“Good evening, sunshine,” Kelly responded in a bright voice.

He merely grunted. To annoy, Kelly smiled and tapped a pink-sneakered toe on the bottom rung of his chair. Peter stared at her, then at the tapping foot with a mix of incredulity and exasperation. When the stare failed to have any effect, he growled menacingly, “Cut that out.”

Unperturbed, Kelly continued to tap. “Ask nicely.”

In response, Peter shifted his chair.

The tapping paused for a second, then returned as Kelly stretched her leg out farther, playing the cadence of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Gabriel stifled a laugh when Peter barely restrained himself from lunging. “Children. Behave.”

Peter scooted his chair beyond the reach of Kelly’s foot, and in retort, Kelly began to hum beneath her breath.

“Kelly.”

The stern tone immediately cut off the tune. “Sorry, boss.”

Gabriel looked at the pair helping him keep his dream alive: the grizzled veteran and the business whiz kid.

Kelly Cole was the more recent find. Fresh out of business school, she’d shown up at Gabriel’s doorstep on the second day of the Ledger’s existence. She showed him financial models, revenue projections, and sales pitches designed to make the paper a success. When he asked why she’d gone to all the trouble for a fledgling newspaper no one had ever seen, she answered simply, “Because I like to read and I like to win.”

Gabriel unlaced his fingers and folded his arms across his chest. “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

“Bad news first,” Kelly decided.

“I was served with a cease-and-desist order from the Chronicle. We continue with the Bert Adams story, we go to court.”

“But that’s your story!” Peter said, bellowing. “You did the digging. You wrote the copy. Now that kiss-ass Burris will turn it into a fluff piece about Armani suits and Prada shoes.”

“I agreed to leave all stories behind when I left the paper. I fight, we’d probably lose.”

“So?” Kelly asked.

“So we can’t afford the legal fees or to pay a judgment. The story’s dead.”

“The story is the front page of next week’s edition and the teaser was going to run on the site tomorrow,” Peter said sourly. “Hell, it’s pretty much the whole paper. All we got left are the police blotter and the wire stories.”

Gabriel smiled slightly but did not respond.

Kelly imagined the calls asking for ad copy refunds and expanding pools of red ink and asked glumly, “You said there was good news?”

“There is. We’re moving to a daily edition.”

Silence greeted his announcement.

“No questions?”

Peter erupted first. “Have you lost your ever-lovin’ mind, man? You just told us we don’t have the Adams story. Little Ms. Perky never ceases to remind me that we’re broke. How in the hell do you plan to increase our production with no stories, no circulation, and no money?”