Sadie Sinclair's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Sadie didn't sleep. By six she was on the porch with her camera, her laptop, and the audio backed up to two drives. Sorrentino's last text still glowed on the screen. They're coming for you next. She cut through the alley behind her block instead of the sidewalk, and by the second corner she knew someone was behind her. A dark sedan idled at the curb when she stopped to tie her shoe. It idled again when she turned onto the next street. She couldn't go to the newsroom. The teacher's lawyer would file by noon and gag the follow-up. The school office would call her mother by eight. She needed a keyboard, a network, and a door that a stranger couldn't lean on. She cut across the park and climbed the steps of the public library between its tall white columns. The sedan couldn't follow her through the turnstile. Inside, the air smelled like old paper. A librarian nodded at her camera and said nothing. Sadie took a carrel on the second floor, near a window where she could watch the street. The sedan parked across from the front doors. A man got out and stood by the hood, phone to his ear. He didn't come in. She opened her laptop. She logged into the paper's shared drive through the library's wifi. She pulled up her draft: the resigned principal, the shredder, the district official's printed name, the quote she'd caught on tape. She dropped in the photo of him mid-destruction. She wrote the lede in four sentences. She named the teacher. She linked the audio. Her hands shook once and then stopped. She called Sorrentino from a payphone by the restrooms because her cell was a beacon. He picked up on the first ring. "Where are you?" "Library. Second floor. I'm filing from here. I need you to publish the second I send it." "They're at the newsroom," he said. "Two of them. They asked for you by name." "Then don't go in. Push it live from your phone. I'm sending in three minutes." He was quiet. She heard him breathing. "Send it," he said. She went back to the carrel. The man by the sedan was looking up at the windows now, counting floors. She hit upload. She watched the bar crawl. Ninety percent. Ninety-five. The file cleared. She refreshed the paper's homepage and there it was, her byline, the photo, the audio embedded under the fold. She screenshot the live page and sent it to three reporters at the city daily whose emails she'd memorized weeks ago. By the time she closed the laptop, the sedan was gone. Whatever they'd been sent to stop had already happened. Her phone buzzed. Not Sorrentino this time. A number she didn't know. The message was one line. We need to talk before you print anything else.