Read Online Morning Glory by Diana Peterfreund - Free Book Online Page B

sky.
    I shrieked.
    “You’d better hope I got it.” He took off toward a nearby thicket and I trotted to keep up, more than a little worried that the next time Mike’s shotgun went off, he’d be pointing it at something without feathers.
    “Look,” I said as we shuffled through the leaves and Mike checked under branches and bushes to find the bird. “You’ve been a journalist all your life, since your elementary-school paper. The Beaverton Bee .”
    “What are you?” he said, pausing momentarily to stare at me. “Some kind of stalker?”
    No, I was into news. I knew how to research. Well, I knew how to Google, at least. “You’ve got to miss reporting. News breaks—it must kill you not to be out there.”
    Mike leaned into the rushes and snatched out a dead pheasant. I averted my eyes.
    “It might,” he said. “But you’re not out there either, since morning shows don’t. Do. News .” He twisted the neck of the bird. I heard a pop, and grimaced.
    I had informed someone I was coming out here, right? Now, there was some serious news. I mean, if someone were to find the mangled body of a morning show producer in the woods after she pissed off a famous former news anchor with a shotgun. The look on Mike’s face was dark enough to make me wonder if that was truly outside the realm of possibility.
    “ Daybreak —Jesus.” He stuck the dead pheasant inside his jacket and kept walking. “Half the people who watch your show have lost their remote, and the other half are waiting for the nurse to turn them over.”
    “But all four of those guys are very loyal viewers,” I said.
    He stopped and gave me an appraising look. I dared to crack a smile, and for a moment, I thought he might listen. Then he shook his head and walked on.
    I kept following him as he left the thicket and hiked back to the boardwalk. I wondered if the pheasant in his coat was bleeding all over his shirt. I wondered if it was still warm. “You don’t have to tell me that we don’t have the numbers. That’s why I think we need you. I think you’d be a real draw for the audience that we’d like to see tuning in to Daybreak . And face it, when done right, morning shows can draw huge audiences—”
    “If I wanted to come back,” said Mike, “I could get any job I wanted.”
    “But you can’t work for another network for two more years,” I reminded him.
    “And so in the meantime, I’ll enjoy my life on IBS’s dime.” He hefted his gun and gestured to the overcast view of field and stream. There was also a little bit of remarkably smelly swamp.
    Wouldn’t most people have been enjoying that life on some sandy-white Caribbean beach? No, I had Pomeroy’s number. If he wasn’t interested in doing some news, he wouldn’t have been hanging out at the IBS office that day. He was sniffing around for work—news work.
    I knew exactly what that felt like.
    Mike’s scowl, however, showed he didn’t find in me a kindred spirit. “Least those jackasses could do after disbanding the best news department in history and shit-canning me for no reason.”
    My brow furrowed. “No reason? What about calling the secretary of defense a douche?”
    Mike raised a hand in protest. “He lied to an entire nation—”
    “He’s a politician,” I argued. “You’ve met those before, right?”
    “—And, more important,” said Mike, “he lied to my face.”
    I conceded the point, but just as Mike was about to move on, I took a deep breath and stepped in front of him. “Okay. I didn’t want to have to do this. I really didn’t.”
    “So don’t.”
    “I went through your contract with the lawyers. And you’re right. They have to pay you for the last two years. Unless—”
    He gave me a look that made me start envisioning those CSI scenes again. But I braved my way through the terror.
    “—Unless six months have elapsed without you appearing on the air in any capacity. And then if the network comes to you with an official offer and you