I stood in the cemetery parking lot for a long, long time, unsure what had happened.
16
Ozrik
Atorrential rainstorm pummeled Newton all day the following day, but the storm system we’d been tracking shifted and no longer looked as promising. Lex and Vern were glued to the computers, reading the Doppler, but they kept shaking their heads in disgust.
“It’s not going to happen,” Lex said. “The wind shifted.”
Elliott communicated NOAA updates as they came in, but so far, all we had was a wicked thunderstorm, high winds, and a risk of property damage and flooding.
My phone buzzed with another incoming text from Charles. The guy might have been a fan of Twisted Fates, he might have been rooting for us from day one, he might have even given a few pointers to help us stay ahead of Olivia’s group, but he was getting on my last nerve. As enticing as the show was, signing that damn contract with CineVision might have been a huge mistake.
Charles didn’t like that we were sitting at the hotel and not out in the weather, filming the storm. He didn’t like it when I told him there was nothing to film, like I could pull a tornado out of a hat. He wanted us wet and windswept and racing through muddy fields.A storm is a storm, he’d said.Footage is footage.
His last message read,Everything is usable. Go stand in the fucking rain and fake it for all I care.I ignored it, hoping he would give up.
He didn’t. His most recent text informed me,I’m calling you. You’d better answer.
“Shit.” I raked fingers through my hair.
“What’s up?” Noah asked from behind the camera. He was filming the guys and their conversations as they monitored the storm.
“Nothing.” My phone rang. “I gotta take this.”
I hadn’t shared Charles’s recent demands with the team, so I motioned that I was stepping outside to take the call. For all anyone knew, it was my mother checking up on me, and those conversations were always private.
I connected the call once I was in the hallway. “Hello, Charles. You’re a pain in my ass, and not in a good way.”
“Are you at the hotel?”
“Where the fuck else would I be?”
“Do you realize Windrow and her team are on the road and filming?”
“Good for her. She’s chasing nothing. We don’t have a TVS. We don’t have a mesocyclone. We don’t have a hook echo. We have a nasty derecho brewing, but no tornado. When Mother Nature gives us a promising sign, we’ll give you front row seats. I promise. Until then—”
“Until then, you won’t get airtime. Do you hear me? Does that register in your little brain, Devereaux? No one will watch, let alone vote for, a team that is sitting around in a hotel room,staring at radar screens. They want action. I don’t know what a derecho is, but go stand in it and keep the camera rolling. Hell,tellthe audience what it is. Get wet. Show me destruction. Flooding. You yourself told me you can monitor radar from that fancy vehicle, so do it. Get out in the thick of it, or it’s sayonara, motherfucker. I’m fighting for you, but Dennis has a hard-on for your competition.”
I saw Charles’s point. He was trying to help, and it irked me that Olivia and her team were out there recording this nonsense. It was an amateur move that an audience would incorrectly assume was superior to our inactive observation of data in a dry hotel room.
What was she doing? Gale would know this storm wasn’t showing signs of production. Hell, Olivia had been at it long enough that she should know it, too. Was this an act?
Fuck me.Of course it was. I’d outmaneuvered her last time, so this was payback.
“She’s out there to win screen time.”
“Yes, Devereaux. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Unlike you, she seems to possess half a brain cell.”
“All right. We’ll go.”
I had made it to the inn’s lobby and peered out the front window at the roiling dark sky as a crack of thunder rattled the pane and shook the world. The rain was relentless, falling sideways in sheets, battering the side of the building, and ricocheting off cars. The streets sported swollen puddles. High winds whipped the tree branches into a frenzy. Across the street, a line of flags on high poles flapped wildly.
“Before you hang up. Another thing,” Charles said.
“What now?”
“Your rescue mission last week. That was golden. That will win you favor with the audience right out of the gate, but we don’twant to lose that momentum. It’s a great angle. We should keep that going so Windrow can’t steal the spotlight.”
