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“I’ll take the prayers,” he said. “How was Tull?”
“Smug,” she said. “But he has a right to be. The proposal is dynamite, blockbuster material as strong as the others. Maybe stronger.”
“I wish we could clone him,” he said and then paused. “Hold on.”
The editor waited, tapping her pencil, looking at her legal pad and her negotiating strategies. They would have to be adjusted in light of—
“Suzanne, I have to go,” Bill said. “It’s not good.”
“I’m sorry, Bill,” she said. “But I need some guidance here. He wants—”
“I trust you,” he said. “Make your best call and keep him in the fold.”
He hung up.
THREE
AT SIX THAT EVENING, Liu kicked off her heels and began pacing again.
She’d been doing it off and on since sending Tull Alabaster’s formal offer, which she’d made without Hardaway’s final approval because she hadn’t heard from the publisher since that morning.
Even her texts had gone unanswered.
It’s a good offer,the editor thought, ignoring the beautiful sunset over the Hudson.No, it’s a great offer for world rights. And we made him.Imade him. Rescued him when there were no other offers. He’ll take that into account, won’t he?
An hour passed. It was dark. She could hear other employees calling it a day and leaving.
Liu looked at Tull’s framed book covers once again:Electric, Noon in Berlin, Doctor’s Orders.
Every one of them had sold millions of copies, evenElectric,which he’d written while an older undergraduate student at Harvard after a stint as a military police investigator with the Marines and NCIS.
“I was the only one who saw your talent back then,” Liu whispered to Tull’s most recent author photo. “You owe me, Thomas. You owe me big-time. And it’s a great offer. No one will be more generous than me. You know that. I’ve given you everything, haven’t I? You know I—”
Her cell phone buzzed. She walked over, saw a message from Tull.
“You’re mine, Thomas,” she said, opening the text.
Liu’s stomach began to drop even before he’d stated it plainly.
“No,” she whispered. “That’s not right.”
Anger surged up through her and she punched in Tull’s number. The call went straight to voice mail. “Call me,” she said. “You’ve got to allow me some time to counter. I can’t—”
The line went dead. The editor stared at her phone, her anger turning to the kind of rage only a scorned woman knows.
“No, no, no,” she said, punching in the number again. The line disconnected after one ring.
Liu grabbed her coat and shoes. “This is not happening! You are not ghosting me, Thomas Tull! You owe me!”
The editor charged out her door and down the hall, muttering, “He’s at the Ritz. Thomas always stays at the Ritz. He’ll be at the bar and—”
Glass shattered. A voice roared in pain from the office on the opposite corner of the building, near the elevators.
Liu stopped and stared; she heard choking noises coming through the open door. She hurried over and saw Hardaway sitting at his desk, hunched over and sobbing.
“Bill?” she said, the bad feeling in the pit of her stomach growing. “What’s happened?”
The publisher looked up at her, ruin in his face and rheumy eyes. “They’re gone,” he said hoarsely. “Both stillborn.”
