Reckless Touch Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One - Amelia

  Chapter Two - Amelia

  Chapter Three - Amelia

  Chapter Four - Reed

  Chapter Five - Reed

  Chapter Six - Amelia

  Chapter Seven - Amelia

  Chapter Eight - Reed

  Chapter Nine - Amelia

  Chapter Ten - Reed

  Chapter Eleven - Amelia

  Chapter Twelve - Reed

  Chapter Thirteen - Reed

  Chapter Fourteen - Amelia

  Chapter Fifteen - Amelia

  Chapter Sixteen - Amelia

  Chapter Seventeen - Amelia

  Chapter Eighteen - Amelia

  Chapter Nineteen - Amelia

  Chapter Twenty - Reed

  Chapter Twenty-One - Amelia

  Chapter Twenty-Two - Amelia

  Chapter Twenty-Three - Amelia

  Chapter Twenty-Four - Amelia

  Chapter Twenty-Five - Reed

  Chapter Twenty-Six - Amelia

  Chapter Twenty-Seven - Amelia

  Chapter Twenty-Eight - Reed

  Chapter Twenty-Nine - Amelia

  Chapter Thirty - Amelia

  Chapter Thirty-One - Amelia

  Chapter Thirty-Two - Reed

  Chapter Thirty-Three - Amelia

  Chapter Thirty-Four - Amelia

  Chapter Thirty-Five - Amelia

  Chapter Thirty-Six - Amelia

  Chapter Thirty-Seven - Amelia

  Chapter Thirty-Eight - Amelia

  Chapter Thirty-Nine - Reed

  Chapter Forty - Amelia

  Chapter Forty-One - Amelia

  Chapter Forty-Two - Amelia

  Chapter Forty-Three - Amelia

  Chapter Forty-Four - Reed

  Chapter Forty-Five - Amelia

  Chapter Forty-Six - Amelia

  Chapter Forty-Seven - Amelia

  Before You Go

  Acknowledgements

  Reckless Touch

  By

  VERONICA LARSEN

  Copyright © 2016 Veronica Larsen

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email the publisher. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Editing by Lea Burn, Burn Before Reading

  Proofread by Kelli Spear

  Interior formatted with Scrivener for Mac version 2.5

  Published by Veronica Larsen

  Publication Date: November 7th, 2016

  To my seven-year-old self, who spent most of her time all alone, scribbling away in a notebook she never allowed anyone to read…Hang in there, kid. It'll all be worth it.

  PROLOGUE

  Him

  The house has been empty for years, with no one to maintain it, no one to look after it. It's a shadow of its former self.

  Like me.

  My steps leave shoe prints on the dirty linoleum of the hall. Behind me, a trail of my progress leads all the way to the back entrance.

  I'm not worried. I'll clean it all later.

  I stroll past the pictures lining the walls, covered in dust. Pictures of them. Gone. All gone. The skeleton of my life. Of everything I had before it all disintegrated in my hands.

  No matter. Tables turn, and no one on this earth can escape reaping what they sow. Not even her. Soon she'll understand what she's done, how her words destroyed everything.

  The air grows stale as I head down into the basement. The first three stairs groan under my weight, just as they always have. A shiver runs through me. It's always been chillier down here than the rest of the house, especially in the winter months. But my shiver isn't from the cold. It's from excitement.

  Even though I know I shouldn't have come. Not during the day when the neighbors could see. But I couldn't help myself. I needed to make sure it's all just the way I left it.

  Reaching the foot of the stairs, I straighten and inspect the room I've prepared.

  The single, twin-sized mattress, pushed against the bare wall of the unfinished basement. Any movement I make echoes in the cavernous space. The chill hangs in the air, and the thick silence is almost buzzing around me.

  I get goosebumps just standing here, imagining what it's like to wonder.

  Wonder and wonder and wonder.

  Wonder if you're going crazy.

  Wonder if you will live or die.

  To gain hope. To lose that hope. To break.

  I wonder, gleeful and fidgeting in my excitement.

  Straight across from the bed is the only other furniture I've placed in the room. A shabby nightstand with a small television monitor perched on top of it.

  That's where she'll see it all.

  That's where she'll see herself.

  I run my finger absently over the blade cradled in my hand. I don't remember pulling it out, but stroking it helps everything in my head go still. I've had this particular knife for so long, I know just how to touch it so it won't cut me.

  It's part of me.

  You're forgetting something.

  I slice at the air with the knife. At the voice. I know it's my own, but it sounds just like him. Mocking. Belittling. Making me question myself. He doesn't know me anymore. I've changed. The things I've been through…the scars that pucker up inside of me, never healing, never showing themselves to the world. But no matter. They make me stronger. I'm better than him now. I won't make the mistakes he made.

  You're going to get caught.

  "Shut up," I hiss.

  But he can't hear me. It's one way with him. It's always been one way.

  He's wrong.

  I won't get caught. I've planned it perfectly. I won't squander away the position of power I've gained. Not the way he did. Tactlessly and without forethought, letting his anger rule him. No. I'll get my revenge and I'll live to see it all play out. I'm patient. I've been biding my time. I've done my homework, set up the smoke and mirrors. They see only calm and control and camouflage.

  No one knows tonight's the night.

  I stroke the blade with my forefinger and pull up an image in my mind's eye. An image of her. Sitting on the mattress, staring at that television with those pretty eyes of hers, wide as an owl's. Watching, for the first time, what happens when she's the headline. When the hunter becomes the prey. When the reporter becomes the story.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Amelia

  THE CAKE'S THICK FROSTING was once embellished with words of farewell, before savages sliced it ten ways to oblivion. Sugar does go well with stress, and lord knows there's heaps of that around here.

  Stress hangs over us, worn like badges for all to see. Because if you're not stressed, you're not doing your job right. Just last year, people were losing their jobs all around us. There were countless layoffs and whispers of paychecks doomed to be furloughed. Insecurity and quiet panic were the anthem we marched to daily.

  Not much has changed in a year.

  Despite all of this, none of us can seem to grasp the idea of someone leaving willingly, of someone quitting altogether. Because every person in this room lives to see their name in print. Dreams of their story landing on the front page.
/>
  Everyone, it seems, except for Sabrina.

  I swivel in my office chair, eating cake with one hand and clicking around on my computer with the other. I gather the last of my assignment files on the screen and drag them into a folder.

  When I steal a glance at Sabrina, she's still speaking with the boss. Duncan sits behind his desk, a king in his ice castle, his office encased in glass walls and in full view of the newsroom.

  Sabrina's hands fly up to her chest as though he's said something touching. No doubt he's offering her praise. Though it's not like him to spare compliments, the small speech he gave earlier about how valuable Sabrina's work has been to the newspaper makes me think he will actually miss her.

  No one will miss her more than I will. She's been my partner in crime, the one person in this whole place I trusted implicitly. And now she's cutting free.

  I knew it was coming. Her rants were getting more frequent. Rants about this thankless job and how it's working us all to within an inch of our sanity. It's true. I see it. I live it. And yet the truth fails to sink in, fails to make me want anything else. There is no name for it. The low hum vibrating in my bones, driving the ache in the pit of my stomach. The desperate thirst to prove myself, to show I'm capable of more.

  Much more than…this.

  I shovel another forkful of cake into my mouth before dragging a picture file into the folder with the rest of the story's contents. My finger slips and clicks the image open. A picture of the mayor of San Diego fills my screen. He stands in front of a sleek, asymmetrical building in the heart of downtown. The structure's metal and glass surfaces glitter under the cloudless San Diego sky like a beacon of hope for the abandoned animals it will soon house.

  But all I can think is, another byline wasted.

  It's not that I don't care about the construction of a new animal shelter. I remember too well what it's like to be herded into places where unwanted things go, with only the dimmest hope of one day being recovered. It's the sort of thing that leaves a mark on you. You feel it on the inside, the mark of the unwanted. Everyone else sees it too. They hold you at arm's length, as though afraid it will rub off on them. But this story wasn't about any of that. It was about a mayor's triumphant funding of a long-desired animal shelter, the grand opening of which conveniently coincides with his reelection campaign.

  The story I wanted to write would reveal this man to be a fraud.

  Mayor Connolly's smiling face taunts me even after I close the image file. His boyish grin is almost charming in the photograph. When I met him in person, the same smile crawled slowly over his face and left me feeling like slime covered every inch of my body.

  I've always been exceptionally good at reading people. There was a time in my life when my well-being depended on reading people's true intentions behind their smiles and carefully crafted words.

  I read between many lines while I interviewed the mayor at City Hall. And I caught a whiff of something awry at his office. Something about the way the women—and everyone who works under the mayor is a woman—squirmed ever so slightly when I asked too many questions. Some avoided my eyes. And when I'd acknowledge the awkward energy, they'd laugh nervously and change the subject.

  It was a story slated to land me squarely on the front page of the Union Tribune. I begged Duncan for more time to dig further, to find the real story I could sense hiding just behind the veil. But he refused to entertain any other assignment, dismissing me before I could build my case.

  Now my byline will be attached to yet another fluff piece, which might as well be an endorsement to the mayor's reelection campaign.

  The phone on my desk rings.

  I swallow back a mouthful of cake and reach across my desk to pick up the receiver.

  "Amelia speaking."

  I let the phone settle into the nook of my shoulder, pinning it there with my ear so I can continue eating cake.

  There's the subtle static of an open line.

  "Hello?"

  Nothing.

  I lean back over to hang up the phone, but just as I pull it from my ear, the voice of a woman filters through the air.

  "Amelia Woods?"

  There's something in the way she says my name that drives my instinctual move to set down the plate of cake and grab a pen instead.

  "Yes, who's this?"

  "Wait. Don't print it."

  Her words were barely audible, but I'm sure I heard correctly.

  Still, I say, "Excuse me?" and press a free hand to my other ear, blocking out the noises around me. "What did you say?"

  "The story. Don't print it."

  "What story—"

  "You know what story," she hisses with an urgency so sudden, I jerk my head back in surprise. "I've got more on him. I can give you what you're missing. Just wait."

  At this request, my pulse picks up. My mouth parts to ask, once again, who is on the line, but I'm met with a dial tone.

  I tap the pen to my desk, staring at the empty space between my keyboard and the notepad I keep beside the phone. After a few seconds, I scribble down what the woman said then set the pen over it.

  Who the hell was that?

  "Hold my hand."

  I blink at the words. Sabrina stands in front of me, smiling. I lean back and hang up the phone, the echo of the dial tone still ringing in my ear.

  "Let's quit together," she goes on, a playful whine in her tone. "We can moonwalk out of here like superstars and make it rain papers all over this bitch."

  "You already know my answer," I say, lips curling despite myself.

  She looks so happy, so relieved. There's a freshness to her face, like someone who's been rescued from the wild, allowed to shower and rejoin civilization. The contrast makes me all too aware of how tired I am, since I stayed up all night chasing a lead that led me to a downtown bar at 1:30am on a Monday morning.

  A part of me wonders if there is something wrong with me for not being even the slightest bit jealous, for not wanting what she now has, a cozy corporate job in a new city. Cozy compared to this job, anyway.

  "What's the matter?" she asks.

  "Huh?"

  "You've got those lines between your brows."

  "I just got a weird call." I take a sip of my coffee, her concern causing me to consciously relax my face.

  "A weird call?" She watches, waiting for me to elaborate.

  I shake my head, dismissing the topic. "Never mind."

  I'll deal with that later. She's heading out soon to finish her last assignment then catching a flight to Los Angeles tonight to start her new life. I want to soak up the last hour of us working side-by-side.

  "I can't believe you're drinking that," she says, nodding to the cup of coffee in my hand.

  She reaches beside me to grab a folded note that's carelessly strewn on my desk. I meant to toss it, but forgot.

  "I'm sick of wasting it."

  After a week of throwing out the gifts only to have fresh versions reappear the following morning, I finally decided there's pride and then there's just plain waste of a perfectly good beverage.

  She reads the note, shakes her head, then tucks it under my keyboard. I look around, searching for the subject of our discussion, but he's nowhere to be seen.

  "You're encouraging him."

  "What? Hell no." I take another indignant sip of the coffee. The liquid is lukewarm, bordering on room temperature. Not that I mind. I'm used to nursing a cup of coffee to its very last drop. "I'm not obligated to screw him because he leaves me a cup of coffee—"

  "And a rose," she adds, turning her attention to the desk around me. "Where is the rose?"

  I nod to the trash bin flush with the edge of my desk, inside of which lies a single rose partially hidden by a cake-smeared napkin.

  "You're stone cold, Amelia."

  She says it with an amused smirk.

  "I wish he'd stop leaving roses. I can't stand their smell." Roses smell like funeral homes and after-school hours spent waiting for my adopt
ive father to tend to the dead and take me home. "What did it say, anyway? The note."

  "You didn't read it?"

  "I don't bother anymore. It's always some bullshit one-liner. Things that would make me gag if it weren't a waste of perfectly delicious coffee. So? What'd it say?"

  "Finish your coffee before you start gagging all over me."

  "That bad?" I ask, chuckling from behind the cup.

  "He may be a writer, but the guy's no poet."

  "Can I get a sip?" a deep voice says from behind me.

  I jump out of my skin, nearly choking on my coffee and sending tan drops falling onto the front of my blouse.

  "What the hell, Caleb?" I scold, spinning around to see the sports editor standing there, half-laughing at my reaction.

  Caleb crosses his arms over his striped button-down shirt, which is tucked into a pair of grey slacks. His clothes are deceptively professional. Caleb's infamous for sleeping around the office, courting the women here for sport, from interns to staff writers who are now gone. He's moved from one to the next with ease. There have been times I've suspected Sabrina fell prey to his pursuits, but she's never admitted as much. Regardless, I don't kid myself into thinking his gifts are anything other than a means to an end.

  "How's your coffee?" he asks.

  It's a question he asks me every morning, and I've stopped caring it's his subtle way of rubbing in the fact that I'm enjoying something he's given me.

  "It's great, thanks," I say, without inflection. I tilt the last few drops of the liquid into my mouth.

  Turning his blue gaze onto Sabrina, he says, "Wish you'd take me with you."

  She responds in a bored voice frayed with exhaustion. "I wouldn't if I could, and I'm so glad I can't."

  "Come on, you'll miss me." He runs a hand over the smooth skin of his lower jaw, as if to say, you'll miss this face.

  "Not seeing your face every day is going to be my favorite part of all this," Sabrina says.

  "Caleb, do you mind?" I ask, "I'm trying to have a moment here with my friend."

  He puts up his hands as though in surrender and backs away from us. "Always a pleasure, ladies…"

  But almost as soon as Caleb walks off, our view of him is obscured by yet another person. This time, a woman in a purple cardigan. Kathleen.