Chapter 13
7:44 AM EST New York - The Network, Anchor Brad William’s Dressing Room
The makeup people had been waiting for Brad to come back into his dressing room to do the customary touch up before he went back on the anchor desk. As he entered the room, Sherry said, “Brad do you want us to do some touch up?” She could see he was quite angry.
“I need all of you out of here now. And I mean now!” yelling at them.
“Sure, Mr. Williams.” She motioned to her assistant and they scuttled out the door as quickly as they could go. She noticed that he made no additional comments as they were leaving. That was good for them.
As he watched them leave, he sat down in his chair and realized that he should not have been so rude. However, he was quite upset; not only with Jack, but also with himself, for losing his temper. How this idiot had gotten the better of him, he had no idea. He looked at his watch. It was 7:46. Luckily, only thirteen minutes left to go before Jack South was proven a liar. Then he would go on the air and make a statement to that fact; and start the process of destroying him. He did not like anyone making him look like an idiot. He knew he should be on the news desk right now, but after the tirade with Mr. South, he really needed to calm down and get himself together. He had even tried walking around the Garden Roof to get his composure back; but he was still quite angry.
As he sat in his chair, he was thinking that in spite of the fact that this person probably broke the law with Homeland Security and was a nut, he had failed to get what was asked of him. In hindsight, he knew that he should have kept probing Jack and made a fool out of him. After all, he was Brad Williams, the best at this. Somehow, South got the better of instead.
Who in the world would ever believe his story anyway? God gave him the numbers and God was going to destroy Southern California? What bothered him above all was that Jack had said that if the network did not warn the people and the authorities, then the death and injury toll would be almost ten times more than what it would be if they did inform them. The other fact was that with the odds at zero, he had won the lotteries; so maybe he could tell the future. He stopped himself from thinking this way. No one could predict such an event with exact details. It was not possible. He still had a bad feeling about all of this and was getting concerned.
He leaned back in his dressing room chair and closed his eyes, trying to clear his head. He had to get back on in a few minutes and act as if nothing had happened. All of a sudden, he heard the door open abruptly and was immediately awake. He glanced at the page standing there and then looked at his watch. It was 8:00 a.m. He must have dozed off.
The page, looking sheepish, said, “You need to come immediately to the Control Room, Mr. Williams. The interview you gave is all over the internet, every word of it. You walking out, everything you said, as well as the producer’s comments afterwards to Jack.”
“What?” Brad said. “How in the hell did that happen?” He ran all the way to the newsroom.
By the time he made it to the Network Control Room at around 8:02 a.m., everyone was looking at the big sixty-seven inch high definition screen on the back wall. The sound was turned up very high. On the screen was the news anchor for KTIB in Los Angeles, one of their affiliates. He was reporting that a major quake had just hit the area. They could all see the shaking right on TV. Brad looked at his watch. It was 8:02. He went to a chair in the corner and just sank into it.
Jack South had been right and he had just blown the biggest story of his career. He began watching the clips on the internet with the computer monitor next to him, showing him walking out of the interview with Jack, including cussing him out, and all the rest of it. He knew then that it was all over the world, and all the other networks. This might just end his career. Jack had set him up.