He was quiet for half a block.
“So you read the Lawrence one? About the mother?”
“Yes.”
“You know how she’s doing now?” he asked.
“No.”
“Neither do I.” His tone was even. “She stopped picking up after the second piece ran. I check her sister’s Facebook sometimes. She posted in August. It was a picture of a birthday cake.”
He kept walking.
“That one cost,” he said.
“It sounded like it would.”
Wiley’s phone buzzed. He glanced down, frowned, and answered. “Yeah,” he said into it.
I watched him listen.
“You’re kidding,” he said. A pause. “No, I get it. I just—“ He raked his fingers through his hair. “Okay. Okay. Send it.”
He hung up and looked at me. “That was theGlobe.”
“Bad news?”
“Complicated.”
I waited.
“They’re collapsing beats,” he said. “Mine and Cabot’s. You know, the guy who covers fru-fru society parties.”
I stopped walking. “Why?”
“Somehow, they think our stories overlap. My editor said this way they think we can share sources and coordinate reporting.”
It would also mean doubling the risk.
“And?”
“There’s a meeting tomorrow morning. They want both of us there.”
“Like I could be anywhere else?”
I pictured it. Two reporters with two protection details in one room. That was too many variables.
“Where?”
He showed me the address. It was the Boston Harbor Hotel not at theGlobeitself. They’d likely pack us all into a tiny conference room with stale coffee and boring corporate art on the walls.
“Who’s handling Cabot?”
“They didn’t say.”
“Fine,” I said.
Wiley watched me. “You good with this?”