The Sentinel would be his way out, he figured.
Then, while dispatched to a mall shooting in Ohio, he’d met a reporter with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Daphne Newsome. They started dating. She was a free spirit. Her first name was Lisa, but she used her middle name, Daphne. She wanted him to move to Cleveland and work at the Plain Dealer. She wanted to have kids and settle down.
He didn’t.
That ended it.
He threw all he had into his reporting and broke a major story. A charter jet en route to Moscow from Chicago plunged into Lake Erie off Buffalo’s shoreline, killing two hundred people. The world press speculated that the cause was terrorism. But Gannon tracked down the pilot’s brother and convinced him to share the pilot’s last letter, which revealed his plan to commit suicide by crashing his jet because his wife had left him for another woman.
The story was picked up around the world.
It led to Gannon’s Pulitzer nomination. He didn’t win, but what he got were job offers with big news outlets in New York City.
But as fast as his dream came true, it died.
A few days after the offers came, a construction worker, who’d spent the afternoon in a bar, slammed his pickup truck into Gannon’s parents’ car, killing them both. He’d never forget that New York state trooper, standing at his apartment door, hat in his hand, then watching two caskets descend into the ground. After his parents’ deaths, he was in no shape to do anything and declined the job offers. Months later, things had changed in New York.
The offers had dried up.
Gannon remained at the Sentinel until he was fired in a scandal over his refusal to give up a source on a story that linked a decorated detective to two women. One had been murdered—the other was missing.
No one believed in the story but Gannon. Everyone had rejected him, except Melody Lyon, the legendary editor at the World Press Alliance. She’d been watching him since his Pulitzer nomination and sensed something about his news instincts.
She hired him to work at the WPA in New York.
In the end, Gannon was vindicated.
Since he’d joined the WPA, he’d faced many ups and downs. But there were bright spots, like the recent one with his estranged sister. The circumstances were frightening, but he’d reunited with Cora, who had a daughter named Tilly. They lived in Arizona.
He smiled each time he reminded himself that he was an uncle now.
On the downside, Dolf Lisker was dragging the World Press Alliance through troubling upheaval. Like everyone, Gannon agreed that the newswires had to adapt to the struggling newspaper industry by strengthening content, particularly online content. Hell, the wire was the forerunner of the internet—so most people got the concept.
What they didn’t get was Dolf Lisker.
Unlike Melody Lyon, Lisker was a corporate sycophant rather than a journalistic champion. His so-called “personnel efficiency model” was rumored to be looming; and his daily edicts with mantras like “brand thrust” and “maximizing news value”—whatever the hell they meant—all worked to create a climate of fear for most WPA staffers.
But not for Gannon.
Being a reporter was in his DNA and he’d survived far worse than the ranting of a nonjournalist like Dolf Lisker. Pure journalism, the kind Gannon had devoted his life to, would endure long after the Liskers of the world had turned to dust.
And what about Katrina Kisko?
He’d never met anyone like her, a Brooklyn girl and a dynamite crime reporter who’d broken several major stories for the Signal. She had the killer instinct needed to survive the city’s fierce news wars.
Gannon loved the way her hair curtained over her eyes when she wrote, the way she clamped her pen in her teeth as she typed, faster than anyone he’d known. There was an energy about her; an intensity that pulled him to her like a moth to a flame.
He’d fallen in love with her.
Katrina was thirty and when she’d started hinting about her biological clock and the possibility of living together, Gannon was open to the idea. For the first time, he started to think about settling down, thinking about kids, thinking about the long run.
The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Katrina was the woman for him, until he reached the point where he was bursting to tell her.
He’d taken her to their favorite Italian restaurant in Lower Manhattan.
They’d both had chaotic days and he was sure his news would sweep her off her feet. After they’d ordered, he’d reached subtly into his jacket pocket and felt the tiny box.
“I’ve been giving a lot of thought about us, the future,” he said. His thumb traced over the box in his pocket as the candlelight lit her eyes.
“So have I, Jack. I’ve been thinking about our moving in together.”
“Yes.” He squeezed the box.
Katrina’s BlackBerry vibrated.
“Sorry, I have to get this.” Reading the message, she chuckled at a private joke she didn’t share. Then she texted a swift response, took a sip of her wine and a deep breath.
“Jack,” she started, “I don’t think it’s such a good idea.”
“What’s not a good idea?”
“Our living together.”
“What?”
“It’ll just complicate things with our work. It would be too complicated for me.”
“Complicate how? What is this?”
“I think we need a break.” Tears filled her eyes. “This is hard. I’m so sorry, Jack.”
The blow nearly winded him. He released the box in his pocket, tossed several twenties on the table and walked out. He kept walking that night until he found himself on the Brooklyn Bridge, staring at Manhattan. He contemplated the river for the longest time before he caught a cab back to his empty apartment.
The subway’s automated public address called: 157th Street.
Gannon’s stop.
His neighborhood was at the southern edge of Washington Heights, in the Sugar Hill district of Hamilton Heights. He liked it here. People were fiercely proud of the community and watched out for each other. On his way home, he stopped at the corner grocery for maple ice cream.
He did his best thinking with ice cream.
His building was a seven-story walk-up on 151st Street where he rented a fifth-floor one-bedroom for thirteen hundred dollars a month. It was clean, quiet, with oak floors, crown molding, milk-white walls and a whole lot of nothing else.
Sure, he had a few things: a used black leather sofa, a coffee table, a TV, a plain table and his personal laptop. Next to it, the New York Times, News, Post, Newsday, USA TODAY and the Wall Street Journal stood in neat towers, like a newsprint shrine to his faith in the truth.
He flopped onto his sofa and spooned ice cream from the carton. Catching night breezes, soft laughter and the echo of distant sirens that floated through the window he’d opened, he assessed his day and his life.
Seeing Katrina had made him think of the little box with the ring he’d bought for her at Tiffany’s. It was still in his nightstand. He didn’t have the stomach to go back for a refund. Maybe because he hoped against all reason that Katrina would change her mind. That was before he heard she’d started dating a DEA agent a week after dumping him.
He should’ve tossed the ring off the Brooklyn Bridge.
A sudden wave of loneliness rolled over him.
Why?
He’d been a loner all his life. Was he feeling this way because he’d seen Katrina? Maybe it was his sister, Cora. Despite all the pain she’d endured, she’d found joy with her daughter, Tilly. It had forced him to take stock of himself.
I’m thirty-five. Do I want to spend the rest of my life alone?