The Reluctant Hero. Lenora Worth

complaining?” Stephanie asked, her hand pulling through her mushed hair as she leaned forward on her cluttered desk. “You know how I feel about whining, now, don’t you, Alonzo? And especially from a Georgia Tech journalism student.”

      “Yeah, yeah.” Alonzo Sullivan scratched his nose, then tossed back his short dreadlocks, his brown eyes opening wide at the woman who sat staring over at him. “I’m not complaining, Stef. Not one bit.”

      Stephanie sent the intern a bleary-eyed stare. “Funny, I sure thought I heard a loud moan coming from your direction.”

      “Just stretching my throat muscles,” Alonzo replied, a huge grin cresting on his face. “But…do we really have to do all this research again? We’ve checked on every Derek Kane in Atlanta, haven’t we? And…it is almost midnight.”

      Stephanie nodded her head slowly, exercising tired shoulder muscles in the process. “Do you have early classes tomorrow?”

      Alonzo lifted a brow, as if debating whether to tell her the truth or not. “No, I don’t have any classes in the morning, but—”

      “So, you can stay and help me go back over all these printouts from the DMV and compare them to the names we’ve gathered, right?”

      Alonzo slowly nodded. “Yeah, sure. Who needs sleep.”

      “I’ve told you a hundred times,” Stephanie replied, playfully slapping the twenty-year-old on the shoulder, “reporters never sleep.”

      “Why did I have to major in journalism, anyway?” Alonzo mumbled. Reaching for the phone book, he shot her a steady brown gaze. “And why is it so important that you find this man? You already did the main story—without him.”

      “I want to interview him,” Stephanie told her confused helper. “I was involved in this…mugging and Derek Kane…well, he saved a man’s life. He’s a hero, and I think he should be recognized as such. I think people need to know that there are still some heroes left in the world.”

      Stephanie watched as Alonzo started organizing all the Derek Kanes, Derek Canes and Derek Cains they’d found on the Internet and in the phone book. After comparing those to the records they’d found through the Department of Motor Vehicles, they’d called most of them, but so far, no one fit the bill of the Derek Stephanie remembered from two nights ago. But she wasn’t ready to give up yet.

      “This isn’t your usual type of story,” Alonzo pointed out as he once again went down the list. “You usually go for the more hard-hitting news.”

      Stephanie scanned her own list. “Yeah, well, I guess I want to interview Mr. Kane because he…he seemed so reluctant. Here’s a man who risked his own life to come to the aid of someone else, yet he doesn’t want anyone to know about his good deed.”

      “That is strange.”

      “Yes, and it got me curious. Plus, I just think it would make a good human interest piece.”

      Alonzo rolled his eyes, then pointed a finger at her. “You think there’s more to this, right?”

      Stephanie had to laugh. “Alonzo, you’re getting too good at this job. Yes, I certainly think there’s more to this. I can’t get this man out of my mind.”

      “How about the police?” Alonzo suggested. “The officer who arrested the youths? Have you talked to him?”

      “Several times,” Stephanie replied. “For some reason, the arresting officer is staying mum on the subject of Mr. Kane—which makes me even more suspicious. Of course, if we have to testify as witnesses, I’ll see Kane at the hearing, I’m sure. But I don’t want to wait that long. This story is fresh and I want to interview him now. But the police haven’t really been any help.” She grinned then. “Although I do have a copy of the police report, of course. The teenagers are being held as juveniles, so they’ll be arraigned in a couple of days. I don’t want to wait until then, because I have a feeling our Mr. Kane might not even show up for the hearing.”

      “So we have to dig through all these names again?”

      “Yes, we do. And call them.”

      “Now?”

      Stephanie glanced at the clock. “It is late. Okay, we’ll go back over the list and eliminate the ones we know are definitely not our man.”

      “Like the seventy-year-old Derek Cain who proposed to you over the phone?”

      “Yes. Nice, sweet man, but not my type.”

      “Well, out of the twenty-two we’ve called, seven have asked for your hand in marriage, and about three wanted to know if you’d live in sin with them.”

      “None of them would be our man,” Stephanie replied, ignoring the sometimes flattering, sometimes disturbing adulation she received from a lot of her male viewers. “This particular Derek Kane acted as if he loathed the ground I walked upon.”

      “So naturally he’s the one you’re going after, right?”

      Stephanie grinned again as Alonzo fell back into his assigned task with no more complaints. He was a good kid, and a hard worker. He’d make a good reporter one day. Right now, Alonzo and the other interns got stuck with the grunt work, but then, reporting was ninety percent grunt work, anyway.

      And she should know. She’d taken some pretty big risks just to get to a story. So going after a man who didn’t want to be found was nothing new for her. Only, this man was different.

      She was attracted to this man. Which was silly. She didn’t know him, had barely seen his face. Yet…it was there, staring her in the face, keeping her edgy and impatient. She wanted to know more about Derek Kane, because she was interested in him.

      Putting that thought out of her mind, Stephanie helped Alonzo reorganize the list, then sent him home.

      Sitting there in the almost empty press room, Stephanie once again went down the list. They’d called all the Kanes in the metro Atlanta area, and several in the outlying areas. He had to be out there, somewhere.

      Thinking back over that night, she tried to remember everything Derek Kane had said or done. The clues were there. She had to put them together.

      “Where are you?” she asked now, her gaze moving down the list. “Maybe that’s not even your real name.”

      She was about to call it a night when her gaze hit on one address in particular. They’d called that number earlier, but no one had answered, and there hadn’t been an answering machine either, so she hadn’t been able to listen to the voice. Call it a hunch, call it woman’s intuition, but this address stood out in Stephanie’s mind for some reason.

      “Flowery Branch, GA.”

      Flowers? Flowers. Then she remembered—he’d said something about landscaping. Was he a landscaper?

      “Think, Stephanie.” Then it hit her. She’d been eavesdropping when Derek had given personal information to the officer. Now two details of that conversation stood out in her mind. Landscaper…and lake.

      “Would a reclusive man who claims he’s a landscaper live at a place called Flowery Branch?”

      He possibly could, if that place happened to be near a lake.

      Flowery Branch was a little town near Lake Lanier, about forty miles northeast of Atlanta.

      “The landscaper who lives on the lake.”

      As she sat there, her heart picked up its tempo. One of the DMV printouts matched this address. And the physical description matched perfectly, too. “This could be him.”

      But she needed to be sure.

      Picking up the phone, Stephanie called the Atlanta Police Department and waited as the operator connected her to one of her most reliable sources on the night shift. If the arresting officer didn’t want to divulge anything about Derek Kane, she’d just