I shook my head, feeling impotent about everything. I had no choice here.

“Nine o’clock,” I said. “And you’ll be here?”

“I’ll be here to personally set it up.”

“Can you tell me why I can’t see him today?”

“No, I can’t. It’s a security issue.”

I shook my head in frustration one final time.

“Thank you, Captain. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“We’ll be here.”

After getting back to my rental, I plugged the Hotel Nevada in Ely into the GPS and followed instructions until I got there in thirty minutes. I pulled the car into the parking lot and emptied my pockets before deciding to go in. I had $248 in cash. I knew I had to budget at least $75 for gas to get back to the airport in Vegas. I could eat cheap until I got home but would need another $40 for the cab ride from the airport to my house. So I calculated I had about a hundred bucks for the hotel. Looking up at its tired six floors, I figured that wasn’t going to be a problem. I got out, grabbed my carry-on bag and went inside.

I took a forty-five-dollar-a-night room on the fourth floor. The room was neat and clean and the bed was reasonably comfortable. It was only four P.M., too early to put the remainder of my fortune toward alcohol. So I pulled out my throwaway phone and started eating into my minutes. I first called Angela Cook, trying both her cell and desk line and getting no answer on either. I left the same message twice, then swallowed my pride and called Alan Prendergast back. I apologized for my outburst earlier and my use of foul language. I tried to calmly explain what was happening and the pressure I was feeling. He responded monosyllabically and said he had a meeting to go to. I told him I would get him a budget line for the revised story if I could get online and he told me not to rush.

“Prendo, we’ve got to get this into Friday’s paper or everybody else will have it.”

“Look, I talked about this in the news meeting. We want to move cautiously. We’ve got you running around in the desert. We haven’t even heard from Angela and, frankly, we’re getting worried. She should have checked in. So what I want you to do is get back here as soon as you can and then we will all sit down and see what we’ve got.”

I could have gotten angry all over again about the way I was being treated but something more pressing had come through from him. Angela.

“You’ve gotten no message from her all day?”

“Not a one. I sent a reporter to her apartment to see if she was there but there was no answer. We don’t know where she is.”���

“This ever happen with her before?”