* * * *
“Phaedra Conners?”
I glanced up at the sound of my name to the woman standing before me, clipboard in hand. When no one responded right away, she glanced over the room’s occupants in rising annoyance and called for me again.
“Phaedra Conners?”
Her voice wasn’t nearly as pleasant this second time around. I froze for one more heartbeat and then cleared my throat as I came to my feet. My hands felt clammy, so I wiped them on my hips, the material of my gray slacks soft beneath my palms. The woman looked me up and down. Though there was no expression on her face to imply as much, I could tell that she found me unimpressive.
“Ms. Dawson is ready to see you now,” she said neutrally. “If you could follow me.” As she turned and started away I grabbed my purse from the floor beside my seat and hurried after her. It was hard to keep up with her long legged stride and I found myself wondering testily how she was even able to move so fast in five inch heels, when I could barely shuffle along in three.
The Oracle wasn’t nearly as large as the Examiner had been and I found myself feeling more than a little claustrophobic as I followed Miss Attitude past the desks and cubicles that marked the personal spaces of individual reporters. As with any newspaper, the few people who were there were bundles of activity. I played follow the leader until we both came to a closed door that read:
Lynette Dawson, Editor in-Chief
The woman knocked twice on the door, waited until we heard a muffled “come in” from beyond the confines, and then walked away from me without a word. I made a face at her retreating backside before opening the door and stepping cautiously inside.
Ms. Dawson had her back to me, so I allowed myself a moment or two to study her in unabashed curiosity. She was an older woman, if the gray in her brown hair was any indication. When I came into the room, I found her staring down a pin board that was completely covered with newspaper clippings and photographs. Her stocking feet were bare against the worn hardwood, and I watched as she lifted her foot to scratch the calf of her opposite leg. Her hair was done up in a messy bun, and the skirt suit she wore had obviously seen better days.
I had to clear my throat twice before she would turn to look at me, but when she did I was both surprised and pleased to see the sharp intelligence in her eyes. Grinning, Lynette Dawson came towards me, hand outstretched.
“Miss Conners.” Her voice was warm and her grip was firm as we shook hands. “It’s such a pleasure to finally meet you. Please, have a seat.”
I followed her suggestion willingly enough and watched as she plopped down in the creaking chair behind her desk. Her sudden weight in the chair made it roll a bit, but she swung back up to the desk with enthusiasm, elbows resting on the surface and her fingers entwining so that she could rest her chin upon them.
“So,” her brows waggled mischievously, “what brings Fiery Phaedra to our humble abode?”
I made a rude sound in the back of my throat, but tried to play it off with a strained half smile. “Please don’t call me that.”
“Why not? You should enjoy the moniker while it lasts, Miss Conners. It’s not every day that people hail you as a revolutionary.” She tapped her chin and there was laughter in her eyes. “How did the Examiner put it? ‘A perfect example of what happens when freedom of speech is no longer a right, but a weapon to be wielded against the majority.’” She sighed and wiped a tear of mirth from one corner of her eye. “That line was a particular favorite of mine. They were always going on about how you were trying to make a statement with your little explosion, but they never explained exactly what that statement was.”
The smile I’d been maintaining became just a tad more forced, so I finally gave it up as a lost cause.
“I’m no revolutionary, Ms. Dawson.”
“Then what, pray tell, are you?”
I sighed. Some people called me a hero, but that percentage was small. The rest of the city thought I was either a dumb schmuck who’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time, or a co-conspirator.
“That really depends on who you ask.”
“I’m asking you.” There was no amusement in Lynette Dawson’s voice. No room for fancy maneuverings. Yet again, I was reminded that it was the woman’s no-nonsense reputation that had attracted me to this place, despite the fact that many viewed it as nothing more than tacky gossip rag.
I’d spent most of my adult life handling drama. I was a fan of the sensational, the chaotic, and the strange. I spotlighted the unique, the heartbreaking, the unbelievable; I gave a voice to the masses, and, for the most part, I even enjoyed myself. It didn’t hurt that as long as the paper was doing well and I stayed on my game, I was able to make a decent living.
The problem wasn’t my work. It was my temperament. The court-appointed psychologist that I’d been seeing after the bomb incident had claimed that I lacked impulse control or something.
I hadn’t really been listening.
Jeez, you’re instrumental in the explosion of a shitty reproduction of the Mystery Machine and suddenly you’re being detained by authorities and charged with destroying public property and reckless endangerment. It didn’t matter that said van had an arsenal’s worth of weaponry and high tech surveillance equipment. It didn’t matter that the piece of junk had been carrying enough explosives to level an entire building. Sure, I pushed it off the roof of a parking garage, but imagine all the lives my petty refusal to share had saved.
I mean, come on. Where was my freaking medal?
Instead of pats on the back and congrats, I was getting hate mail and being accused of being a communist. Apparently no one was buying my version of things, which was that it had all been a big misunderstanding. According to the majority there was no way I hadn’t been in on whatever nefarious plot the as of yet unknown terrorists had planned. They had been parked in my space after all. I must have had a change of heart at the last minute and decided to do the Christian thing by getting rid of the bombs before they could enact their bloody purpose.
I knew it was bullshit, but hey. I had to appreciate the creative genius behind it. After all, it had been on the front page months ago, and for a while my face had been plastered all over three major news channels. If today was any indication, people hadn’t forgotten about it nearly as quickly as I’d hoped they had, and I mentally prepared myself for another rejection.
Ever since the car bomb thing, other newspapers had been reluctant to hire me on. Just because the police weren’t able to prove that I hadn’t been involved didn’t mean that I was innocent, and the controversy surrounding the part I’d played in the whole debacle had cost me my job. No paper wanted to employ a woman that many believed to be a domestic terrorist. Bad for sales and bad for employee morale.
I’m pretty sure that the only reason I wasn’t facing jail time was because the cops wanted to see if I would eventually lead them to any of my accomplices. That, and because I’d done my fair share of favors for a particular judge during my years at the Examiner and he’d vouched for me. In the end, I had saved lives after all.
So here I was, almost a month later. Still looking for a job that wouldn’t put my journalism degree to waste and glaring at parked cars with tinted windows because I was 99.9% sure that they were surveillance vans put in place by the Feds.
There were a number of ways that I could have answered Ms. Dawson, but in the end I simply shrugged and said, “I’m a reporter who got on the wrong end of a story.”
She regarded me for another moment or two, and then smiled.
“You’re hired.”
My eyes went wide and I gaped. “Really? Just like that?” Not that I was complaining or anything, but usually when an interview took less than three minutes it was because I hadn’t gotten the job.
“Just like that,” she said, getting to her feet and stretching the kinks out of her back. “I know your work, Miss Conners,” she continued, wandering back over to her board. “You’re good at what you
do. You’d be an asset to our team. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t—”
Dawson seemed to struggle for the right words; finally, she simply used her fingers to make a circular motion in the air above one temple.
I laughed despite myself. Far be it for me to look a gift horse in the mouth but— “What about the Fiery Phaedra thing?”
She shrugged without turning around. “We’re a tabloid, Conners. Any publicity is good publicity as far as I’m concerned.”
Happiness was a hesitant warmth in my chest, and I found myself stifling giggles as I came to my feet.
“Thank you. You have no idea how much this means to me. I promise I—”
She waved the rest of my words away. “You start Monday. We have staff meetings every Wednesday. Give me headlines. Proof it wasn’t a mistake to hire you. That’s all the thanks I need.”
Kissed By Moonlight Page 2