Chapter One
Now
Wednesday, November 7th, the day after Election Day
“Thank you all for joining us this morning. It is my privilege to be interviewing Lieutenant-Governor Susannah Evans, who woke up this morning as the governor-elect of Florida. I know you’re busy this morning, Ms. Evans, so thank you for taking the time to sit down with me, and thank you for making usyour first stop today.”
“You’re welcome, Kevin. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.”
Although I can see from the hard, cold glint in Susannah Evans’ blue eyes that she’s anythingbuthappy to be sitting here talking with me. Especially in person. But we’re live, and we’re both on our best behavior.
Frankly, I can’t blame her. Not after my run-in with her friend and former runningmate, Governor Owen Taylor, during his campaign for his first term.
Inevershould have let the producer in my ear override my good sense that day. It was a shitty question, a stupid question, and Iknewbetter. I hadn’t meant to ask it, not really. But I was sick from food poisoning because of bad sushi the night before, was working on a migraine and couldn’t clearly read my notes, my head wasscreaming at me, my mom hadliterallyjust died of cancer the week before…
And because I was trying to listen to Taylor,andlisten to the producer’s voice in my ear at the same time, with a miserably throbbing headache to boot, Istupidlyparroted the question my goddamned producer dumped in my ear before I’d really thought about it and processed it.
Yeeeeaaah.
Admittedly,notone of my finermoments.
Add to that the mega-ration of shit I received later from my father over flubbing it and not hammering Taylorharder.
I finally got the bastard—the producer, not my father—fired by the network for that goddamned stunt. I’d been trying to get rid of him for months, and that was the last straw.
Hell, if I could get the network to fire my father from my life, that’d beamazingand worthevery ounce of bullshit I put up with from them.
Worse? Theystilldidn’t want to fire the guy, at first. The only reason they did wasn’t because of what he did, but because even our own viewers rightfully skewered us, and we were the laughingstock of every damn network.
Even Fox News clicked their tongues at us.
That’s when advertisers threatened to pull their dollars, and FNB finally cavedand released a statement blaming him and terminating him.
It was cheaper than letting me go and paying out the remainder of my contract. Especially when the rest of my crew all publicly stepped forward to support me and verify my account of the events, and then some angel anonymously released the full tape that recorded the producer yelling at me.
Doubly especially since I’d tried to get anotheranchor to handle the interview, but the network brass insisted I do it despite how horrible I felt and my life circumstances.
All that was on the tape, too, which had been running before I sat down with Taylor.
When the public learned not only was I sick, and in massive pain, and grieving, to boot, the pendulum of opinion swung back hard and heavy in my favor.
I’d only been at Full News Broadcastingfor a couple of years at that point, and was still naïve enough to think I could create positive changes there to shift their coverage back toward center and help boost ratings. Admittedly, it was a helluva scoop, landing an interview with Owen Taylor after that school shooting.
Until I flubbed it worse than the Buccaneers on any given Sunday. It was literally the only time I ever felt thankfulthat Mom died, so she didn’t see me do that.
She would have loved me regardless, I know she would have. She would have talked me through it, hugged me, offered me that limitless love and pride she’d always been imbued with.
I’m pretty sure it was Lou who released the tape with the audio from the producer on it, the one that saved my ass and my job. When I asked him if he did it, he smiled andshrugged, but would neither confirm nor deny.
Doesn’t matter who, I guess. They saved my career, as well as helped win me even more viewers.
Owen Taylor got me back but good, though, four years later. I thought all was forgiven and I was being handed a scoop when I got to be the first anchor to interview Taylor and Evans early the morning after Taylor’s re-election. The walk-and-talk wouldn’tbe long, just a preliminary clip we could run until we tagged them later in the day for our scheduled formal sit-down.
A sit-down that had been delayed and rescheduled several times over the previous week by Taylor’s ball-busting chief of staff, Carter Wilson.
Who also happens to be Susa Evans’husband.
I got my walk-and-talk, all right.
