My phone woke me at five forty-three AM.
Not an alarm. Notifications. So many of them arrived at the same time that the vibration against my nightstand was almost continuous, a low mechanical hum that pulled me out of a shallow sleep before I was ready to be awake.
I lay still for a moment, staring at the ceiling of my hotel room, and then I reached over and picked up the phone.
Forty-seven notifications in the last hour. My name was trending on two platforms. The article, the arrest footage, the corridor video I had filed last night, all of it had been running through the night while I slept badly and dreamed about a pair of handcuffs clicking shut.
I sat up and turned on the television.
Every channel had something.
The national sports networks had devoted their entire morning progr
