This time she waited.

"Yeah," he said.

"Then we printed the truth, Nick. You can ask the staff attorney upstairs. That's our obligation."

He bit the inside of his cheek, working to keep his mouth shut, when one of the assistant news editors stuck his head inside the door and said, "Excuse me for intruding. Uh, Nick, we got a shooting over at the jail. We gotta get you out there. Somebody said it might have been some kind of escape attempt."

Nick nodded and looked back to the city editor.

"Death calls," he said, turning to go.

"Nick," she said, stopping him as he started through the door.

"Yeah."

"Larry Keller called me this morning from over at the courthouse," she said, lowering her eyes, her voice going quiet. She wasn't good at being emotional. "He told me that Robert Walker was released early from the Lee County road prison last week."

When she looked up it was Nick who turned his face away.

There was a tightening of lips, a clench in jaw muscle that he knew could transform his face into a portrait of anger, frustration and guilt all at once. He'd seen it in the mirror after Keller had called him first with the news as a courtesy.

"I'm sorry, Nicky," Deirdre said.

Nick took a couple of deep breaths, through his nose, not wanting her to notice. He knew sympathy was not her strong suit, and it wasn't in him anymore to accept it. People in the newsroom knew about the deaths of his wife and daughter. They knew that he had been sent as a breaking news reporter to cover yet another fatal car wreck, only to arrive at the scene and recognize his own family van. They never brought it up. He never brought it up.

"Do you need some time off?" she said. "A couple of days?"

"I had a year off, Deirdre," Nick said, sounding sharper than he meant to. "I need to get back to work."

"That's what I thought," she said and then turned back to her screen, dismissing him with her shoulder.