Even by the time he reached his desk, Ryan had still refused to accept any culpability in losing the story. As far as he was concerned, it was his baby, his birthright, and it didn’t matter if the paper had given that snake sole credit.
It also didn’t matter to him how many people had told him to beware of the thief. How often they compared Horace to a vulture, circling around the other reporters, waiting to pick up a juicy story that he could swoop in and claim for himself.
How many others he had done this to already?
The pulitzer winning reporter had been so friendly to him, an ambitious nobody, fresh out of college, looking to make a name for himself. It didn’t seem possible that Horace was the heartless betrayer the whole paper made him out to be.
Ryan had rationalized the collective attitude in his head. It had to be jealousy, that Horace, a decorated reporter, was simply superior to the rest of them, that they couldn’t stand the praise lavished on Husk year after year, and decided to shun him in shallow retribution.
He ignored the fact that they all told the same story, using that to strengthen his own reasoning of what was going on. That they each said practically the same thing showed they lacked ingenuity and creativity, and that was why Horace surpassed them again and again.
He groaned at the recollection that he had sworn not to turn into his colleagues.
His mentor’s betrayal forced him to look at their warnings as what they always were: facts. They all gave the same testimony because he had stolen from each of them the same way.
What killed him was this happened to him because he had committed a cardinal sin as a reporter. He had ignored the truth because it didn’t fit with the story he wanted to tell himself.
Never again.
Replaying the betrayal in the harsh light of hindsight over and over again forced Ryan to reassess the duplicity with a new perspective. He still refused to accept that the story now dominating the headlines belonged to anyone else, but oddly, this no longer ate at him like it did when he first stormed into Frank’s office.
His focus now was to not end up like the rest of the druthers he worked with. The last thing Ryan wanted was to remain haunted by Horace’s treachery for years, opting to bitch about it to anyone who would listen rather than ever do anything about it.
The con man had taken him under his wing, even fed him some small stories while he was still making headway, just so he could pitch something to Frank. Ryan now saw the ruse for what it was, how deftly Horace had gained the confidence of a plucky young reporter so that when the protege finally broke a big one on their own, the first person they’d share it with was their office hero.
Ryan peered across the bullpen at Horace’s closed door. It still pierced his heart how quickly Horace had scooped up the story after Ryan had shared it with him during their daily afternoon coffee break.
The clarity of hindsight left him pining for the opportunity to have kept the story to himself, or better yet, to have an even greater story up his sleeve.
But he didn’t have a promising prospect of a scoop. Sitting glumly at his desk, he didn’t have anything on the horizon in any aspect of his life. The only thing he had to look forward to was an invite to his brother’s poker game. The only catch was it was being held at his brother’s job, and the last thing he wanted was to freeze his ass off all night on Baltimore’s inner harbor.
Oh if I could do it over again, I’d feed him a line of bull. But that thief will know better than to trust any story I give him after what he just pulled.
Ryan was so caught up in the thought he didn’t notice his desk phone ringing until his neighbor begged him to answer it. He did so sheepishly, but his embarrassment quickly faded away when he recognized the voice on the other end of the line.
“I’ve got something for you. Got a pen handy? Believe me, you’re gonna want to write this down.”