Dancing in the Dark Read Free Page A

comes, she thought. With
Hourglass segment
correspondents already working on two stories similar to this one, Joel
had been rooting for just one more. In Michigan, a college student had
disappeared for six days, afterward telling police she had been
abducted at knifepoint. In Oregon, two teenage sisters were reported
missing after their mother found blood-covered sheets and a broken
window in their bedroom. Frenzied searches had been launched for all of
them. But police were convinced that the young women hadn’t been
kidnapped at all—that they’d staged everything.
    It was perverse, but Diane was certain Joel coveted another
misguided soul, one with her own twisted tale. Someone new and
something timely to kick off the show’s season opener in September.
    “This is perfect for us, Diane. It’s a third girl who’s cried wolf.
I want you to do the story.”
    “I’m going on vacation tomorrow, Joel,” she said, crossing her legs,
trying to stay calm, and hoping he had merely forgotten that she had
the next two weeks off. Yet she already knew he hadn’t. Joel didn’t
forget a thing.
    “This is important, Diane. Your vacation can wait, can’t it?”
    “No, it can’t wait, Joel. This trip has been planned for months.”
    “You got travel insurance?”
    Diane was tempted to lie but thought better of it. One lie always
led to another, and usually the truth came out, sooner or later. Lies
were what had gotten Philip in so much trouble.
    “As a matter of fact, I do,” she said. “But I bought it in case one
of the kids got sick or something. I didn’t buy it to cancel our trip
out west so I could work more.”
    Joel frowned the frown that had intimidated countless other
reporters and producers before Diane. The creator and executive
producer of the award-winning newsmagazine program was a television
legend. With forty years of broadcast journalism experience under his
trim belt, he’d gotten to this point by virtue of his quick mind, keen
visual sense, and refusal to give in or give up, ever. From his
earliest days in the business, when film, not videotape, was the news
production medium; even in the days when news lagged hours and,
sometimes, days in getting to the public because airline schedules
dictated the arrival of newsreel footage in New York before it could be
broadcast around the country; in those simpler days before satellites
and cell phones and computers on every desk in the Broadcast
Center—even when there had been so much less to control, Joel had been
a control freak. Throughout his career he’d wanted everything his way,
and he was accustomed to getting what he wanted.
    “Changing the subject for a second, Diane…” He picked up a pen and
began doodling on the yellow legal pad on his desk. “Your contract is
up for renewal in a few months, isn’t it?”
    “In January,” she replied, her lips tightening. The
conniving cheat
. This wasn’t playing fair. Joel knew her
situation and was using it to his advantage. Everyone at KEY News was
aware of what had happened to Philip. It had been in all the New York
newspapers, it had been on the Internet, it had even been on their own
network television and radio news. That Joel was using Diane’s
misfortune to get what he wanted shouldn’t have surprised her; still,
she found herself dumbfounded at his audacity.
    Joel knew that she was the head of household now. He knew that her
salary kept her family fed, clothed, and housed. With Philip gone, she
had no other income to fall back on. Though Joel wasn’t coming out and
saying it, he was clearly trying to tie the certitude of her contract
renewal, and therefore the financial security of her family, to her
acceptance of this assignment. She resented him for it, deeply.
    “Well, you know how these things go, Diane. The front row will come
to me. They’ll want my opinion before they get back to that agent of
yours, who undoubtedly will be lobbying for a hefty pay increase for
his star