Free Party Lines by Fiona Wilde

mother’s maiden name later, no doubt hoping to escape
her past.”
    “Holy
shit, Craig. This is big. I mean, really big. Who fed you this tip?”
    Zell
put his head back and laughed. “Now why doesn’t that surprise me?” Another
pause. “Hell yeah, we’ll use it. It’s not every day you find out the golden
girl managing one of the most-watched campaigns in state history turns out to
be an arsonist!”
    On
the other side of the desk, Beckwith’s eyes widened.
    “You’re
kidding,” she said.
    “No,
ma’am I’m not,” Zell said, hanging up the phone and tapping the pictures of
Lindsay on the screen. “We have our front page campaign story after all.”
     
    ***
     
    Lindsay
had not meant to fall asleep at the townhouse, and was roused awake at 3 a.m.
by the sounds of a siren in the distance. Glancing at the bedside clock, she
was awake in an instant, quickly pulling her clothes on and jotting a note to
Ron apologizing for her sudden departure.
    “I’m
sure you’ll understand,” she wrote, punctuating the words with a smiley face.
    Cross-town
traffic was light in the wee hours, and the doorman of her building was nodding
off when she went past. Although it was technically still the middle of the
night, she found it difficult to get to sleep once she was back in her own bed.
It felt lonely, and she missed Ron very much – missed the feel of his
strong arms around her, the smell of his cologne, the confident touch that left
her a gasping, throbbing mass of nerve endings.
    In
the morning she and Clara were scheduled to go over a proposal by the Hopkins
campaign to jointly attend a town hall meeting in one of the state’s many
struggling blue-collar communities. It was an unusual suggestion for the
Hopkins campaign, and Lindsay had been tempted to ask Ron about the idea in
advance. But she’d honored their mutual agreement not to discuss work when they
were together and pushed the subject from her mind while they’d been together.
The community was deeply religious, and very right wing; perhaps that was why
Hopkins felt he’d have a friendlier reception there. But with the economy as it
was , Lindsay wasn’t so sure.
    She
rolled over in bed and looked at the bedside table. Her cell phone was there
and she realized that she’d gone to Ron’s without taking it. Now she picked it
up and looked at the little outside screen. “Eight missed calls,” it read.
    Rolling
over onto her back, she began to open the phone and then slammed it shut. It
was probably nothing important, or at least nothing that couldn’t wait until
the morning. She was suddenly sleepy, and grateful for it. Tomorrow would be a
busy day; it wouldn’t do for her to show up at Clara’s office all bleary-eyed.
So putting the phone down, Lindsay snuggled under her covers and fell asleep.
     
    ***
     
    Lindsay
overslept a bit the next morning and set a speed record getting herself ready
to go. Pulling on a white blouse and grey skirt, she stepped into a pair of
black heels and ignored the ringing phone as she grabbed her briefcase. The
message light, she noticed, was blinking on her machine but she had no time to
check them if she wanted to get to the office on time.
    She
rushed back to the bedroom to get her cell phone so she could check her
messages on the way to work, only to find it dead.
    “Great,”
she said, jamming it in her bag. She could always just charge it at the office.
    The
sky was overcast as she exited her building. The morning doorman, Stew, gave
her an odd look as she went past and she almost stopped to ask him if
everything was alright before decided there wasn’t
time.
    In
the car Lindsay rushed through traffic, pleased to hit only two red lights on
the way to her destination. Her stomach growled when she got in the elevator,
and she regretted not having had the time to grab a bagel at the food car next
to the newsstand where she usually picked up the morning papers.
    The
elevator gave a muffled ding as the doors slid