His next call was to Jack Morrison, an investigative reporter at the Metro Daily. Jack had spent years covering public contracts and the quiet arrangements between developers, city officials, and police leadership. He was careful by temperament, skeptical even of people he liked, and Marcus valued that more than enthusiasm. "I don't want a sensational headline tonight," Marcus told him. "I want you to look at Vision Heights Development. Something about these property purchases isn't right."
Jack made him repeat the name. "I know that company," he said. "They buy in clusters. Usually places the city has recently called distressed. Why are you asking?"
"Because their representative has been pressuring my elderly neighbor, and tonight a police captain surrounded my wife with ten cruisers."
There was a silence at the other end. "Send me anything you have. But Marcus, don't assume the connection is proven because the timing is ugly. If we print an accusation, we need more than a pattern."
"I understand. The records come first."
Marcus obtained permission to leave his assignment, made arrangements for a late flight into Reynolds Regional Airport, and spent the waiting hours assembling a chronology of everything Angela had told him about the neighborhood. He searched saved photographs of Mrs. Carter's letters, looking for company names and dates. He called two neighbors he knew personally, but avoided asking them what to say. He wanted independent accounts, not testimony shaped by his outrage.
Mrs. Martinez answered while sitting at her kitchen table with her husband. "We filmed it, Marcus. All of it. Angela didn't touch anyone. They threw her on the road."
"Is she conscious? Was she breathing afterward?"
"She was talking when they put her in the car. She looked hurt. I'm so sorry."
"Don't apologize," Marcus said. "You helped her by recording. Please keep the originals exactly as they are, and don't delete anything. Diana will explain how to send copies securely."
Mrs. Martinez began to cry. "They stood right there and told us to go inside. My children saw it. I keep hearing her say she wasn't resisting."
After ending the call, Marcus sat in an airport chair, his eyes fixed on the floor for a long moment. He had known danger in places where the risk came with the mission, where the people around him had training and a plan. Angela had been taken from a familiar residential street because a man with authority decided she was an obstacle. The helplessness of being far away struck him harder than any physical threat he remembered.
He opened a message from his wife that she had sent the previous afternoon. It was a photograph of Mrs. Carter's roses after a thunderstorm, each petal carrying water like tiny pieces of glass. Beneath it Angela had written, "She says Herbert planted these the year they moved in. We have to make sure she gets to keep them."