“I was chasing down a hot tip,” Ryan replied before he was interrupted by Horace’s twentieth sneeze of the meeting.
The young reporter couldn’t suppress his smile. “Are you catching a cold?”
“YES!” Horace bellowed. “Thanks to the wild goose chase you sent me on!”
Ryan leaned back in his chair. “How exactly did I send you on a wild goose chase?”
Horace opened his mouth to reply and then closed it. He snuck a quick peek at Frank, who had remained silent leaning back in his office chair, watching the drama play about between the two of them.
“Never mind,” Horace mumbled quickly.
“Actually, I’d like to know,” Frank said, finally leaning forward. If Horace’s face could’ve paled further, he would’ve turned transparent.
“I was following a lead,” Horace replied nonchalantly, believing his answer was enough.
“What did you hope to uncover?” Frank pressed.
Horace glared at Frank with a look of betrayal. “Doesn’t matter. Turned out to be nothing.”
“No, it does matter,” Frank insisted. “Because right now, if the dock workers wanted to, they could file charges for trespassing and harassment. Did you actually accuse them of being human traffickers?”
“That sounds suspiciously like a fictional idea I jotted down in my notepad,” Ryan interjected. “One that’s been mysteriously torn out.”
Horace’s eyes burned white hot into the side of Ryan’s head. The sight would’ve been menacing had it not been interrupted by another sneezing fit.
“I remember getting it at the precise moment I got the hot lead that I chased down this night,” Ryan went on. The smile was back. “I had a hard time keeping the details of the story straight as I was being fed the tip.”
Horace turned back to Frank. “They’ll never press charges. They’d expose the fact they were playing poker on company property.”
“You’d better hope so,” Frank said gravely.
“I’m sure our legal department would rest easier knowing Horace was in fact chasing a lead,” Ryan said. “Perhaps he should offer up his notes on the story.”
That brought color to Horace’s cheeks as he began to fume. Frank signaled to fork over his notes, and the thief hung his head as he offered it to the editor.
“Quite a talent to take your notes in Ryan’s handwriting,” Frank commented.
“Sir!” Horace protested. “This is a case of pure sabotage by Ryan!”
“How could Ryan sabotage you with a story idea written in his notepad? Did you tell you this was a credible lead?”
No response.
“So what I have on my plate is potential criminal charges against my lead reporter, who was off chasing a bogus story you can’t explain how you came into possession of without admitting to theft.” Frank looked out his office window and shooed away the crowd of reporters reveling in Horace getting his comeuppance. “And a whole paper ready to cannibalize you for it.
“All of this while one of the most junior reporters of the paper may have just broke the story of the year.”
Horace was nearly hyperventilating. “What. Story?” he managed.
“The one that’s been dominating the airwaves since you’ve been gallivanting around the docks,” Frank said as he turned on a TV he kept in his office.
The screen came alive with a shot of the exterior of a hotel.
“—coming to you live from the horrific scene. Once again, if you’re just joining us, Representative Benedict Spears, known in Congress as the Battering Ram, was arrested earlier tonight, charged with counts of possession, prostitution, murder, and unlawful disposal of a body. We’re still learning all the details, but the story broke when Spears was found today in his hotel room in the midst of carving up the body of a deceased female, who was not his wife, that had checked in with him.”