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He was certain that, if he were to glance at himself in the mirror, he would be looking like absolute shit. His eyes felt square from looking at his holo screen for too long. His legs had gone numb from sitting in his office chair for too long. His head was slowly aching from thinking over all the ways this report could go wrong for too long. His stomach was complaining at him from being ignored for too long. His heart was straining because the thought of getting this wrong had been weighing on him for too long.
The heels of his palms were pushed into his eyes, rubbing roughly, as he finally peeled himself away from the screen. He needed a drink before he went any further.
Scott stood and paced over to the drinks cabinet. Thank God for his father and his foresight on such a matter. As had become a personal tradition, Scott lifted the crystal glass up in a silent toast to Jeff before he took his first swig.
Everything had got out of hand way too fast. Everything had spiralled and now… Well, now Scott wasn’t sure he could wind it all back into some sort of order again.
The whiskey burned as it ran down his throat. He savoured it, leaning his back against the cabinet.
Where had it all gone wrong? How had such a damning list been compiled with such ease?
Aiding and abetting a terrorist; employment of a minor; faking someone’s death; using untested, and potentially dangerous, technology; the accusations of being a money laundering operation…
Some were more threatening than others. Some had Scott worrying that it wasn’t just a reputation that was on the line. And the worst part of it all was every accusation Ms. Hardy had laid at his feet was backed up by some solid fact. He couldn’t strike a defamation suit against her because it was true. Twisted a little, maybe, but still, nevertheless, true.
She’d done her homework, ensuring she had the right amount of evidence to back up her claims. At least she’d had the decency to forewarn him of the publication.
The Crimes of International Rescue: An Exposé on the World’s Most Covert and Respected Organisation.
The title alone made Scott feel sick to his stomach, felt like he and his family were being stripped down and examined under a microscope for an assessment that wasn’t ever going to conclude in their favour. And he felt powerless to stop it. There was no legal way to get Ms. Hardy to cease publishing her article, and Scott wasn’t the sort of man who resorted to violent, if empty, threats to try and scare her away either. His only option had been to organise a meeting with her, to talk with her face to face, to try and make her see why publishing such an exposé was a bad call.
He glanced at his watch; almost seven pm. She’d be here for that chat in five minutes.
Scott had specifically chosen the Tracy Industries offices in New York, one for the familiarity of the place, but also to show her the monetary might of the Tracy family. He might not have resorted to violent threats, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t above all kinds of threats. And it certainly didn’t mean he felt good about it.
The glass was drained and returned to the cabinet. Then, steeling himself for the meeting, Scott returned to his seat behind the desk. He used the brief moments he had left to review some of the notes that Callum had written up for him. It was basic PR, along with a slightly scathing sign-off that decreed that Scott should have allowed someone from the department to sit-in on the meeting. When his office door knocked, Scott almost wished that he had.
His assistant, Emery, entered. She was followed by a woman Scott could only presume was Ms. Hardy. She was dressed in a fitted Houndstooth jacket with a matching skirt. Her white blouse crisp and tucked into the skirt, dark tights accentuated her legs, and her heels raised her by a few inches. Her ash brown hair was wrapped into a neat chignon, two strands falling to frame her face.
He flashed a quick smile. “Thank you, Emery. You can finish up for the day and head home now, if you like.”
His assistant wasn’t unaccustomed to working overtime, but Scott made the mental note to add a nice bonus to her next pay-check regardless.
When Emery had left, closing the door behind her with a soft clock, Scott turned his attention to his guest. He gestured to the seat opposite the desk, a maroon-coloured, velvet-upholstered armchair. With a slight nod, she slid herself into the seat, legs crossing at her ankles.
“I’m very grateful for you agreeing to meet with me, Ms. Hardy,” Scott said, his entire persona naturally exuding businessman. It was like a mask he slipped on when attending board meetings, only this time it hadn’t been put on on purpose. He was looking far too rigid and sounding far too uptight for the easy-going version of himself he had originally been aiming for.
“I can’t say I was surprised by your invitation,” Ms. Hardy replied. She glanced around his office, taking note of whatever she deemed important to remember, and then flashed him a polite smile. “I take it you asked me here to try and convince me not to publish?”
Scott didn’t mind getting straight to business, he supposed. It suited him far better, and the sooner she was out of his door, the better.
“Are you going to offer me money?” She continued. “Or threaten me with it? Let me tell you now, Mr. Tracy, that I’ve had both offers and threats posed to me in the past with stories that were far more damning than this little investigation, and I’ve never sold out. I don’t intend to start now, either.”
His lips twitched, faintly impressed by her code. “Please, call me Scott. No, I didn’t ask you here because I want to bribe or threaten you. I just wanted to talk.”
“Talking me out of printing the truth? Now that is a new one.”
Scott bristled slightly at that. “It’s not entirely the truth, though, is it, Ms. Hardy?”
“Call me Daniella, please,” she parroted back his request of informality.
“Daniella,” Scott attempted again, “I wanted to see if we could come to some sort of agreement, to avoid this whole thing turning into some sort of a storm inside a teacup.”
She scoffed. “Alright, if you want to talk, let us begin with your claims that the truth I possess isn’t actually the truth, shall we?” Daniella leaned back into the plush chair, elbows perched on the arm rests, a pen twirling between her fingers.
Scott resisted the urge to sigh. He pushed his irritation as far down as he could manage, and allowed her to carry on.
“I have stacks of evidence—eyewitness testimonies; reports from both your organisation and the GDF, as well as certain companies that were involved in your rescues; communications from various parties—that suggest that what I possess is the cold hard truth. The conclusions I made in that exposé were not made out of malice or misjudgment, Scott, contrary to what you may think. They were drawn from the sources I had available to me, and, yes, they are damning.”
“Yes, but that’s just it,” Scott snapped. “You had what was available; but you weren’t there when those things actually happened.”
Daniella blinked, though she didn’t back down. “Being present when someone is breaking or twisting the law does not negate that law.”
“No, it doesn’t, and I’m not saying it does. I am saying that different situations mean that you sometimes have to take the lesser of two evils.”
She arched a brow. “Let me get this right. Are you saying that breaking out a known terrorist and harbouring him on your private island is the lesser of… what evil, exactly?”
That frustration bubbled to the surface. God, she was worse than Kat Cavanaugh! And that, Scott realised, was a quite a feat. He leaned forward onto his desk, arms flat against the mahogany grain. “That isn’t what I’m saying. You’re twisting the truth again!”
Daniella was unrelenting. “Did you, or did you not, break the criminal known as the Mechanic out of the Hex, a GDF secure facility—”
“That wasn’t how it happened—!”
“—And then did you, or did you not, harbour him on your island?”
An agitated sigh was the answer she received. Scott pushed himself away from his desk, stood himself up and walked the few steps to the wall-to-ceiling windows that overlook New York City. His back was turned to the reporter but he knew she was watching him keenly. Only then did it hit him that he hadn’t once asked for the meeting to be confidential.
Cold terror sliced through him. Scott glanced over his shoulder. “This is all off-the-record, right?”
Daniella stared at him as though that hadn’t been the words she’d expected to hear. “Was it supposed to be?”
He could have so easily lied to her. He could have said yes, it was in the letter I sent you. It was one of the agreements to the meeting. It was there in black and white, when he knew for a fact that he’d omitted that detail. It didn’t matter that it was done accidentally. Daniella had every right to publish whatever he said in this meeting alongside the exposé, and he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Lying would have been the wisest move. He wouldn’t have to worry about his words tonight being twisted along with everything else and going to print.
But Scott was an honourable man. He didn’t lie or cheat. He owned his mistakes, no matter how big or damning, and maybe—maybe—Daniella would notice that too. Maybe it’d urge her to have a change of heart.
He shook his head in answer. “No, I, uh, I think I left that bit out.”
Daniella remained quiet for a moment. “It can become an off-the-record meeting, if you’d like? From the start. We can pretend that it always had been.”
Scott gawked at her, blue eyes marvelling at the journalist. Perhaps being so open with his mistake had made her have a change of heart. She didn’t have to give him that offer. She could have added far more to her exposé if the meeting was on-the-record, she could have twisted the truth even further, but she gave him an out.
“Thank you,” he said thickly. “I’d appreciate that.”
She nodded. “Then consider it done.”
Relief coursed through him. If she was going to be lenient on that, then maybe there was still a good chance he’d be able to talk her out of publishing her main story. A sigh slipped past parted lips and Scott glanced back out of the large windows.
The New York City skyline was bright with the lights of skyscrapers and traffic. From the fiftieth floor of the building that traffic looked like ants, multicoloured, gridlocked ants, all hurrying to get from one destination to another. There was something calming about watching the busy New York scene from so high above, from so far away. From here, he wasn’t in the middle of the chaos. He wasn’t unable to see the bigger picture of the city as a whole.
It was time for a change of tactic.
He turned back to Daniella again. “I don’t know what I can say to you that will change your mind,” he admitted. “You say you have the evidence and I don’t doubt that. You say that difficult situations aren’t an excuse to bend or twist the law and I don’t disagree with you.”
One hand ran through his chestnut locks, messing up his usually neatly-styled hair. After a long day at the office, even his best hair gel was starting to fail him and escaped curls were starting to pop through. He breathed out, slow, steady and deep.
“But if you go ahead and publish this article, you’ll be a catalyst for a chain of events that will only get worse with time. You’ll give our enemies the ammunition they need to damage us. I don’t want to sound dramatic but this exposé could signal the beginning of the end of International Rescue, an organisation that the world needs, Ms. Hardy. Please don’t be the one who sparks the ignition that starts that process.”
Daniella pursed her lips, considering his words and warnings. For a moment, Scott gave himself the hope that she was going to listen and finally back down.
But her head tilted ever so slightly, her lips curled a fraction, and her palm balled into a fist around her pen. “You’re saying that publishing this exposé—which the public have a right to read, by the way— will cause irreparable damage to one of your companies?”
“Please, Ms. Hardy, I am pleading with you to not publish this article. Why else would I be trying to convince you?”
“To save face? Your reputation? Significant investments? You’re a businessman, Mr. Tracy. How can I be sure that this isn’t just you trying to save yourself money?”
“Because I haven’t taken you to court.”
Daniella scoffed again. “And that shows me that you’re not a corrupt businessman how exactly?”
“If I was concerned about money, then I’d have just taken you to court and sued you for all the millions you don’t have. Your career would be in tatters, and my family would be safe.”
Threats. The one thing Scott had told himself he wouldn’t stoop to.
To her credit, Daniella didn’t seem too bothered by his words. She rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t be able to sue me. Everything I have in that article is based on true events. I have the facts on my side.”
“And I have the money on mine. I have access to the very best lawyers in the world.” Scott sat himself back down, steepling his fingers on his desk. “Trust me when I say that I am not here to make money, or because I am worried about the business side of things should everything turn sour. I am here, Ms. Hardy, to implore you to think about the very real consequences publishing this exposé will have.”
He held her gaze, uncompromising in his dire warning. She was a hard read. Her amber eyes gave nothing away and Scott suddenly felt the need to challenge her to a card game once they weren’t butting heads over this article. With a poker face like that, he was certain she’d be a decent opponent, and with John up in orbit most of the time, he needed a new rival to compete against.
Daniella raised herself from the seat. “I want the truth out there, Scott. No matter how much good you do in the world, you cannot be allowed to go unchecked. That is wrong, but…” She trailed off as she rummaged around in her bag before setting a small, oblong device on his desk. “Read it. Make notes. Then meet with me again and we’ll work together on it. It’ll be less exposé and more of an interview, holding you to account still, but slightly less harsh.”
It was an olive branch, Scott recognised, and the deal was one that wouldn’t get better. The fact that she had, once again, given him the opportunity to change things in his favour was in itself surprising. He’d begun to think that the argument would have gone on all night, and though he was sure there would be more petitioning in the future, this was better than nothing.
His hand slid across the desk to pick up the thumb drive. “Thank you.”
“I’m not doing this for you or your organisation, Mr. Tracy. I’m doing this because I don’t think you’re lying about it being catastrophic for the rest of the world. I don’t want to be the cause of any disastrous chain reaction and,” Daniella trailed off again.
“And?”
“And,” she hesitated, “I don’t think that you’re necessarily deserving of something so damning. You sound decent and I want to give you a chance.”
Scott couldn’t help the grin that formed now, dimples on full display. “I appreciate it, more than you can imagine. I’ll be in contact in a few days.”
Daniella offered him a small smile before she headed for the door, and only once she was gone did Scott feel the sting of relieved tears threatening to run down his cheeks. Only once she was gone did he let them escape. He stood and made his way back to the drinks cabinet, pouring himself another whiskey and downing the brown liquid in one.
That had been far too close. He didn’t know who had been watching down on him favourably tonight but he was thankful for the luck they’d sent his way. He was so unbelievably thankful because, next time, he wasn’t sure he’d get off the hook so easily.