by Natasha West
‘I reckon. They dragged the guy off to solitary, I think the fight’s over,’ Ashley said.
Gina dropped her camera off her shoulder, holding it down by her side. She hoped they might knock off now. It had been a long morning.
‘How much battery you got left,’ Ashley asked. ‘Might go and talk to the loser of that fight?’
Gina tutted. ‘Do you ever take a break?’
‘He’s still bleeding through the nose. I think you’ll have to leave it for now,’ the prison guard said.
Ashley sighed. ‘Yeah, fine.’
Gina nudged Ashley in the ribs. ‘I’m starving, I want lunch.’
‘You can just get something from the prison cafeteria.’
Gina fixed her with a look.
‘Fine, sorry, we’ll leave it there if you like. Go somewhere proper to eat,’ Ashley said repentantly.
Gina smiled. ‘That’s more like it.’
Ashley turned to the guard. ‘So, we’ll be calling it a day, Mike, OK?’
‘You coming back tomorrow?’ the guard asked.
‘I’m coming back every day until my access is revoked,’ she told the guy with a cheeky grin. ‘I wanna get the whole male prison experience, really get in deep.’
The guard looked baffled by that. Then he remembered something. ‘Oh, the warden said yes on Steven Peace, by the way.’
Ashley gave a small whoop.
Gina’s eyes went wide. ‘Oh. I was kind of hoping he wouldn’t grant us quite as much access as that.’
‘Peace is never getting out,’ Ashley assured her. ‘He was given a hundred and fifty years for what he did.’
Gina shuddered. ‘That’s what bothers me. I mean, what he did to those cows alone… And that thing with the meat cleaver and the tricycle?’
Ashley raised an eyebrow. ‘Gina, come on. We go…’
‘…Where the story is. I know. You don’t have to keep saying it.’
Ashley smiled. ‘Maybe I like saying it. The “we” part. It was always “I” before. Nice to have a plural.’
‘Plurals can be nice,’ Gina agreed.
They left the prison and got in the van. As Gina drove through the prison gates, Ashley checked her phone.
‘Anything interesting?’ Gina asked, turning up the road in the direction of town.
‘Just another job offer,’ Ashley said dismissively. ‘I’ll send them my generic rejection.’
Gina smiled to herself. It had been a long time since Jimmy’s Pizza. A lot had changed.
Ashley had done exactly as she’d vowed, turning in her notice within days of the holdup. She already had a plan by then, she said, but she didn’t explain it straight away. She was still nutting out the details. But she promised Gina would find out soon enough. And she did.
‘I’m starting up my own YouTube channel,’ Ashley eventually revealed.
‘Whoa, going maverick, are we?’ Gina asked. They were lying in bed, a few weeks into dating. It was going well. Better than well, actually; it was electric between them. They rowed, obviously. Ashley was still Ashley. But somehow, Gina felt like it was a good thing. Ashley was worth fighting for.
‘Yeah, I’m tired of the mainstream. So… you in?’ Ashley asked.
‘What, me?’ Gina asked.
‘I mean, not if you don’t want to. Go back to shooting fiction if you like, but… if you ask me…’
‘I didn’t,’ Gina said, knowing it wouldn’t stop Ashley from giving it to her straight.
‘The stuff you got that day with Pete, it was something else. You held your nerve like a seasoned pro. You’ve got talent. You’re wasting it on bad movies.’
Gina kind of knew that. In truth, she had been leaning in the direction of shooting news for a living. She’d been fielding a lot of offers to work in that sector. Problem was, it all sounded quite boring compared to where she’d cut her teeth. Where the action was. She wanted something, well, not quite like that first day, but certainly beyond dry news.
Which was precisely what her new girlfriend was offering her. Which might be a hitch in an otherwise tempting offer. ‘I mean, it sounds… I admit it could be great. But what about you and me? Being in a relationship and working together? Could blow up in our faces,’ Gina said.
Ashley took her hand gently and smiled. ‘Look, we’re a good team. That’s all I know. Not only can you shoot great stuff, I think you bring out my human side. I might need that.’
Gina slipped closer to Ashley. ‘We do make a good team, don’t we?’
They went for it.
What they wanted was to make in-depth documentaries with a focus on investigative journalism. The first story was Pete. They even interviewed him in prison. Luckily, his desire for attention outweighed his hatred of Ashley and Gina, and he talked to them all about the holdup, his brand of bullshit undercut with Ashley’s probing and occasionally downright uncomfortable questions. He was crying by the end, and they were very real tears.
Gina cut the whole thing together, pretty much learning to edit on the fly. Once it was cut, they held hands, pressed upload, and waited. It blew up. A million views in just a few days. Trending on Twitter. The whole shebang. People were excited to get an insider’s view of such a famous story.
After that, they were off and running, Ashley finding small stories that no one else cared about that gave her spider sense a little buzz and going in to find out the truth. And fuck, was she good at it. She’d exposed a politician’s financial misappropriation and discovered a police cover-up in the first month alone. She just knew how to get to the truth, and it was Gina’s privilege to watch her do it through the eye of her lens. Needless to say, the channel grew quickly. A year in, they had twenty million subscribers and counting.
And the reason it blew up was absolutely obvious. People liked Ashley. Loved her. They liked the way she seemed as if she was merely curious about this and that, and how she was gentle when needed, which she told Gina was only a recently acquired skill learnt in Pete’s accidental journalistic finishing school. But there was still plenty of the old Ashley in there. Because when the moment presented itself for one of Ashley’s truth bombs, you better stand back, hold on to your hat, duck for cover, because it was all coming out. Ashley was clutched to the heart of a truth-seeking audience.
Though Ashley said it was more than that that kept people watching. She reckoned what people loved was their relationship, hers and Gina’s. Because Gina wasn’t a passive camerawoman. She was nearly as much a part of the action as Ashley was, talking from behind the camera, in the thick of it with her. Telling Ashley when she thought she was onto something, as well as when she thought Ashley was being an arsehole.
Gina didn’t care what it was that people liked. All she knew was that she was doing something that mattered, and she was having a blast while she did it, working with the woman she loved.
But Gina wasn’t the only one to fall in love with Ashley. The mainstream wanted her. Wanted her bad. Though Gina had had to be talked into going in on this mad scheme, now she worried that there might be an offer from conventional media one day that was simply too big for Ashley to turn down. She loved this life with Ashley, travelling around, making docs all day, hotels at night. She didn’t want it to change.
‘You’re never tempted to take one of those news jobs? You would have snapped their hands off when we first met,’ Gina asked, trying to sound casual.
But Ashley shook her head confidently. ‘I like what I do. I do what I like. And I do it with you. Why change anything?’
Gina was relieved. ‘Why, indeed.’
Ashley kissed her on the cheek as she drove. ‘Oh, hold that thought. I just gotta check if that guy got in touch about letting me into his cult that worships the planet Hercules.’
Gina raised an eyebrow. ‘But there isn’t a planet Hercules.’
‘And that’s just the tip of the crazy. It’s gonna be brilliant,’ Ashley grinned, swiping down her phone. ‘Hey, this is interesting.’
&
nbsp; ‘What?’
Ashley started laughing. ‘Channel Seven has been in touch.’
‘That’s Kara Malone’s channel, right?’
‘Yeah. They want to buy the rights to show our docs. Primetime slot, apparently. Nine. After the news.’
‘You’d be on TV?’
‘We’d be on TV, yes.’
‘But we wouldn’t change anything about our method, they’d just have the rights to transmit it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And Kara Malone would be your warmup act?’
‘That is correct,’ Ashley grinned.
‘Fuck me. We have to take it, don’t we?’
‘Let’s think about it,’ Ashley said calmly.
‘But surely it doesn’t get any better than that?’ Gina asked.
‘It does, actually. That’s where I am now. Nothing better. Best life, etc. Unless you disagree?’
Gina considered it. ‘I don’t disagree, no. I just thought it might be the kind of deal you’d be tempted by.’
‘Why do you keep saying “you”? This is a “we” deal. I’m not your boss anymore. And when I was, it was only for about ten minutes, anyway. We’re a team. So if you wanna take the deal, we can certainly discuss it.’
Gina considered. Before Ashley, she’d never really felt like her life was going anywhere, that there were important things to grab for. But she’d grabbed for Ashley. And that had worked out. More than worked out. ‘You know what, you’re right. Let’s sleep on it. Let ‘em sweat.’
‘Sure. As long as you make me sweat first,’ Ashley said with a naughty look.
Gina nearly swerved off the road. ‘Woman, don’t say things like that while I’m driving. I’ll kill us both!’
‘I trust you not to do that. You saved my life the day we met, silly to end it now.’
‘You saved mine too. In a lot of ways,’ Gina told her.
‘We saved each other,’ Ashley agreed.
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In the meantime, feel free to enjoy these other books by Natasha West
Hawke’s Prey
Hawke’s Game
Hawke’s Flight
The Plus One
Plus Two
Something for the Weekend
A Marriage of Connivance
Joined at the Hip
A Mistletoe Moment
Real Love
Waiting for the Punchline
Chase Me
Close-Ups and Mess Ups
Meet You at the End of the World
By Any Other Name
Never the Bride
The Dropout
Only Ever You
The A to Z of Girlfriends
Just Married?
The Matchmaker
200 Hours
Sweetest Thing
Lost and Found
Ride the Wave
