hinged on the courage of a stranger with a byline. But it was also a way out, a path that led into the light instead of deeper into the dark.
“We’ll need to move fast,” Richard finally said, a new resolve steadying his voice. “We need to find the right reporter. Today.”
Heather nodded, already pulling her laptop closer. “Then let’s start digging. We’re not victims hiding in a room anymore. We’re the whistleblowers.” She glanced at the flash drive. “And he’s the one who’s about to have a very bad day at the office.” Heather’s fingers hovered over the laptop keys, her mind already racing ahead to the next move. The screen’s glow reflected in her sharp blue eyes, turning them into twin pools of determination.
Heather’s fingers flew over the keyboard, her instincts as a recruiter kicking in—this was just another high-stakes hiring process, except instead of placing a candidate, she was hunting for the right journalist to expose a corrupt councilman.
“Who do we know?” Richard asked, leaning over her shoulder. His breath was warm against her neck, and she fought the urge to shiver. Not now. Focus.
“We don’t know anyone,” she muttered. “But we can find someone.” She pulled up a search engine and typed in *Lewis Vargas Green Valley corruption* and hit enter.
The results were a mix of press releases and fluff pieces about the councilman’s “visionary” urban renewal projects. Then, buried halfway down the page, a headline caught her eye: **"Local Investigative Journalist David Exposes City Hall’s Darkest Secrets."** The accompanying photo showed a man in his early 40s, sharp-eyed and skeptical, standing outside a courthouse with a notepad in hand. His byline was everywhere—whistleblower exposés, corruption scandals, the kind of stories that made powerful people sweat.
Heather tapped the screen. "This is our guy."
Richard frowned. "How do you know?"
"Because he’s got a reputation for being a pain in the ass," she said, scrolling through his articles. "Look at this—he’s taken down three council members in the last two years. If anyone can make Vargas’s corruption go viral, it’s him."
She pulled up his contact info.
"David. Reputation for being a bulldog. Works for *The City Chronicle*." She tapped the screen. If anyone can make Vargas’s corruption go viral, it’s him. If we can get him to bite, this story will be everywhere before Vargas even finishes his speech."
Richard leaned in, reading over her shoulder. The warmth of him was distracting, but she forced herself to focus.
"We need to move fast," she said, clicking through Milo Davidson's articles. "He's our best shot at getting this in front of the right audience before Vargas's press conference tomorrow."
Richard straightened, rubbing the back of his neck. "How do we even approach him? We can't just walk into a newsroom and say, 'Hey, we've got explosive evidence about a councilman, but we're also fugitives from a shooting.'"
Heather smirked. "We don't walk in. We make him come to us." She pulled up the *City Chronicle*'s website and navigated to their contact page. "Journalists love anonymous tips.
Especially when they smell a story that could make their career."
Heather's fingers hovered over the keyboard. She paused, considering the right approach. "We need to be careful. Too vague, and he'll ignore us. Too specific, and he'll start digging before we're ready. We need to give him just enough to make him curious."
She began typing, her words deliberate and precise:
---
**Subject:** *Vargas Green Valley – The Truth Before the Press Conference*
**Message:**
*David,*
*You don’t know me, but I know your work. I’ve been following your exposés on City Hall for years.
You’ve got a reputation for not letting corrupt officials bury the truth. This time, the truth is bigger than you think.
Councilman Lewis Vargas is about to announce the final approval for the Green Valley Redevelopment Project tomorrow at the City Hall annex. But what he’s not telling the public is that the project is a front. The real money isn’t going to Green Valley—it’s going into Vargas’s pockets and those of his associates. I have proof.