“When he asks where you got his private number, tell him the same thing you did when you called his other semiprivate number, that a reporter never divulges his or her sources. He has to respect that. He’s been around Washington long enough to know how that works, and after all we already had the number from Abner,” Dennis said.

“I say we go to his house and camp out in his driveway,” Espinosa said. “I’m real good at candid shots. I’ll catch the bastard in the act when he starts to shake his fist at you.”

“We have to be professional about this. Simply sending a text to do a short interview for the Man of the Year contest isn’t going to cut it. He’ll just blow it off and make noise about my having the number. I want to ask him why Amalie is going to the First Lady’s gala with the Director of the FBI instead of him. But I’m not sure I want to put that in a text. I’m not even sure it’s a good idea to tip our hand. Like Espinosa says, we want to capture his face on film when I throw that at him, if, and it is a big if, I follow through.” Maggie flapped her arms in the air like a bird as she tried to figure out what she should do.

“We don’t even know if Sparrow will agree to any of this. You could be putting the cart before the horse,” Ted snorted.

“We do now,” Maggie said, looking down at an incoming text from Annie confirming the director’s date for the gala. “Annie can charm the bees out of the trees, as we all know. She really has a special rapport with Sparrow. I think we all knew he would agree. I also think Annie is going to try playing matchmaker. Sparrow is single. Amalie will be single soon.”

Maggie flapped her arms some more. “Maybe I should just go with my original thought, which was to casually mention that Amalie is on the guest list and has responded that she will attend. My gut is telling me to throw him the bone and see if he bites down on it. Of course, he is going to want to know how I came by that information, so once again I will have to refer to reporter’s privilege. Then I think he’ll probably just shoot the four of us. Any of you have any ideas?” She flapped her arms again to show she was confused and needed to make a decision.

The boys looked at Maggie but didn’t offer an opinion because they knew her well enough to know that if her gut was talking to her, that’s what she would listen to, not them, no matter how much sense they made.