“No,” Harper said gently.
Savannah froze. For a second, she thought she might cry. Then the moment passed and was replaced by heat. Anger. Sharp, bright, and easier to hold.
“Franklin made it clear,” Savannah said, her voice tight. “Nothing happened. Nothing is happening. So I am going to match that energy.”
Harper opened her mouth. Then closed it. Then sighed. “You are going to hate that.”
“I do not care.”
“You really do.”
Savannah pushed past her, coffee sloshing dangerously close to the rim, and walked straight back to her desk.
She sat. She stared at her screen. She refused to look left toward the hallway. She refused to care where Tilly was. She refused to need anything.
But her jaw hurt from clenching. Her chest felt too small. Her hands shook faintly on the keyboard.
Harper was right. She was crawling out of her skin.
She typed three words. Deleted them. Typed two more. Deleted those too.
Then Henry’s voice cracked across the newsroom.
“Savannah. Franklin. I want you two together for the six hit.”
Savannah’s stomach dropped so fast she felt it behind her knees. The entire newsroom seemed to tilt. Or maybe that was just her heart.
She didn’t turn. She didn’t breathe. She just said, “Okay,” even though she wanted to scream.
A chair scraped across the room. Tilly’s.
Her pulse pounded.
This was going to be a disaster. A slow, quiet, professional disaster, she had no idea how to survive.
Twenty Three
Tilly snapped the battery case shut and swallowed the tight feeling in their throat. Six hit. They could do this. They would do this. They’d done live shots with sprained ankles and broken gear and producers screaming in their ear. They could survive thirty minutes with Savannah pretending they didn’t exist.
Henry stood by the assignment desk, scrolling on his tablet. “Medford update,” he said, not looking up. “Charges reduced this morning. DA just sent revised language. Savannah, I want a clean stand-up. No speculation. Six o’clock.”
Savannah nodded too fast. “We should get courthouse exteriors first. Then, the police headquarters signage, just in case they tighten access. If we lose daylight, we lose flexibility.”
Henry blinked, thrown off for half a second. “Yeah. Sure. That works.”
Tilly clocked it. Savannah didn’t usually jump in like that. She waited, listened, and asked questions later. Today, she already had the plan mapped out in her head, like she needed the control locked down before anything else could slip.
“Car two,” Tilly said quietly, because Henry was still within earshot.
Savannah nodded without looking at them. “Fine.”
They walked out to the garage side by side but not touching. The cold slapped them both when the bay door opened. Savannah brushed past them to the passenger side so abruptlythat Tilly felt it like a shove, the edge of her sleeve catching their arm for half a second before she pulled away.
The silence in the car was immediate and thick.
Tilly focused on driving. Savannah stared out the window so hard it was like she was trying to burn through the glass.
“You can take the next left,” she said.
