One Good Reason by Nicole Salmond Page B

and let
her free. She had to act on what she knew now. Hayden still considered her his
captive, still believed she had the information he needed. As far as she knew,
this was the first time since her arrival that he was leaving the house, and
with the event that unfolded with Aran and Daw, he’d been watching and guarding
her like a hawk for the past week.
    This
just might be her only chance of escape; she couldn’t let the chance pass her
by. She needed a plan, a bloody good one at that.
     
    ***
     
    Paul
Harris sat down at his kitchen table and turned on the small television resting
on the kitchen bench.
    For
four weeks, he’d been in hiding. Four weeks of living on the run, and staying
in places like this tiny one bedroom shack in the middle of the Australian
desert.
    Paul
was used to staying in all sorts of living conditions. He had travelled the
world many times over, sometimes staying at five star hotels, sometimes
sleeping on the sidewalk. All in the name of journalism; his greatest passion
in life. He loved his job. He had sacrificed many things in his life for his
work. Some things he wasn’t proud of, but it wasn’t all for nothing. During his
time as a journalist for the last twenty years, he had uncovered news and
stories that changed the world and people’s lives. He would dig and dig to
uncover the most famous cover-ups of all time, and then release them for all
the world to see.
    Paul
was good at his job, if not excellent at it. But being good at what you did,
didn’t always keep you out of trouble. Like right now, for instance, Paul had
spent the last two years working on a government cover-up that forced him into
hiding four months ago.
    What
he’d found would crush the government in power. What he’d found would send
government personnel to jail.
    He
had been about to break the story when all hell broke loose. A tip off from an
anonymous informant told him over the phone early one morning to watch his
back. ‘They’ had found out the story he was about to publish and ‘they’ were
going to make sure that it never hit the newsstands. He was told to get out and
leave as quickly as possible, and forget the story.
    The
informant had been right, and had also saved his life. Paul had been staying in
a unit above a tattoo parlour at the time. He had known the owner for years and
he’d offered Paul cheap rent. When the informant called, he had been woken up
at three in the morning. His poor reception on his mobile phone made him have
to step out onto the back terrace to take the call. Just after the informant
had hung up, his unit and the tattoo parlour were fired on with guns and
homemade bombs.
    Paul’s
bedroom was at the very front of the unit. The explosion was so powerful it
sent Paul flying off the terrace’s balcony and onto the garden bed below. If he
hadn’t received that call at that time, he would have still been sleeping in
his bedroom.  A bedroom that had now been blown to pieces.
    Paul
had only moments to react. All his belongings were in that bedroom, along with
his laptop, which held a copy of the story he had been about to break, so he
took off before the emergency officers arrived. When he had gotten to his work
computer, it had been hacked. Every file erased from the hard drive. The only
file left was a blank word document titled ‘Explosive Story Breaking
Headlines .’
    Paul
had received death threats before; it came with the territory. However, never
had a threat been carried out. He did the only thing he could have done. He
used his life savings and went into hiding in a remote location in Australia.
    The
police had ruled the attack on his unit as ‘ bikie gang related.’ Which Paul knew was anything but true. Regardless, he was still
at risk of being attacked again, so he went to the local police station to
answer questions about the attack and to confirm that he hadn’t been injured in
the explosion. He wanted his attackers to know he was still alive and well.