The Morning After Read Online Free PDF Page A

this warehouse-turned-office building, she tapped a pencil on her desk and scowled at the image of Pierce Reed, a photograph taken thirteen years earlier when he’d still been a fresh-faced cop in Savannah. In his late twenties, but still serious, he nearly glared into the camera. She wondered what drove the man. Why uproot himself and move to California, only to return here over a decade later? Why not marry? Why no children?
    She’d love to do a story on Reed and was working on an angle to sell to her editor. Something along the lines of the man behind the myth, a personal look into one of Savannah’s finest…
    Her phone jangled and she cut off speculation about the elusive detective.
    “Savannah Sentinel,” she said automatically, her attention focused on the caller. “Nikki Gillette.”
    “Hi, Nikki, this is Dr. Francis with the Savannah School Board. You called earlier?”
    “Yes, I did,” Nikki said quickly as she visualized the woman—tall, imposing, never a hair out of place, an African-American woman who had made good and at forty-two held a major position of authority in her hometown. “Thanks for calling. I’d like to interview you on the recent budget cuts,” Nikki said and clicked over to her notes on the computer while holding the receiver between her shoulder and ear. “There’re rumors that some of the smaller neighborhood elementary schools are going to be closed.”
    “Temporarily. And we prefer to call it merging. Taking two or three schools and blending them together for everyone’s benefit. We maximize our talent that way, the students are exposed to a lot of different teachers with innovative ideas, their educational experience is broadened.”
    “Even if they’re bused out of their neighborhoods, mainly the poorer neighborhoods, and shuttled across town?”
    “So that they ultimately benefit,” Dr. Francis cut in with her smooth, dulcet voice. A native Savannahian, her accent was subtle and refined. She’d been a poor girl who had worked her way through the school system here, who had found scholarships, grants and work study programs to propel her through undergraduate school and a doctoral program while her single mother held down two menial jobs and raised a total of six kids. Dr. Francis was the epitome of the American dream, a philanthropist, never married, with no children, but a woman with foresight who actually seemed to care about all of the kids in Savannah. So why did Nikki have the feeling that she’d somehow sold out? Dr. Francis rambled on and on about serving the needs of the students and the community and Nikki took notes, reminding herself not to be so cynical. Maybe the woman really believed the garbage she was peddling. And maybe it’s not garbage. Just because they’re closing down a school you attended years ago, doesn’t make it necessarily bad.
    Nikki clicked her pen and listened, agreed to meet with Dr. Francis later in the week and hung up thinking that the story wasn’t exactly Pulitzer Prize material, not even Nikki’s particular cup of tea, but it might have merit and was certainly newsworthy in its own way. No, it wouldn’t spark a byline in a bigger newspaper, wouldn’t propel Nikki Gillette to a job at the New York Times , or Chicago Tribune , or San Francisco Herald , but it would help pay the bills for the month and maybe she’d learn something.
    Maybe.
    In the meantime she wouldn’t give up on the Jane Doe pulled from the river, nor would she put her story on Detective Pierce Reed on the back burner. Nope, there was something there, something newsworthy. She could feel it. She just had to find out what it was. To do that, she needed to interview Reed, somehow get close to him.
    Which was about as likely as cozying up to a porcupine. The man was bristly, grumpy and sometimes just damned rude. Which was probably why she couldn’t just drop her idea about a piece on him. He was a challenge. And Nikki Gillette had never backed down from one.