Free Flash and Fire by Marie Ferrarella

at the pack and read the perfunctory warning stamped on its side. It was nice to know, he mused cynically, that the surgeon general worried about him. Nice but unnecessary.
    Hell, everyone had to die of something, he thought. It might as well be of a vice he enjoyed.

Chapter Seven

    The alarm went off, and Amanda woke up feeling like hell.
    The night had gone by choppy and fragmented, like shards of shattered glass. Pieces of disjointed dreams floated away from her, just out of reach, mocking her with half shapes.
    She felt as if she hadn’t slept at all.
    She didn’t even remember changing out of her clothes and getting into bed, but obviously, she must have. Probably five minutes ago.
    The alarm was still ringing. Reaching out, she slapped the buzzer down. The whine slowly died away, and she sighed. She lay there, trying to piece together yesterday, working backward.
    Christopher had wanted to play when she had returned home after seeing Whitney. For an hour, she’d lost herself in a world that was bound by toys, childish squeals, and sticky hugs. Desperate to escape into it, she’d played with her son on all fours, creating battle scenarios with him and sending multicolored building blocks toppling onto unsuspecting commandos.
    When Christopher had finally shown signs of winding down, Amanda had bathed him and put him to bed while Carla lost herself in the second installment of a miniseries.
    Amanda had read to him for another half hour, although she knew he wasn’t able to comprehend the story she’d selected. Snow White’s triumph over evil to live happily ever after didn’t make sense to the two-year-old, but Amanda had needed to hear the story once more herself. The sound of her voice was soothing to him and the forced, cheerful cadence she had assumed while reading eventually managed to soothe her as well.
    She’d closed the book and watched him sleep. Amanda had sat there longer than necessary, her fingers wrapped around the plastic book cover. It was hard letting go of the last bastion of childhood, she thought, but everyone had to do it eventually.
    A self-deprecating smile had curved her mouth. Some of us just do it a little later than others.
    By the time she had left Christopher and headed for the den, she felt ready to do whatever had to be done to help Whitney.
    It was the child within her who had reacted so violently to Whitney’s confession. Amanda knew that she had no right to make him into a plaster saint. After all, he was a human being, just like everyone else.
    Well, perhaps not like everyone else, she had amended, smiling to herself.
    No matter what he had done, he had done it for all the right reasons. Whitney Granger had always been and always would be a man with scruples. His very existence helped her to believe that goodness and decency still existed. It was easy to lose sight of that in her line of work. Doing the news, she was exposed to horrors on a daily basis. It sometimes felt as if everyone was just out for himself and no one cared anymore, no one loved.
    Even her father and her ex-husband reinforced that feeling.
    But she knew, because Whitney resided in it, that the world wasn’t all dark, all cold. Not even all black or white. There were shades in it, not just of gray, but of blue and red. Whitney was like the occasional human interest story that cropped up. He was the stranger who went out of his way to help a needy man.
    The stories were few and far between, but they kept her going.
    Slowly closing the door of the den behind her, Amanda had gone to her desk, sat down, braced herself, then slit open the envelope Whitney had given her and begun to read.
    She’d made notes on a legal-sized yellow pad, searching for the right words to use in the news release she would give the next day. She had already made up her mind that she was going to do it without first mentioning it to the station manager. With any luck, she planned to treat this as if it was just a news bulletin, handed