Destiny Lingers Read Free Page B

close friendship and deep admiration and respect for each other blossom into a passionate and bona fide love. I sit here today, five years later, wondering where all that love has gone.
    “I’ll see what I can do.” Garrett’s voice drops. “Call you later.” And with that, my husband is gone. I wonder just how far gone he really is.
    “Hey! You !” I am startled by a loud, barking “Tom the assignment editor,” now standing over my desk, pointing his fat finger at me. My heart pounds furiously as he urgently rattles out orders like bullets.
    “I’ll call you back, baby,” I say into a dead phone. “Yeah, Tom. What’s up?”
    “We got a hostage situation developing up in Harlem. That’s your neighborhood, isn’t it? Perp’s holding a kid, maybe three or four years old. He says he’ll kill him unless he gets to talk to a reporter. You’re all I got right now. Need you to hightail it up there and check it out.” Tom turns and heads back to his assignment desk, marching as if off to war. “If it’s something, it’s yours!” Tom yells over his shoulder as he flips on the radio mike to find out the estimated time of arrival of the closest camera crew.
    Cameraman Fred Robinson and his audio guy, Butch Mason, say their ETA is seven minutes.
    “Where the hell is my reporter?” Tom yells like an animal at me across the newsroom. “Let’s move !” He emphasizes the order with a Jackie Gleason swerve of the neck.
    I grab my papers, my Coach satchel, my reporter’s notebook, and my Mont Blanc pen and am out the door.
    I guess I’ll have to put off meeting with Garrett until later. After all, this big, breaking story could be the big “get” of my budding career—with a live shot for the five, six, and eleven o’clock newscasts, advancing my visibility and credibility in the number-one news market. I’ll spend the night preparing video packages for the early morning news and perhaps even a network news break-in.
    Forget the story of my life right now.
    Again, my life will have to wait.
    Thank God for my career.

Chapter Two
    B y the time I make it down the elevator and out to the Fiftieth Street awning, I can see the Channel 4 news van accelerating up the street. I can also hear the pulsating boom-diddy-boom-diddy-boom of reggae music blasting out the window as my news crew gets closer. Cameraman Fred and his soundman, Butch, are both bobbing their heads to the funky Caribbean beat but are also looking very serious behind their dark shades. Fred swerves up to the curb with immediacy as Butch jumps out and slides open the news van’s roaring door and helps me hop in.
    “Sounds like we’re going to be up there a while,” a concerned Butch reports. “Cops’ve been negotiating with this guy for more than three hours now and looks like he’s not lettin’ up.”
    “Yeah,” Fred chimes in from the driver’s seat. “They say the guy’s pissed off ’cause the city took his kids. Now, why he thinks holdin’ his kid hostage is going to help his case with the city, I do not know.”
    “Yeah, that fool could actually kill his kid on the six o’clock news.” Butch blows a swift puff of air through his lips and props his big, booted foot up on the dashboard with a thud. “People are nuts today, ya know?”
    “Tell me about it,” I reply with an air of calm, but inside, my heart is pounding like crazy as another adrenaline rush kicks in. I am excited, thrilled, prepared, and in shock. I am ready for anything.
    The van continues its wobbly way up Amsterdam Avenue into Harlem, where police say a man is holding a machete to his three-year-old son’s throat, threatening to kill the terrified child unless the city’s Social Services Department restores him custody of his son and four other children. The agency reportedly took the kids after the man was ruled unfit to raise them. Officials say he became delusional after his wife was killed in a recent arson fire, and he was left to raise their five