Page 19 of Born for Starlight

The room went quiet. Even Jase, who'd had a comeback loaded for every single thing I'd said tonight, didn't have one for that.

Billy Anderson was the one who shut his reaction down first. As a matter of fact, he hadn't offered anything to the discussion, just sat there stone-faced. I wondered what Simon saw in him, but then again, how many people had thought the same thing about me?

We started to focus on Angelica, her likely travel window, the organizations she'd mentioned funding, contacts Simon had from his own years in the field who might know something about the current players in Brazil. It wasn't much. It was a start, and starts were usually all a man got before the real work began.

Jase's phone rang in the middle of Simon sketching out a rough security plan on the whiteboard. He glanced at the screen and swore under his breath.

"It's Angelica's agent, Marty. He's half good guy, half douche. I never know which one I'm going to be talking to." He answered it on speaker. "Marty, I can't talk long."

"Jase, thank God. Is she with you? Is Angelica back in Jasper Creek yet?" Marty's voice came through fast and bright, entirely too bright for a man who should have been terrified. "I've been trying to reach her for six hours. She's not answering."

"So, she's coming to Jasper Creek? When? She hasn't told me or Bonnie."

"Dammit, I was hoping you'd know. Maybe she's already on a plane, not ignoring me. But I have to, have to, talk to her about the numbers." It was a sound that grated on every one of our nerves as we were trying to figure out how to protect the woman. "I can't believe the podcast's numbers, Jase. They're phenomenal! The episode's already at two million downloads. Two million, in under a day! Julian's people are calling it the biggest single release the podcast's ever had." Marty's voice climbed another register, somewhere between disbelief and pure professional joy.

"That's not the headline I was hoping for, Marty."

"It's a fan-fucking-tastic headline, is what it is, and I've already got Julian's producer on the other line asking about a follow-up, wanting to lock something in before the momentum cools." Marty barreled on like Jase hadn't spoken at all. "This is the moment, Jase. This is the moment careers get made on. We need to move fast, strike while she's still the biggest name in the news cycle, and I need her to call me back the second she lands so we can talk timeline."

I watched Jase's face while Marty kept talking, watched the exact second the numbers landed on him the way they'd already landed on me.

Two million downloads, in less than a day. A follow-up already being teased before the first one had even finished trending.

Whatever playbook we'd been thinking to write up was out the window. We were definitely going to have to wing it.

Chapter Seven

After the flight and wrestling my luggage into a rental car, I just didn’t have it in me to go to my rental house. I wanted a soft place to land, so to speak, and hanging with Bonnie and the twins was worth putting up with my butthead big brother.

I didn't call ahead. I never did with Jase and Bonnie, not since he'd started telling me years ago that showing up unannounced was the whole point of home, that a place stopped being home the second you needed an invitation to walk into it.

I drove straight from the airport, still wearing yesterday's clothes, my hair doing something I refused to look at in the rearview mirror, and pulled into his driveway before I'd even decided I was tired enough to need a shower first.

The front door was open before I got both feet out of the car, which should have warned me.

"Move! Move! Move!" Lachlan tore across the yard at a dead sprint, nine years old and covered in what looked like an entire bag of flour, chased by his sister wielding a spatula like a sword. "She’s got the weapon!" he yelled.

"It's not a weapon, it's a spatula, and you deserved it." Amber skidded to a stop when she saw me, spatula still raised, flour flying off both of them in little clouds. "Aunt Angie!"

"What in God's name happened to you two?"

"We were making a cake." Lachlan explained. "It didn't go so good."

"It went great," Amber corrected. "Dad's just mad about the ceiling."

I looked past them toward the house, where Jase stood in the doorway with an expression that told me the ceiling comment wasn't an exaggeration.

"Don't ask," he said pointing at me. "Don't you dare ask."

He crossed the yard, a joyful grin plastered on his face, and pulled me into a hug hard enough to lift me half off my feet, and for one long second I let myself just be held by somebody who'd been holding me my whole life. He smelled like coffee, sugar and security. I finally relaxed for the first time in what felt like forever.

"Thanks for coming straight here." His voice was muffled against my hair.

"You knew I was coming?"

"We’ve been keeping track." He pulled back and held me at arm's length, studying my face the way he'd been doing since I was small, checking for damage he could actually see. "You look tired."

"I am tired. It's been a busy couple of days."