Perrie had begged Milt Freeman, the city editor, to take her on, to give her a chance with hard news, even though she'd been writing gardening and cooking articles for the previous three years. After a week of constant appeals and a case of his favorite scotch, he had finally relented and offered her the job.

Milt had told her afterward that he'd been worn down by her tenacity-not the scotch-the same tenacity that she'd used to become the Star's top investigative reporter. The same stubborn determination she was drawing on this very minute. A good reporter would long for a hot bath and a warm bed right about now. But Perrie considered herself a great reporter, and she was exactly where she wanted to be. Right in the thick of things.

Perrie Kincaid's byline was hot. She had broken four major stories in Seattle in the past two years, and three of them had been picked up by the national wire services. Her peers in the broadcast industry were in awe of her, unable to snatch even the smallest scoops from under her perceptive gaze. And drizzle or none, she was going to break this story, too.

The seemingly abandoned warehouse was actually the nerve center of a major smuggling ring that dealt in stolen luxury autos, cars that had probably been parked in front of one of Seattle's trendy restaurants just hours before. Once stolen, they were loaded into containers and shipped to the Far East, where they were traded for uncut heroin, which was then loaded on the boat for the return trip to Seattle.

The smuggling ring was only a small part of the story. There had been blackmail and attempted murder. But the part that would nab her the Pulitzer was the trail that led right to the floor of the U.S. Congress, to the dishonorable congressman from the great state of Washington, Evan T. Dearborn.