Free The Shell Collector by Hugh Howey Page B

tell Henry. I lower my voice to a whisper. Everyone in the newsroom is watching us. “This is front page. Real news. I’m telling you. Have I ever been wrong about these things?”
    “You really want me to answer that?”
    I check my email one last time. Nothing that can’t wait. I shut down my computer.
    “If you leave here without telling me what in the hell’s going on, you won’t have a job when you come back.”
    “I won’t need this job when I come back.” I turn and walk past Margo’s desk toward the elevator. Margo smiles and wishes me luck. I don’t ask her what she means.
    Henry hurries after me. We both know the other is bluffing: he won’t fire me and I won’t quit.
    “Do you hear yourself right now?” he asks. “You’re the one who didn’t want to go in the first place. Is this the feds? What’re they investigating? You’re not fucking him, are you?”
    I whirl around at Henry and point a finger at him. He nearly crashes into me. “I’m not fucking him,” I say. “Ness Wilde is exactly who I thought he was. His family stands for everything wrong in this world, and he sits on his private estate where everything is fake, nothing is real, and he sits in the middle of these … these shells within shells, and he is working on something awful. I’ve seen a glimpse of it. I mean—Henry, he has these trees that don’t belong there. Palm trees. Thousands of them. He’s totally messed up. His driveway is a freaking fortune in crushed shells.”
    “That’s why we have to run these stories, Maya. The one on his grandfather is brilliant. It sounds just like him. Living alone, buying up land that he knows will be beachfront one day—”
    I shake my head. “No. I told you, you can’t run that piece. Promise me. We skip to his father.”
    Henry crosses his arms. I place a hand on his shoulder. “I’m going to bring you the piece of our lifetimes, Henry. I swear. I can feel it. You’re the one always saying that real journalism is dead. Dead as the seven seas. Well, this is the kind of story that will bring it back to life .”
    “I need more than that, Maya. C’mon. Give me something. A hint. A headline.”
    I hesitate. If I had the shells, I would show him those. And then I remember I have something a fraction as good. I dig my phone out of my bag and bring up the image gallery, sort through the recent pics. I find the one of the three lace murexes sitting on my kitchen counter. It’s the pic I sent to my sister as a gag.
    When I show Henry the picture, his eyes widen. “So he bought you,” he whispers, his voice dripping with disappointment.
    “They’re fake,” I tell him.
    Henry pinches the picture to zoom in. Studies the image closely. “Are you sure?” he asks.
    “I’m sure.” I lower my voice. “Henry, he cracked these open in front of me and tried to convince me they’re real. The feds are investigating where they came from. I’m telling you, they’re fakes, but they’re good fakes. They could crash the shelling market. Or send it skyrocketing. Hell, I don’t know.”
    “So why are you going back up there?” Henry asks.
    “Because I think he wants to come clean. He said he wants to show me his secrets. The guy is losing it, Henry. The feds say he never leaves his property. I think he trusts me, and he wants to let me in on something. I think he wants to confess. But Henry, you have to promise to keep this between us. He insisted on no leaks for a week. No stories. He made me promise.”
    Henry nods. Slowly. I have to pull the phone away from him. I slip it into my bag.
    “I’ll call you when I’ve got something,” I say.
    I leave Henry rooted in place and hit the elevator call button. Dawn is standing a few paces away, getting a cup of water from the cooler. She smiles at me. As I step inside the elevator and ride down to the lobby, I wonder how long she’d been standing there. I wonder how much she heard.

13
    The drive up to Ness’s estate is different