Downfall by Jeff Abbott

Author:Jeff Abbott [Abbott, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Thriller
ISBN: 9781455528417
Google: 0_z7-zTBe4YC
Amazon: B00A6HLXJE
Barnesnoble: B00A6HLXJE
Goodreads: 16131462
Publisher: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Published: 2013-07-16T04:00:00+00:00

33

Friday, November 5, afternoon

Las Vegas

AFTER A SHOWER and a change into nicer cocktail clothes, Janice turned on the television in the hotel room and caught the national broadcast. Barbara Scott was story number five, after a profile of a new leading vice presidential contender (a senator from New Mexico, a woman primarily known as a policy wonk), her not-so-photogenic husband, and her three charming children; a suicide bombing in Moscow that killed three; an announcement of a major debt restructure for an Eastern European nation; and a congressman involved in a one-car accident who might have been drunk but was under investigation. The announcer glanced over into the camera.

“Best-selling author Barbara Scott, known for her scathing exposés of corporate corruption and government malfeasance, was found dead inside her fire-ravaged home in rural Oregon today…”

And then they cut to a reporter, hair blown by wind, standing up-valley from the devastation. Janice listened to the typical reporter clichés: “in a plot that could have been lifted from one of her books,” “a woman who made many enemies,” and “the twist at the end of Barbara Scott’s life.” It was arson; she’d been shot before the fire, no clues, no suspects. Then a retrospective of Barbara Scott’s life. She’d graduated from a small college with a journalism and English degree, then gotten a master’s and a doctorate and started teaching at another equally small college. She never indicated an ambition for a career beyond academia, but then she’d written a brutal account dismantling the legacy of a former president, backed by extraordinary research. Then she’d written a book exposing three prominent CEOs and how they’d mismanaged their apparently healthy companies—scooping every financial reporter in the country and again enjoying a huge publishing success. She’d found the data to support her work, the interviews, the cold, raw facts apparently provided to her by insiders.

Then she’d gone on, the massive best seller out of nowhere, and she’d done the same to the film industry, the investments industry. A book by Barbara Scott scorched lives like an avenging fire. People became afraid of her. The news report showed a film clip of Barbara Scott saying, “Oh, I’m just an everyday person who worked really hard and caught a lucky break or two.”

Lucky. Like Lucky Lazard. It gave Janice a chill.

Janice sat down. The reporter reappeared, said investigations were continuing and that according to Barbara Scott’s editor she’d been working on a book discounting the idea that certain businesses were too big to fail. Then a picture of Barbara Scott, with the years of her birth and death beneath. Then the TV went to a commercial for investment services.

At least they hadn’t said that her laptop was missing. Only because they were still sifting through the rubble. Maybe she had more than one laptop. Some writers did, she was sure.

She stared down the Strip from her window. She was at the Mystik, which was Lazard’s newest and grandest property, but from here she could see more of

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