Born to Run

Chapter 8

Chloe tucked her cell into the pocket of her blue jeans, angry at herself for the way the call had gone. Paulette was such a bitch. She zipped up her jacket and started walking.

Chloe had agreed to meet her source at the covered bus stop on Georgia Avenue at ten o’clock. It would have been a pleasant walk past Howard University in daylight, but nighttime made it a long, cold mile. Her breath was steaming and her hands were freezing. Driving, however, was out of the question. She’d lost her license after the DUI conviction, and her old Sebring had been collecting white pocks of bird shit in the alley behind her apartment since June.

Did you take something, Chloe?

It had taken her sister all of ten seconds to accuse Chloe of drug use. Chloe couldn’t even brag to perfect Paulette without her heart racing and throat tightening. It was pointless trying to explain that she was about to break the biggest story in the country-bigger than anything “Paulette Sparks reporting live from the White House” had ever dreamed of. And of course Paulette had to tell Chloe-the fallen intern-that she was at the White House Christmas party. What a joke. The stupid member of the Sparks family-the one who was way too dumb for print journalism-was drinking eggnog with the president and First Lady. It was enough to make Chloe gag. She wanted to scream. Again.

Get control, girl.

Screaming in Paulette’s ear had been a big mistake. She was probably on the phone right now telling their father how Chloe had snapped again. But so what? Chloe’s source was about to make her-not Paulette-the Washington reporter on the move.

The blinking bank marquee at the corner said it was 9:57 P.M. and twenty degrees Fahrenheit. The wind made it feel colder. Chloe pulled her jacket tighter. Gloves would have helped, but she’d lost her only pair on the subway yesterday. She blew on her hands to warm them and-whoa-even she could smell the vodka. It seemed weird that something so odorless in the bottle could stink so badly on the breath, but alcohol was alcohol. She’d learned that lesson when she lost her internship at the White House, too. She dug a mint from her pocket and popped it into her mouth. Cool. Just like Chloe. Way cool.

Definitely too cool for this fool.

The wind gusted as Chloe reached the bus stop. The covered shelter was protected on three sides with Plexiglas, which provided welcome relief from the cold. Down the street, the traffic light changed from red to green. A cluster of cars rolled past the bus stop, and then the street was quiet again. Chloe took a seat on the wooden bench, folded her arms tightly, and looked out toward the empty street.

Nineteen degrees according to the bank marquee. The temperature was literally dropping by the minute, and the minutes were passing like frozen molasses. She’d agreed to meet her source at the bus stop, thinking it would be a safe, public place with plenty of people around. She hadn’t planned on an unusually brisk cold front keeping everyone but her off the street.

At exactly 10:00 P.M., her cell rang.

“This is Chloe.”

“Hello, Chloe,” the man said. “It’s me.”

It was the first time she’d heard his voice. Until now, they’d communicated only by e-mail and the accent threw her. The h in hello sounded more like the German ch in Ich or Nacht.

Chloe said, “I’m here, just like I said I would be. Where are you?”

“Watching.”

An uneasy feeling came over her, as if she were suddenly in a fishbowl.

“You owe me,” he said.

“I know, but it’s-here’s the thing about that,” she said, unable to steady her voice. It was so much easier to play it cool by e-mail. She was quaking like a schoolgirl in the principal’s office.

Pull yourself together, damn it!

He said, “Don’t get cheap on me,” but it took Chloe a moment to realize that tsip was cheap.

“We have to talk.”

“Talk, my ass,” he said. “I done enough talking.”

She swallowed hard. “You need to be patient.”

“No,” he said. “You work for a rag sheet. The rag sheet pays its source.”

Rag sit? What is that accent?

“I e-mailed you copies of the wire-transfer instructions. Didn’t you see?”

“You think I’m stupid, Chloe?”

Her heart sank. She’d thought the documents were convincing fakes. “Transferring that much money to an offshore account takes time,” she said.

“You bitch, I see what you’re doing. Make me think the money is right around the corner, get me to give up the story for free, bit by bit. I could have sold this story to any of the tabloids. I picked yours.”

“It was the right choice.”

“Until your editor put a newbie on the assignment. A story like this, I expected him to take it straight up to the owner. Guess your boss only wants pictures of celebrity party girls in short skirts and no underpants.”

“A White House story is a more complicated negotiation. I have to flesh out the gist of it, at least, and then I can get the money.”

“And I believed that crap at first. You seemed smart. Hungry. Primed to stick it to President Keyes, after the way they fired your ass from the White House. But you know what, Chloe? I don’t think you intend to pay me a dime. It’s like you changed on me. What happened-all of a sudden you decided you don’t like being a checkbook journalist?”

She didn’t dare tell him how true that was. What was the point in landing a story this big if the world-led by Princess Paulette-was going to accuse her of sleazy tactics?

And, of course, a quarter million dollars was simply way over budget.

“Please,” she said, “just-”

“Shut up!”

Chloe gripped the phone, afraid that he was going to hang up. Suddenly, his tone took on an even sharper edge.

“Do you have any clue who you’re dealing with? Do you?”

“Just calm down, all right?”

“I calm down when people pay. And if they don’t pay, I make them pay.”

Chloe froze, unaware of the approaching car on the street.

“We can work this out,” she said.

“I already told you too much,” he said. “I know better than to trust a reporter. You aren’t going to pay. Period.”

“Let’s be reasonable adults here.”

He didn’t answer.

“Hello?” she said, but the line was silent.

Her source was gone-and so was her story of the century.

Chloe closed her flip phone and held her head in her hands, staring down at the sidewalk-until she noticed a car pull up to the bus stop.

The night was suddenly a blur, and everything seemed to happen at once. Instinct took over, warning her that the same car had passed by the bus stop just a few minutes earlier, that someone had been circling the Plexiglas fishbowl, that the driver’s side window was open despite the cold night air, that the silhouette behind the wheel was the face of her informant, that she was staring into a marksman’s tunnel of death. She braced herself for the flash of gunpowder in the darkness, the crack of a pistol, the sound of her own scream-but there was none of that. Or perhaps she’d simply blinked and missed that final split second of her young life.

Chloe felt the hot explosion between her eyes-and nothing more-as the car pulled away. Her body slumped forward and dropped, face-first, onto the sidewalk.