Page 20 of Boardroom Mask

JILLIAN

“What do you want from me? Why don’t you run from me? / What are you wondering? What do you know? / Why aren’t you scared of me? Why do you care for me? / When we all fall asleep, where do we go?”

— “bury a friend” by Billie Eilish

For obvious reasons, I don’t sleep.

I sit on the floor with my back against the door until my tailbone goes numb, then I move to the couch with every light in the apartment blazing. I check the deadbolt. I check the windows. I check the closets, the bathroom, behind the shower curtain. I even check under the bed like a kid afraid of monsters, except my monster was real and he licked my neck and told me he was sent to kill me.

When the moon is almost done with its trek across the night sky, I give up on sleep entirely and take a scalding shower. I scrub my neck where the Masked Man’s tongue was until my skin is raw and pink, but even then, I still feel him there.

Okay. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go to the police. I don’t need to be a crime reporter to see that as the clear next step. This case is open-and-shut, really. After all, I have evidence aplenty. I have a bite mark on my earlobe that’s already bruising purple. I have a breaker box that was tampered with. I have a deadbolt that was picked. So, with all that in hand, I’ll walk into the precinct on West 82nd, sit down across from a detective, and I’ll tell them everything. They’ll take my statement and open a case and assign someone to look into it, and I’ll have done the right thing.

By the time I leave for work, I know with a sinking feeling in my gut that that’s exactly what I can’t do it.

There are practical reasons for this, and I rehearse them on the subway. If I report a masked intruder who claimed to be connected to the Lazarevs, a few things will happen. Doug will pull me off the story for my own safety, which means months of work and a missing source go down the drain. And the cops will open an investigation, which tips off the Lazarevs that I’m being specifically targeted, which blows whatever access I still have. Both of which mean the story dies and the Lazarevs get to keep doing all the heinous things they’ve been doing.

But that’s not the real reason.

The real reason is that something awoke in me on that floor last night. Not The Fear—I’ve been afraid for five years and I’ve gotten pretty good at it. This was different.

When I knelt in front of him, laced my fingers behind my head and pressed my forehead to the wall and felt his heat behind me and smelled cinnamon and sandalwood and heard that low, commanding rasp tell me I was a good girl?—

Ifeltsomething.

I feltpresent. I was there, fully there, not floating above myself watching it happen to someone else.

That terrifies me far more than the Masked Man ever could. Because if I tell someone, they’ll want to know why I didn’t fight harder. And I don’t have answers I’m willing to give.

So I walk into the newsroom before anyone else has arrived, drop my bag at my desk, and open my laptop.

I have work to do.

I spend most of the day going over everything I’ve assembled thus far on my Lazarev story. I’ve got a renewed sense of energy now, as I pore over everything public I can find on Lazarev Global. Corporate registrations, property transfers, building permits, tax liens, anything with a name or a signature attached. Doug told me to build the story from the bottom up, and that’s what I’m going to do, masked psychopath or no masked psychopath.

Little by little, the newsroom fills up around me. Weston drops into his chair at 9:15, gives me a nod, and puts on his massive over-ear headphones. Cheryl from Metro pings me on Slack to ask if I want to grab lunch, but I don’t respond.

By one P.M. I’ve got a decent map of the Lazarev corporate structure spread across dozens of browser tabs and a legal pad full of scribbles. There isn’t anything like a smoking gun yet, but neither are they squeaky clean. It’s a Byzantine maze of holding companies nested inside holding companies, most of themregistered in Delaware or Wyoming, plus a few in the Caymans. This sort of complexity screamswe are definitely hiding thingsto anyone who’s ever read a financial filing.

What exactly they’re hiding remains unclear.

I keep going until the sun is almost down. That’s when I check the time and realize I need to move.

I grab my bag, my recorder, and a fresh notebook and head out. I’ve got a meeting with Giovanni Ochoa. We set this up weeks ago, back when he was still returning my messages. The plan was always to meet in person, somewhere neutral where he’d feel safe. He picked the spot: a diner on Tenth Avenue in the low Forties, one of those old chrome-and-vinyl places that somehow hasn’t been turned into a Sweetgreen yet.

Although that was before he vanished.

I’m going anyway, if only on the off chance he shows up. And on the more likely chance he doesn’t, at least I can say I did my job.

The diner is half-full when I walk in. A couple of construction guys munch burgers at the counter and an older woman with a newspaper nurses a cup of coffee in the booth by the window. I pick a booth with a clear sightline to the door, sit down, and order a black coffee.

As I wait, I check my phone. No messages from Ochoa. I pull up our Signal thread and scroll through it. The last message is mine:Hey, just confirming we’re still on for Tuesday at five. Same spot. Let me know.

That was three days ago. I wonder if he was even alive when it was sent, or if the Lazarev meat grinder had already chewed him up and spit him out.

I sip my coffee and wait. Five P.M. comes and goes. Six does the same. By seven, I admit the obvious: He’s not coming.

I knew that before I sat down, if I’m honest. People who want to blow the whistle don’t go dark for days and then show up right on schedule at a diner on Tenth Avenue. They either come early because they’re nervous, or they don’t come at all. Giovanni Ochoa is the latter.