LOVING HER SOUL MATE (19 page)

“Good morning, Ed,” she said
airily to her boss as she walked past him.
 
He was stooped down talking to an editor at the copy desk.

“What’s so good about it?” Ed
replied, not bothering to look her way.
   
And then he remembered something.
 
“Oh, Turner, it’s you,” he said, looking up.
 
“I need to see you in my office,” he added.

Shay placed her things on her desk
near the back of the newsroom, and then headed back toward the front.
 

“Hey, Ronnie, what’s up?” she
asked as she passed his desk.
 

Ronnie mumbled something as if he
wasn’t the least interested, and she kept going.
   
He was doing all he could to keep his rage
from festering.
 
She just betrayed him.
 
She just literally crawled out of bed with
another man, and she had the nerve to ask him what was up?
 
Your ass was up, bitch, while John Malone
pounded it, Ronnie had wanted to say.
 
But he kept his cool.
 
She needed
some tough love, he decided, something to bring her back to reality.
 
And he was just the man to give it to her.

Shay arrived in Ed’s office just
as Ed did himself.
 
He closed the door
and they both sat down.

“Is it about the press conference
yesterday?” she asked him.

“Why would you ever think that?”

Shay smiled.
 
“I’d never seen anything like it, Ed.
 
The guy went after me the entire time.
 
I just sat there amazed.”

“It was something to see all
right.
 
Seeing Malone defend you was
something to see, too.”
 
Ed said this and
looked at her.

Shay hesitated.
 
“Yeah,” she finally said.
 
“You think he’ll be fired?”

“Who knows?
 
The mayor suspended McNamara already, pending
the outcome of some lame investigation of course, but that doesn’t mean Malone
is out of the woods yet.
 
He should have
known what was going on, even if he claims now he didn’t.
 
My bet is that he knew all along and he’ll
get the ax next.”

Shay remained expressionless,
although she couldn’t disagree with Ed more.
 
“So what’s up?”

Ed leaned back.
 
“I’m putting you back on the Queen’s Ridge
story.”

Shay frowned.
 
“But why?
 
Ronnie’s handling that story now.”

“You both will be handling
it.
  
Just as you both will be handling
the Dodge story.
 
And Ronnie will be lead
on both.”

Shay felt as if she’d just been
slapped in the face.
 
She stared at
Ed.
 
“I break the story.
 
I write the story.
 
I’m the person the source came to.
 
But I’m not good enough to continue reporting
on the story?
 
Is that it, Ed?”

“You can report.
 
But you’re report to Ronnie and he’ll get the
byline.
 
It’ll be his name on the story.”

“Are you saying, are you telling
me that we won’t even share the byline?
 
It’ll just be all Ronnie?”

Ed hesitated.
 
“Yes,” he finally said.

“This is really foul, Ed,” Shay
found the courage to say to her boss.
 
“This is really unfair and this is wrong.”
 

“It’s not about all of that,
Shay.”

Shay was flustered.
 
“Well please tell me what it’s about because
I don’t get it.
 
I keep working my ass
off and this is the same shit I keep getting.
 
Over and over.
 
So please tell me what it’s about.”
 

“I only do what I’m told, all
right?
 
And my boss told me to make
Ronnie primary.
 
So I made Ronnie
primary.
 
It’s politics in this
town.
 
McNamara has friends in high
places.
 
You should know that.”

“But, Ed---”

“No but.
 
Case closed.”

Shay stared at Ed.
 
She could see the embarrassment in his eyes,
and the regret that he’d been put in such an untenable position, but she felt
no sympathy for him.
 
She was tired of
this.
 
She was tired of being held back,
pushed aside, her rightful stories stolen from her and given to less talented
journalists.
 
She stood to her feet.
 
“Is there anything else?” she asked him.

“Look, Turner---”

“Is there anything else, sir?”
Shay didn’t want to hear it.

Ed let out a harsh exhale.
 
“No, Turner, there’s nothing else,” he
said.
 

And Shay left his office and
headed for her desk.
 
Ronnie looked up as
she past his desk, as if he wanted to see her reaction, but her face remained
as stoic as she could manage.
 
But when
she reached her desk, she balked.
 
The
idea of just sitting there as if she accepted this unfair treatment made her
turn right back around and head out of the newsroom altogether.
 

She walked down the hall, opened
the door to the stairwell, and hurried through.
 
She stopped in the rarely used, empty stairwell and sat on the top
step.
 
She leaned her head against the
rail and tried not to feel sorry for herself.
 
But that was a tall order.
 
She
had been so hopeful.
 
Her career was
finally getting off the ground again and her love life wasn’t far behind.
 
But literally overnight, just like that,
they’d decided to give a story they knew was rightfully hers to Ronnie
Burk.
 
And she wasn’t blaming Ronnie, he
was taking what was given to him, but that didn’t make it any easier.

Her cell phone began to ring and
for a moment she didn’t even bother to answer it.
 
Until she thought of one particular person,
the only bright spot still in her life, and at least looked at the Caller
ID.
 
Brady Police Department was emblazed
on her screen.
 
She answered the phone.

“This is Shay,” she said.

“Well hello there,” John said
jovially.
 
He was in his office, leaned
back in the swivel chair behind his desk, a smile on his face as soon as he
heard her sweet, smoky voice.
 

Just hearing his voice brought all
kinds of emotions to the forefront for Shay, too.
 
They had had such a wonderful night together.
 
The best night of sex and conversation she’d
had in a long time.
 
And
now this.
 
She fought back
tears.
 
“Hey,” she said.

John immediately detected a
difference in her voice.
 
He stopped
rocking.
 
“What’s the matter, honey?” he
asked her.

“Nothing, I was just. . .”
 
The tears began to appear.

“Shay, what is it?”

She hated crying to him like some
damn baby, but she felt like hell.
 
“They
took me off the story,” she said.

John frowned.
 
“
You
?
 
Are you kidding
me?
 
You’re the one who broke the
got
damn story!”

“That’s what I said.
 
But they don’t care.
 
They’re letting Ronnie Burk handle it. He’ll
get the byline too.”

John shook his head.
 
Those assholes!
 
“I’m sorry, babe,” he said.

“I’m okay,” Shay said, wiping her
tears away.
 
“I just found out and it was
just a shocker, that’s all.
 
But I’ll be
okay.”

“Maybe I’ll come over there and
have a little talk with Barrington.”

“No, John, please,
don’t
.
 
Ed’s just
doing what the publisher wants.
 
And even
if it’s his idea, they aren’t going to change anything.
 
I’ll be okay.
 
I’m used to it.”

John closed his eyes.
 
She wasn’t even thirty yet and already used
to raw deals.
 
If Barrington was in his
face right now he’d choke the shit out of him for treating his lady this
way.
 
And that was the thing with John
now.
 
Shay was officially now his
lady.
 
His
responsibility.
 
And nobody was
mistreating her and
expect
him to remain silent.

“What about you?” Shay asked him,
regaining her composure.
 
“Have they
fired you yet?”

John smiled a weak smile.
 
“No, I’m a valuable asset right now.
 
I know where the bodies are buried, so to
speak.
 
The conventional wisdom is that
I’ll be out the door next.
 
The word I’m hearing
is that the mayor is contemplating a complete overhaul of the police hierarchy,
with me and the rest of the top brass being shown the door.
 
But I haven’t heard anything directly from
him yet.”

“I pray he doesn’t let you
go.
 
They need you there.
 
You were only doing your job.”

“I’ve been so caught up with
running that drug task force that those Dodge murders and the connections we
should have drawn a long time ago just never came across my desk.
 
McNamara handled every one of those cases.”

“Or didn’t handle them, which is
the point,” Shay said.

“Right,” John said.
 
He then motioned for a uniformed officer who
was standing outside his door, waiting for him to get off of the phone, to
enter.
 
“We’d better both get back to
work,” he said to Shay.

Shay closed her eyes and nodded
her head.
 
“Agreed.”

“Sure you’re okay?”

“Positive.”

“Have dinner tonight?” he asked
her.

She smiled.
 
“Sounds good.”

“I’ll call you.”

“Okay, John.
 
Bye.” She said this and then killed the
call.
 
She remained where she sat for a
few minutes longer, her cell still in her hand, her mind bouncing from her
budding romance with John to the drag that was becoming her job.
 
All she wanted was a fair shot.
 
Don’t screw her over.
 
But she kept getting screwed.
 

And then, last night, she allowed
John to screw her too.
 
Not in the way
her job was working her over, but in a more risky, intimate way with far more
lasting implications.
 
And she didn’t
know if she could handle all of this.
 
She came to Brady as a way of starting over after the way she was
treated in Birmingham.
 
And already she’d
been cheated on and slapped by the man she had once thought was husband
material, had been bedded by a cop who had a reputation for bedding females,
and now her job had her mired in clay.
 
She felt stuck, fucked, and mucked.
 
And she’d only been in town less than four months.

She left the stairwell and headed
back to the newsroom.
 
Her conversation
with John did manage to make her feel less besieged, so that was a good
thing.
 
And once she got behind her desk
she was actually able to concentrate on the work at hand.
 
She was writing a follow up story on the
Dodge murders, and although her name would not appear once the story was
published, that wasn’t going to stop her from doing the best job she could.
 
She still had to eat and pay her bills,
byline or no byline, and she wasn’t ever going to forget that fact.

Ronnie Burk watched her as she got
back to work.
 
He watched her whenever he
walked over to the copier, or the fax machine, or whenever he had to show his
slug line to the copy editor.
 
And
sometimes he’d look back and catch her just sitting there, with those reading
glasses on, her big, dreamy eyes staring into space as if she was in some deep
thought.
 
She looked like some
love-struck teenager to him, and it pained him that it wasn’t his love that had
struck her.