Page 24 of Secret Baby Daddy

*

Wren is waiting on the sidewalk outside my building when the car drops me off, laptop bag slung crossbody, already halfway into a briefing before I’ve got my key in the door.

Wren has been with me since her first year out of journalism school, back when she still believed crisis management was a corruption of everything reporting was supposed to stand for.

She was right, mostly.

She stayed anyway, because Ashworth Kline pays better than any newsroom and because, I suspect, some part of her likes being on the side that wins.

“I pulled the amplification data,” she says, following me up the stairs. “The Sloane story didn’t break organically. There were forty-one accounts pushing variations of the same three phrases eighteen hours before the video hit the Tribune’s inbox.”

“Show me.”

I drop my bag on the kitchen counter and pour two glasses of wine; Wren likes to pretend she doesn’t drink on work nights and then drinks anyway, and I need something in my hand that isn’t my phone.

She spins her laptop toward me.

Rows of handles, half of them a year old, half created the week before last, all suddenly fluent in entitled heiress and cover-up and the Merricks always win.

“Somebody built the narrative before the footage even existed publicly,” Wren says.

I scan the account creation dates myself.

Old enough accounts to avoid the obvious bot flags, new enough activity to suggest a team working to a deadline rather than organic outrage.

It is, grudgingly, good work.

“Northbridge,” I say, and the name tastes bitter.

“There’s a Vasseur listed as a Northbridge advisor on their public filings.”

Wren tilts the screen so I can see the corporate registry.

“Nothing concrete. Just a name buried in an appendix nobody reads.”

“Calder knows him.”

I don’t elaborate, but my mind flashes to the way Calder’s jaw locked when Roman said his first name.

Some things are not mine to hand over, even to Wren.

She does not push.

She has worked for me for three years, long enough to learn which silences are strategic and which are simply mine to keep.

She watches me over the rim of her glass, too sharp for her own good; I was just like her at her age, before the agency taught me which edges to file down.

“You okay? You’ve got the face you get right before you don’t sleep for two days.”

“I’m fine.”

I am already composing the counter-narrative, three drafts deep, before she’s finished the sentence.

“Go home, Wren. Get some sleep. I need you fast tomorrow, not tired.”

She pauses at the door instead of leaving, laptop bag already on her shoulder, and I recognize the hesitation of a person deciding whether tonight is the night to say the thing they’ve been carrying.

“Can I tell you something before I go? It’s not about the case.”