She should have said no. She should have stayed in her cozy Philadelphia-area condo, sipping co!ee, and reading the newspaper. She could have let herself take it easy for a change instead of working because she was afraid to miss a big story. If only she’d made a di!erent decision, she wouldn’t be in such a hot mess.

“Rose. Rose. Where are you?” Her colleague called over the boisterous crowd.

Some guy’s arm pushed against her mouth and most of one eye so she couldn’t respond. She raised her right arm to break free of the protestor’s grip, but he had a good hundred pounds on her. She was more concerned about her Nikon D6 and 200mm lens than she was about almost anything else.

Except for breathing.

The man’s shirt, smelling of sweat and a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, inched more into her mouth, further impeding her breathing. His beefy arm squashed the right side of her nose. She pushed again. Nothing. Panic battled for space in her oxygen-deprived lungs. She sucked in a whistle of wind through her remaining open nostril, then shouted the way her self-defense coach had taught her. It was challenging with a mouthful of arm. She pushed with all her might. The protestor jerked away. Gravity pulled Rose toward the dark gray pavement between Philadelphia’s City Hall and busy Market Street.

She threw out her right arm to break her fall. An elbow jabbed into her ribs. She moaned at the searing pain and loss of control. At that moment, two muscular hands reached under her arms and kept her from falling. Rose breathed a sigh of relief. It didn’t last long. Those hands pulled away as another body spun her around so quickly all she saw was a blur of dark blue union T-shirts. Rose grabbed her camera tighter to her chest and felt the earth drop away again. Her shoulder screamed as her body twisted and her right shoulder swiveled in a way it wasn’t made to.

Rose hit the pavement. Hard.

A loud crack preceded the pain in her right arm as it took the brunt of her one hundred thirty-!ve pounds. Something shattered. A piece of hard plastic—likely part of the lens cap or the camera body itself—pierced Rose’s side as she collapsed.

Rose lay on the pavement, the front end of a dirty sneaker !lling her vision. The last voice she heard as her eyes flickered closed was her colleague calling out again.

“Oh my god. Rose!”