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Felon E was her baby, her creation, her universe. While the world of true-crime bloggers grew exponentially, with new entrants on the scene almost daily, she was still number one, the top of the heap. Her blog echoed throughout the online world because of her accuracy, her tact and her compassion.
She utilized all the social networks to get the word out, and her fans did the rest. She’d come a long way from the crime beat at The Te
She was admired by law enforcement, too. Many departments utilized her blog and a
To stay on top of the breaking crime news, she’d carefully cultivated contacts throughout the country, but her bread and butter came from friends in the 911 call centers. Major metropolitan areas, local county networks—she’d made deals with hundreds of folks. Those co
After a high-profile bank robber had written in to the blog and asked to surrender, the media had been keeping a close eye on Felon E. There had been requests from every major news outlet for her to appear on their shows to talk about how she could keep on top of the country’s crime, but she refused all interviews. She wasn’t in this for her own glory. She was in it because she wanted to help.
At least that was what she told herself, over and over again.
The blog was raking in the dough. The advertising she sold on the site, and so judiciously monitored, paid more than enough to keep her afloat, enough that she could afford to send her five-year-old son, Fly
She toggled her mouse and tried not to look at the picture wedged at the back of her desk. It was no use. Shifty as a sneak thief, her eyes slid over the faded photograph in its dented silver frame. A dark-haired man holding a small blue bundle, smiling broadly with paternal pride. He’d been gone a week later, leaving her to manage a newborn and a funeral. She swallowed hard and let her eyes drift away before she could make real contact, before the memories of him overwhelmed her.
Angels and death, missing fathers and harried mothers. The past clashing with the reality of her present.
She’d explained to Fly
And pizza. He was passionate about pizza. Just like his father.
Fly
She’d held her silence all this time, though his killer hadn’t been caught.
When Tommy died, Colleen was working at the paper, pulling down just about enough to cover the mortgage and little else. Though the foundation his coworkers had set up was flush, that money was earmarked for Fly
She’d always been a crime buff, that was probably why she married Tommy in the first place. A cop whore, he’d called her, joking and laughing at her over di
When her grief allowed her rational mind to surface, she knew she needed to find something more to raise her small family. She was a writer, after all, so she thought about writing a book. It would be fast, easy money; she could break into the market with a flashy true-crime story. Then one of her heroes, Dominick Du
Colleen started populating Felon E with stories, a
She’d attracted a few nuts and the like over the years, but Tommy had taught her well. She could shoot the guns in the safe with the ease of many hours of practice, had the house wired to an elaborate alarm system. She knew self-defense techniques. She was smart and savvy and capable of disguising her whereabouts with the computer. She’d been a computer science major at MTSU before switching to journalism her junior year. That gave her two important legs up, an edge over other crime bloggers—the ability to code her site with lovely little traps for those trying to sneak in the back door, and the skill to do all her own web work, ensuring that precious anonymity.
So much for memory lane. She really should move that picture of Tommy—every time she looked at it, the whole scenario flooded into her brain. She really should. But she wouldn’t.
Colleen stood and stretched, then slipped into the kitchen, past the cabinet that needed some work—it was practically hanging off its hinges—to the refrigerator with its broken ice machine. She cracked the lid on her fourth Diet Coke of the morning and started thinking of the angle for the next installment of the story. Teenage boys from upscale Nashville neighborhoods didn’t go missing every day. But if she was going to make this story sing, she needed a scoop, something major. Something official.