Chapter 6

"You're shitting me."

"Rachel!" I said. "I don't believe that I've ever heard you swear."

"I've never read a story like this one." Her hands were trembling as she held the copy I had given her. I was taking no chances on posting this story on the intranet. It was simply too hot, and I had no confidence that everyone and his brother couldn't read it there. "We gotta take this to Bill."

She picked up the phone to call him. Yes, she knew it was almost lunchtime. Yes, she was sure that he had a hot date. It was Friday after all. But, she suggested, if he didn't get himself down here before he left he'd be kicking himself all weekend long.

Bill cancelled his date as soon as he finished reading the story.

"Where'd you get this, Rick?" he asked.

"Source at the Governor's office," I answered. "Anonymous for now."

He raised an eyebrow at me and then looked at Rachel.

"There's nothing in here sourced to the office anyway," she explained. "Except for the fact that there weren't any disbursements to Amalgamated Coal over the past two years for the use of their plane."

"Do they know what you're working on?" Bill asked me.

I shook my head.

"They think I'm doing a general story about reimbursements for the Governor's travel. I never mentioned Amalgamated or his dove-hunting trips. And I picked a two-year period so they wouldn't know that I was concentrating on last year's trip."

"And you actually confirmed that this Tricia Linney got on the plane in D.C. last year and flew with him to Texas?"

I smiled. That part had been easy. I had found Ms. Linney's picture prominently featured on the website of Amalgamated's main lobbyist. A retired airplane maintenance man in D.C. had had no trouble remembering her boarding the Amalgamated plane last spring.

"That was one hot-looking bitch," he had said when I reached him after a long series of telephone calls and had e-mailed him a copy of the photograph.

"Shit," Bill said.

"I assume you haven't called the press office for comment yet," he said to me.

"I thought maybe we should wait," I said. "If I called them now they'd have all weekend to work on their response to the article. Same with Ms. Linney."

He gave me a look that merged respect and surprise.

"Guess I'm gonna have to stop thinking of you as the obit guy. Huh, Hando?"

"I like doing the obits, sir," I said.

"Yeah, right. Okay. Here's what we need to do. Pull in one fact-checker over the weekend, Rach. Somebody you trust. We'll go to the Governor's office for comment on Monday afternoon, as late as possible. Then we print it Tuesday morning. In the meantime, you, me, Hando, and the fact-checker. That's it. I'll give Gus a heads-up about it to keep him in the loop. We'll have to show him the article on Monday. He is the chief, after all. But nobody else learns about this. Okay?"

We gave him our solemn assurances, and he gave us a few suggestions for word changes that might help make our points. When he left, Rachel's face was beaming as she looked down at me.

"Can I hug you, Rick Handley?"

"Rachel, if I was standing up you wouldn't have even asked, would you?"

"Jerk."

She wrapped my head in her arms. I could easily get used to this sort of compensation package.

I had finished my lessons with Inigo the previous night. Another set of outlaws had visited town, eight men with far better swordsmanship. We had fought them in the tavern. We had used the stairs, the bar, and the tables.

Three lay dead when I became conscious that Inigo's blade had fallen silent. I was facing three others another was trying to staunch the flow of blood from a gash I had cut in his arm. I looked back to locate Inigo. I feared that he was dead. I feared that his killer was about to come up behind me.

Instead, when I glanced over my shoulder, I found him sitting at a table, drinking from a whiskey bottle. He had mortally wounded his opponent.

"You son of a bitch," I screamed as my blade danced with those of the outlaws arrayed against me. "Get over here and fight!"

"You are doing magnificently, Handley," he said with a full laugh. "The greater the odds, the greater the glory."

"I don't care ... about the fucking glory," I said, gasping out the sentences in groups of three and four words. "I care about ... my fucking life."

"Your life." Inigo spat out the words as I heard him get to his feet. "Very well, my friend. But your life is in no danger."

It was nonetheless much easier to drive the rest of them off with Inigo by my side than it would have been by myself. After they had turned tail and run, we sat back down at the table.

"You really think I was in no danger?" I asked as he cracked open a fresh bottle and poured us both glasses.

"You, my friend, can easily beat ninety percent of the people you will face."

"Ninety percent?"

"Eighty-five," he said. "No less than eighty."

I laughed.

"You're not really boosting my confidence here, Inigo. I've probably fought eight guys in the last week. So that means I'm toast when the next one shows up."

"No, my friend. You have learned well. I have nothing more to teach you. Practice, yes. You must do that. And as far as the ninth one goes, and the tenth, and the ones beyond, I did not say that you could not beat them. I only said the first eight would be easy. You may find yourself up against a master after that."

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