“That’s right,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like this was some grand conspiracy, that your show was the only way to bring DeHardt down. I had several different ongoing strategies to do that. It just so happened that your show was in the right place at the right time to—” Thayer paused and pantomimed stabbing someone with a knife, “—finish the job.”
“Oh. Great. Good to know.”
Her boss shoveled a heap of noodles into his mouth and loudly slurped until they disappeared into his mouth. “Mm, that’s good. Why aren’t you eating?”
She poked at the noodles. She didn’t have an appetite, but she forced herself to take a bite. “Yum.”
“Why do you look so disappointed?” he asked. “Is it because of your show?”
“I don’t know.” She took a deep breath. “Maybe because I really believed my show was supposed to do some good. I thought the point of the show was to make the players lookgood,but instead we used the show to lie and distort Dane’s character and force him out of town.”
“That’s business.”
“Not really what I’d call it,” she mumbled.
“What’s that?”
“I said, that’s not business. That’s unethical journalism.”
“Unethical.Journalism.” He spoke the words separately, as if both endlessly amused him and for entirely separate reasons. He laughed and laughed until he began to cough, nearly choking on his ramen.
Her eyes narrowed. “What’s so funny about that?”
“I know you studied journalism in college, and you still cling to this youthful dream of changing the world with your reporting. But we’renotjournalists, Austen, we never were. We’re in the business of crafting and strategically promoting corporate-friendly narratives. Journalists do not make money. We do. That is the difference.”
“I see that now.” She sighed. She wasn’t in the mood to debate their worldviews. “So what’s the good news?”
“Like I hinted over the phone, you’re being promoted.”
“To what, exactly?”
“Social Media Marketing Manager. You’d make $76,000 your first year.” Thayer could see the flicker of interest in her eyes. “Ahh, I can see that you like the sound of that! Money’s not so bad now, is it?”
“Well … obviously, I’d like to know more …” Sure, the salary sounded great, but something about this whole meeting felt off. She didn’t want to get her hopes up just yet.
“How’s this? A full benefit and retirement package. Three weeks paid vacation, fifteen days of sick leave, five days personal leave. You’d be managing a staff of eight.”
It was impossible to stop the grin from sneaking across her face, but still, it seemed too good to be true. She searched for the catch.
“Do we even havea Social Media Marketing Manager?” she asked. “Or are we creating a new position?”
He shook his head. “No, we don’t, and we’re not creating the position, either.” He paused for dramatic effect. “TheTexans, however, do have a Social Media Marketing Manager, and they’re holding the position for you.”
“The Texans? As in, the professional football team?”
“The one and only.”
“Thayer! That’s huge! How’d that happen?”
“I told the owner, Mr. Sullivan, that you were ready for something bigger after our littleDate with a Devilproject. He reached out to a fellow sports team owner, and close friend, who owed him a favor. And the rest is history.”
“That’s unbelievable!” Still, Austen couldn’t shake the feeling that something seemed off about this whole thing. “But wait, why did you call it apromotioninstead of a job offer …?”
“Well—” Thayer shifted in his seat. “Because I didn’t want to scare you. And I want you to think of it as a promotion. Practically speaking, itisa promotion in every sense of the word. It’s just that you’d be working for a different company.”
She stared at him. What was he hiding? What waswronghere?
“There’s another benefit to this job that I didn’t tell you about. Since we’ll now be working for different companies, we’ll finally be free of the Devils’ employee fraternization policy.”
