The Black Bullet

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Susan Schulman stood from behind her desk in an alcove of the Channel Nine newsroom and walked toward the restroom. Nicole Bradley looked up from the computer on her desk, her first assignment as an intern-searching through digitally-stored stock footage-and watched Susan disappear down the hallway.

“How are you coming?” asked the five o’ clock news producer, a no-nonsense, prematurely balding veteran of television news.

“Oh, fine,” Nicole said. “I found some shots of alligators for the story Rod’s doing on habitat destruction.”

“Good, punch in the reference numbers for Sam to pull them in. He’s in editing.”

“Okay.”

The producer looked at his watch. “I’ve got a story rundown meeting now.” He crossed the newsroom to sit with the executive producer.

Nicole walked down the hall to the restroom. She entered and saw Susan Schulman applying lip gloss. “I’m Nicole Bradley. I just want to tell you I’ve always thought you did great work. I watched you a lot before heading up to UF. Still watch you when I come home. You’re one of the reasons I’m studying journalism.”

Schulman didn’t miss a beat applying lip gloss. “You’re the new intern, right?”

“Third day.”

“So you want to get in the news biz?”

“Absolutely.”

“Lots of people do now. It looks like a sweet job, but you’ve got to work hard at it. To get to a larger market, the networks, CNN or Fox, you’ve got to really stand out, and that usually comes by finding a breakout, killer story.”

“Have you ever found that story?”

“Close, but no Emmy yet.” Susan picked up her purse and started for the door.

Nicole said, “Wait a sec. What if I had that killer story for you?”

“Excuse me?”

“The kind of story you could ride to the network.”

“This is your third day as an intern and you think you have a story of national significance?”

“I think it’s of international significance, and I’ll share it … if-”

“If what?”

“If, wherever you’re going, you promise to get me hired, too.”