High Treason Read Online Free PDF Page A

and close the door.”
    He did, in that moment thanking the Holy Things for the fact of the window and the witnesses it created. If the two guest chairs had not been stacked with meaningless crap, David might have sat down. As it was, he remained standing.
    Baroli filled his seat with flesh to spare. He pushed himself away from his desk and simulated crossing his arms across his ample man-boobs. “You know that if it was up to me we never would have hired you, right?”
    “I believe that you might have mentioned it, sir. Sixty or seventy times in the last fifteen months. Sir.”
    “You’re here because your father is a major shareholder.”
    “Again,” David said. “Seventy-one times now.” In reality, his father would have been more than delighted to see him crash and burn, but Baroli wouldn’t care. David was supposed to be in law school now, on his way to a Wall Street job that would add to the Kirk family’s billion-plus-dollar legacy. “But I disagree,” David said. “I like to think that I’m here because I’m a talented journalist.”
    Baroli laughed. “A journalist,” he mocked. If he’d been tasting the words, they’d have been long on sulfur and garlic. “You’re so green you’re still wet.”
    David waited for the rest. He was in fact new to his profession, but he was damn good at it. He met his deadlines and was ahead of the curve on developing sources. He sensed that the trouble he was in had nothing to do with his job skills.
    “Grayson Cantrell was in my office about a half hour ago,” Baroli said. Grayson owned the choice stories from the city beat. “He told me that when he contacted Malcolm Sanderson to get a quote on the DC City Council’s decision to walk away from school vouchers, Councilman Sanderson told him that he’d already spoken to a reporter named Kirk. He was disinclined to repeat himself.”
    David gave the smug smile that he knew pissed Baroli off. “I’ve known Mr. Sanderson my whole life,” he said. “Peter Sanderson, his son, and I were best friends from elementary school through high school.”
    “How special for you,” Baroli said. “But that was not your story. That story belonged to Grayson Cantrell.”
    “Grayson Cantrell is lazy.” The words were out before David could stop them. He was like that sometimes when it came to stating the truth.
    Baroli recoiled. “Grayson Cantrell was working sources before you were a viable sperm.”
    “Yet I didn’t make my call to Councilman Sanderson until eight hours after the announcement,” David said. “The story is up on my screen now, if you want to take a look at it.”
    “I want you to delete it,” Baroli said. “I want you to concentrate on the job you were hired to do.”
    “I’m doing the Sanderson story on my time. If you don’t want to print it, I can put it on my blog. Mr. Daniels told me that he reads my blog regularly. I’m just sayin’ . . .” Preston Daniels owned the Washington Enquirer , having inherited it from three previous generations of Danielses.
    Somewhere below the layers of facial flesh, a muscle twitched in Baroli’s jaw. “You signed a noncompete,” he said.
    David shrugged. “My words for you are work for hire. My words for me are mine to do with as I please. If it makes you feel better, I don’t pay myself very well.”
    But his advertisers did. Kirk Nation , David’s blog, had just north of 172,000 subscribers now, and was viewed by well over a million people every day. He had influence peddlers lined up at the door to throw money at him in return for visibility on his masthead. David worked at the Enquirer for the 401(k) plan and the health insurance. And it didn’t hurt to pad your résumé with time served on one of the most read and most influential newspapers on the planet. He was in the Big Leagues.
    Baroli would have made a shitty poker player. His eyes grew hot and his jowls trembled. A poster child for the old generation of editors who no longer