ERICA WALKS IN THE DOOR of her apartment, drops her suitcase, and heads straight for her office, where she keeps several prepaid phones. She calls Mark Benton, the former GNN IT wizard who helped her crack the Nylan Hastings case. For his efforts Mark was assaulted, beaten, and left for dead on a Greenwich Village sidewalk. He survived, but it’s been a long haul back to physical and emotional health. By his own admission he’s still suffering from PTSD, although he’s functioning and even finding pleasure in life.
Mark left New York and moved out to Portland, Oregon, in part to live in a more low-key city, in part because he’s a passionate windsurfer. He found a good job in IT at Nike, which has much less of a pressure cooker culture than GNN. Erica is happy for him. The man has proved himself above and beyond.
“Hi, Mark, it’s Erica Sparks.”
“Erica, how goes it?”
“There’s no short answer to that question at the moment. Listen, I need your help.”
“Uh-oh.”
“If you don’t want to get involved, I will understand completely.”
“To be honest, I am getting a little bored by sneakers.”
“I’m working on a story about Mike Ortiz, an in-depth profile. As you may know, his wife is a billionaire and she is very secretive about how she manages her money. It’s all done through a company called Pierce Holdings, which is headquartered in San Francisco. I’m not at all sure things are what they seem. Hypothetically, is there any chance you could get into their system?”
“Hypothetically that would be breaking the law.”
Erica lowers her voice and gives him a broad-strokes overview of her investigation. When she’s done there’s a pause, and then Mark says, “Let me look into it.”
“Mark, there aren’t words.”
“Erica, my adrenaline is pumping. In spite of everything, that’s a good thing.”
They hang up. Erica trusts Mark with her life. The question is: Does she trust herself with his?