One Big Lie

Kate Fairchild was waiting in the conference room of the Seattle Examiner when Mac Davis got off deadline. Well, she probably wasn't Fairchild anymore, Mac thought. She'd gotten married, and she was the type of woman who would take her husband's name.

Kate was tense, upset about something, nervously twisting her hands together. She'd once been taken hostage by a deranged gunman and never lost her serene poise. He grimaced. It must be bad for her to come here.

"Kate?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

"I need your help," she said simply, and she slid a snapshot across the table to him. It was an old photo, taken with a cheap camera, Mac thought, as he looked at it curiously. The photo was of a tall white man, with his arm around a woman — Asian, maybe Cambodian, maybe Vietnamese.

A young girl stood in front of them. Their daughter, he guessed.

He looked at Kate, and raised his eyebrow.

"The girl in the photo came to see me at U-Dub," she said. "She gave me the photo, and said she needs my help."

Mac frowned. "I'm not tracking."

"That's my father, Mac," Kate said. "Does he look dead to you?"

Mac looked back at the photo. No, he conceded, he didn't look dead to him.

Book 6 in in the Mac Davis thriller series features a Marine turned cop reporter in Seattle.