Chapter 2: Get Out Before I Throw You Out

Evelyn Hart did not cry until she was in the rental car with the door locked and no one watching.

She allowed herself exactly forty seconds. Then she wiped her face, pulled up her notes app, and typed three words.

He hates me.

She stared at those words for a moment. Then she deleted them and typed what actually mattered.

He's hiding something.

Because Ryder Blackthorne's reaction had not been the cold dismissal of a man who simply disliked journalists. She had interviewed enough powerful people to know the difference between annoyance and rage. That had been rage. Personal. Burning. The kind that did not come from nowhere.

She had known this assignment would be complicated. The moment her editor, Clive, had dropped the file on her desk four weeks ago, she had Googled the Blackthorne scandal. She had read her father's original exposé. And for the first time in her life she had read it not as his daughter but as a journalist. And she had found things that bothered her. Unnamed sources. Evidence that was referenced but never produced. A timeline with a gap she could not account for.

She had not said any of that to Clive. She had taken the assignment and gotten on a plane.

Now she sat in the parking lot outside the Lunar Racing League's main circuit complex and thought about Ryder Blackthorne's face when he said the words, your last name is Hart.

He had looked like a man who had rehearsed that speech ten thousand times.

Her phone rang.

"Tell me it went beautifully," Mia said.

Evelyn laughed despite herself. "He told me to stay out of his way."

"Rude and gorgeous, exactly as advertised." Mia Carter, her best friend and fellow journalist, had the ability to make anything sound like entertainment. "What's he like in person?"

"Terrifying." Evelyn paused. "And I think the story I was sent to cover is not the real story."

Silence on the line. Then Mia said, "Evelyn."

"I know."

"You just landed. You haven't filed a single word yet. Clive wants feature content, not an investigation."

"I know." She looked back at the circuit entrance. "But Mia, I read the original article again. My father's sources were all anonymous. The financial documents he cited were never actually published alongside the piece. And the timeline of when the story broke matches perfectly with a League sponsorship deal that Blackthorne Racing lost immediately afterward. The team that picked up that sponsor?" She let the pause land. "Lucas Thorn's organization."

Another silence.

"That's circumstantial," Mia said finally.

"Everything starts circumstantial."

Mia sighed. "File the feature content first. Then dig. And Evelyn? Be careful. If you're right about this, someone buried it once already."

Evelyn hung up.

She had exactly two hours before the afternoon press briefing. She used them to review every publicly available document related to the Blackthorne scandal. By the time she walked back into the media center, she had six questions she needed answers to and no legitimate way to get them yet.

The press briefing was held in the league's main conference hall. Every racing team had a representative present. Evelyn took a seat in the third row, set up her recorder, and did her job. She asked three solid questions about the season schedule and the new circuit modifications. She was professional. She was invisible.

Then Lucas Thorn walked in.

He was not scheduled to speak at the briefing. His team's representative was a polished PR woman named Greta. But Lucas came in anyway, twenty minutes late, and took a seat at the front table like he owned the room. Which, based on everything Evelyn had read, he essentially did. Thorn Racing was the league's biggest sponsor. Lucas Thorn had served on the board of the Lunar Racing League for six years.

He was also, according to her growing theory, the man who had destroyed the Blackthornes.

He smiled at the room. Broad and easy and completely rehearsed.

Evelyn watched him the way she had learned to watch people. Not at their eyes. At their hands.

His hands were very still.

The briefing ended. The room shuffled. Evelyn was gathering her recorder when a shadow fell across her notepad.

She looked up.

Ryder Blackthorne stood over her like a weather system. He had not been at the briefing. She had checked. Twice. Which meant he had come in specifically to find her.

"The press pool is on the other side of the building," he said.

"I know where the press pool is." She clipped her recorder to her bag strap. "I also know this is the general media area and I'm permitted to be here."

"You were watching Thorn."

That stopped her. She looked up at him properly. "I was doing my job."

"You were watching him like you recognized him." His jaw was tight. "How well do you know Lucas Thorn?"

She stood up so she was not at the disadvantage of having him tower over her. "I don't know him at all. I arrived in this city this morning."

"But you've researched him."

"I've researched everyone relevant to the league. That's what journalists do." She held her ground. "Why does it matter to you who I was watching?"

Something shifted in his expression. A door closing behind his eyes.

"Get out of this section," he said. "Before I have security remove you."

She picked up her bag. Looked him dead in the eye. "You can threaten me all you want, Mr. Blackthorne. It won't stop me from doing my job."

She walked out.

Behind her, she heard Noah Rivers say quietly to Ryder, "She's not scared of you at all, is she."

She did not hear Ryder's answer.

But she felt his eyes on her back until she turned the corner.

That night, alone in her hotel room, she opened her laptop and pulled up every financial record she could legally access on Lucas Thorn.

She did not sleep until two in the morning.

She found the first discrepancy at one fifty three.