Page 17 of Making It Live!

It was also a voice I would have recognized in a crowded stadium, in a thunderstorm, in my sleep — hell, in my grave.

My hand tightened on the desk.

The movement was small — imperceptible, probably, to anyone watching.My fingers curled around the edge and pressed down, hard, the way you press on something when the floor has dropped out from under you and you need to confirm that at least one solid surface still exists.

Jimmy.

The name hit me like a freight train wearing silk gloves.One word, detonating silently in the center of my chest.

Camera Two's red light was on.Fourteen million people were watching.The toss to the analyst was three seconds away, and the man in my earpiece — the man who had left me with a half-empty apartment and a note that said he didn't recognize me anymore — had just handed me a direction, and I had to take it.I couldn't answer.I couldn't even turn toward the glass.Whatever was happening in my chest, it had to stay there, because the only thing I was permitted to do on live television was obey the voice in my ear.

I turned to Camera One and delivered the toss with the seamless authority of a man whose world had not just cracked down the middle."Joining us now is Dr.Alan Whitfield of the Brookings Institution.Dr.Whitfield, what should we make of today's testimony?"

My voice didn't shake.My expression didn't change.The audience saw nothing, because I'd spent years building a version of myself that could take a bullet on live television and deliver the next line of copy without flinching.But behind my ribs, something was happening that I had no name for and no defense against.

The analyst talked.I nodded at the appropriate intervals and asked a follow-up I generated from pure muscle memory, because my brain was no longer in the studio.My brain was in a fourth-floor walk-up off Morningside, unlocking a door and finding the apartment half-empty and a silence so loud it had echoed for years.

"Nelson, ten seconds on the analyst, then toss to Marla for the weather segment."

There it was again.That voice.Inside my head.Calm, professional, and absolutely devastating — because the last time that voice had been inside my head it had been sayingI don't recognize you anymore, and now it was sayingtoss to Marla for the weather segment,and my body didn't know the difference.My body heard Jimmy and responded the way it had always responded to Jimmy — with everything, all at once, every nerve ending firing in a way I'd spent years learning to suppress.

I wrapped the analyst and tossed to Marla.To her credit, Marla didn't miss a beat, though I caught her glancing at me sideways during her lead-in, which meant something in my face had shifted.Marla, who'd been on television long enough to read a co-anchor the way a sailor reads the stars, had noticed.

The broadcast went on.Jimmy's voice went on.Every direction precise, every call sharp, and I hated that I noticed, because it meant I was listening to him with the wrong part of my brain — not the professional part that evaluated editorial competence, but the part that catalogued the texture of his voice the way you catalogue a song you used to love and can't stop hearing.

Jimmy was good.Infuriatingly, undeniably good.The C-block rescue-dog segment I'd written off as filler?He restructured it on the fly — cut twenty seconds, added a toss to a live reporter at the shelter, turned a fluff piece into something that almost resembled journalism.I felt the improvement in real time, the way you feel a car shift into a higher gear, and I wanted to throw something.

I resisted the urge and delivered the copy and hit every mark.I was Nelson Mackenzie, and millions of people were watching.Not one of them knew, or cared, that the voice in my ear belonged to the man who had broken my heart so thoroughly at twenty-two that I had rebuilt my entire personality around the wreckage.

"Nelson, thirty seconds to close.You've got the outro, then hold for three on the graphic."

I delivered the final line, looked into Camera Two, and held for three seconds while the graphic played and the theme music swelled.I did not blink.I did not breathe.And I did not look at the glass wall of the control room, where my ex was sitting in the EP chair like he had every right to be there.

The red light died.

"Clear!"

I unclipped my mic and stood.My hands were steady.My face was neutral.Everything about me, from the outside, looked exactly the way it was supposed to look.

Marla was watching me.I could feel it.

"Good show," she said carefully."New EP seems sharp."

I picked up my water glass, took a sip I didn't taste, set it back exactly seven inches from the edge, and walked off the set.

Harry appeared at my elbow within four steps, matching my pace, saying nothing for exactly as long as it took to clear the studio floor and reach the hallway.

Then, quietly, without looking at me:

"So.New EP."

My jaw was tight.Every muscle in my face struggled to stay neutral, and Harry could see it too, because Harry saw everything.Right now he was watching the most controlled man in cable news hold himself together through what appeared to be sheer force of will.

"Harry."

"Yes?"

"Find out who he is.Everything.Résumé, byline, how Bruce found him, when he was hired.I want it on my desk in twenty minutes."