drinking from a thermos.
“Who’re you?” Kate asked.
“Penny. I’m the new assistant. Todd was here but he went home sick.”
“Who’s on the scanners?”
“Sloane. I forget his last name.”
“Parkman. Where is he?”
“He told me he was stepping out to get scones and would be right back. Is everything okay?”
Kate rolled her eyes.
Sloane was the worst person you could put on scanner duty. All that crash-and-burn stuff is a bit too tabloid for me, but they say everybody has to do their time here, she’d overheard him tell a friend on the phone.
He’d joined Newslead a year ago between rounds of layoffs. His family was one of New England’s oldest. He had degrees from Harvard and Columbia, had worked at the Washington Post and Forbes, and had boasted about having political connections in Washington and corporate connections on Wall Street.
He always introduced himself as Sloane F. Parkman and assured you that he knew everyone and everything, right down to the best bars in Manhattan, the best shops and restaurants. He wore Brooks Brothers shirts, had a gleaming, white-toothed grin and never had a hair out of place.
How he’d gotten a job with Newslead in a time of cutbacks was no mystery. Kate knew that he’d been hired at the urging of her editor because of mutual family ties. There were no secrets in a newsroom. Sloane had half the news-reporting experience that Kate had yet he regarded her as he would an untested rookie, and as a latter-day-Dickensian working-class woman to be pitied.
I applaud you for what you’ve achieved in your life, he’d told her one day. It’s nothing short of heroic, putting yourself through that community college in Chicago the way you did—sorry I’d never heard of it. In any event, here you are. And raising a child alone. Bravo, Kate. Bravo.
That was Sloane F. Parkman.
Kate entered the scanner room with Penny in tow as new transmissions came through clearly.
“Forty-nine Ninety, this is LaGuardia tower. Are you declaring an emergency?”
Kate took notes, motioning for Penny to sit in the empty chair and use the computer at the desk.
“Penny, did they teach you how to listen to the scanners?”
“No, not yet.”
“Did Todd show you how to alert the photographers on duty and call freelancers?”
“Yes.”
“Okay—wait—listen!”
More transmissions were coming through. Kate cranked up the volume and took notes.
“Affirmative. We’re declaring an emergency. We have passenger and crew injuries aboard. Approximately thirty, some pretty bad. We’ll need a lot of ambulances.”
“Fatalities?”
“None to report.”
“Forty-nine Ninety, do you have damage to your aircraft?”
Kate was writing as fast as she could, trying to make sure her notes were clear.
“Damage to the cabin, ceiling, galley, storage bins.”
“Are you citing turbulence?”
“Negative. Negative on turbulence. We had a sys—” A burst of static drowned out part of the transmission, but the message ended clearly with “—malfunction.”
“Repeating. You’re reporting a—” more static “—malfunction?”
“Affirmative.”
“Forty-nine Ninety, you have priority clearance to land. Runway Four. Crash and Rescue will meet you at your gate.”
“Roger...visual approach for Runway Four...”
Penny turned to seek direction from Kate but the older woman had already grabbed her bag and was rushing toward the elevators.
“Penny, I’m heading to LaGuardia!” Kate shouted. “Alert every photographer and let them know we have a plane in trouble landing now!”
Three
Queens, New York
As the taxi raced through the skyscraper-lined streets, Kate searched for updates on her phone.
Nothing so far.
She set up an alert for anything that broke on EastCloud Flight 4990.
Crosstown traffic was good; there were few double-parkers and unloaders blocking the street, and within minutes they’d entered the Midtown Tunnel. It smelled of exhaust and gleamed gold from headlights reflecting on the walls. As it curved under the East River to Queens, Kate found herself taking stock of her job and her life.
Wasn’t she living her dream?
For as long as she could remember, she’d wanted to be a reporter and to get her life on track. In spite of all that she’d endured, she’d managed to work her way up the journalistic ladder to a position at Newslead, one of the world’s top news organizations. The global newswire service had bureaus in every major city in the United States and in one hundred countries. Its reputation for excellence had been solidified by awards it had won throughout its history, including twenty-two Pulitzers. Newslead was respected and feared by its chief rivals, such as the Associated Press, Bloomberg and Reuters. Kate was proud to work for Newslead, but things were changing.
Fierce competition, the corrosive impact of the internet on the distribution of news and the melting number of subscribers continued to exact a toll.
Kate had to struggle not to pin her hopes on the rumor that Chuck Laneer, the editor who’d hired her at Newslead before he’d left to teach at Columbia after clashing with former management, was returning to help rebuild the news division. Chuck was gruff, wise and old-school. He could kick your butt and respect you at the same time.
But so far the news of Chuck’s return was only gossip.
The reality was that anxiety had gripped the newsroom. Management weighed every financial decision extensively. Staff faced constant evaluation. Performance on every news story was scrutinized. Newslead had instituted a “staff efficiency process,” linking story count and story pickup to individual performance assessments. It was championed by Kate’s editor, Reeka Beck, a twenty-eight-year-old Ivy League management zealot.
Reeka had a cover-girl face, an insatiable ambition and was convinced that her news judgment was superior to that of seasoned journalists. Reeka had been a junior copy editor at Newslead’s Boston bureau, whose collective work had been a finalist for a Pulitzer. In reality, she possessed little reporting experience. She’d never covered a homicide or asked an inconsolable parent for a picture of their dead child.
But her moneyed
