Farewell to Hollywood by Michelle Keener

Author:Michelle Keener [Keener, Michelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian Fiction
Publisher: Ambassador International
Published: 2021-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

KATE WAS STILL REELING FROM the interrogation she went through just to get in the building. That receptionist could put most courtroom bailiffs to shame. If Jonathan hadn’t come to rescue her, Kate was pretty sure she would have ended up on her rear end at the bottom of the steps.

“Glad you made it,” Chris said and reached for her. Instinctively, Kate shook his hand. Chris laughed and perfunctorily returned the handshake before taking the visitor pass from her other hand and clipping it to her jacket.

The receptionist behind the plexiglass snickered, and hot embarrassment drenched Kate. What was wrong with her? She blamed a late night researching social media profiles from the list of names her dad had given her and a too-early-in-the-morning alarm . . . that she had snoozed three times.

“Thank you, Lenore,” Chris said, then leaned in close to Kate. The heat of his cheek leapt across the space between them as he whispered, “There’s coffee in the kitchen. Lots of coffee.”

Chris led her to the cafeteria. He pointed her toward the kitchen and then crossed to the camera set up. Coffee. She needed coffee and a second to catch her breath. Maybe then her muddled brain would start working again. “Oh, wait,” she called. When Chris turned back to her, she handed him a folded sheet of paper. “This is for you. It’s the list of names from Norma Jean’s.”

Sweat coated her hand as she held it out to him. She’d used the copier in Ben’s home office to make a copy of the list. She had the original, and she was making notes on it as she dug through the online records of each name on the list. So far, her late-night searches hadn’t turned up anything. She was going to have to switch to physically tracking these men down, so she could identify them.

But Chris didn’t need to know that. She gave him the information from her dad. She wasn’t hiding it from him. She turned over the evidence just like a discovery process in court. She simply didn’t give him all the details of her copy or what she was doing with it. That was how she rationalized it.

If only her sweaty hands and the pit of guilt in her stomach agreed.

“This is great,” Chris said as he scanned the list. “Thank you.” He refolded it and stuffed it in his bag.

See, the devil on her shoulder whispered, if you had given him the original, you would never have even seen it. She wasn’t exactly lying to him, but she wasn’t being forthright either; and she didn’t like that. After everything Chris had done, and as close—she swallowed hard on the word—as close as they were becoming, she knew it wasn’t right, but there wasn’t any way around it. She owed it to Megan.

Kate, her coffee, and her guilty conscience sat quietly on one of the vinyl-topped metal stools behind the camera. She watched as Chris interviewed Jonathan. Jonathan was animated and passionate as he shared his story and what led him to start the Manna Center.

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