a finger at the envelope. “Hey. Bottom of the first page. Check out the numbers after the dollar sign. If you tell me that isn’t two times what you’re making at the Standard, I’m gonna call you a lying little minx.”
She couldn’t keep herself from taking a peek. He wasn’t wrong. More like two and a half.
“The station that smeared me this morning is going to hire me tomorrow?” she asked. “How do you see that playing out?”
Harrelson clenched his hand and raised it to his lips. He let out a puff of air and spread his fingers wide, showing her his empty palm.
“You say yes, the story—poof—goes away. It’ll turn out the jailbird is lying, and you were right all along. Vindication. Such a sweet-sounding word, vindication.”
“And if I say no?”
“Well,” he mused, “I’d say you’d never work in this town again, but that’s a cliché. Also, you’ll never work in any town again. Not in our vocation of choice.”
She drank her cocktail while she hunted for the catch. The sting of the pepper infusion stoked the red-hot coals in the pit of her stomach.
“The Weaver Group wants positive PR,” she said. “That’s what this is, isn’t it? You’re going to be their personal propaganda machine. And if I say yes, I have to do it, too. Make them look good in the media. Cover up the truth. Lie.”
“My agreement with them is just that. My agreement, nothing for you to concern yourself about. All you have to do—in addition to returning that USB drive you stole and deleting any backups—is keep your mouth shut. You can pick your own stories, call your own shots, report on anything your little heart desires. Except Weaver. When it comes to them, this contract is contingent on you becoming those three monkeys of yore: see no evil, hear no evil, and absolutely speak no evil.”
Her fingernails drummed on the envelope. The bundled paper inside rustled. It sounded, in the commuter thrum, the muffled din of the train station, like a rattlesnake’s tail.
“You’re in a liminal space,” Harrelson told her. “Your life is about to change. It’s either going to get a hell of a lot better from here on out or a hell of a lot worse. Nice thing is, you get to pick which one it’s going to be. How often does anyone get a choice like that?”
Everything about this offer was too good to be true. And yet, there it was. Her instincts sniffed at the envelope like a bloodhound on the hunt.
“Why?” she asked.
He paused in midsip. “Why what?”
“Why give me a choice? The damage is already done. My paper suspended me, I’ll probably be fired in two weeks, and I’m staring at a multi-million-dollar lawsuit. I’m ruined.”
“Doesn’t mean you’re not still dangerous,” he said. “I know it. Leda Swan knows it, too.”
“So why not just kill me?”
He shrugged. “Because this is how she wants it. The woman has plans for you. Mine is not to wonder why, mine is but to deliver the good news. C’mon, Nell. Smile for me, huh? This could be the best day of your life, with even better days to come. All you have to do is sign on the dotted line.”
It would be so easy.
She could keep doing what she loved. The only thing she loved. Hold her tongue, keep one little truth buried, and the rest of the world would be her oyster. She’d be safe, alive—and at two and a half times her salary, she’d be living in style.
All she’d have to do was close her eyes and seal her lips against one little truth. And let the Weaver Group get away with murder.
Her fingernails gave the envelope one last rap. Then she slid it back across the table.
“No thanks,” she said. “My integrity isn’t for sale.”
She tossed a twenty-dollar bill onto the lacquered wood and shoved her chair back.
“For the drink.”
He slouched and contemplated his glass as she rose.
“You’re going to get people killed, Nell.”
She didn’t dignify that with a response.
“Then again,” he added, “that’s never stopped you before, has it? You don’t care about anyone. All you care about is the almighty scoop. Chip off the ol’ block. How’d that work out for your old man? Oh, right. He’s dying alone in a nursing home, no friends, and even his own daughter won’t visit him.”
“I should be more like you?” she shot back. “Sell out and betray everything I believe in? You weren’t always like this. You were