Never Look Away Read Online Free PDF Page B

back in my chair and laced my fingers behind my head. I always felt a little more relaxed when I moved away from Sam. The thing we had was a long time ago, but you started sharing a computer screen too often and people were going to talk.
    It felt like the chair's back support was going to fail, and I shifted forward, put my hands on the arms. "You have to ask?"
    "I've never seen anything like this," she said. "I've been here fifteen years. I asked the M.E.'s assistant for a new pen and she wanted to see an empty one first. Swear to God. Half the time, you go in the ladies' room, there's no goddamn toilet paper."
    "I hear the Russells may be looking to sell," I said. It was the number one rumor going around the building. "If they can pare down the costs, get the place showing a profit, they'll have an easier time unloading the place."
    Samantha Henry rolled her eyes. "Seriously, who'd buy us in this climate?"
    "I'm not saying it's happening. I just heard some talk."
    "I can't believe they'd sell. This place has been run by one family for generations."
    "Yeah, well, it's a very different generation running it now than ten years ago. You won't find ink running through the veins of anyone on the board these days."
    "Madeline used to be a reporter," Samantha said, referring to our publisher. She didn't need to remind me how Madeline got her start here.
    "Used to be," I said.
    What with papers shutting down all over the country, everyone was on edge. But Sam, in particular, was worried about her future. She had an eight-year-old daughter and no husband. They'd split up years ago, and she'd never gotten a dime of support from him. A former Standard staffer, he'd left to work on a paper in Dubai. It's pretty hard to chase a guy down for money he owes you when he's on the other side of the planet.
    When she was newly divorced, with a baby, Sam put up a brave front. She could do this. Still have her career and raise a child. We didn't sit next to each other back then, but we crossed paths often enough. In the cafeteria, at the bar after work. When we weren't trading reporters' usual complaints about editors who had held or cut their stories, she let down her guard about how tough things were for her and Gillian.
    I guess I thought I could rescue her.
    I liked Sam. She was sexy, funny, intellectually challenging. I liked Gillian. Sam and I started spending a lot of time together. I started spending a lot of nights at Sam's. I fancied myself as more than a boyfriend. I was her white knight. I was the one who was going to make her life okay again.
    I took it pretty hard when she dumped me.
    "This is too fast," she told me. "This is how I fucked things up last time. Moving too quickly, not thinking things through. You're a great guy, but ..."
    I went into a funk I don't think I really came out of until I met Jan. And now, all these years later, things were okay between Sam and me. But she was still a single mother, and things had never stopped being a struggle.
    She lived paycheck to paycheck. Some weeks, she didn't make it. She'd had the labor beat for years, but the paper could no longer afford to devote reporters to specific issues, so now she reported to general assignment, and couldn't predict the hours she'd be working. It played hell with her babysitting. She was always scrambling to find someone to watch her daughter when a last-minute night assignment landed on her desk.
    I didn't have Sam's week-to-week financial worries, but Jan and I talked often about what else I could do if I found myself without a job. Unemployment insurance only lasted so long. I--and Jan for that matter--was worth more dead since we signed up for life insurance a few weeks back. If the paper folded, I wondered if I should just step in front of a train so Jan would be up $300,000.
    "David, you got a sec?"
    I whirled around in my chair. It was Brian Donnelly, the city editor. "What's up?"
    He nodded his head in the direction of his office, so I got up and