Read Death of A High Maintenance Blonde (Jubilant Falls Series Book 5) for Free Online Page A

true, suicide was a distinct possibility.
    The news business could tear reporters and editors apart; I saw that this afternoon at Noah’s grave. While many police and fire departments have procedures in place to help first responders depressurize after traumatic events, many reporters are left to cope in their own way with the horror they’d just seen.
    And, face it: the effect of trauma on reporters was something most liberal arts educations never covered. So, we keep showing up at murders, car crashes and worse, go back to the newsroom, churn out the story and come back the next day to do it again.
    Along the way, you begin to internalize the horror, to make tasteless jokes about the victim or the perpetrator and after a while you can’t turn it off when deadline’s past and the adrenaline won’t stop.
    No one ever tells you to find a therapist, anybody who will listen. Nobody says don’t drink at night alone, don’t drink at work, or don’t drive drunk—because they’re all doing it too. No one says you need to do it to save your life, your marriage—or your child. But as you hurtle into that dark night, it doesn’t seem to sink in until you’re left at the side of a literal or figurative road surrounded by the wreckage of your life. The darkness in your soul builds and builds until the relationship you counted on the most is shredded and you find the woman you’re married to having sex in the shower with her co-anchor in the middle of the afternoon.
    What they do tell you is “suck it up,” “be tough,” “this job isn’t for sissies.”
    Did anyone say that to Charisma Prentiss? Did she run back out into the field because she couldn’t let go of the dragon that was the news? Or were there other pressures—pressures to publish, sources or editors to appease? Did she go back because she didn’t know to do anything else? Or was it her legendary ego, knowing that nobody could do a story like Charisma Prentiss did a story and dropping out meant she was no longer at the top of the heap?
    If I could find her, just for one interview, one conversation…
    I stopped the DVR, and used the remote to scratch at my beard.
    What would I do? What would she do? I knew what I wanted to ask her, but what was I trying to prove?
    I shut off the TV and moved to the computer desk in the corner of the living room. Shaking the mouse brought my sleek Apple computer screen to life. A quick search on Charisma Prentiss brought up the old news of her collapse. Even in the digital world, where everything was traceable, she’d managed to disappear.
    What was her husband’s name? I wondered. I typed in the words “French +journalist +killed +Baghdad” and hit ‘enter.’
    There it was: Jean Paul Lemarnier . The most recent entry was a story written when his name was unveiled in the Newseum’s Journalists Memorial Gallery in Washington D.C., as part of a ceremony recognizing reporters killed while in pursuit of a story. His name was among eighty-two added to the list which brought the somber total to more than 2,200. I clicked on the ceremony video, watching as the widows and widowers of other reporters came forward to speak.
    Charisma Prentiss was the only bereaved spouse who didn’t attend.
    Instead, Lemarnier’s parents came to the podium and in tearful French, acknowledged the honor.
    Why wouldn’t she come to an event like that? Was she afraid her presence would detract from the event? I had a vision of old Charisma, surrounded by cameras, wearing dark glasses like some Hollywood diva, stiff-arming the circle of reporters who wanted to know where she’d been. I shook my head and discarded that idea. Maybe she didn’t come because she was afraid of being a pariah, whispered about as she entered the gallery, with her fellow journalists stepping back in disgust as she passed by, like a leper in church.
    I typed in “Charisma+Lemarnier,” sucking in my breath as story after bylined story scrolled up. Each one—soft,