Private Scandals

before they do.” He’d hate to miss getting a shot of the crash. He gunned the engine, glanced at her. The gleam in his eyes promised a wild ride. “Here’s the kicker, Dee. Finn Riley’s on board. The crazy son of a bitch called in the story himself.”

Chapter Four
    S itting in the forward cabin of the beleaguered 747 was like riding in the belly of a dyspeptic bronco. The plane bucked, kicked, shuddered and shook as if it were struggling mightily to disgorge its complement of passengers. Some of the people on board were praying, some were weeping, still others had their faces buried in air-sickness bags, too weak to do anything but moan.
    Finn Riley didn’t give much thought to prayer. In his own way he was religious. He could, if the need arose in him, recite the Act of Contrition just as he had through all those shadowy sessions in the confessional as a child. At the moment, atonement wasn’t on the top of his list.
    Time was running out—on his battery pack on his laptop computer. He’d have to switch to his tape recorder soon. Finn much preferred writing copy as the words flowed from his mind to his fingers.
    He glanced out the window. The black sky exploded again and again with spears of lightning. Like lances of the gods—nope, he decided, deleting the phrase. Too corny. A battleground, nature against man’s technology. The sounds were definitely warlike, he mused. The prayers, the weeping, the groans, the occasionally hysterical laugh. He’d heard themin trenches before. And the echoing boom of thunder that shook the plane like a toy.
    He used the last moments of his dying battery playing that angle.
    Once he’d shut down, he secured the disk and the computer in his heavy metal case. He’d have to hope for the best there, Finn mused, as he slipped his mini-recorder from his briefcase. He’d seen the aftermath of plane crashes often enough to know what survived was pure luck.
    “It’s May fifth, seven-oh-two Central time,” Finn recited into the recorder. “We’re aboard flight 1129 approaching O’Hare, though it’s impossible to see any lights through the storm. Lightning struck the port engine about twenty minutes ago. And from what I could squeeze out of the first-class flight attendant, there’s some problem with the radar, possibly storm-related. There are two hundred and fifty-two passengers on board, and twelve crew.”
    “You’re crazy.” The man sitting next to Finn finally lifted his head from between his knees. His face, under its sheen of sweat, was pale green. His upper-class British voice was slurred more than a little with a combination of scotch and terror. “We could be dead in a few minutes and you’re talking into some bloody machine.”
    “We could be alive in a few minutes, too. Either way, it’s news.” Sympathetic, Finn dragged a handkerchief out of the back pocket of his jeans. “Here.”
    “Thanks.” Mumbling, the man dabbed at his face. As the plane shuddered again, he laid his head weakly against the seat and closed his eyes. “You must have ice water for blood.”
    Finn only smiled. His blood wasn’t icy, it was hot, pumping hot, but there was no use in trying to explain that to a layman. It wasn’t that he wasn’t afraid, or that he was particularly fatalistic. But he did have the reporter’s unique sense of tunnel vision. He had his recorder, his notebook, his laptop. These were shields that gave the illusion of indestructibility.
    Why else did a cameraman continue to roll tape when bullets were flying? Why did a reporter jab a mike into theface of a psychopath, or run in instead of out of a building during a bomb threat? Because he was blinded by the shields of the Fourth Estate.
    Or maybe, Finn mused with a grin, they were just crazy.
    “Hey.” He shifted in his seat and aimed the recorder. “Want to be my last interview?”
    His companion opened red-rimmed eyes. What he saw was a man only a few years younger than himself, with clear, pale skin shadowed by a hint of a beard shades darker than the tousled mane of wavy bronze hair that swept the collar of a leather bomber’s jacket. Sharp, angular features were softened by a mouth spread in an engaging grin that featured a crooked eyetooth. The grin brought out dimples that should have softened the face, yet only made it tougher. Like dents in rock.
    But it was the eyes that held the onlooker’s attention. Just now they were a deep, misty blue, like a lake dappled in fog, and they