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Had this been her entire plan from the start? A way to get the notorious Portland gossip writer out of her hair once and for all?

And what better way to do that than to break her? And Jamie was broken, both professionally and personally.

Jamie sobbed harder, a fresh wave of tears racking her body.

Scrubbing at her face with her hands, she sniffed and scanned her coffee table.

She always left a box of tissues on it somewhere among the clutter.

“Goddamn it, Jessie.” She had forgotten about Jessie’s rampage of cleaning while Jamie came back from the edge of migraine hell.

The table was pristine, with not a tissue box in sight.

Jamie sniffed and resigned herself to getting up. She pulled herself to her feet, using the closed door she had been leaning against. After finally finding the tissues on the windowsill of the kitchen, she grabbed the box and returned to her living room.

Everything weighed her down—mentally, emotionally, and physically.

With a sigh, she flopped down on the couch and heard a strange crinkling noise. It took a bit of wrangling and doing couch squats to find out exactly where the crinkling had come from but when she did, her mind momentarily failed her.

In her hand, she held the photos from the proposal and the notes she had so far written up for the article for her lesser-known blog. She held the now crinkled papers and blinked, unsure what the hell the pile of paper was doing under her couch. It wasn’t like she ever hid any of her story information. Who exactly would she hide it from? She told Jessie more than she ever should, but Jessie would never jeopardize anything for Jamie.

And no one else ever came to her place.

Well, not ever.

Memories of Siena’s visit tormented her as she remained standing in front of her couch gripping the photos. But they hadn’t even existed at the time of that visit.

She pulled her phone from her back pocket and dialed without needing to check the number or truly looking at the phone. Her mind was missing something, but she wasn’t going to jump to any conclusions. There might actually be a reasonable explanation.

Even if for the life of her now she couldn’t figure it out.

“Jamie, what’s wrong?” Jessie’s worried voice came down the line. Only then did Jamie think about what day it was, and the time.

“Oh shit, Jessie I’m sorry, I didn’t realize the time. I just have a really weird question for you.”

“Okay, ask away.” Jessie’s voice was slow and filled with caution.

“When you cleaned up my place the other day, did you put any of my notes or photos under the cushion on the couch?”

“What? No. You were passed out on it. I wasn’t touching you.” Jessie’s reply was filled with the chuckling Jamie had expected. But hearing it made her chest tighten and an anger flare within her. “Why would I?”

“Right, of course. Sorry to bother you.”

“James, what’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure, well I’m not completely sure. Not yet. But I’ll tell you when I can. Right now, I’ve got to chase down a lead.”

“All right.” Jessie’s smile came down through the line, and before she realized it, Jamie was smiling in reply. “It’s nice to hear you distracted with a story.”

“Yeah, it kind of is,” Jamie agreed. She wasn’t about to explain her day so far to Jessie. That would take way more time than Jessie had right now. After saying their goodbyes, Jamie paced her apartment, the well-worn track a comfort beneath her feet.

It had been nice to be focused on a story and a mystery. Because really what else did a story do but answer a question she had to find the answer to?

At first, as the idea bloomed in her mind, she dismissed it immediately. Swatting it away like a mosquito looking for her blood. But the more she paced, the more her mind got back into the game she had always been so good at playing, that idea grew.

It was going to be tricky. And she would only have so much control over it actually happening. Giving anyone else power over her stories had never come easily. It had been the reason she had started the blogs in the first place. She hated being censored.

The shit she wrote for that paper really did border on the trashy side of things. At the beginning she had written them with everything she had. She would find the angle to make the most mundane thing interesting and ensure her writing captivated the reader’s attention. But it hadn’t taken her long to write the pieces moments before she flicked them over to the boss’s inbox.