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  Eventually, I got a job working at a pet store, then as a cleaner at another clinic where I also did my internship when the time came. When I wasn’t volunteering or working, I was applying for scholarships. Again to anywhere that would possibly take me.

  My track record of dedication combined with good grades finally paid off, and I got a full ride for college. Without it, I’d never have been able to make my dreams come true.

  I’d worked my ass off for every little thing I had and I gave literally every cent I didn’t need to charity. Now this Stark asshole wanted to question the legitimacy of my donation? Just no. A hard, firm no.

  The article went on to name the clinic as a “pop-up shop that appeared overnight,” and said “the mysterious donor, a Mr. EM Martinez, certainly has some questions to answer.” It was insinuated throughout that there had to have been an ulterior motive for the donation and that the clinic could be a front for nefarious dealings.

  I slammed my coffee down on the table so hard that it sloshed over the sides and left the paper with brown liquid pooling all over the offensive article. Why on earth would anyone immediately conclude that just because a donor didn’t want glory or anything else out of it that they had to be a criminal?

  There was something wrong with this journalist. Seriously wrong.

  Charitable donations done for the sake of donating to a cause one believed in had to amount to criminal activity? It was ridiculous. This person had to be sick. And a total and complete dick.

  Fury unlike anything I’d ever felt before ripped through me. This was my father’s name he was smearing. If it had been mine, fine. At least I was still around to defend myself. My father wasn’t, and he’d died a hero for saving that little boy.

  He didn’t deserve to have his legacy tainted by a cynical, ignorant ass who made assumptions based on their own sad life. What an absolute prick.

  My chair fell over on the sidewalk from the force with which I pushed it back and how abruptly I stood up. I left my coffee and my water behind, looping Mae’s leash around my wrist as I marched to the office. It was closer than my house, and I’d been on my way there anyway.

  My rage didn’t subside. All the way to the clinic, I cursed the journalist out in my mind and came up with more than a few creative ways of telling them off.

  I wasn’t letting this slide. Whoever this dick was, he or she had to know that they couldn’t go around writing such utter garbage without repercussions. I briefly considered getting a lawyer to send a letter instead of writing one myself, but I’d try it this way first. If I got them to recant the allegations without having to pay for a lawyer, it would be even better.

  Jabbing the power button on my computer after I dropped into my chair, a manic smile spread on my lips. The damn idiot who wrote that article wasn’t getting away with this. I would make it my personal mission to ensure that they got what was coming to them.

  The ancient machine took ages to start up, but I used the time to order my thoughts. Once I could get onto the internet, I looked up the newspaper and copied down the email of the so-called reporter responsible for the article. By the time I finally clicked into my email program, I was ready to go.

  For the subject, I wrote, “Shoddy research and a sorry excuse for journalism.” The email that followed wasn’t any kinder.

  Dear C Stark,

  It is with disgust and disappointment that I read your article titled “No Show From Lead Donor” in today’s edition of your paper. The very name of the company you are employed by makes it seem like they expect their journalists to report on the NEWS. Nothing in the abovementioned article can be construed as newsworthy. It is only a very mentally unstable mind that can infer criminal conduct from a kindhearted donation to a good cause made without the expectation of receiving something in return.

  In that regard, I suggest you seek urgent help. There may be nothing anyone can prescribe that will cure stupidity, ignorance, or cynicism, but perhaps there is something that might help for delusions or hallucinations of time spent researching.

  Any journalist worth their salt knows that research is the foundation for an informative, well-written piece in which news is properly and fairly conveyed. Have you no shame, or just no ethical values?

  To publish such nonsense without even contacting the subject of your defamation for a comment has to be the laziest, sorriest excuse for journalism that I’ve ever seen. For such a journalist to be employed by a publication who claims to bring people news is pitiful. Is that really the state of the journalism industry? Surely, it can’t be.

  I suggest that if you want to write childish articles without having to go through the effort of verifying facts, that you should apply for a job at Highlights Magazine. Honestly, at least then the readers won’t have the legitimate expectation of the reporter actually doing anything to earn their money.

  A public apology for the drivel you published is in order if you care about your reputation or that of your employer at all, as is an attempt to do better next time.

  Do better, C Stark. Be better.

  Yours sincerely,

  A Concerned Reader

  After rereading my message, I went back and hid my email address to make sure it was sent anonymously, then pushed enter to send it off. Sitting back with a satisfied smile, I looked over at Mae. All she did was lay her head back down on the tiny bed she favored above all others, not seeming proud of me at all.

  But it didn’t really matter. I was proud of me. Proud for having made enough money to have any to donate, proud for trying to keep my father’s legacy alive, and proud for standing up against a big bully who probably didn’t ever expect any pushback.

  Well, get ready, C Stark. Because this girl? This girl is pushing back.

  Chapter 6

  COLTON

  “That was a surprisingly scathing article you wrote,” Ross said as we walked into our office building on Monday morning. “Why are you gunning so hard for this donor? You don’t know anything about them.”

  I pressed the call button for the elevator. “That’s exactly the point. If someone has the money to donate what they did, they’re worth knowing about and for the community to know about. Unless of course there’s something else going on.”

  “What happens if you’re chasing a ghost this time?” he asked. “Have you heard anything? The whole purpose of that article was to draw them out. So what if it didn’t work?”

  “Then I’ll try again.” I smirked. “When have I ever given up just because it’s been a little difficult to get a response from a subject?”

  “Never.” The doors slid open in front of us, and we climbed in. Ross turned to face me as he hit the number five for our floor. “But what if this one didn’t see your article, or doesn’t feel called out by it?”

  “If they don’t feel called out by it, they’re either a sociopath who doesn’t feel anything, in which case the town could be in real trouble, or I can’t do my job.” I lifted my brows. “And we both know how good I am at my job.”

  “Sure. You’re great at it, but you might have met your match. Someone who donates thousands and doesn’t want the credit for it? That’s a different caliber of person to what you’re used to dealing with.”

  I shrugged but I couldn’t quite get the smirk to drop from my lips. “We’ll see. Anyone who gets called a criminal and doesn’t respond either is one or is too stupid to have made that amount of money by any legitimate means.”

  He rolled his eyes at me. “So you’re saying if they don’t respond to you, they’re either a criminal or a stupid criminal. That’s jaded, bro. Even for you.”

  “Jaded doesn’t make me wrong.” So what if I often assumed the worst about people? It wasn’t like I didn’t have any reason to. The shit I’d seen in this job would drive most people to the brink of paranoia—perhaps further than that. “All I’m saying is that people don’t just donate out of the kindness of their hearts. They donate because it’s a tax break, it makes them feel bette
r, or both. It’s never just because.”

  “Maybe not, but it can be just because it makes them feel better without making them a criminal,” Ross said when the car stopped at our floor. “Let me know if you do hear from this person, okay? I trust your instincts, but you came out of the gate strong on this one. If you’re wrong, we may be facing liability issues. At the very least, we’re in public apology territory and a retraction.”

  I snapped two fingers to my forehead in a salute. “If I’m wrong, I’ll apologize and I’ll retract. No problem. But Ross?”

  “Yeah?” He stopped in front of his door.

  “I’m never wrong.”

  My friend sighed, a rare flicker of worry in the ice of his eyes. “I hope you didn’t start now. You’ve been on a roll your entire career. At some point, the wheels have got to come off.”

  “This isn’t that point,” I said confidently, leaving him to his office and walking into my own.

  Not bothering to close the door behind me, I took off my jacket and hung it over the back of my chair, whistling while I waited for my laptop to start. Ross had been right when he said I’d come out of the gate strong with this one. In fact, it might have been the strongest start I had ever made.

  But as I’d sat there on Saturday night, scouring the internet for traces of this donor and coming up dry, I’d gotten this feeling that this could be the big one. I didn’t know why. Something about it just felt different.

  Maybe because this person was using charities I happened to respect and support myself to get rid of their dirty money, or maybe because if that wasn’t the case, I was genuinely curious about who the person was. I’d met too many people who were rotten to the core and not enough who weren’t.

  Truly selfless people were few and far between. Hell, I owed my life to one of them but I hadn’t met another since. If this was another of those people, I desperately wanted to sit down with them.

  Sure, maybe insinuating they were engaged in criminal activity wasn’t the best way to go about it, but it was a surefire way to elicit a response. All I had to do now was wait.

  It turned out I didn’t have to wait much longer. My emails opened up once my computer was started, and one immediately caught my eye. When I opened it, that warm feeling of anticipation spread from my stomach and into my veins.

  It was go-time. My ploy had worked. I’d be seriously surprised if this “Concerned Reader” was anyone other than the donor themselves or direct family. No one took shit up that seriously when it wasn’t written about them or someone they loved.

  “Ross,” I called, grinning as I linked my fingers behind my head. “You’re gonna wanna see this!”

  Thirty seconds later, he came striding into my office with a Bluetooth device in his ear. He finished his conversation with curt phrases before he clicked off. “What it is? Did you hear from our mysterious donor? Also, are they suing us?”

  “They might eventually.” I turned the laptop so the screen faced him and gave him another shit-eating grin. “What was that you were saying about how I was chasing a ghost? I told you, dude. I know how to do this fucking job.”

  A soft chuckle came from him as he rubbed the side of his neck while reading through the email. “You son of a bitch. I agree. I think this really is from the donor. Too bad they’ve hidden the address it came from.”

  I arched a brow at him before turning the screen back. “Who do you think I am? An amateur? A rookie? Someone who is, and I quote, pitiful, lazy, and childish?”

  “What are you saying? You can track the sender even though they’ve blocked their address from showing?” He widened his eyes at me. “Please tell me you haven’t installed illegal software on our system.”

  “I haven’t installed illegal software on our system,” I replied dutifully. “I bought software that is completely legal from a friend who’s a private investigator. All it really does is what any real tech-savvy person can do. Totally legal.”

  He arched a brow and shook his head but didn’t ask any more questions. “So what now?”

  “Now I track the email address of the sender and look into them.” Opening the software that might have been a tiny bit more shady than I’d just told Ross, I clicked on the control to run the email through it.

  Several lines of codes appeared, blinking in and out of existence as the software did its thing. The next thing I knew, an email address popped up on my screen, eduardosadmin@vetmail.

  Unsurprisingly, it appeared to be linked to the same veterinary clinic that I’d discovered the donor owned. What made it suspicious was that there was no other mention of EM Martinez in the entire county who was a veterinarian with his own clinic. So what it looked like was that this guy had opened up a clinic here, donated a bunch of money, but didn’t actually exist.

  I’d tried to look into the company records, but there wasn’t really much there except for the name. Now that Eduardo’s Angels had popped up again, there was no doubt in my mind that the clinic was where I had to start.

  The employees of places that were opened as a front rarely knew anything about what the true owners were up to, but it was all I had to go on. There was no postal address listed anywhere for this guy, nor was there a residential address, contract number, or anything else.

  Eduardo’s Angels was the only lead I had. I looked up at Ross, who was still standing at the other side of my desk with his hands in the pocket of his tailored suit and a worried expression on his face. “You know, I’ve been looking to get a dog anyway. This might be a good time to follow through on it.”

  “You’re going to get a dog just to have an excuse to visit this clinic?” he asked, his tone dripping with incredulity. “Do you even realize how big of a commitment it is to get a pet? No more traveling without making plans for someone to look after it, no more fucking anywhere in your own house without the fear of getting your balls licked?”

  “That’s where your mind went?! Traveling and getting my balls licked?” I laughed. “I’d hate to have to live in your head, man. If anyone is sick around here, it’s you. Maybe I should just go down to the clinic and tell them that.”

  He tapped his temple with his index finger and gave me a smile that was filled with cool confidence. “What you wouldn’t give to live in my head. Do you know how many awesome memories are up here? Tons.”

  “Awesome memories and disturbing thoughts obviously. No thanks.” I opened a new tab on my browser and pulled up the pages of several rescue organizations and pet shops. “Do you think I’d be able to get a rescue dog this afternoon? Have you got any contacts?”

  He frowned and shook his head. “I’ve got a guy for pretty much anything but definitely not for dogs. Don’t rescue places usually have a whole checklist of stuff you have to comply with before they let you have the animal?”

  “That’s what I’m worried about.” I drummed my fingers on the desk while I thought. “I wanted to get a rescue, but I guess that’s going to have to be my next dog. Pet shop it is.”

  Ross’s face was a mask of doubt. “Can’t we just borrow a fucking dog from someone?”

  “Nah. I’ve wanted one for a long time. Now is as good a time as any to get one. Plus, it gives me excuses to keep going back there if I need to.”

  “Okay, it’s your funeral.” He smirked before walking to my door, where he stopped to lean against the frame with laughter in his gaze. “Or your balls getting licked. Either way, it’s your problem.”

  He walked out into the corridor before he finally burst out laughing and muttering to himself about how much of an idiot I was. I didn’t waste any time wondering if he was right. I had a dog to choose.

  An hour later, I walked out with a compromise dog. He wasn’t technically a rescue, but he was six months old already and the pet shop assistant told me no one else had showed any interest in him. The staff took turns taking him home so he would get out of the glass display box he was kept in, but other than that, he hadn’t left the store.

  I soon figured
out why, though. The dog was a real dick. His name was Tiger, and he was an American Leopard Hound. They were one of the lesser known breeds in the country but, apparently, among one of the oldest tree-dog breeds. Since they were lesser known, big, and not so cute, no one had wanted him.

  My heart immediately went out to the gray and black coated puppy, but when the first thing he did was piss on my seat on the way to the clinic, I concluded that there may have been more to it.

  He growled at me, snapped at my sleeve when I tried to stroke him, farted a lot, and tried chewing on my seat. All of which happened in less than fifteen minutes.

  By the time we pulled up to Eduardo’s Angels, I was seriously considering returning the fucking mutt. But then he turned his big brown eyes up to me, and I decided to give him a chance. If only for the time it took the vet to examine him.

  “Tighten it up, boy,” I murmured to him after I parked. “We have a job to do here, and you’re going to help me.”

  Chapter 7

  HAVEN

  Kayla frowned when she walked into the office to see me still fuming over the article. I sat behind my desk, glaring at my computer screen and constantly refreshing. It had been over twenty-four hours since I’d sent the email and the journalist hadn’t responded.

  No apology. Not even a message to say they noted the contents of my email. It was beyond rude.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, folding her hands in her lap as she sat down. “If I’m overstepping, just tell me to leave you alone, but you don’t seem okay.”

  “I’m not.” I looked away from the screen after refreshing it again, sighing when there was still no new message. “I donated some money to an organization who put together a festival in support of several charities over the weekend.”