Page 6 of Excitable Boy
“Thanks!”
As he packed his stuff, she pulled out her laptop and settled in to take notes. It amazed her that she really had learned a lot covering all these meetings. Dry organizational and scientific language she wouldn’t have understood a year ago now made sense to her.
By the time the meeting ended a little after one p.m., her stomach was growling and she felt like she needed a caffeine IV. She grabbed herself a sandwich from a shop around the corner from her building and carried it upstairs to the offices ofSunshine Attitude Magazine.
As she headed to her desk, her boss intercepted her and followed. “Heard you had an exciting morning.”
Bill Melling was a nice guy, and the publisher and EIC of the magazine, as well as helped keep the company’s other divisions going.
“Yeah, that’s one word for it,” she groused. She dumped her stuff on her desk.
“How do you feel about doing a series of articles about senior drivers?”
She turned. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. Stats, family impact of losing a license, all of that.”
“We haven’t done that one yet?”
“Nope.” He handed her a piece of paper that he’d been carrying. “I already looked up the driver. He’s eighty-six, and this is hisfourthticket in two years.” He smiled. “Enjoy.” He returned to his own office.
Well, shit.
She stared at the paper, which listed the case numbers and dates of the incidents. The first thing she’d do would be to forward this information to Ed Payne, their attorney and a friend in common from the Suncoast Society.
But, yeah, come to think of it, itwouldbe a good substantive series of articles.
Already, her mind was working on it, how she could break the series into segments, people she could talk to. She’d already shiny squirreled into making a project list when she realized she needed to get the info Bill had given her to Ed.
With her phone, she used her scanner app to save the info into a .pdf, added another scan of the accident report and case number, and a screenshot of her insurance card, and queued an e-mail to Ed.
Per our call I’m about to make to you.
Shayla
She sent the e-mail, then looked up Ed’s number in her contacts.
Ed was laughing as he answered. “I already had a chat with your owner this morning,” he playfully teased. She assumed from that comment it meant he was alone, or at least in private.
“Tony called you?” she asked.
“Yep. Said you’d be calling me.”
“I just sent you an e-mail with more information.” She told him the summation, and humor disappeared from his tone, the serious lawyer back in the house.
“Okay, I’ll get on that today. Sounds like we have grounds for a lawsuit.”
Guilt flashed through her. “I’m not sure I want to sue them. I just want to go after their insurance.”
“Shay, the man’s dangerous. He needs to lose his license. If he’d put it into drive instead of reverse and done that, he could’ve plowed into the building and killed or injured you or any number of people.”
She shuddered. “Then let’s look at that as our goal,” she said. “Him losing his license. We want a fair payout, and we want him to voluntarily surrender his license. I don’t want to soak them for this. It wasn’t like I was hurt, and it was an older car. I just don’t want him or anyone else to get hurt.”
He sighed. “That’s…fair and reasonable, I suppose.”
“Why do you sound disappointed?”
“Because I could probably get you a lot of money.”
