Chapter Seventeen

"What are you doing here?" Olivia asked. Rory thought it was a good sign that she hadn't slammed the door shut in her face immediately upon seeing her. She attributed most of that to shock. Olivia, Rory's source, hadn't been expecting to see the reporter on her doorstep and, when she did, she didn't know what to do next and simply froze. However, Rory knew that her reprieve would be brief.

Rory stuck her foot discretely into the path of the door to stop it if Olivia tried to close it. Then she answered Olivia's question, trying to phrase it in the most inviting way possible. "I came here to talk to you. You've haven't been responding to my messages and I was worried. I looked you up in our system; that's how I got your address."

"And you just showed up at my door? Isn't this like some invasion? I think you should leave," Olivia spoke. Her shock was wearing off and her indignation was beginning to show through. Rory was glad that she'd slid her foot into the door because Olivia had tried to punctuate her statement by closing the door. However, Olivia didn't try very hard and the door just sort of bounced of Rory's foot.

"You were the one who reached out to me, Olivia. You sought me out and then you left me hanging. You've been dodging my calls, not responding to my emails, essentially ghosting me. Now, if you hadn't been the one to initiate all of this, I would understand, but I can't figure out what is going on here. I'm tired of playing this game so, yes, I looked you up and showed up here. I will not be jerked around anymore!" Rory felt her indignation flare even more intensely than Olivia's had. It was partly because she had nothing on her story and this girl, who'd been messing with her, was her last hope. It was partly just the fact that Olivia had come to her and then gotten cold feet and that was extremely annoying.

"Yeah well, I have the right to change my mind," Olivia responded. She tried to sound offended, but it came out more like false bravado.

"I don't think that changing your mind is all that is going on right now, Olivia. If someone is intimidating you or something, I want you to know that confidentiality is extremely important to me. Your name or any association to you besides 'confidential informant' will not leak out. You have my word," Rory spoke. Her anger that she'd been experiencing only moments before had abated. Olivia's false bravado had made it clear that there was more to the whole situation than just a difficult source.

Olivia seemed to register Rory's words. Her whole body seemed to relax a little. With a quick glance into the apartment, and then a second quick glance around the hallway, Olivia seemed to arrive at a decision. "Okay, you can come in and talk. But if anyone finds out that I am the one that told you this, I could lose by job and that would devastate every part of my life." Rory nodded in agreement and then followed Olivia inside.

It was a nice apartment, better decorated and styled than Rory's. she would have liked to blame her messy, eclectic apartment on the fact that she had a son. However, Ricky had never been a messy child and the state of her apartment was completely a result of Rory. Sometimes she wished she could have an apartment like Olivia's.

"Do you want some coffee?" Olivia asked, drawing Rory out of her musings. She nodded, never one to turn down coffee. Olivia quickly busied herself with making coffee while Rory sat down at the small, white oak table in the kitchen. It was obvious that Olivia was nervous; her hands were shaking a little as she poured the French press coffee into two cups.

"How do you take it?" Olivia asked, a slight hitch in her voice. Rory hoped that she wasn't destroying this poor girl's life for the sake of her story.

"Just black," Rory responded. She wanted to ask Olivia if she could tape the interview, but she hesitated. This whole situation seemed so messed up and Rory decided that, the least amount of evidence she had on Olivia, like not having her voice on tape, the less likely it would be that Olivia could be outted.

Once the coffee was ready, and Olivia had no further excuse to not sit down by Rory, the woman took a deep breath and did just that. The two sat at the kitchen table sipping their hot coffee for several minutes. Rory didn't want to pry; she'd already essentially forced herself into Olivia's house. There was no need, and most likely no benefit, for pushing her any further. Instead, Rory simply waited. She knew Olivia would talk when she felt like it.

With one final breath, and one long drag of coffee, Olivia opened up. "Huntzberger Enterprises looks extremely prosperous on paper. It has rather quickly gained a lot of money from investors and has been making them all a pretty decent profit. It's been a rocket-quick rise, and, to outside eyes, it looks like there's no stopping the company. But all of it is a lie.

"Huntzberger Enterprises hasn't made any money. All of the investors are paid out by obtaining new investors. There's no other capital. It's all a Ponzi scheme. And the reason the company is structured like that is because the product we've been touting, this magical device that no one is really sure what it does, doesn't exist. It is a drawing on paper, but nothing else.

"The company didn't start off like that. Logan really thought this thing would work; he really believed in it. It was at that time when a lot of us came on. He had such a passionate belief in the company that he won me over. But, after about a year and several thousands of dollars in r & d, it turned out that this thing that Logan envisioned, this magical technological product that was supposed to make life on the internet so much easier, was not possible at our current level of understanding. It would take millions of dollars to even get an idea of how to go about doing it.

"investors don't tend to give money for pipe dreams and maybes, so Logan and some of the other executives decided to lie a little bit, to say that this product was farther along than it really was, that we were only months away from going into production. They figured that if they could just get the funding for the research, eventually they would have this amazing product that would be worth at least one hundred times more than they'd gathered from investors. And maybe that is the case, but as things stand right now, there's no product and no real profits."

Olivia had spilled this great secret in what seemed like one long breath. She had talked quickly, obviously nervous about what she was saying and just wanting to say it before she could think about it too much. Rory had a hard time jotting down everything, but she didn't want to ask Olivia to go over it again. Instead, she wrote down as much as she could.

"So, it's all a lie?" Rory asked for clarification, a hard rock settling in her stomach. What had she uncovered? What would it mean for Logan? For her relationship? For her son?

Rory left Olivia's apartment shortly after the other woman had confessed all that she knew. She walked back to the Time's offices in a bit of a daze, playing over everything she had just learned. It was a little hard to believe, but not entirely. Logan had been known to get excited about business ventures and not do all of his due-diligence or the work involved in setting it up properly. Then, when he found himself underwater, he tried to fix the situation and cover up his wrong doings without coming clean for his mistakes.

Maybe the same thing had played out here, but on a much larger, much more impactful scale. Now that Rory had some sort of idea of where to look, she could do some investigating on her own, talk to some of the investors and look at the corporate paperwork for Huntzberger Enterprises.

When she sat back down at her desk, she was a completely different Rory. Where before she had been hopeless and defeated, now she felt renewed. She could do this, accomplish this impossible task that Miranda had set for her. Her fingers began to fly across her keyboard as inspiration struck.

She typed up what Olivia had said, taking her quickly scribbled down notes and filling them in with detail, giving each sentence life. Once she'd gotten all of that out of her mind and onto her computer, she set to verifying it all. She quickly, and with a skill she'd honed over years of grunt work, filed off a few FOI requests, hoping that it wouldn't take too long to get the documentation. She knew that she wouldn't be lucky enough to find a document with incriminating information, but if there were enough holes, omissions, and coverups she could definitely bolster Olivia's information.

She hit send on the requests and then spent the rest of the day doing a little more internet sleuthing. The first time she'd looked through everything, she didn't have an angle. Potential criminal activity was a wide net and she hadn't managed to catch any fish with it. Now that she knew she was looking for fraud, she could narrow down her search and see if she could pick up on even the softest of whispers.

Finally, it seemed, like this story, and maybe even her life, was no longer spinning but heading in a forward direction.

The few weeks after Thanksgiving flew by for Rory. It usually went this way, when she was in the depths of a story. Time just flew by without her really being aware of it. Before she knew it, Ricky was asking to go see Santa and providing her with his list of Christmas gifts. 'Was it really that close to Christmas already?' Rory wondered as she looked at the list of books that her son was asking for.

She'd just that morning submitted a very rough draft of what she'd uncovered to Miranda, hoping it would keep her from breathing fire down her back. She still had to wait a few more weeks before she got any of the documents she'd requested so her story was as far as it would go for the time being. Now, she had a moment's peace to worry about her personal life.

And it needed a bit of worrying.

Aside from the rapidly approaching holiday and the fact that she hadn't even put up a tree or any decorations, she'd been neglecting everything that wasn't her story. She hadn't made any further plans with her mother about the wedding that was only a few months away. She knew that her mother was perfectly capable of planning a wedding on her own, but Rory was taking her maid of honour role very seriously and she felt like she was letting her mother down. Then there was the fact that she hadn't so much as received a message from Logan. He'd vanished at her grandparents' party ad hadn't made any appearance or anything else since then. While she was working on her story, she hadn't noticed the passage of time, but now that she had a break, a moment, she realised how strange it truly was.

Sure, they weren't in a definite, clearly defined relationship. She wasn't his girlfriend and she most certainly didn't consider him her boyfriend. That being said, she did expect him to at least reach out to her, especially after his Houdini act. She'd sent a few text messages, inquiring about what had happened, where he'd gone, what was going on with him, but hadn't received a response. Maybe this was his less than mature way of saying he no longer wanted to have any sort of relationship with her. Maybe he was ghosting her, or whatever it was called.

Rory let that thought roll around in her mind for a brief second before she pushed it away. This wasn't the time to be thinking about that. If Logan was out of their whatever they had, then that was too bad for him. She had her family, her mom, her son, Luke, and her friends. They were her concern, especially at this time of year.

With a new sense of determination, Rory quickly began gathering her things, her bag, her keys, Ricky's list, and headed out the door. If she was failing in all other aspects of her personal life, at least she could make her son happy.

"Ms. Gilmore?" a voice asked off to her right as soon as Rory made it down to the street. She was a little taken aback; strangers didn't usually call out to her. She turned slowly, her hand dipping into her purse to try and find something she could use to defend herself. She saw a young bike messenger, his helmet on his head and his bike leaning against him. Rory felt a slight sense of relief but was still curious about how a bike messenger knew who she was.

"Can I help you?" she asked, not moving closer, but taking her hand out of her bag.

"I'm looking for a Ms. Rory Gilmore. I have a package for her," he said, motioning to the bag attached to the side of his bike.

"I'm Rory Gilmore," she responded. The bike messenger nodded and then reached into his bag.

"You've been served," he said as he handed over a manila envelope.