okay with that, I’m okay with you.”
“Shall I come up now?”
“Like Jackson and Jimmy said, ‘It’s five o’clock somewhere.’”
Actually, Jenna glanced at her watch, it’s almost five in New York. She wondered how Dafoe was doing. As she started to check e-mail, her cell went off: Nicci.
“I’m heading upstairs to see Senator Higgens,” Jenna told her.
“You got in? Already? That’s great. Alicia and Chris need a sound bite from you about the ‘grave threat to the planet.’ Their words.”
“I’m guessing you mean Alicia’s words.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re guessing right.”
“Don’t I get to suss it out with the senator first? See what she has to say about the Iron Oxide Express?”
“Nightly News goes on in eighty-eight minutes. It’s yesterday there today, if you follow me.”
“Is the crew ready to go?”
“They’re on their way down here.”
“How ‘on the way’ are they?”
“Ah, they’re walking in with the gear now.”
“We’ve got to do this fast. The senator sounded overdue for her first drink of the day.”
“I doubt that,” Nicci said. “She’s known for her mimosas.”
Jenna ducked into the bathroom and freshened her makeup in sixty seconds flat. She brushed out her hair and touched up her lips just as quickly. Grading herself on the travel curve, she just passed. On The Morning Show curve? Failed miserably. Marv would shout her off the set.
Alicia had commandeered a conference room and set up two chairs facing each other. The camera crew was breathless from racing to get ready.
Chris and Alicia herded Jenna to a corner of the room. “What we need,” Alicia said, “is a tough statement about the dangers inherent in this situation. Something like, ‘I’m a scientist, and what I’ve seen has me very worried about the future of the planet. That tanker is full of dangerous chemicals that could change all life as we know it.’”
“You’re kidding, right?”
The tall producer said, icily, “You’re not debating some think-tank expert on The Morning Show. All we need are sound bites.” Alicia eyed Nicci as if she expected Jenna’s producer to intervene on her behalf. When Nicci didn’t, Alicia added, “Just say what they sent you to say. Now let’s get moving. Back in New York, they’re throwing the piece together and you’re wasting time. We’ll beat the shit out of every other show, if you’ll just do your goddamn job.”
“Don’t try to script me,” Jenna said, temper rising. “I haven’t even assessed the situation yet.”
“Look,” Chris said to Alicia, “let’s find out what Jenna is comfortable saying.”
Good cop, bad cop, Jenna thought.
“Okay,” Alicia said, “what are you comfortable saying?”
Jenna ground her molars and took a deep breath, but before she could respond, Alicia’s and Chris’s phones went off almost simultaneously. They walked off in different directions with their cells to their ears.
“I don’t believe it,” Alicia bellowed moments later as she slapped her phone down on a long table. She ran to a large, wall-mounted flat screen, turned it on, and flipped rapidly through the channels, flying past Oprah and Ellen and music videos and more before stopping on an image of Rick Birk, who looked haggard and truly scared.
“We’re not in the show because of this fuckface.” Alicia looked like she might smash the screen.
Birk slowly lifted his hand, revealing a pair of wire cutters clamped around his right thumb, the grips held by a person who remained mostly off camera.
The very first word out of Birk’s mouth was “Please,” spoken with a tremor. Jenna was shocked—as far as she knew, the correspondent had never uttered the word before. Birk cleared his throat noisily and added, “I need you to listen carefully.” He winced, and his eyes darted to his shanghaied thumb. A squiggly line of blood ran from beneath the wire cutters.
CHAPTER 18
A dust storm darkened the horizon, and Dafoe darted from cow to cow, trying to shift them from the pasture into the barn. They didn’t want to go, and offered baleful moos. Cows loved routine, and a howling storm at midday was definitely not routine.
“Move,” he bellowed, smacking Milquetoast on the hindquarters. He could imagine Bayou’s frustration, listening to the herd’s ballyhoo while convalescing on his doggie bed. But Dafoe wasn’t about to risk his border collie’s long-term recovery by putting him to work before he healed fully.
It took another ten minutes of maddening effort for Dafoe to finally drive all but one frisky calf into the barn. The recalcitrant critter kept dashing around and kicking up his hind legs. Between desperate lunges to grab the animal, Dafoe made a fast