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There have been three calls from Jenny in the last five minutes. She ducks inside the Veale Center and calls back.
    “Mommy, Mommy, I saw it on TV, are you all right?” Jenny is sobbing.
    “Yes, I’m fine, honey. I’m fine . It’s a horrible thing that’s happened but I’m fine.”
    “When are you coming home?”
    “I’ll be spending the night out here. I have a job to do. This is a very important story.”
    “I don’t care . I don’t want you to have that job anymore. It’s too scary.”
    “No one said it was an easy job, Jenny, but it’s an important one.” Erica takes a deep breath—just talking to Jenny is grounding her. She’s still a mom. “Can you please ask Yelena to stay over tonight?”
    There’s a pause and then Jenny says, “Yes.”
    Law enforcement is swarming around the arena, and Sara Kenyon and other newscasters are delivering live on-the-scene coverage. GNN isn’t. That’s unacceptable.
    “I better get going, honey.” Out the glass doors, Lesli is gesturing to let Erica know they’re ready to go. Erica walks back outside. All of the dead and injured have been removed, but their blood remains, staining the concrete like a demonic Rorschach test. Evil. There’s so much evil in the world.
    Erica flashes back to the Staten Island ferry crash that launched her career. Is it possible this horrific act was also orchestrated by unseen forces who want Erica to be on the scene? No, that’s ridiculous. No one except a few people at the network knew where she would be positioned. And she can trust everyone at GNN. Can’t she? She’s being paranoid. Isn’t she?
    Erica takes the mic from Derek, and as she opens her mouth to begin reporting, she wonders if it’s all really worth it.

CHAPTER 5
    THE NEXT MORNING ERICA IS sitting at her desk in New York. She was on the air for another four hours anchoring GNN’s coverage of the bombing, and then she crashed for a few hours at an airport hotel. The network’s plane flew her back to New York and she came straight to the office, where she showered in her private bathroom and changed into a clean dress.
    Fifteen people died in the bomb attack, forty-two were injured, eight are in critical condition, and the country is reeling. Cell phone and network footage clearly show a young man—first described to Erica by the campus security guard—pushing his way forward in the crowd in the moments before the explosion. He was wearing sunglasses, had a ski cap pulled low on his forehead, and was carrying a backpack. Some anchors at other networks—eager to get ahead of the story—are already speculating that he’s an Islamic terrorist. Erica refuses to engage in that kind of inflammatory reporting. It’s irresponsible, demagogic, and just plain lousy journalism. She’ll wait until identification can be made and the facts uncovered. She’s told Eileen McDermott that she wants to stay off the air until there’s a break in the story.
    Something from last night has lodged at the back of Erica’s mind, but she can’t remember exactly what it is. It happened before the bomb blast, and with the ensuing panic and pandemonium she can’t bring it up. It’s like an itch she can’t scratch, and it’s driving her a little nuts. But she pushes her frustration away—if it’s gone, it’s gone.
    Her phone rings.
    “Great job last night, Erica,” says Mort Silver. “We topped the ratings.”
    Erica understands that the news is a business, but the obsession with ratings at a time like this, when the nation has lost an admired public servant and been traumatized by an act of terrorism, makes her uneasy.
    “I’m glad to hear it, Mort.”
    “Let’s stay on top,” he says, and there’s an edge in his voice, subtle but unmistakable.
    Erica isn’t ashamed of being ambitious, but she never wants it to cross the line into ruthless. Since she helped nail Hastings and his cohorts, she’s enjoyed a unique status among American journalists. She even got a