July 24
The executive news director for Channel 13 blocked off a coveted nighttime hour slot for Elizabeth Blake’s exclusive report on the death of Yukon’s CEO Geoffrey Tate and the troubling questions swirling around the Pentagon’s half-a-trillion-dollar Bullwhip contract, information Blake and her producer had cherry-picked from the Newshound files Teo had handed over to her.
Blake had kept her superiors in the dark about the provenance of her information, but she promised them a blockbuster story, and the station had been promoting it nonstop all week long. “Lizzy Blake blows the lid off Yukon cover-up,” promised one over-the-top promo, with a shot of the reporter standing alongside the distinctive prospector sculpture outside Yukon’s downtown headquarters, a fake bundle of dynamite in her hand.
Throughout the day leading up to the report, other promos flashed pictures of Geoff Tate on his yacht, Jewel Tate entering the courthouse in her tight-fitting outfits during the trial, and snippets of Jewel’s call to 911. All indications pointed to a program that would shatter the news operation’s previous rating records.
Lizzy made sure to email and text her network contacts to remind them to tune in or record the program. It was her ticket out of the small, stagnant pond that was local television news and into the bigs, and she planned to punch it in prime time.
She debated what to wear, finally settling on an expensive but conservative low black tunic jacket, zippered in the front, a single strand of pearls at her neck. She had her sandy-colored hair highlighted and professionally blown out; brows plucked; red raspberry lip gloss applied, one coat at a time, with a needle-nosed brush; nails buffed to a crystal sheen.
She chose her favorite pair of rust-colored Bruno Magli Galena pointed-toe pumps, to better accentuate her legs, no stockings, and applied an extra layer of bronzer to her calves, thighs, and face. The makeup artist in the greenroom told her she looked stunning, and, for once, it wasn’t an exaggeration.
With forty-five minutes to go to airtime, Lizzy sat down at her computer to give her jealously guarded script one final read before sending it over to the teleprompter.
She keyed in her password—“Cronkite”—and began reading silently to herself:
When she was finished, she hit Send and shot the transcript over to the teleprompter desk.
No sooner had Lizzy walked off the soundstage after airing the Yukon exposé than the phone lines in the studio lit up. Every light was blinking, and her cell phone was exploding with incoming text messages, calls, and emails. She was overcome by a feeling of power and prestige. Elizabeth Blake has arrived, damn it!
Lizzy was sitting at her desk when her producer materialized at her side. “We kicked ass, Tony,” she said, a smug, satisfied Mona Lisa smile on her lips.
“The whole network is in an uproar,” the producer huffed.
“It’s what we expected, right? Look at my cell phone. It looks like Grand Central.”
“No, Elizabeth, it’s not what you think. Lawyers, politicians, foreign embassies are all calling. They’re demanding an immediate retraction and full apology.”
Huh, what did that dipshit just say? Did I hear him right? she thought. “Retraction, full apology,” she repeated hazily.
He nodded. “Yes. They claim none of it was true. The documents are phony, the information bogus, the pictures photoshopped.”
“That can’t be.”
Lizzy plugged Teo’s thumb drive into her computer’s port and clicked on the link to the secured cloud server. Instead of an index of folders and files opening on the screen, an image of a Guy Fawkes mask appeared before dissolving into a message:
The fog in Lizzy’s head lifted. “Fuuuuck,” she shrieked and pounded her keyboard with both hands, sending splintered nails sailing through the air. She grabbed her cell phone and punched in a number.
“Teo, you no-good piece of . . .”
“This is Mia,” Mia said. “Teo is busy right now. Can I help you?”
“You did this,” Lizzy screamed. “Byron is behind this. He had the kid set me up.”
“Elizabeth, is that you?”
“You’ll pay for this.”
“Is there a problem?”
“You’re trying to sabotage my career, ruin everything I’ve worked for. I’ll never get a job at one of the networks now.”
“Calm down, Lizzy,” Mia purred. “Don’t take it personally. It’s how the game is played in this town. Smart woman like you, I would have thought you’d have learned that by now. Isn’t that what you told Teo?”