“How am I supposed to know that if you don’t call me back?”

I didn’t see Sarah’s other staffers getting chewed out like this. “Could we just move on?” I asked.

She took a breath, let it out slowly. “What are you doing now?”

“I’m gonna knock off this auction feature, Metro can use it any time they want with the pics Stan took.” I sucked on the side of my index finger. It was stinging like hell.

“Okay. How long?”

“Twenty inches or so.”

“Let it run. There’s a lot of big holes in the section tomorrow.”

Welcome to the newspaper biz. No one cares what’s in your feature, just so long as it will fill the space.

“And this feature on Larry? Is it—”

“Lawrence.”

“Right. Lawrence. Is that thing going to be done soon, because I was telling the M.E. about it, that things got a bit hairy last night.”

“Did you really have to do that?”

“Zack, there was no way I could not tell the managing editor about that. If Magnuson finds out about it from someone else, then comes to me and asks why I didn’t let him know, I’m toast around here.”

“Okay, I get it. But you explained it, right? That it just happened? It wasn’t like I planned to be in a shootout.”

“Uh, pretty much. But he wants to see you.”

My stomach did a flip. “You’re not serious.”

“He said, ‘Would you be good enough to have Mr. Walker come by and see me?’ And I said of course. He seemed a bit uncomfortable with the idea of you riding around in a car that’s taking shots at people. He also found it a bit hard to picture.”

“What does that mean?” I sucked on my finger again, winced.

“I don’t think he sees you as one of our more gung-ho staffers, risking his life to get a story.” She smiled and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Of course, he doesn’t know you the way I do. What have you done to your finger?”

“Paper cut,” I said. “Hurts like the devil. You got any Band-Aids in your office?”

Sarah sighed. “It would help, what with you being summoned to see Magnuson, if we had something to show him, some sort of progress on the Lawrence feature.”

“We’re going out at least one more night, tonight. Things could easily come to a head, then I can wrap the whole thing up.”

“Couldn’t you write it up now? Surely you’ve got enough. I mean, you’ve got a major robbery, a guy left dead in the street, what more do you want? It’s not like you have to solve these clothing store robberies. That’s Lawrence’s job, and if it takes him another month, I can’t afford to lose you for that long.”