Stay Tuned by Lauren Clark

job.
    Until the Carpet King commercial ran a third time.
    Before I could blink, Alyssa’s face faded to ash gray and then flushed scarlet. She stared at the monitor, eyes narrowed into slits, while Tim tugged at his collar with one finger, intently focused on a speck of dust on the anchor desk. Alyssa pursed her collagen-injected lips and jutted her chin.
    I’d seen that look before. It wasn’t a good sign. Like the space shuttle countdown gone terribly wrong. T-minus ten, nine, eight…
    “She’s gonna blow!” Joe whispered and leaned into his mic, throwing me an apprehensive glance. He pushed one of a million black buttons. “Twenty seconds,” he warned. Only Tim responded with a nervous nod.
    The tiny hairs on my arm stood at attention. I swallowed hard and prayed for something, anything. My mind raced with possible options. Divine intervention? A lightning strike? A power surge? Anything to knock out the signal in our entire viewing area.
    Then it happened.
    We were back on air. Mics open, video cued, we waited. Alyssa, now purple-faced, slammed both hands down on the desk. Tim, poised to read from the teleprompter, jumped at the sound. When he opened his mouth, nothing came out.
    As if in slow motion, Alyssa stood up and raised one perfectly creased arm of her ivory linen suit. She molded her shell-pink manicured fingers into a fist. Tim turned and reared back in horror at the look of pure menace on Alyssa’s face.
    She cold-cocked him. Blood spurted from Tim’s nose. He fell back like Humpty Dumpty.
    We went to commercial.
     

Chapter 12
     
    I sprang into mommy-mode and ran toward the studio. Five seconds later, Drew met me at the huge double doors, breathing hard. No doubt, he’d witnessed the whole event on the huge plasma screen in his office.
    At six feet tall and one hundred forty-five pounds at best, Drew wasn’t known for flying like Superman toward the scene of the crime—but then again—this wasn’t your usual crisis. With surprising force, Drew yanked the studio doors open and vaulted through, his pale face twisted into contorted control. I could guarantee his lips were barely holding back a fiery volcano of four-letter words.
    Alyssa launched into full-scale sobs when she saw us. Her breasts heaved under her suit jacket, which threatened to pop an entire row of buttons. I ran toward her, reached across the desk, and grabbed Alyssa by the shoulders. Her body recoiled under my touch.
    She blinked slowly when I bent down to get closer. Tears dangled on her lashes. Her bottom lip trembled like a girl who’d been stood up by her high school prom date. Alyssa looked small and frightened, her skin blotchy, black mascara running down her cheeks in rivulets. A stab of sympathy hit my chest. Beneath all of the makeup and stuck-up airs, Alyssa was just a kid. A kid with some pretty large emotional issues.
    Whether or not she realized it now, the right hook she landed on Tim spelled disaster for her career. The fact that the blow was broadcast across our viewing area made the problem two hundred times worse. My mind raced with the possible repercussions. Hate letters? Bad ratings? A lawsuit? All distinct possibilities.
    “Crap! Dammit! Come on!” Drew spouted all at once, trying to revive Tim.
    From my angle, I could only see part of an olive pant leg and one wing-tip shoe. I let go of Alyssa and stepped back to survey the situation myself.
    A closer look revealed most of Tim under the desk, legs sprawled like he’d been in a bar fight. A tiny cut slashed across his nose matched the deep burgundy of the blood smeared across his top lip and mouth.
    Drew sat back on his heels, shoulders slumped. If I had to guess, he was probably thinking a full-blown, heroin-induced hallucination would be better than dealing with the fallout from these two.
    I caught my breath. My brain hurt from the stress. Tim wasn’t moving. Drew wouldn’t speak.
    We can’t let the show end like this. Think, think…
    The only