Previously on The Vanishing Years …

The Lydia Fairfax case had become a media circus with national headlines, cameras everywhere, her family playing their roles for the public. But off-camera, their indifference was unsettling, and the trail of elderly women still haunted reporter Ethan Cole more.

Every one of those women had worked at Temex, a secretive biotech plant where entire sections were locked off from even basic staff. Beatrice Harlan, a 71-year-old widow, was among them. A Temex security guard Ethan tracked down hinted at “weird” levels of secrecy inside the company, though he was too afraid to say more.

Then came the bombshell. A press release revealed that Harrison Fairfax Sr.—Lydia’s father—had poured half a billion dollars into Temex to advance “longevity technology.” Suddenly, the missing heiress and the missing women weren’t separate stories at all. They were threads in the same dark tapestry.

**

When you stumble onto a story like this, there are a few ways you can play it.

Option one: the Hollywood version. You become obsessed, the dog-with-a-bone reporter who won’t let go until the villains are unmasked and justice is served. The credits roll, the truth prevails, and everyone claps.

But in the real world, that’s mostly myth. The longer you work this job, the more you see that corruption isn’t an exception; it’s the norm. You can’t expose it all. You pick your battles, and sometimes you pick the wrong ones.

Even when you land on something ugly, something that should spark outrage, you quickly learn that it doesn’t mean anyone will care. Editors shrug. Readers click away. The story dies in the 24-hour news cycle, forgotten by next week.

I’ve written more than a few pieces I thought would raise hell, only to watch them sink with barely a ripple. That’s how reporters harden over time, especially on the crime beat. You start cynical, you get jaded.

So as I pieced together Temex, the missing women, and the Fairfax connection, I weighed it. Did it have legs? Absolutely. But was it worth the fight? That was another question.

My paper wasn’t built for investigative crusades anymore. Not since the layoffs, the talent drain, the slow pivot to cheap traffic and clickbait. Roger wanted Lydia Fairfax, the vanished heiress, the search parties, and the cameras parked outside the mansion. That’s where the numbers were.

And that’s why, late on a Saturday night with my notes scattered across the desk, I made my choice: I’d take Temex off the books.

Roger didn’t need to know, and wouldn’t want to anyway. The Fairfax empire was too powerful, too dangerous for him to stomach.

So I’d work it quietly. Patiently. Maybe it would grow into a book, maybe a long-form piece for one of the nonprofit outlets that still gave a damn. But for now, this story belonged to me alone.

Working the Lydia Fairfax case gave me perfect cover. I could churn out the predictable copy, keep the clicks coming, and at the same time slip deeper into the Fairfax empire.

Naturally, the family became my focus. I’d follow the money and watch their every move. And above all, I had one goal that eclipsed the rest: securing an interview with Harrison Fairfax Sr.

To be continued …

Read Part 1 here

Read Part 2 here

Read Part 3 here