Nobody's Hero by Liz Lee

dollar mistake and was settled in minutes. We’re not talking Bob Woodward here.”
    As Callah watched Riley, something shifted inside her. He might not believe in himself, but she believed in him. Riley had saved her from something, she wasn’t sure what. “Someone wants to hurt me, Riley. And someone else thought you were the man to save my life. There’s got to be a reason.”
    And as she spoke she realized she’d come to her conclusion. “The answers are in Burkette.”
    “Someone certainly thinks so.”
    “Then we’ve got to go back.”
    “We’re not going to be able to do that without him seeing us.” Riley nodded to where the man who was supposed to protect her was standing. The man who’d talked to Charlie.
    “I won’t leave with him.” She couldn’t. Of that she was certain.
    “Fine. Just put down the gun and we’ll talk to him, Callah. If you go out there with that thing, there’s no telling what will happen.”
    “What if your brother’s wrong, Riley? What if that man out there won’t tell us what’s going on?” The cold metal felt good in Callah’s hand. For the first time since she’d run out of her house with Riley that morning, she felt like she was in some sort of control. She couldn’t put the gun down without knowing the man outside wouldn’t hurt them.  
    The decisions made, Callah opened the door just as the dog walker reached the sidewalk.
    “Don’t come any closer.” She held the gun behind her, ready to use it if she had to. But then Riley stepped close enough she could feel the heat of his body. When he put his hand over hers, she didn’t bother fighting. She needed to focus on the man in front of her.
    The dog walker’s startled eyes met hers. “Ma’am, I’m Special…”
    “I know who you are.”
    The radio in his hand squawked to life, an urgent sounding call for communication.
    He started to pick it up, but Callah shook her head. “Tell them I’ll meet you in Burkette. With Riley.”
    “Ma’am, just let me explain.”
    His voice was soft, completely at odds with his eyes, and she wanted to laugh. “I’m not interested in explanations,” she lied then continued. “Not yet. We’ll talk in Burkette.”

Chapter Seven
    Back in Burkette.
    Callah figured there was a song in there somewhere.  
    Riley’d spent the first thirty minutes of the ride across the lake railing about how lucky she was not to be dead after stepping outside with a gun when they knew the dog walker was a government agent. One part of her knew he was right. But faced with the same circumstances she’d make the same choice again.
    Because she wasn’t dead, and the federal agent had followed them across the lake all the way to the offices of The Standard . And now he and some other official looking guy in a suit were sitting outside the office waiting to speak with her. Two Cigarette Smoking Men. Stars in her very own X-Files .
    Riley’s editor, Mack, looked at her as if she were the key to Fort Knox. Worse, Riley looked at her in the very same way. Like an object for examination. A subject. A headline. Somehow she’d let herself forget that first and foremost she was a story.  
    Dang, it was cold in here. Callah wrapped her arms around herself as she tapped her sandal on the floor and wrinkled her nose at the smell of ink and paper.
    Reporters kept looking up from their cubicles with curious glances. They circled big stories like sharks around blood.  
    This was her Jaws .  
    She tried to ignore the phones ringing, the sound of tapping on keyboards, the occasional curse at computer problems. The men in the hall. Waiting.
    She felt exposed in the glass windowed room with its cowboy and Indian brass sculptures and paintings that looked like they’d come from a Spaghetti Western. Fitting really since her life had somehow turned into the stuff of movies. Riley sat across from her and smiled as if this were the best day of his life. She needed to remember how close to the truth that