“Dad, what’re you doing here?” Jeff glanced at the reporters crowding the entry and came to a sudden standstill. His face blanched. “Is Mom—”
“Mom’s fine. We’ll talk in the car.” Edward pulled Jeff aside, away from curious stares and alert ears. “Keep your head down and ignore them. Let’s go.”
Edward pushed the door open and thrust Jeff in front of him just as Ben parted the crowd.
“This way.”
Three reporters with their camera crews lunged forward shouting questions at them. Edward moved Jeff to his other side, using his body to shield him from the swarming reporters. Ben held his arms wide as if trying to herd them all. “The senator has no comment at this time.”
“Just a few questions, Senator,” someone called out. They pressed close, following Edward and Jeff to the car.
Edward opened the car door and shoved his son in the back seat, then climbed in next to him. Ben hopped in the front seat, started the car, and they pulled away.
“What’s going on?” Jeff’s gaze jumped right and left as cameramen circled the car trying to see through the tinted back windows.
“I tried to get to you before them, to warn—”
“Warn me what?”
Jeff watched his father’s clenched jaw. “It’s out. They know how your mother got hurt.”
Jeff’s indignation melted. He slumped in the seat. Everybody knew it was his fault.
“Oh.” Oh, crap. “How’d they find out?”
“Doesn’t matter. The damage is done.” Dad frowned and narrowed his eyes the way he did when thinking. “I signed you out of school for the rest of the week. It should blow over by then.”
“What do they want?”
“Forget it.”
Jeff looked out the back window. The white KWG News van pulled out on Lakeshore drive behind them. “They’re following us.”
Dad’s head whipped around to spot the rapidly gaining van. “Ben?”
“On it.” Phone in hand, Ben talked in clipped sentences to somebody.
“They want to talk to you pretty badly,” Jeff said.
“Not me, you.”
“Me?” His voice squeaked unmanly.
“Don’t worry. Ben’ll lose them.” His father turned to see how many vans followed.
Jeff cleared his throat. “Why me? You said they knew everything.”
“They do.”
“Then what do they want?”
He didn’t answer.
Jeff leaned closer. “Dad. What do they want?”
Frown lines between Dad’s eyebrows deepened and his lips tightened. “More.”
What more? There wasn’t anything more. He’d screwed up, and Mom had been hurt. What more could he give them? Understanding widened Jeff’s eyes. “They want to see me cry?”
Crying kids sold papers and magazines. Pain. Devastation. Britney Spears losing custody of her kids. Katrina. Virginia Tech. Trapped miners. Japanese tsunami. People thrived on others’ misfortune with ghoulish fascination.
Dad glared at the van pacing even with them. “Ben, where the hell are the police?”
“On their way.”
“What if I didn’t?” Jeff asked.
Dad spared him an irritated glance before turning back to watch the vans closing in on them. “Didn’t what?”
“Give them any reaction. They’d have nothing to write about, and they’d leave us alone.” Jeff had never spoken to the press directly, but he’d watched Dad and Mom plenty.
“Forget it.” Grim-faced, his dad stared at the road ahead.
“I can do it.”
Face set in hard serious lines, Dad held his gaze. “No. They are not preying on my son.”
Jeff’d seen his father mad before, but never this cold and determined. Dad’s absolute resolve to protect him was all the courage Jeff needed. He could do it.
“Go back,” he told Ben. “I want to go back to school.”
“Jeff, by tomorrow, all the kids will know. They’ll stare at you, feel sorry for you.”
“I’m a senator’s kid. They already do that. I don’t need babysitting.” Dad’s impatient tone only deepened his will. He’d made a lot of mistakes lately, but in this he was right. “Take me back. I’ll answer their questions.”
The car slowed. “He could be right, Edward. Going on the offense could take the wind out of their sails.”
“Forget it,” Dad said in a flat, uncompromising voice he used all the time with him, but Jeff never heard him use with other adults—not even those who worked for him.
“But—”
“Did I tell you how to handle your divorce?” His father snapped.
“No, sir.”
“All right then.”
Wow. Dad really did love him. Jeff squared his shoulders and sat a little taller. “Dad, let me face them. I can handle it.”
His father looked at him several long seconds. “You can?”
He nodded.
“How long have you been skiing?”
He frowned. Dad knew how long he’d been skiing. “Six years or so.”
“Would you say you’re a pretty accomplished skier?”
He nodded, tentative. “I’m decent.”
“So what happened the day your mother got hurt?”
So Dad wanted to play games? Wanted to teach him a lesson? Fine. This was one game Jeff was gonna win. His old man was not going to make him cry like a baby. “You want to know what happened? My mom and I were skiing. I couldn’t resist some fantastic powder and skied out of bounds. She followed me and got hurt.”
“Was the area clearly marked as out of bounds?”
“Yes, sir, it was.”
“So you knew you were going out of bounds?”
“I did.” He nodded.
“Did you know it was taped off because the ski patrol judged the area unstable and dangerous?”
“Yes.”
“Do you make it a habit of breaking rules and skiing out of bounds?”
Jeff looked Dad in the eyes, challenging. “No, sir. This is the first and last time I’ve ever gone out of bounds.”
“How exactly did your mother get hurt?”
“I ran over something and dropped right in front of her. To avoid hitting me, she swerved to the right and slid into some trees.”
Dad’s friendly tone disappeared, replaced by a fast, brusque question. “So how does it feel to know your disobedience and carelessness permanently crippled your mother?”
Jeff raised his chin and stared down his father. “It feels pretty shitty. But there’s nothing I can do about it now, is there?”
Ben laughed. Their eyes met in the rectangular rear view mirror and Jeff swelled with pride at the approval he saw there.
Respect lightened his father’s expression. He looked at Ben. “Maybe he is ready.”
“Um... Can you find a better word than shitty?” Ben asked.
Dad stared at him a few seconds. “I liked the ‘shitty’.”
Chapter 28
Skye stomped into the pressroom. Looking right then left, she zeroed in on several men crowding the doorway of one cubby and stalked over.
“Excuse me, gentlemen.” Skye squeezed past Brett and Neil to stare at John Daniels.
Daniels rocked back in his chair, like a king holding court. A middle-age paunch rolled over his belt and his thinning hair was combed over a rapidly expanding bald spot. On the right side of his desk sat a family portrait, blond, blue-eyed wife, two children—boy and girl. The boy she’d met last week.
“I need to talk to you,” Skye said.
He raised one eyebrow and looked her up and down. Interest crinkled his eyes. “I’ve seen you around, but I don’t believe we’ve met.”
Skye suppressed a shudder.
“I’d like to talk to you in private.” She pivoted toward the other men, giving them a pointed look. “If you don’t mind?”
The men dispersed willingly, knowing that the cubby-filled room offered only the ill
usion of privacy.
“In private?” he drawled. “Sure, honey.” He stood and sucked in his gut to hitch up his belt.
“This way.” Skye marched into an empty conference room, flipping on the light as she passed. Closing the door behind Daniels, Skye stood to the side of the table and crossed her arms.
“You’ve got me all to yourself.” He swaggered close. “What now?”
Skye grimaced. “Save it Romeo. I called you in here to let you know what an insensitive, amoral, imbecilic cretin you are.”
Daniels froze. The smile wiped from his mouth as his face crumpled into a mask of hurt. “Well, that’s not fair. You don’t even know me. Yet.”
Skye glanced at his left hand and platinum wedding band. Slime ball. “Is Todd Daniels your son?”
He dropped his eyelids and tipped his head back. “Why?”
“He’s your son, isn’t he?”
Daniels rested plump arms on his belly in answer. His eyes now lit in wary curiosity.
“You have got to be the most despicable person I know. You used your son to pump Jeff Hastings for private information about Senator Hastings’s wife and then printed it. You didn’t even have the balls to put it under your own byline.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, lady.”
“How much did The Times give you for that story? Ten grand? How about our own Ted Marley? What’d he give you?”
He maintained his silence, but dusky red embarrassment creeping up his neck gave him away.
“You’re such an asshole.”
“What’s it to you? Beat you to the punch?”
Skye’s anger got the better of her. “I was there before the punch, you moron—”
She clenched her fists at her side. She wanted to pummel him until her knuckles stung. Instead Skye looked away and bit back several more crude names. “I just have more respect and compassion to take advantage of a situation and send a kid into therapy for the rest of his life.” Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t give a damn about—”
The door opened and Jenny slid in. “Hi, guys. Problem?”
Skye’s jaws clenched and unclenched. “I was just telling Daniels what I thought of him.”
“Yeah, ball-less cretin, asshole. We all heard. Sports writers; they don’t quite know what to do with themselves in the off season.” She turned to John Daniels. “What’d you do now, John?”
“He used his kid to make friends with Hastings’s son and pump him for private information about the Senator’s wife’s accident, then sold it.”
“You can’t prove anything.” He dropped into a chair, then swung his feet up onto the tabletop, smug and confident.
The door swung wide open, and Karen swept into the room. Her eyebrows rose at the three. “Am I interrupting?”
Daniels dropped his feet to the floor and sat up straight in the chair. “Uh, no.”
Karen crossed to the end of the table and picked up her reading glasses. “Skylar, you’re back. Got that follow up article on Hastings?”
Still seething, Skye was reluctant to take her eyes off Daniels. “Not yet. I just had a private matter to discuss with John.”
Karen gave the three a considering look. “When are you going to have it?”
“Just finishing it up.”
“Is it as good as the first?”
Skye nodded.
“Good.” She looked at Jenny. “And you?”
“Refereeing.”
Karen leveled a steady stare at Daniels, then shook her head. “I don’t even want to know. Get out.” She waved her hand as if shooing away a bee.
Daniels was the first through the door, then Jenny and Skye. As they walked away, Jenny leaned close to her ear, whispering, “You’ve got bigger problems than him.” She looked around the crowded newsroom, then took her arm. “Let’s go.”
Once they’d cleared the building, Skye slowed as they headed for Jenny’s car. “Where’re we going?”
“Lunch. I haven’t eaten yet.”
“So what’s the big mystery? Why can’t you tell me here?”
Jenny kept walking. “It’s complicated, and I’m starving.”
“Fine.” Skye rushed to catch up to Jenny.
* * *
Skye had plenty of problems, so what mysterious problem could Jenny possibly know that was worse than what that low-life Daniels had done?
Once settled at Panera with her broccoli cheddar soup, Jenny’s salad, and drinks, Skye leaned forward and spoke softly. “I’m being blamed for leaking info about the Hastings family. My boyfriend thinks I’m a heartless bitch and won’t take my phone calls. I know who did leak the information but can’t tell.
“I’m going to write the Hastings story—even though I promised Edward what he told me would be off the record, so now he and Mark will be justified in hating me. And that asshole Daniels won’t clear my name. What could possibly be a bigger problem than that?”
“You know that article I did a few months ago about designer babies?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I did a follow up piece about the embryo glut in America.”
“And this has, what, to do with me?”
Jenny took another bite of her salad, quickly chewed, and swallowed. “You know this whole ESC thing has got everybody’s panties in a twist, so somebody finally did a rough count of all the embryos left over from in vitro fertilization. Guess how many?”
“Since the government got about forty stem cell lines from there, I’m gonna guess about four thousand.”
“More like six hundred thousand in the US alone.”
Skye’s hand stalled halfway to her mouth. “Wow. That’s a lot.”
She took a big sip of her iced tea as she nodded. “The parents—or donors— are in moral paralysis. There’s even a legal term for what to do with the leftover embryos: disposition decision. Deciding the fate of frozen embryos became so hard and problematic that the parents couldn’t make a decision, so they don’t.”
“So they just leave the little embryos frozen indefinitely. What other options do they have?”
Jenny swallowed and wiped her mouth. “Five—none of them great. Use them.” She ticked the points off on her fingers. “Freeze indefinitely, thaw and quietly dispose of them, donate them to an infertile couple—known as President Bush’s Snowflake program—or donate them to research. Only three percent choose the last option.”
Skye did some quick mental calculations. Three percent of six hundred thousand was eighteen thousand, about four hundred-fifty percent more than the forty existing government-approved embryo stem cell lines—which were heavily flawed and nobody wanted to use.
“Although fascinating, still not seeing what this has to do with me.”
“Indirectly. I spent months researching this article. Talked to dozens of people across the country and word is there is a real—and strong—black market for embryos.”
“For their stem cells?”
Jenny jabbed her fork at her. “Bingo.”
“Doesn’t make sense. Obama’s executive order lifted the Bush administration’s strict limit on federal funding and invested millions of dollars in new embryonic stem cell research.”
“Research, not treatment. And for certain medical conditions, ESCs are still the gold standard.”
“Okay. So?”
“One of my informants contacted me a few weeks ago with an oddball tip. He was weirdly cryptic, but the gist of it was that the buzz on the street has it that a record fee was paid recently for embryos for a VIP’s treatment. In my own backyard.” She finished chewing. “At first it didn’t make much sense, but...” Jenny looked her in the eye. “What high profile person do we know who has used stem cells in treatment lately?”
“Not Noelle Hastings. She’s using stem cells from cord blood. Mark’s company provided them.”
“Do you know that for a fact?” Jenny held her gaze and leaned in. “What if it’s not?”
“Not what?”
&nbs
p; “What if the cells aren’t from cord blood? What if they’re from an embryo?”
“That’s crazy.” Edward would never okay that. But what if he hadn’t okayed it? “Where would they even find an embryo that was a great match?”
“Six hundred thousand is a lot of chances—not to mention that number is probably on the low side—if you’re tapping into a black market, these people have far larger, far more sophisticated networks than legal sources.
“As it was explained to me, infertile couples make on average eight to fourteen embryos. They may only use half of them, and it’s common for them to abandon the rest. Ask any fertility doctor. Once they have the kids they want, they often stop paying to store the rest of the embryos. They disappear, or move and leave no forwarding address, and the embryos become the fertility doctor’s problem.”
“So the less scrupulous docs sell the embryos on the black market.”
Jenny shrugged. “Seems so.”
“Isn’t that kind of risky?”
“Not really. They claim to have destroyed them or the embryos died in thawing. Ordinarily thirty percent die in thawing—though in 2008 they developed this new process of quick-freezing embryos called vitrification that has a ninety-five percent freeze-thaw ratio. It’s fascinating.” She frowned and shook her head. “Anyway, if the doc sells the embryos versus destroying them, who’s gonna say otherwise? The people paying him? I don’t think so.”
“Isn’t that against the law?”
“Selling them? Absolutely.” Jenny nodded.
“No, destroying them. I mean what about protecting human rights and all that? I’d think the pro-life organizations would be all over that.”
“Yeah, well, it seems they have bigger battles to fight and have let this one slide—at least in the states. Germany, Italy, and a few other countries solved this dilemma by forbidding the freezing of embryos—every embryo created must be implanted immediately. England, on the other hand, allows embryos to be frozen for a maximum of ten years—unless special circumstances exist. But so far Americans haven’t wanted the government regulating such things so...”
“We have a thriving black market fueled by more than half a million abandoned embryos.” Skye polished off the last of her soup and tore off a chunk of bread. “You could be mistaken. Could be your guy was talking about somebody else.”
The Lives Between Us Page 32