After the public revelation that Sally was a highly skilled fencer, she expected someone to ask publicly whether she was Hippolyta or not. In fact, when she stopped to think about it, she was surprised that it hadn’t happened already. After all, her fencing had been common knowledge around the newsroom clear back to the early days of the Amazon, and people in the studio were a lot more familiar with the story than the average person on the street. Given the number of people who considered themselves reporters—well, it was hard to imagine that no one had yet publicly accused her.

But in the days that passed after the trailer on the Atrium Tournament, nobody seemed to connect the two, which gave Sally some relief. Maybe, if she could just keep from putting the Hippolyta outfit on again until some good job offer came along that would get her out of town, she might still get away with it.

A job offer did come from the Daily, and a fairly good one. If Jason had still been an issue she probably would have taken it. A short stint at print reporting didn’t look bad on a TV résumé, after all, it made an applicant look a little more well-rounded. But in this case it wouldn’t take her out of Toledo, though at least it would get her off the TV screen and out of the public eye. She hadn’t told Tom yes, and hadn’t yet told him no—she’d said getting out of TV was something she would have to think about. He said it could keep for a while anyway, so there was that option if things got too sticky.

It hadn’t been much of a secret around the newsroom lately that Vicky was looking. In fact, almost everyone was looking at any given time—news people did move around a lot. But a main anchor position, even in a somewhat smaller market, Lexington being about the size of Battle Creek, was a considerable step up for her, and it did get her closer to her father, no small consideration.

Ben told Sally afterward that it would take a while to figure out what to do about replacing Vicky, but that he wanted Sally in the weekend anchor chair after Vicky left, at least until he figured out a more permanent solution. In normal times, Sally would have told Ben that she’d be interested in keeping it full-time. It would regularize her position, even though it might cut her out of some tournaments. But with the Hippolyta problem there and always in danger of being revealed, and the fact that the co-anchor job was a pretty big step up from where she was, the idea was never a factor in her decision. Given a choice, she’d go to another station in a market the size of Toledo or a bit larger as a reporter, then after a while look for a position as a weekend anchor or anchor/reporter in a market the size of Battle Creek or Lexington in the never-ending game of industry musical chairs.

Getting switched to the morning shift on election week and Jason working afternoons, she didn’t see him much, and then only in passing. Besides, he was busy. There were a number of school elections and city elections, although it was an off year for state and national elections, so there was plenty of time for coverage of local issues.

Sally suspected that Jason wouldn’t mind having the weekend co-anchor job, since it would put him on the screen with his name mentioned even more. She doubted he’d get it, not because of his temper, which did seem to have been reeled in a bit since the weekend, but because Vicky’s job was considered to be a woman’s spot. The station didn’t like to put two men as co-anchors except for an emergency or on a very temporary basis, which was part of the reason that she’d been Vicky’s regular fill-in at the post, anyway.

But it was good to be out of that tense atmosphere, a real relief, and it gave her a chance to think about Rick a bit. After a couple months he was still a nice guy and a good prospect, except for the issue about her moving. That’s unless she wound up going to the Daily, which seemed less and less likely as time went on. However, unlikely as it might be, if Jason were to wind up with the co-anchor job, Tom Rostenkowski was going to get a fast phone call. She knew she’d be moving on anyway, and probably sooner than later. That was a bummer, and there was no two ways about it—and she’d been keeping things somewhat cool with Rick, just for that reason. It seemed likely that they’d barely have time to warm up, and she was going to be out both a boyfriend and a fencing partner.

All of that left Sally in a strange limbo as Election Day came and went. Jason got a lot of air time on Election Night, but as soon as it was over with his face was no longer seen as much as he liked. That was fine with her, but she figured it was only a matter of time before he’d be trying to weasel his way to the front again to the detriment of anyone else on the staff. At least they were still on different shifts, and she didn’t have to be around him much.

On the weekend after Election Day there was an open tournament in East Lansing. Because of his schedule, Rick wasn’t able to go, but Sally took Justin and Emily. Her mind just wasn’t on fencing, and she quickly lost the shine on her nicely renewed B rating by having some brain fade and getting knocked out early. It was just as well as she had to leave shortly afterward to race to Toledo to do the six o’clock news, then race back to East Lansing to pick up the kids. She barely made it back to Toledo to do the eleven o’clock. If nothing else, that made it clear to her that working weekends and getting to tournaments was not going to be as easy as she’d hoped.

At least it had worked out so that the three of them didn’t have to go back to East Lansing on Sunday. That freed her time up a bit, but had its down side—one of the things that Sally really enjoyed was hanging out with other fencers, just trading stories and being friends. She thought about heading on up there anyway, just to hang out a while. However, after the two round trips the day before she wasn’t all that crazy about making a third one, then having to race back for the Sunday evening news, which often got pre-empted at the last minute by a football game.

It was clear that something had to give, one way or another. She’d really started to get back into her fencing, and had been enjoying it immensely, but to do anything with it meant she’d have to quit working on weekends, and that led into a whole raft of other conundrums. By Monday afternoon she was really getting frustrated with the whole thing and couldn’t see a way out unless she quit something that she liked, no matter what it was.

It was a slow afternoon. She sat at her desk, staring at nothing in particular, keeping six balls in the air while the clock approached her normal quitting time. It would be nice, she thought, if she could juggle her life like that and do as good a job.

“Sally?” she heard Shane’s voice speaking gently to her. “Can I bother you?”

She gathered up the balls without missing any and turned to the cameraman. “Yeah, sure, Shane.”

“Sally,” he said, coming over to lean his butt on the corner of her desk. “I’m not sure how to say this, because I know it’s a touchy subject with you, but I’d like to ask a favor.”

“Shane, I owe you enough that it’d be hard to turn you down.”

“This time I wouldn’t blame you if you did, but this thing has me eaten up enough that I’d feel even worse if I didn’t ask you. The other day, Jason and I were doing a school story over on the west side, and we found a class of fifth graders making get well cards for one of their classmates.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, to make a long story short, Jason and I figured that it’d be a neat human interest story to see those cards get delivered. A nice feel-good story, you know what I mean.”

“I’ve done a few,” Sally nodded.

“It isn’t a feel-good story, Sally. The little girl has leukemia. She isn’t going to get well. Her folks literally brought her home to die.”

“Oh, shit. That’s hard. The kid has to be what? Ten? Eleven? That really sucks.”

Shane shook his head. “I’ll tell you how bad it sucks. Both Jason and I kept it together till we got out to the van, and then we both broke down in tears. Sally, those weren’t crocodile tears he was crying, either. Hell, I never thought he had a heart, but I guess he does.”

“I find that amazing. So how do I figure in?”

Shane let out a long sigh. “The kid told Jason that her one real wish is to meet Hippolyta before she dies.”

Oh, shit! Sally thought. Shit, shit, shit.

Shane didn’t need to say anything, he could read her face well enough. “Look, Sally, after that business a couple weeks ago with the Newsmagazine crew, I know you’re touchy as hell about anything to do with that, and I don’t blame Charlie that he’s just as touchy. I know Ben told Jason to lay the hell off the whole Hippolyta thing with you or he’d get his ass kicked out the door. But, well, this isn’t Jason asking. It’s me. Could you talk to Charlie about it?”

“How soon would this have to come off?”

Shane shook his head again. Clearly he was bothered by the thought of what was happening to the kid. “God knows. I mean that literally. But my guess is that it won’t be long, days or a week or so at the most, and I’m told she’s getting weaker by the day.”

“Oh, shit,” Sally sighed. At least she didn’t have to make up her mind right now and could buy herself a little time. “I can ask,” she replied finally. “But I can’t tell you what the answer will be.”

“While you’re asking, the thought has crossed my mind that we already have the tape from the delivery of the get well cards, and this could be a good followup story for the station to cover. Hippolyta is already a legend that Channel 5 has been in from the beginning, and, well …”

“I get the picture,” she sighed. “Like I said, all I can do is ask.”

The hell of it was, Sally thought as she drove her Mustang across town toward Sluggy’s, was that every damn time she put on the Hippolyta outfit things spiraled further out of control. The only reason she’d done it two weeks ago for the Halloween stuff was to rub the Newsmagazine crew’s collective noses in the mud. That had worked out well—hell, everything Hippolyta had done had worked out well, for that matter—but there always seemed to be more and new ramifications every time, and she knew that some day it would catch up with her. After Shane had told her a bit more about the little girl, it just seemed to indicate more reasons to do it, and as always there was no telling where it would lead.

But damn it, it was hard to say no this time. And even if she did say no, there would be another request, and another, and another … it had to end sometime, but there was no telling when or where. The best thing she could do would be to get another job, well out of town, and as soon as possible. Then, the Amazon could damn well disappear along with her. It’d mean leaving Rick, it’d mean leaving her promising little group of fencers, and maybe no return to her favorite pastime, but at least she’d have all this hassle behind her.

It turned out that Charlie had beaten her to Sluggy’s and found a quiet table in the back—not that the whole place wasn’t pretty quiet at the time. “Hi, Sis,” he said as she sat down across the table from him. “You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”

“Another job for our friend in black. This is really getting to be a pain in the butt.”

“What now?”

There wasn’t much Sally could do but sit there and tell him the whole story. “I don’t want to do it, but I don’t see how I can say no, either.”

“Yeah, a deal with a kid like that. I guess I can’t blame you. So when are you thinking of doing it?”

“How about tonight? The sooner I do it, the less time I’ll have for my nerves to get the best of me. Besides, Shane says the kid isn’t likely to last much longer anyway.”

“If you want to do it tonight, you’ll have to do it without me,” he said. “I’m working the evening shift over in Swanton tonight.”

“You know, Charlie,” she replied. “As a reporter, playing a superheroine may be a little bizarre, but I swear to God you’re just as bad.”

“It runs in the family. You really need to have some cover though. You’ve still got Panty Raid involved in this, and there’s no telling what shenanigan he’ll try to pull, but there’ll be one.”

“True, how about tomorrow night?”

“No, I’m going to be in Whitehouse then. How about Rick, or Janice? Or, both of them? I think they’re both off tonight.”

“That might work,” she said with a sigh. “You’ll have to be the one to talk to them though. You’re the one who supposedly knows Hippolyta. You need to tell them that their main job is to keep Metheny out of Hippolyta’s face, like they did over at the Women’s Crisis Center.”

“Yeah, I can do that. You’ll have to get back to me with the when and the where.”

“I’ll have to work something out. I swear, this is the last time.”

“I’ve heard you say that before, Sis. You want some advice?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Give Metheny as little lead time as you can. That means Shane, too. You might get real lucky and get Shane without having Panty Raid along. Do it, get it done, get out of there, and be done with it.”

“Yeah, that’s good advice,” she said. “I’ll be at home. Call me there as soon as you get something worked out with Rick and Janice.”

“Where and when would you like them to meet you?”

“I don’t know. Oh, how about eight at the gate to Olander Park? That’s not far from where this kid lives.”

“I’ll get back with you,” he promised.

Driving the Shay wasn’t going to be fun this evening, she thought a few hours later. Even though it was a nice night, November in northern Ohio is too late in the year for this top-down stuff. Oh, well, it won’t last long.

Fortunately, her folks were gone somewhere and didn’t expect to get back until late, so she had the house to herself. That didn’t really help much. She spent most of the afternoon wondering about what the hell she could say to a young girl on the edge of death. The only answer she could come up with was to stay in character as Hippolyta and encourage the kid to meet her future head on, like an Amazon. No regrets—just do what the Gods tell you has to be done. Be a little mystical and sympathetic, but still be an Amazon. It didn’t sound easy, but when she thought about it, it seemed like she might have the easy part. After all, tonight it was the kid facing death, not her. It really sucked that someone so young would miss out on all the potential life ahead of her.

The afternoon still dragged. There wasn’t much she could do to get her mind off the situation. About all she could do was to give her gear a good going over. After the deal at Halloween, she’d figured—well, hoped—that she wouldn’t have to use the Amazon costume again, and hadn’t gotten around to taking care of it as well as she should have. Tonight, the outfit needed to be gleaming, perfect, like a superheroine’s should be. Penthesilea and her scabbard needed a good polishing and got it. She gave some thought to leaving the .357 home, since a lot of people freaked out about guns, but decided to take it as it had become part of the Amazon’s reputation. It hadn’t been cleaned for a while, nor the holster shined; that ate up more time.

Relax, Sally, she thought to herself as she began to pull on the gear. This is not going to be that hard. Heart-rending, yes, but not that hard. It just requires thinking, not doing. Be an Amazon. Be Hippolyta, the real one who faced death every day. Even if she was a myth, the real warriors back then hadn’t been, though maybe sickroom visits weren’t the sort of duty the warrior class was ever called out to do.

Having the leather on helped. Even without the accessories like the mask, she could feel the persona of the Amazon start to slide over her as she glanced at the clock. Six-thirty, that ought to be good enough. After all, if she couldn’t get hold of Shane, Hippolyta could just do this one on her own without Channel 5 First to Know News looking on. That probably would be a better idea anyway, but what was done was done. She picked up the phone and dialed the number for Shane’s cell phone.

Jason was still more than a bit burned over Andrea’s decision to play cute with him over at Franklin Park Mall on Halloween evening. Even most of two weeks hadn’t dulled all the sting it had caused him. She couldn’t have done it at a much worse time. It had really gotten embarrassing the way she’d treated him in front of the Newsmagazine crew, not that the whole day had been much better. He’d hoped to show off his sure touch with the story, and all he’d come away with was messy, stinking fingers. After that scene at the mall he’d been just about ready to tell Andrea where to shove it, but reason set in and he changed his mind. After all, Andrea had a couple good things going for her, and they were even better when she took her bra off. She sure filled out her T-shirt here at Hooters, where he still went most nights after work for a sandwich and the chance to stay in the forefront of her attention.

This had the potential of being a good night. She was getting off early and had told him to be ready for a fun evening. Amazingly enough, his plans and her plans seemed to coincide, so it looked like it could be a pretty darn good time once he got her up to his apartment and got that Hooter’s T-shirt off of her.

It would be good to have something to take his mind off of Shelby Robbins, the little girl with leukemia who he and Shane had talked to earlier. While Jason wasn’t big on kids, this one was cuter than most and had such a great attitude despite only having days to live. It was a damn shame that something like this had to happen to a sweetie like her. The only thing she seemed to want before she died was to meet Hippolyta, which Jason could understand, though his reasons were a lot different. It was a damn shame that it most likely wasn’t going to happen. After leaving Shelby’s home, he and Shane had talked it over. Both of them had agreed that it was totally pointless for Jason to even try to talk to Sally about asking her brother to contact that weird woman. After the debacle on Halloween and the reaming he’d gotten from Ben, Jason didn’t want to think about it anyway. They did agree, though, that Shane stood a chance of making it work, even though it was still at best a long shot. Jason had even agreed that it would be best if he weren’t even around when Shane asked, since both of them knew that Jason would stand a good chance of saying something that would piss Sally off, maybe even piss Ben off.

If Shane did manage to convince her to try, it happening within the next day or two was about the best that could be expected. From what little Sally had let slip, it seemed like Charlie didn’t have direct contact with Hippolyta. It was a leave-a-message kind of thing. Not tonight, for sure. That was good, because while Andrea was busy on her job, when she got near his table she kept dropping him unsubtle little hints and winks that told him that she was hotter to trot than normal. This was going to be a good evening …

His cell phone ringing jarred him from his reveries. Now what? Damn it! All he needed was to get yanked off on something stupid on a night when Andrea hinted she was extra horny. You have to get it when you can, he thought as he pulled the phone out of his shirt pocket and clicked it on. “Metheny,” he answered.

“Get your butt moving,” Shane told him. “Hippolyta is going to be at Shelby Robbins’ house at eight.”

“What? Are you sure?” Jason replied wide-eyed, almost coming out of his seat.

“Sounded like her when I talked to her on the phone just now. I called Shelby’s parents, they’re going to be waiting. Now get moving.”

“I’m on my way. Jeez, I don’t believe it.”

“Me either. I’ll meet you there. I’ve got to shag ass over to the station and get a van.”

“I’m out of here,” Jason said in excitement. Maybe this would be the chance he had been waiting on for months, to talk with Hippolyta for a bit. It seemed unlikely that anything could come from a meeting like this, but you never knew. Shit, what an opportunity. This might even get him back in good with Ben! “See you in a few.”

He clicked the phone off and slipped it in his pocket, only now noticing that Andrea had come up beside him while he’d been talking to Shane. “I gotta run, Andrea,” he said hurriedly. “Something’s come up at the station. I don’t know how long it’ll take but I’ll call as soon as I can get free.”

“Are you sure you can’t get out of it?” the stacked blonde said with a frown. “I’ve really been waiting for this all day.”

“Not this time. That was Shane. Earlier today we came across a kid who’s dying, and she wants to meet Hippolyta. Somehow Shane managed to set it up, so we’re meeting her. It’s a damn miracle.”

“So you’re standing me up to run off chasing after that bitch in black again,” she said with evident anger. “Jesus Christ, I’m not good enough for you? Fine with me!” Her voice rose to the point where she was now yelling. “Go stick your nose up Hippolyta’s butt and see if you get anything, and then see if you get anything from me, either.”

“Andrea!” he yelled back as she turned to go. “Please.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself,” she snarled as she hustled off. “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

“Well, shit,” he said in disgust. “I don’t have time to play your silly games tonight. See you sometime, maybe.” His voice dropped to a mutter. “Damn women, anyway,” he said as he tossed a ten on the counter to cover his sandwich and headed for the door, taking no notice of two very interested men who got up to follow him.

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