Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 147733 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 739(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147733 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 739(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
Jessica’s desire to leave for greener pastures is clear, so I ask what keeps her here.
An elderly mother with bills piling up.
A grandmother at the only retirement home in town.
An uncle who hasn’t managed to stay sober, but who never stops trying.
With ample obligations and little money, Jessica reckons it will be a while before she has enough to leave this city.
Like so many others mired in the town’s economic abyss, she’s effectively trapped. Time and hope are both running thin.
I roll my eyes. These situations are hardly unique to Pinnacle Pointe, sad as they may be, so why write about it?
And what’s it got to do with drugs?
I keep reading.
If Jessica’s despair seems shocking, it isn’t the absolute bottom.
One candid townsperson went on record anonymously.
“There’s money to be made in the Pointe, right or wrong,” he said. “You just gotta know where to find it. I’ve had my own business since eighth grade. Used to be a lumber factory in town. Then my old man got sick and got laid off. We couldn’t afford his medicine. I had to help the family out.”
This sounds like a good kid. He’ll set things straight, right?
“I started off selling uppers on the docks as a side thing. It was enough to buy us food for a week. Soon, it was adding up to three thousand bucks a month. The summer crowd went nuts for the pills, especially the college kids. But everyone wanted them, and I only had like sixty pills a month with my own prescription and the ones I could pull from my friends.”
At this point, the young man pauses and grins.
“I started making runs to Portland and hooked up with suppliers. But some dude in a leather jacket showed up a few months later at the drop site. He told me they were watching to make sure they got their cut, and if I started stiffing them, I’d be 'done.' Don’t think he just meant cut off. So I freaked. I got paranoid. I tracked every pill I sold religiously, and paid them extra just so we were good.”
The young man hesitates. His eyes flick over his shoulder. It doesn’t matter that we’re in a closed office, he’s that nervous about who could be listening.
“My Portland guy wanted to recruit me for more. He promoted me.”
Our anonymous source now sells prescription painkillers and other illicit goods all over town at meeting sites we agreed not to highlight.
“Tourists always pay the most,” he says. “Everybody wants to have a good time away from home—but the people who buy at church are steady customers in the slow season. Plus, they can’t rat you out without going down with you.”
The young man gives us a calculated smile.
God.
My heart thrums in my chest, shell-shocked that anything like this was going on there. And apparently for years?
It just keeps getting better as I read on.
The next section rattles off five “robberies” that happened in Pinnacle Pointe over the summer. But from the descriptions, they seem more like trumped-up petty thefts.
The last paragraph catches my attention.
The quiet middle-class neighborhood on the edge of town is the only place insulated from the burglaries. Two founding families of the oldest church rest on one side of the road. Farther up the street is the once bright and beautiful Bee Harbor Inn—and the town’s only billionaire.
You might be tempted to think protection comes from the billionaire, who’s made his slice of Pinnacle Pointe his own private fortress.
You’d be wrong.
Rather, it’s the well-kept, well-lit inn that shelters this side of town from the quiet anarchy pulsing through the streets. Even vacant, Bee Harbor’s peaceful legacy lives on.
For some in Pinnacle Pointe, the porch light is always on.
What the—? That was my grandparents’ old slogan.
Seriously.
Who the hell is behind this, and why are they painting the inn like it’s some special safe space?
It’s like they knew our tourism campaign was coming, and now they want to trash the town before it gets off the ground.
My stomach knots.
Could it be an insider? Who else knew about the tourism project?
When this crap gains traction, everyone in Pinnacle Pointe will hate me for having the only kind word in the entire hit piece.
But they have to know I wouldn’t have agreed to this.
I wonder how far its reach already is.
I go back to the search results page. The next hit has the same journalist holding the microphone for an old lady who looks like she belongs in a Medicare commercial. It’s a video.
“Didn’t you say your home got broken into this summer?” the brunette asks.
“They did! One of those rats broke into my house and stole—get this—my CPAP machine of all the things!”
The other woman makes a face like she’s sucking a lime and pulls the mic back. “What could they want with a medical device?”