Mercedes practically crawled over his desk. “Mac, you know how much I want that job.”
How much she wanted it? ITAL On Air was the reason Jessie turned down three other jobs to take this one. Anchoring a TV show was a lifelong dream, although it had faltered in her late twenties when the dog-eat-dog-and-then-pee-on-the-other-dog competition of television news almost broke her. But some dreams died hard. Real hard. The burn in her chest assured her that, at thirty-three, her career fantasy was at least still on life support.#p#分页标题#e#
Hadn’t she just told her sister at baby Brianna’s christening that she wasn’t going to sell out and give up until she reached that pinnacle in her career? Because her career was her life, Jessie had said, looking down wistfully at her brand-new niece.
And Stephanie had smiled…that very same condescending, pitying, I-know-you-wish-you-were-me smile that she’d just seen on Mercedes. No wonder it looked so familiar.
“Listen to me, ladies.” Mac yanked her thoughts back to the present. “The powers that be like both of you and have asked me to orchestrate a little friendly competition.”
“Now there’s an oxymoron,” Jessie muttered.
“The better get wins,” he said.
“The better get?” Mercedes asked. “Like, whoever gets the best interview?”
“That’s what a ‘get’ is,” Jessie reminded her without the eye-roll the question so richly deserved. “You want to explain how this is going to work, Mac?”
“You both have ten days to put together a profile piece to be considered for ITAL On Air. Ten days to submit a written piece that, if not selected, we can still use on the site. The one that is selected will be produced for an ITAL On Air episode, and assuming you don’t bomb, you get the gig.”
Jessie’s brain was already spinning through every possible subject she’d cultivated in and around New York, her “beat” for the last year. She’d been to dozens of functions, fundraisers, grand openings, and parties, and they’d resulted in a pretty impressive contact list. And some excellent profile pieces.
“You are both free to go beyond your usual geographic arenas. Anyone and everyone is fair game. And I want one of you to get the job, not some outsider.”
Of course, the promotion would be a feather in their boss’s cap.
“So I made a list I want you to consider and see if you have any connections to these people.” He pulled some paper from his stacks, giving a page to both of them, a list of six or seven names, some household familiar, but some…
Personally familiar.
“Garrett Kilcannon,” Jessie said on a hushed whisper.
“You know him?” Mac asked.
“Uh, yeah.” She fought a smile at the first memory that popped into her head. “He was the first guy to touch my boobs.”
Instantly, Mercedes whipped to look at her. “He touched your boobs? The guy who invented PetPic and sold it to for, like, a billion dollars?”
“Yes, but he wasn’t rich or famous yet. I was fifteen and friends with his sister.” She drifted back almost two decades. “We made out in a dog kennel.”
“It’s a start,” Mac said, sounding a little less impressed.
“Not with him,” Mercedes responded. “I tried to get him when I had the Seattle beat. Not a chance. No interviews, not one, not ever.”
“I seem to recall…” Mac was tapping his phone, squinting at the screen. “Yeah, here it is. A Forbes piece, three years ago. They creamed him.” He thumbed through the story. “Seems he sold his pet photo-sharing social media site to FriendGroup.”
“Who hasn’t?” Mercedes asked. “FriendGroup has gobbled up every possible competitor and turned it into a subsidiary.”
“Exactly,” Mac agreed, still reading. “And he was supposed to run the subsidiary when it sold, but a couple weeks after the deal closed, he bailed. Had his brother, a lawyer, do some wrangling to get him out of running it. He lost a ton of stock options, and his reputation took a beating, too. They threatened a suit…” He scanned some more. “Shit went down, and Garrett Kilcannon is persona non grata in the tech world. Apparently, he’s a real son of a bitch.”#p#分页标题#e#
“What?” Jessie thought about the boy she knew, and had last seen when she was sixteen. “Garrett Kilcannon was one of the nicest, funniest, warmest guys I ever knew.”
“Warm in the dog kennel,” Mercedes said.
“Speaking of dogs,” Mac continued. “He left Seattle and went back to North Carolina and opened some kind of dog-rescue facility at his family’s homestead. Jeez, talk about a fall from grace.” Mac looked at her. It was a wonder he didn’t drool on the phone, he was salivating so hard. “There’s a story buried there, Jessie. Deep as a dog buries a bone.” He beamed at her. “See what I did there?”