Chapter 14 Tom
Chapter fourteen
Tom
The sky is still navy when I reach the south gate at five twenty-three. Two minutes early.
This is usually my favorite time of day—the blue hour, when the city is quiet and the light is soft and directionless. No crew noise, no traffic. Just the work.
Not today.
Sam is standing five feet from the gate, her hands shoved deep into her coat pockets.
Her jaw is set hard, and her eyes are locked on the card reader.
I stop walking, waiting for her to acknowledge me, but she doesn't look over.
She doesn't wave or say good morning. She just pulls one hand out of her pocket and slaps her key card against the plastic reader.
The gate beeps and unlocks.
"Gate's open."
Her voice is dead flat and hyper-professional, the exact same icy tone she uses with Richard. It is a massive, jarring pivot from Wednesday night, when we sat shoulder-to-shoulder in the site office, sharing Pad See Ew and staring at each other's mouths.
I shift my camera bag higher on my shoulder and walk through, but Sam is already moving. She heads toward the eastern boundary with her shoulders tight and her stride clipped.
I follow her in silence. The site is entirely empty—no hard hats, no machinery, just raw steel beams and concrete pads stretching out toward the dark water.
The streetlights are still buzzing, throwing long, warped shadows across the gravel.
My boots crunch loudly on the loose stone, and hers echo ten feet ahead of me.
Usually, she asks about the shot list. Usually, she makes a dry comment about the cold. Just last week, she brought me coffee without even asking what I wanted and got the order exactly right. Today, I get nothing. Her back is to me, her coat zipped entirely to her chin.
She’s quiet. Too quiet.
We reach the eastern perimeter where the light is perfect. It’s soft, diffused, with just enough contrast to make the steel beams look intentional instead of abandoned. I set my bag down on a concrete pad and crouch beside it. Sam stops three feet behind me.
I pull out my camera and check the lens. She doesn't move.
I stand up and frame the first shot through the viewfinder. The beams cut clean lines against the lightening sky. I adjust the aperture and check the focus. Sam is still standing there.
I lower the camera. "You good?"
"Fine."
Her arms are crossed, and she’s watching me like I’m about to pocket something.
I turn back to the shot, line it up again, and press the shutter. The click echoes in the stillness. I move six feet to the left to frame the next angle. She's right behind me.
I stop and turn around. "Sam."
"What?"
"You're hovering."
"I'm observing."
"You're standing close enough to count my shutter clicks."
She shifts her weight but doesn't step back. "I want to see the angles you're choosing."
"You approved the shot list."
"I know."
"So you already know what I'm shooting."
"I want to see how you're shooting it."
Her jaw is tight and her eyes are locked on my camera. This isn't about the shot list.
I turn back to the frame and take three more shots in silence. She watches every single one. When I finish the sequence, I lower the camera and point toward the north corner. There's a stack of shipping pallets near the chain-link fence, maybe twelve feet high and stable.
"I want elevation on those beams," I say. "Fifteen feet should—"
"No." Sam steps in front of me.
"It's just a pallet stack. It's stable."
"Stay on the marked path."
"Sam, it's right there—"
"I said no."
Her voice cuts through the cold air like a blade. She reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out a piece of paper, folded once with crisp edges. She's been carrying it carefully. She unfolds it and holds it out. "This is why."
I take it. It's a compliance log, printed and dated two weeks ago. My name is at the top.
Security Monitoring Alert: Perimeter Activity — East Side Access.
I scan the rest. Neighboring property. Unauthorized elevation. Fire escape. Logged and forwarded. I hand it back to her.
"Yeah. I got flagged."
Sam folds the paper again. Her hands are steady but her knuckles are white. "You went around site access denial."
"I went to the property next door. I asked the owner for permission and he said yes. I shot from his fire escape."
"Without waiting for approval."
"The light window was closing. If I'd waited for the site office to open and process a perimeter extension request, I'd have lost the shot."
"So you improvised."
"I solved a problem."
"By going around the system."
I exhale through my nose. "By finding a legal solution when the system was too slow to be useful."
Sam's hands tighten on the paper, deepening the fold line. "Tom—"
"I didn't trespass. I didn't forge anything. I didn't sneak past a locked gate. I went to a business owner, explained what I needed, and asked if I could use his fire escape for twenty minutes. He said yes. That's not breaking the rules. That's common sense."
She just looks at me. Her expression hasn't changed. She looks like I just confirmed a theory.
"And what happens when there's no neighbor?" she says. "No side entrance? No creative workaround?"
"Then I follow the protocol."
"Do you?"
The question lands hard. I take a step closer. The distance between us drops to inches, the exact same proximity we held when I almost kissed her. Only this time, the air between us is charged with ice instead of heat.
"Yes," I say, keeping my voice low. "I don't break the law, Sam. I don't fake permits or climb fences or lie to security guards. I find legal ways to do my job when the official process is too slow or too rigid to make sense. There's a difference."
"Not to the people reading that log."
"The log says I accessed neighboring property. It doesn't say I did anything wrong."
"It doesn't have to." Her voice cracks, just slightly, on the last word.
I stop. She's not mad at me. She's worried about liability. I drop my shoulders and soften my stance. "What are you really worried about?"
Sam looks down at the paper, her fingers tracing the crease.
"My bosses knew you did this," she says, her voice dropping.
"They paired us together because they knew I would run interference.
My name is on this project." She doesn't look up.
"If you go rogue again, I don't just look out of control.
I look like a fool who couldn't manage her own team. "
There it is.
I don't see the commanding lead architect. I see the fourteen-year-old girl she told me about on the subway—the one terrified that if she doesn't hold everything perfectly together, the whole world falls apart.
I take a slow breath, all my defensive frustration instantly evaporating. "I'm not trying to blow up your systems."
"Then what are you trying to do?"
"My job. Well."
"By going around the people whose job it is to approve you?"
"By not waiting for permission to do what I already know is safe."
Sam shakes her head. "That's not how this works."
"That's how I work."
The wind picks up, rattling a metal panel somewhere behind us against its frame. Sam folds the paper one more time and puts it back in her pocket.
"We're tethered now," she says. "Your choices impact my credibility."
I nod. "I know."
"Do you?"
"Yes, I do."
She searches my face, looking for a lie. I try again.
"I'm not reckless. I calculate the risk. I get permission where I need it. I don't take stupid chances."
"But you don't wait."
"No. I don't wait."
She holds my gaze.
"I can't promise I'll always follow the process exactly the way it's written," I say. "But I can promise I won't do anything that puts your credibility at risk without telling you first."
"Meaning?"
"If I'm going to improvise, you get a heads-up. Before. Not after."
Sam goes still. She's weighing it, running scenarios in her head. Finally, she nods.
"One strike," she says. "If you surprise me once, you're done. I'll pull your access myself."
"Deal."
She holds my gaze for three more seconds, then turns and starts walking back toward the gate. "Finish the shoot," she says over her shoulder. "I'll wait over there. So I can’t count shutter clicks.”
I watch her go. Her stride is still tight, but her shoulders drop half an inch. I pick up my camera. The light is already changing.
***
The apartment is cold when I get back.
I drop my camera bag by the door and head straight for the desk where my laptop is still open from last night. The screen saver is running—black and white cityscapes I shot three years ago in Chicago. I tap the keyboard and the editing software blinks awake.
I plug in the memory card and start the import. While the progress bar crawls across the screen, I fill the kettle and set it on the two-burner stove that came with the sublet. The kettle starts to hiss just as the import finishes.
The thumbnails load in a grid, and I start scrubbing through them one by one.
The eastern boundary sequence is solid—clean lines, good contrast. It's the kind of work that makes a bid package look professional instead of desperate.
I linger on frame eighteen, the angle Sam questioned.
The one I would have shot from the pallet stack if she'd let me.
The shot would have been better from higher elevation. But I'm glad I didn't push it. It would have looked like I was testing her boundaries. I delete two underexposed frames, adjust the white balance on a third, and crop a fourth to tighten the composition.
My phone buzzes on the desk.
I glance at the screen. The subject line makes me stop.
3-Week Shoot — Dubai Commercial Development
I set down my coffee and open the email. The body text is short. My agent doesn't waste words.
Tom,
High-profile international project just came through. Luxury residential and mixed-use development in Dubai. They saw your Harbor District portfolio and want your architectural eye.
Three weeks on-site. Starts in four weeks. $45K flat rate plus travel and accommodations.
This is the kind of gig you don't turn down. Let me know by Monday and I'll lock it in.
I read it twice. Dubai. Three weeks. Forty-five thousand dollars.
I lean back in my chair. That covers my rent for a year, buys new gear, and buys the kind of freedom most people work five years to get. I've been chasing work like this for two years—the kind that puts my name in front of international developers and opens doors.
I scroll down to the dates listed at the bottom.
My stomach drops.
The shoot starts four weeks from now and runs for three. I pull up my calendar. The Harbor District timeline is color-coded: green for locked deliverables, yellow for flexible deadlines.
The final Board presentation is green. First week of the Dubai overlap. The photography review session is green. Second week.
If I take this job, I'm gone for the last two weeks of the project. Sam presents the final pitch alone or they pair her with someone else.
I close the calendar and look back at the email. The cursor pulses in my inbox. I hit Reply. The empty message window opens and I type: I'm in. Send me the contract.
My finger hovers over the Send button.
Forty-five thousand dollars.
I don't press it.
I open the calendar again and stare at the green blocks.
The old version of me would have hit send before finishing the first read.
He would have replied "yes," figured out the logistics later, and booked the flight that afternoon.
I've been doing this for ten years—saying yes, moving on, chasing the next thing.
I look at the photo on my screen—the dawn shot from this morning, frame eighteen. The one Sam and I debated before the argument. The light is perfect and the composition is tight. It works because we both pushed in different directions until it locked.
I close the reply window without sending. The email sits in my inbox, unanswered.
I look at the calendar again, then at the photo.
If I leave, I get my forty-five thousand dollars, my international profile, and my absolute freedom. But Sam presents alone. And I don't finish what we started.
I lean back in my chair. The room is quiet except for the hum of the laptop fan.
Ten years of running. Ten years of never staying in one place long enough to get attached to anything. That was the plan. That is who I am.
I save the editing file and close the laptop. The screen goes dark, leaving me sitting in the stillness.
The email is still waiting. I should send it. I should take the money and the exit door.
But for the first time in my life, I don't want to leave.