Page 32 of Stolen
chapter 17
quinn
The mother doesn’t come across well. She delivers her prepared statement as if reading from a shopping list, and she looks almost bored to be here.
The police may have told her not to show any emotion, of course. They’ll have explained that in cases like this, the perps often watch media coverage and get off on the family’s pain.
But the public expects a desperate mother to react in a certain way. Quid pro quo: give me your tears, your grief, your trauma, and we’ll give you our sympathy and understanding. Until something else catches our attention, anyway.
Show ussomething, Quinn thinks. Throw us a bone.
Sure, everyone reacts to trauma in different ways. She’s seen one woman bury five children killed by the same bomb in Syria without shedding a tear, and another sob her heart out over a torn dress. But as Quinn glances around the press pack, she notices it’s not playing as sympathetically as it should. The story is still largely local; most of the journos present are touchy-feely Americans. Alexa’s cool British reserve isn’t doing her any favours.
Quinn signals for her cameraman, Phil, to take some wide-angled shots that include the grandparents of the missing girl who’re sitting quietly at the side of the room. Both ofthemarein tears, she notes, the grandmother clinging to her husband’s arm. So this stiff-upper-lip thing isn’t a family trait, then.
She hates human interest stories like this; they’re voyeuristic and intrusive, turning personal tragedy into a saleable commodity. She became a journalist to cover events that change the course of the world, and the disappearance of one kid, however tragic for the family, doesn’t matter in the wider scheme of things.
But she can sense something dark at work here that piques her interest. Something sinister and ugly; something that’s brought this family’s world crashing down upon them.
She jams a plastic Evian bottle in the crook of her withered right arm and untwists the cap with her left hand. It contains neat vodka; not her beverage of choice, but she can hardly rock up to a press conference swigging bourbon from her hip flask.
This might not be Quinn’s kind of story, but it’s the perfect springboard back to prime time. She’s aware she only got it because the rest of INN’s Washington team was scattered across the country following Democratic presidential candidates, leaving Quinn the assignment editor’s bottom-of-the-barrel option at seven on a Sunday morning. But this is going to be big. INN is a UK-based news network and Florida a popular destination for British families.
If Lottie Martini isn’t found safe and well soon, this’ll get a lot of play back home. Front-page stuff. A little English girl from a nice, middle-class family, disappearing from a wedding, and not in some dodgy third-world country like Thailand or Mexico but inAmerica, just a hop and a skip from Disney World. The tabloids are going to eat it up.
She watches Alexa Martini as the vodka warms its way down her gullet.Isthis a nice, middle-class family? The missing girl’s father is dead, killed in the Genoa bridge collapse last year, sothat should elicit some sympathy. Everyone loves a pretty young widow. It’s a shame the kid isn’t more photogenic, though. No one’s going to want to plasterthatface on a ‘Have you seen this child?’ T-shirt.
Her phone pings with a news-feed alert and she leans in to talk to Phil, whose eye is glued to his camera viewfinder. ‘Can you stay with this till they’re done?’ she says. ‘I need to call the Desk.’
‘Want me to toss the mother any questions?’
‘She isn’t taking any. I won’t be long, anyway.’
Quinn hits speed dial before she’s even out of the conference room. ‘Sandy, did you just see what dropped on the wires about Raqqa?’
‘Don’t worry, Quinn. Terry’s on it.’
‘Fuck Terry. I should be there.’
‘No one’s going there while the Russians are bombing the shit out of the place,’ the assignment editor says. ‘Least of all you.’
‘Come on, Sandy,’ she presses. ‘Terry doesn’t have the contacts on the ground like I do. He’ll never get inside the city. You know I’m the right person for this.’
‘Have they found the missing kid yet?’
She sighs impatiently. ‘I can hand this story over to Daryl or Anya. They don’t need to sit on Biden and Warren every minute of the day. Or you can fly someone out from London.’ She hates having to beg, but she’s literally given her right arm for this story. ‘Please, Sandy. I can go directly to Raqqa from right here, I’ve got all my personal shit with me. I’ll swing through the Beirut Bureau and pick up—’
‘Forget it, Quinn. Christie would have my balls.’
Christie Bradley, the first female editor in INN’s history, and possibly the only person, other than Marnie, who Quinn respects. She’s been Quinn’s inspiration since she first joinedINN as an entry-level desk assistant fourteen years ago, one of an elite band of fearless reporters like Christiane Amanpour and Christina Lamb who blazed a trail for women like Quinn to follow.
‘You want me to sign a waiver?’ Quinn tells Sandy. ‘No one’s going to sue you if I get killed. Come on, Christie will be fine with it—’
‘You’re on speakerphone,’ a voice says. ‘And I bloody well am not fine with it, Quinn, so quit pushing.’
Christie sat by Quinn’s bed in the ICU all night after she was medevacked out of Syria, waiting for her to regain consciousness, and the first thing she said when Quinn came round was, ‘Your story led the bulletins.’ Quinn thoughtChristiewould get it.
‘You know I’m right,’ Quinn says. ‘No one knows that story like I do.’