Dead Air (Sammy Greene Thriller) Read Free Page A

Someone’s in the clock tower.”
    In the courtyard below, a crowd quickly gathered around the student pointing up.
    “Wait! Don’t jump! We’ll get help!”
    Help? He’d told them something was wrong, but nobody believed him. Now it was too late. No one could help him. All those voices, shouting, screaming. He wanted them to shut up, to leave him alone. Just a few precious moments. Alone.
    “He’s going to jump! God, somebody stop him!”
    Easing himself to the very edge of the precipice, he pushed off, feet first, toward the bosom of the crowd. His final expression was a gentle smile. Soon it would be over. Finally the pain and the nightmares would stop.
    Forever.
    Sammy strode across campus, ignoring her twinges of guilt. Yes, she’d failed to tell her boss at the station that she’d been tipped off about an animal rights protest organized by the Very Reverend Calvin Taft for that afternoon. At best, Larry would send someone to accompany her; at worst, he’d forbid her going. She didn’t want either scenario. Taft was
her
story.
    By the time she entered the university’s biology building, the demonstration was in full swing. She followed the rising sound of chants and claps to where Taft and more than two dozen rabid followers were trying to push past a harried-looking lab tech guarding the entrance to the animal studies unit.
    “I’m warning you!” the tech shouted.” The police’ll be here any minute!”
    A chorus of curses erupted from the mob.
    “Murderers!”
    “Killers”
    “Death Dealers!”
    Jockeying for a good position amidst placards and fists, Sammy raised her microphone above the heads of the protesters in front of her, shielding her small tape recorder under her left arm. The reporter in her loved to watch people react. The tilt of a head, a wrinkled brow, a downturned lip, a not-quite-guileless grin. She studied any gesture that might belie the speaker’s words — what Sammy liked to call the “story within the story.” Observing the faces of these kids, she was fascinated and horrified by the ardor she saw there. She knew it was a testament to the power of their leader.
    Taft turned to his flock. “The hand of the abuser does not threaten us. We have come to rescue these poor suffering souls from your inhuman treatment.”
    Right
, Sammy thought —
Father Teresa
. She’d run into the Reverend before. Tall and gawky as Ichabod Crane, Taft exuded the arrogance of a man personally chosen to serve God. For more than a decade the charismatic evangelist had led the Traditional Values Coalition, a vocal group of religious extremists. And for most of that time, Taft had been no more than back-page news copy, crisscrossing the country advocating his fundamentalist version of morality to local cable TV and after-midnight talk radio audiences.
    But with the malaise triggered across the country by last year’s economic downturn, his message had begun to resonate. Not only religious kooks listened to his florid speeches. Taft had tapped into a frustrated segment of society that grew day by day: weary workers falling behind as they struggled for a piece of the American dream. God would stand by their side and give them hope. From the past year’s donations alone, Taft’s coalition now boasted a multimillion-dollar war chest.
    Taft targeted colleges and universities as “dens of iniquity,” promoting rallies against abortion, gay rights, and recently, animal research. What worried Sammy most was that so many students seemed persuaded by his hateful rhetoric.
    Reaching into her purse, she grabbed her Nikon One Touchand snapped shots of the demonstrators. She’d track them down for interviews later.
    The flash caught Taft unaware. For a moment he stared in her direction. Even from the distance, Sammy was struck by the power in his dark eyes, an expression she’d seen at last year’s abortion protests — rage saturated with hatred that seemed just a fraction away from an explosion of