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  While they were tearing down and packing up, Rory had started chatting with one of the security officers. In passing, the guard mentioned that pickets were gathering at the Tavern on the Green restaurant in the park. He was headed there as soon as the TV people were packed up and gone.

  When Kelly climbed into the station wagon to ride back to the studio, Rory relayed the information to her, treating it as a bit of interesting gossip.

  Kelly suggested immediately, “Why don’t we swing by since we’re this close? We don’t have to get to the studio right away.”

  If Kelly had taken the time to analyze her reasons for suggesting it, they would have been sound ones: Melcher was a controversial figure in New York politics; rumors abounded that he had his sights set on the governor’s mansion; and his ultraliberal views had inflamed the state’s conservative element. All of which meant State Senator Dan Melcher was an ongoing story, with the potential to become a major one in the future. Tape of the protest could be useful file footage for some later, in-depth story on the senator even if it didn’t prove to be sufficiently newsworthy on its own.

  As producer, Brad Sommers could have vetoed the idea, but he shrugged an indifferent “Go ahead.”

  Rory and Larry loaded the camera and sound gear into the station wagon and climbed in with Kelly and the driver. Taking Center Drive, they made the swing around to the Tavern on the Green restaurant.

  Two dozen protesters, most carrying placards, milled in front of the building, kept away from the entrance by a mounted patrolman and two park security officers. Just as they arrived on the scene, a police cruiser pulled up and two more patrolmen stepped out to join the others.

  Any hope the officers had of persuading the protesters to voluntarily end the demonstration died the instant the group saw the television crew drag their equipment from the wagon. Kelly dug a notebook, pen, and her press credentials out of the shoulder bag that served as a repository for a small clutch purse, her work notes, makeup, hair spray, and assorted paraphernalia. She spotted a patrolman conferring with a harried-looking man in formal dress near the restaurant entrance. With pad in hand, Kelly approached the pair. Neither looked particularly happy to see her.

  “Hi. I’m Kelly Douglas with -“

  The patrolman cut her off. “I know who you are, Miss Douglas.” His expression was suitably grim but his glance was appreciative as it skimmed her face.

  “What’s going on?” She deliberately asked the obvious as she pocketed her press credentials and glanced back at the demonstrators.

  A six-foot-two, muscled hulk of a man with a shaved head and a Fu Manchu mustache was arguing stridently with one of the officers. Rory Tubbs had his camera aimed at the confrontation, one eye tight to the viewfinder. Larry was behind him, trailing wires and a sound recorder.

  “Miss Douglas, please,” the tuxedoed man interposed, pulling her attention back. A nameplate on his breast pocket identified him as the assistant manager. He looked impatient, irritated, and more than a little anxious. “Don’t let your cameraman take any shots of the restaurant. It can hardly matter where the banquet for the senator is being held.”

  She promised nothing. “Is the senator inside? I’d like to get a statement from him.”

  “He hasn’t arrived yet.” The patrolman volunteered the information, to the man’s abject dismay.

  Kelly seized on that immediately, aware it meant there could be an opportunity to get some footage of a face-off between the senator and the protesters. “When is he expected to arrive?”

  The patrolman shrugged. “Any time.”

  A black Lincoln Town Car, polished to a high gleam, swung into the restaurant’s drive. The assistant manager immediately tensed, his gaze fixing on the vehicle’s darkly tinted windows in an unconscious attempt to penetrate the reflective glass and identify the occupants within.

  Taking no chances, Kelly rushed over to alert Rory to the possible arrival of the senator. As the car pulled to a stop, he hurriedly changed position and angle to focus the camera on the Lincoln’s rear passenger door.

  Long seconds dragged by before the uniformed driver climbed out and moved to the rear door on the camera’s side, opening it. An aide emerged first, followed closely by the senator. As usual, he wasn’t accompanied by his wife, a wheelchair-bound victim of a drunk driver.

  Recognizing their quarry, the protesters gave voice to their anger. The senator ignored them, his expression never losing its affable look as he paused to speak briefly to his aide. But he tugged at the cuffs of his white dress shirt, a nervous gesture Kelly had seen him make on previous occasions when something wasn’t going well.

  With the skill of an actor, he pretended not to notice the camera as he started forward. Flashing a confident smile, he waved. His former campaign manager and close adviser, Arthur Trent, climbed out of the car’s front seat, catching Kelly’s eye and nodding.

  In her peripheral vision, she was aware of the forward surge by the protesters and the effort by the police to block them. She didn’t see the woman slip past them, she was just suddenly there. Kelly saw the gun in her hand before she realized the sound she’d heard had been a gunshot.

  The scene erupted in a flurry of frantic action – people scrambling for cover, the aide catching the falling senator, an officer reeling backward, someone struggling with the woman, police rushing to assist, and Rory maneuvering to capture it all on videotape. Kelly watched, thinking only professionally, allowing no other thoughts to intrude, yet aware all the while that they were the only camera crew on the scene.

  Almost as suddenly as it began, it was over. The woman was facedown on the pavement, held there by an angry, white-faced cop hurriedly cuffing her. The aide had the senator cradled in his arms, a bloodied hand pressed to the wound in his chest.

  “He’s been hit!” he shouted, tears running down his cheeks. “Somebody get an ambulance!”

  Kelly saw the mounted patrolman kneeling beside the downed officer, still holding the reins to his restive horse. She glanced at the blood oozing from a corner of the officer’s mouth. Some part of her mind registered that it wasn’t the officer she had spoken to. Rory had the camera aimed at the now sobbing woman, his fingers on the zoom.

  Kelly laid a hand on his shoulder. “How much did you get?”

  “All of it,” he said, his concentration never breaking.

  Hearing that, she raced inside to a pay phone and called the story to the news desk.

  Contacted by cellular phone, the satellite van with Brad Sommers and its two-man technical crew arrived on the scene within minutes. By then, paramedics were loading the senator in an ambulance. A second one with the wounded officer on board was just pulling out, its siren screaming. The police had the immediate area sealed off and were methodically collecting the names and addresses of witnesses. Two other TV crews along with half a dozen print press, reporters and photographers, were there, adding to the confusion.

  Flashing his credentials, Brad shouldered his way to them. “What’s the latest?”

  “I heard one of the paramedics say he didn’t think the cop was going to make it,” Larry answered.

  “And Melcher?”

  “Nobody is saying anything.” Kelly had a glimpse of a paramedic holding an IV drip aloft as the stretcher carrying the senator was eased into the back of the ambulance. “We can’t even get anyone to confirm he was shot.”

  “That blood on his shirt wasn’t from a bloody nose,” Rory inserted, the camera still balanced on his shoulder.

  “Load up, Brad announced. “We’ll follow them to the hospital. There’s another crew on the way here. They can cover this end. Give me what you’ve got.” He held out a hand for Rory’s tapes. “I’ll fire up the generator and edit on the way.” To Kelly, he said, “Make your script a minute thirty. As soon as we get to the hospital, we’ll do your standup and cut a sound track.” The ambulance
doors closed as Rory passed two tape cassettes to Brad. “All right, let’s move it.”

  He sprinted for the satellite van, a marvel of high technology complete with its own power generator and small control room packed with editing and transmitting equipment. Lugging the camera and sound gear, they trailed after him and piled into the station wagon. Kelly flipped on the dome light and started scribbling on the notepad as the vehicle swung onto the road, directly behind the departing ambulance.

  Subconsciously aware that what read well in print often sounded awkward when spoken, Kelly silently mouthed the words she wrote, at the same time making sure her script allowed for an introduction by the anchor. She also kept in mind that her script had to relate to the scenes in the tape without becoming a verbal description of them.

  Not an easy task, especially when she had to write blind. Brad Sommers was in the satellite van, selecting portions from the cassette tapes and putting them together in a single edited piece that she hadn’t viewed.

  She finished the first draft, conferred briefly with Rory and Larry, then made adjustments based on some of the more dramatic pictures that had been captured on tape. She had time to do a quick polish and that was all before they reached the hospital.

  While Rory and Larry set up to record her standup, Kelly slapped on some powder, blush, and lipstick. The action wasn’t prompted by vanity, but rather the knowledge that the camera was notorious for washing out flesh tones. And any reporter, male or female, who looked ashen-faced didn’t project the kind of image that inspired a viewer’s confidence and trust.

  As soon as her makeup was retouched, Kelly made a fast check with the hospital to get the latest on the senator’s condition, made the necessary changes in her script, did the standup and narration for the edited tape, then drew her first truly easy breath.

  She took another now, this time her brow knitting together in a small frown, that initial feeling of pride and satisfaction gone.

  “I wish I could have seen the pictures Brad used she murmured critically. “If only there had been time to review the tape.”

  “You did fine, Kelly,” Larry assured her.

  She shook her head. “I could have done better.” She ran through the script in her mind, seeing a dozen way ways she could have improved it – verbs she could have made stronger, more active, sentence fragments she could have used for dramatic impact, facts she could have tightened and punched up.

  “It always has to be the best with you.” The words were offered by Rory as an observation rather than a criticism, and one that was wholly accurate. To Kelly, the best was equivalent to success, and success symbolized approval and acceptance, two things that were vitally important to her even though that was something she couldn’t admit, not even to herself.

  “No wonder you’re leaving us,” Rory added, then paused to meet her eyes. “We’re really going to miss you, you know.”

  Warmed by that unexpected admission from him, Kelly smiled. “You make it sound like I’m moving to some far corner of the world,” she chided lightly to cover her own sudden surge of self-consciousness. “I’m only changing floors.”

  “Yeah, from local to network. That’s like being shot into the stratosphere.” He flipped his cigarette into the darkness, the glow of it making a red arc against the night shadows.

  Network. It was a magic word. A goal she had strived toward ever since she graduated from college eight years ago. These last eight years had been hard ones, working sixty and eighty hours a week, making that long climb from a green television reporter at a small station in rural Iowa to being slotted to host a new magazine-style show on prime-time television. She had finally made it; she had her hands on the top rung – now all she had to do was hang on.

  She felt a twinge of uneasiness at that thought, remembering the man she’d seen at the park earlier. Mentally she turned from it, forcing a lightness into her voice. “I haven’t left yet, Rory,” she said. “You’re still going to be stuck with me for another week.”

  “True.” He grinned.

  Brad Sommers came out of the hospital at a trot. “They want you at the, studio, Kelly.” He waved the driver into the station wagon. “Now.”

  Kelly tasted disappointment. This was her story; she had broken it, and she wanted to file her reports for the eleven o’clock news from the scene. But she didn’t resist when Brad Sommers took her arm and propelled her to the station wagon. With her new job at the network only days away, this was no time to risk getting labeled hard to work with and temperamental.

  Minutes later, the driver let her out at the Fiftieth Street entrance to the seventy-story building that would forever be called the RCA Building by New Yorkers despite its new owner’s attempts to rename it the GE Building. With her shoulder bag bumping against her hip with each, quick stride, Kelly crossed the black granite lobby to the security desk.

  The uniformed black guard on duty saw her coming. “Caught your special report, Miss Douglas.” He opened the gate for her. “How’s the senator?”

  “Still in surgery.” She stopped long enough to sign in.

  “He’s a good man. Be a shame to lose him.”

  “Yes.”

  As she swung toward the bank of elevators, someone called, “Going up?”

  Kelly caught the small trace of an English accent and smiled even before she saw British-born Hugh Townsend holding an elevator for her. Slim and, as always, nattily dressed in a summer gray suit from his favorite Savile Row tailor, he had a lean and narrow face and an aristocratic fineness to his features. His neatly clipped hair was dark brown, bordering on black, with traces of silver showing up at the sides to give him an appropriately distinguished air. His manner could be aloof or charming, depending on the situation or the company. With Kelly, he invariably emphasized the charm.

  “You’re working late tonight, Hugh.” She was never sure how to describe him – friend, mentor, adviser, or, as senior producer for the new magazine show, boss.

  “Actually I planned to leave an hour ago, but I stayed to catch the latest news on the telly.” He waited until she was inside the elevator, then punched the button for her floor and glanced sideways, his hazel eyes gleaming with approval. “Splendid work.”

  “Was it?” She still had some misgivings about that.

  “It was.”

  The doors slid closed and the elevator started up with a slight lurch. Kelly made a mental note to get a copy of the aired report to review later in the privacy of her apartment. There she could play it over and analyze her mistakes whether in scripting, delivery, or facial expression. It was sometimes a painful way to learn, but she had found it to be the best.

  “A pity, though, that the woman didn’t wait until next week to shoot the esteemed senator. What an exit that would have made for you.”

  “As well as great pre-publicity for the new show, right?”

  His look matched her wryly amused glance. “That thought did cross my mind.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Join me for a late dinner when you finish and we’ll celebrate your coup with a bottle of wine. ‘For wine inspires us, and fires us with courage, love and joy.’”

  “You have a quote for every occasion, don’t you?”

  “Not every occasion.” Hugh paused reflectively. “Perhaps we should have a Margaux tonight. The eighty is a charming wine.”

  “What? No forty-five Latour to celebrate?” Kelly mocked lightly.

  He arched a dark brow, humor and challenge blending. “When you win me an Emmy, Kelly, that will be an occasion truly worthy of a forty-five Latour.”

  “An Emmy? You do have high ambitions, Hugh.”

  He met her glance, a half smile hovering around his mouth. “You surely didn’t think you had a monopoly on that, did you?” The elevator stopped at her floor, the doors swishing open. “I’ll have a car waiting for you downstair
s.”

  “Dinner sounds wonderful, Hugh, but she could already hear the sounds of frantic activity coming from the newsroom. “It’s going to be a wild night. When it’s over, I’ll want to go home and crash.”

  He slid a hand under the French braid, his fingers unerringly locating the tightly banded cords in her neck. “It will be hours before you wind down enough to sleep.” He gave her a gentle push out of the elevator. “Dinner.”

  Dinner, she thought.

  Chapter Three

  It was midnight when Kelly walked out of the building onto an empty sidewalk. All the street vendors had long ago wheeled their pushcarts home, and the panhandlers had given up their search for easy marks.

  The heat had eased and the traffic had thinned, leaving the streets quiet – as quiet as they ever got in Manhattan. A garbage truck lumbered along Fiftieth making its nightly rounds. A few blocks away, a siren screamed, accompanied by the deep-throated blast of a fire truck’s horn.

  Kelly pulled the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder, breathing in the rough night air that was New York. She spotted the lone car waiting at the curb and headed for it. When she reached it, the driver was there, holding the rear door open for her. Kelly slung her heavy shoulder bag onto the seat and slid in beside it.

  Softly over the rear speakers came an old song by Hall and Oates. Mentally she tuned it out, dug in her bag and took out a bulky folder. Crammed inside were pre-interview notes and a lengthy bio on a Harvard professor-turned-author she was scheduled to interview on tomorrow night’s “Live at Five” report. His weighty tome chronicling the country’s economic woes was also in her bag. Kelly flipped on the reading light and searched through the sheaf of papers for the bio, as always filling what otherwise would have been idle time with work.

  The car turned onto Park Avenue and joined the scattering of taxis and limousines speeding along the thoroughfare, past darkened shop windows and closed stores. Not five hours ago the street had been clogged with traffic, drivers bad-tempered from the heat and noise.