BLOOD & BYLINE

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Chapter 4 TWO QUESTIONS AND A WARNING

POV: Mara Voss

The receptionist has told me four times that Mr. Ashford is unavailable.

I’m still in the chair.

My coffee is gone. My phone is at sixty-two percent. I’ve been sitting in this lobby since nine-ten and it is now nine-fifty-four and the only thing that has changed is that the receptionist has stopped making eye contact with me, which honestly is fine. I’m not here for eye contact.

I’m here because I sent a formal interview request to Ashford Industries on Monday, got a decline by Tuesday afternoon, sent a follow-up Wednesday morning, got a second decline Wednesday afternoon, and showed up in person Thursday because I have tried being polite and polite has a limit.

The receptionist makes a call at nine fifty-seven. Body turned away, voice dropped low. I watch her shoulders pull up and then slowly release.

She hangs up. Looks at me with the expression of someone who has just lost an argument they didn’t want to have.

“Mr. Ashford will be down shortly.”

“Wonderful,” I say. “Thank you so much.”

She does not look like she thinks anything is wonderful.

The elevator opens at ten-oh-three and he walks out alone. No assistant, no handler, nobody running interference. Just Cole Ashford crossing a lobby like a man who has already decided exactly how the next twenty minutes go and is mildly curious whether I’ll surprise him.

He stops in front of my chair.

“Ms. Voss.”

I stand. “Twenty minutes. That’s all I need.”

Something moves across his face. Not surprise. The opposite of surprise.

“Fourth floor,” he says.

The conference room is white walls, glass table, two chairs already facing each other. I sit. He sits. Whatever just happened in the lobby disappears from his face completely, like a door closing, and what’s left is smooth and practiced and so perfectly managed it makes the back of my neck prickle.

I open my notebook.

“Ashford Industries holds the primary infrastructure contract on three of the four warehouse blocks on the east dock," I say. “Two of those blocks have active incident reports filed in the last six weeks.”

“We’re aware.” Flat. Fast. “We’ve cooperated fully with Bureau investigators.”

“Thomas Greer worked for Meridian Tier Partners at your east dock site.”

“Meridian Tier is an independent contractor. Their staffing decisions aren’t made by this office.”

Clean. Rehearsed. The kind of answer that takes years to learn, technically true and completely hollow. I write it down anyway because sometimes the architecture of what someone refuses to say is the whole story.

I let four seconds pass.

“The body was found at Crane Access Point Seven,” I say. “East end of Dock Pier Four.”

I look up.

Half a second. Maybe less.

Something cracks open behind his eyes before the control slams back down. Not guilt, not panic. Something more precise. The specific recognition of a person who knows exactly what that location means and did not expect me to know it too.

Gone in under a second. But I saw it.

“The Bureau classified the incident as industrial,” he says. Voice unchanged. Hands flat on the table.

“They did,” I say. “I’m asking about site safety conditions at that specific location before the incident occurred.”

“Our safety record is publicly available. You can submit a formal request.”

Eleven more minutes of this. Every answer airtight, every response a door quietly closing. I write it all down. I let him think I’m satisfied.

Minute fourteen.

“The earlier incident,” I say, casual, eyes on my notebook, “occurred near Storage Bay Nineteen. West access road.”

The two fingers on his right hand press flat against the glass tabletop.

It’s small. Most people would miss it.

I don’t miss things.

His eyes come straight to mine and this time the polish doesn’t come back as fast and underneath it is something that has stopped being about press management entirely. Sharp. Focused. Like I just became a different category of problem than the one he walked in prepared for.

He knows I saw it.

I know he knows.

I write something completely meaningless in my notebook and keep my face neutral and my hand steady and inside my chest my heart is doing something loud and complicated that I absolutely do not have time for right now.

We finish the twenty minutes. Nothing usable. Nothing printable. I close my notebook, stand, push my chair in.

“Thank you for your time.”

“Ms. Voss.”

Different voice. The managed version is gone. What’s left is quieter and more direct and somehow worse.

I stop.

“The story you’re building,” he says, “could get you killed before it gets published.”

The room goes very still.

“I’m telling you that as a fact. Not a threat.”

I turn around slowly and look at him. He hasn’t moved. Hands flat on the glass, eyes on me, nothing performed anywhere on his face. This is the first completely unmanaged thing he’s said since I sat down and it lands with the specific weight of someone describing a danger they know the exact shape of.

“Is there a difference,” I say.

He says nothing.

I leave.

The elevator takes forever and I stand in it with his words running on a loop. Could get you killed. Not might. Not possibly dangerous. Could get you killed, the way you say something when you’ve already seen what that looks like.

Cold air hits my face outside. I walk.

Half a block. Full block. I stop at the corner and stand there while the city moves around me and I take stock.

He knows both locations. The second one surprised him, which means the first one didn’t. Which means he’s been tracking this. Which means whatever the Bureau buried, Cole Ashford knows more about it than a man who builds community health clinics should know.

This story is bigger than I thought.

I start walking again. My recorder has twenty minutes of useless answers. My notebook has two observations that matter.

My heart is still going faster than it should.

I notice this. I turn it over the way I turn everything over.

It is not entirely fea

r and that is the part I cannot figure out how to file away.

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