Break the Glass by Olivia Swindler

Author:Olivia Swindler [Swindler, Olivia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2023-12-04T16:00:00+00:00

31.

LAUREN

August 29, 7:45 p.m.

It felt like I was swimming upstream as I made my way toward the hotel.

As soon as I parked, I had a moment of panic. What if someone recognized me? It was a long shot, but Renton is a small town, and the people staying at the hotel could be some of Sal’s loyal donors. I riffled around the back seat of my car and found an old hat. It wasn’t much, but I hoped that a hat, in tandem with my dressed-down attire, would be enough of a disguise. Though I had showered, the thought of getting dressed in anything other than my favorite yoga pants seemed like an impossible task.

I had met enough high-profile people in my life that I rarely felt apprehensive about meeting someone new, but for the first time in years, I was nervous.

When we were kids, my sister was convinced that she would be a spy when she grew up. That’s all she’d wanted to do. My parents had bought her “spy gadgets” so she could practice—which meant she spent her afternoons spying on me. Even at ten, I was not amused. Here I was, living out my sister’s fantasy. It felt annoyingly ironic.

But it wasn’t really spying, after all. I was curious. Joel had just given me an excuse to ask the questions that had kept me up at night. I was there on official business. I had a purpose.

After Joel left my house earlier in the afternoon, I googled Mason Pont.

I didn’t recognize him. I had half expected to. Maybe not as someone I had talked to, but I had interacted with the press enough that many of their faces were familiar, even if I didn’t know their names. He looked like he was in his late twenties or early thirties—young. I wondered if he was too young and naive to realize what a can of worms he had opened. Yes, the job of a journalist is to report a story, but did he know he was ruining people’s lives?

No. He was doing his job. But he was also going above and beyond to prove himself early on in his career. It’s likely he’d be promoted as a result of breaking the story. Sal had been the one ruining lives, not Mason. However Mason had gotten his hands on the story didn’t matter. He had an ethical responsibility to expose Sal for who he really was. Something I had never dared to do. Maybe if I had known about this scandal, I would have done the brave thing. Maybe, had I known, I would have gone to the press, gone to Joel, done something to put an end to Sal’s crimes.

It was easy to find Mason in the nearly empty lobby. He stood out like a sore thumb. He was the only person not wearing head-to-toe Griffon gear. He must have seen me first. He left his table in the bar to greet me. The woman he was sitting with looked vaguely familiar, but I was too tired to place her.

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