Exclusive

Daily. God bless him, hadn’t he told her a thousand times that a good reporter dug deep, that there was always another layer to unfold, that you should never discount anything, no matter how seemingly unimportant and valueless?

The best leads—the ones that made a story sensational, that elevated a so-so story into one that rocked the world—were the ones found in the most unlikely places, places you’d never think to look for them.

It had been there all the time. All the damn time! Among the scraps of paper and notes that she’d taken from her desk at WVUE. She had checked out the lead, but only superficially. She hadn’t dug deep enough.

She cautioned herself against getting too excited now. She could be wrong. This could still prove to be a blind alley, but gut instinct was telling her otherwise. In any case, she had to find out.

Pushing the men aside, she surged to her feet. “I’ve gotta go.”

“Go where?”

“I… I’d rather not say. Not until I know.”

“You want to leave, but you don’t know where you’re going?”

“Of course I know where I’m going,” she said impatiently. “I don’t know what I’ll find when I get there. Maybe nothing. Maybe something. But I’ve got to go.”

Bill Yancey said, “Barrie, I can’t let you walk out of here—”

“Please, Bill. Send someone with me. A U.S. marshal. Let him handcuff me, I don’t care. Just, please, let me do this. It could bust this thing wide open.”

“What could?”

“That’s what I can’t say.”

“Why can’t you tell me?”

“Because I don’t want to look like a fool if I’m wrong!”

A long silence followed her shout.

Then: “Let her go.”

It was Gray who’d spoken, and when Barrie turned to him with surprise, his eyes were on her, communicating a thousand things, not the least of which was absolute faith in her.

In that instant, she knew she loved him. Dammit. She loved him very much.

“Let her go,” he repeated, holding her stare. “She knows what she’s doing.”

* * *

“Could’ve knocked me over with a feather when you showed up with a letter of introduction from the attorney general.”

Deputy Warden Foote Graham was as disarming as his name. He belied the bully stereotype portrayed in prison movies. He was mild-mannered, slender as a reed, and wore wire-rimmed glasses. He was sensitive enough not to express any curiosity about the soiled nurse’s uniform she was wearing. She hadn’t taken time to change.

Barrie thanked him for seeing her without an appointment. “I left Washington in such a hurry, there wasn’t time to notify you that I was coming.”

Bill Yancey had greased the skids. After agreeing to the trip to Mississippi, he’d placed a private jet at her disposal. At the Jackson airport, there’d been a car and esco

rt waiting to drive her to the prison in Pearl. Foote Graham was in awe of his well-connected guest and had readily agreed to assist in any way he could.

“I assume your interview with Charlene Walters is of an urgent nature?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, Warden Graham. That’s confidential.”

“I can’t figure it,” he said, shaking his head in bafflement. “But if you and Attorney General Yancey say it’s a matter of national security, who’m I to question it.”

He ushered her through a door that was opened for them by a uniformed female guard. “She’s waiting for you,” the guard said. “And mad as a hornet to be pulled away from rec time.”