“Move that way a little,” Shayna said, setting it up for the best shot. Andy grimaced as he moved, but neither of them were about themselves right now. “Stop.”
“Okay, go ahead,” Andy said. His shirt was torn, there was a crack in one of the lenses of his glasses, and he had the same scattering of cuts and nicks over his forearms and face as she had.
She typed in a short descriptive line for the post, and then the live video counted down 3-2-1 and she gave him a thumb’s up.
“This is Andy Katz of the Washington Gazette reporting live from the scene of an apparent explosion at the Northern Arms Garden Apartments in Northeast DC. My photographer, Shayna Curtis, and I were here on another assignment when the blast occurred. As you can hear in the background, police, fire, and EMS are on their way but haven’t yet arrived.”
Ten people tuned in to watch. Then a hundred. Within sixty seconds, there were nearly a thousand people watching and reacting to the live video.
“It’s not clear whether or how many residents might’ve been inside the building or what caused the fire, but as you can see, inhabitants are streaming out of neighboring buildings.”
She gave him another thumb’s up. He had it from here. Rounding the far side of her car so she could stay out of the video’s frame, she put the viewfinder to her face. Her heart was racing and she couldn’t stop sweating and blood kept dripping into her eye, but she couldn’t worry about any of that just then.
Crouching out in the field in front of the building, she took wide-frame shots of the blaze and then of the towering column of smoke and flames. She moved closer, and the whole world narrowed down to what she saw through her viewfinder.
People huddled together in raw shock. Gas company employees running from the buildings. One of their utility helmets in the grass. Three people clustered in a window immediately adjacent to the flames.
Jesus, when were the fire companies going to get here?
She’d no more thought that then the first of the emergency vehicles swung onto the block.
In a burst, she captured shots of the first responders unloading and setting up the scene. Firemen unrolling the hose, opening the hydrant, donning their gear. The EMTs laying out a triage area and reaching out to the first of the injured. The police setting up a perimeter.
Which meant she needed to get these close-ups while she could because she knew she was going to get pulled back any second now.
“Help us!” a lady screamed from her window.
Shay went as close as she dared, close enough that the heat hurt her face and hands. “Hold on,” she yelled. “The firemen are here. I’ll point them right to you.”
Shayna let the camera go slack on the neck strap and waved her arms as a line of firemen started across the short field. A group came right for her. “There are three people in that window,” she told an older man with a weathered face. “But there were also two in that window just a minute or two ago and I haven’t seen anyone come out.” She pointed to where she meant.
He nodded. “We’re on it. Thanks. You should get back now. This scene’s not stable.” He jogged away.
And Shayna continued taking pictures. Because telling our most human stories through images was her job, her passion, and the way she made a difference in the world.
Chapter Seventeen
The knocking would not fucking stop.
After at least ten minutes of it, Billy hauled his ass out of bed and down the stairs, fully prepared to murder whoever was on the other side of that door.
“What?” he growled as he opened it.
“Took ya long enough,
” Mo said, giving Billy’s face and bare chest, both covered in bruises, a once-over before inviting himself inside. “You look good.”
“Fuck.” Billy buttoned the fly to his jeans. He’d been too strung out to take them off when he’d fallen into bed.
“Yeah, that about sums it up, I’d say. What the hell did you do to yourself?”
“Nothing. Listen, Mo, I was kinda in the middle of something—”
“Sure you were,” he said, making himself good and comfortable on the couch. He even propped up his feet on the table and crossed his ankles. The fucker. “Just to move this along, know that I’m not leaving. Because after I figure out what’s going on with you, I’m hanging around to help Shayna whom it seems is in a big rush to leave your house all of a sudden. Have any idea why that might be?”
“She found a new place. You heard her,” Billy said, dropping heavily onto the couch himself.
“You let her news fuck you up even more, didn’t you?” Mo arched an eyebrow. “She said she found a roommate and you heard that you were too late. And then you learned that it was a guy and what you heard was that she wanted someone else. How am I doing?”