“Are you with Dalton Development? Can you comment on the work stoppage?”
The man froze, hand on his door. “You can’t be here.”
Savannah’s smile didn’t budge. “You’ve got millions in city funding on hold. The neighborhood wants answers.”
He shook his head and started back into the truck. “No comment.”
“Then say that on record,” Savannah pressed, taking a half step closer.
Tilly winced through the lens. They kept rolling because instinct saidnever stop rolling, but they could feel the heat crawling up their neck. It wasn’t that Savannah was wrong — it was that she didn’t know when to stop.
The man finally muttered something about legal review and drove off, leaving a spray of gravel and Savannah standing in the exhaust cloud, mic still raised.
Tilly lowered the camera. “You’re out of your mind.”
Savannah turned, still catching her breath. “We just got our kicker.”
Tilly blinked. “We almost got trespassed.”
“Almost,” Savannah said, smiling. “Big difference.”
They didn’t talk on the drive back.
* * *
The newsroom had thinned out by the time they got back. The ten o’clock rundown still glowed on the assignment board, and the hum of the edit bays filled the otherwise quiet space. Tilly led the way, footage card in hand, saying nothing. Savannah trailed a few steps behind, the soft click of her heels the only sound between them.
Inside the booth, the light from the monitors threw both of them into shades of blue. Tilly slid the card into the reader and queued up the raw footage.
Savannah leaned against the back wall, arms crossed. “You’re not still mad, are you?”
Tilly didn’t answer. They scrubbed through the timeline, finding the moment she’d chased down the developer. The wind was loud, the mic slightly overblown, but her voice cut clean through the chaos.
“—the neighborhood wants answers.”
The line landed harder than Tilly expected. They hit play again.
Savannah stepped closer, eyes on the screen. “It works.”
“It’s aggressive,” Tilly said, but their tone had softened.
“It’s honest.”
They replayed it a third time, slower now, their editor’s eye catching details: the sharpness in her voice, the framing they’d instinctively followed even while cursing under their breath, the faint smear of dust that crossed the lens when the truck pulled away. It shouldn’t have worked. But it did.
Savannah moved to stand beside them. “You can cut it right there,” she said quietly. “Let the silence hang before the tag.”
Tilly did as she suggested, trimming the clip down to her cue. The audio dipped into wind for a heartbeat before her closing line rolled in. The sequence landed clean. Too clean.
They sat back in the chair, exhaling. “It shouldn’t be this good.”
Savannah smiled, satisfied. “That’s what happens when you stop playing it safe.”
Tilly turned toward her, ready to argue, but stopped when they saw the look on her face, not smug, exactly. Just certain.
“You’re reckless,” they said.
“You’re cautious.”
