CHAPTER ONE
California, present day
Standing in his garage, Rhett Bryan elbowed the door of his Maserati Gran Turismo the rest of the way open, juggling a leather messenger bag, a banana, and the protein smoothie that would get him through a production meeting, dress rehearsals, and a quick lunch with Skye Lauren, his soon-to-be next conquest. Or at least he hoped it would swing that way. The up-and-coming actress would look good on his arm for the Emmys in a few weeks. Variety had named her the “it” girl last year. Her star was on the rise . . . and her legs weren’t bad, either.
“Mr. Bryan, should I drop off the dry cleaning?” his housekeeper, Marta, asked, appearing at his side while drying her hands on the scrubs she wore in lieu of a traditional housekeeper’s garb. He liked that she didn’t wear the fussy uniforms some wore.
“Please do. Oh, and make sure the new dark-gray suit goes out. I need it for a meeting early next week.” He’d had the Italian suit made for him that spring when he’d taken a train to Naples from Cannes. The solitary sojourn had helped him decompress from the film festival he’d attended with some studio execs who he hoped would finance his new venture. He liked the way the suit, crafted by a wizened, fourth-generation tailor, made him feel—impeccable, powerful, rooted. That was the image he wanted to cultivate, a much different one from the loveable goof he played on his late-night talk show.
“Yes, sir. Have a good day,” Marta said as he climbed inside his car.
He gave his usual salute, glad he’d hired the unflappable woman last year. His house sat in the Hollywood Hills, an excellent example of a midcentury modern built by a disciple of Wright. The four-bedroom house was modest for someone who had two Emmys and a late-night show on a major network, but Rhett loved the clean lines, the white-oak built-ins, and the louvered windows that opened to an incredible view of the canyon. Sometimes he rolled his bar cart out to the patio, made a martini, and turned on Sinatra, re-creating a time when the Rat Pack reigned with their fedoras and undone bow ties.
Yeah, he had a vivid imagination, but it had served him well over the past fifteen years he’d lived in LA. He was number one in his market and positioning himself to enter the world of feature films with a new production company.
His phone buzzed as he wound down his street, tossing a wave to an older couple walking their Afghan hound. The dog wore a fuzzy pink collar with rhinestones. Only in LA.
“What’s up, Stevo?”
“JT can’t make it for the rap video bit. Got a bad summer cold.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Nope. Thank God we didn’t promo it. I can try to tap someone else, but it’s short notice.” Steve Ermine booked the talent for Late Night in LA with Rhett Bryan, but even Steve couldn’t do anything about sick celebrities.
“Sucks he got the flu ’cause that bit was gold. Viral material. Wait, what about doing it with Bieber next week? Let’s switch the sketches and do the karaoke thing with Melissa McCarthy. She’s good at improvising. Put in a call to her assistant and see if we can clear it.”
“On it,” Steve said.
“Anything else?”
“Nah, we’re good.”
“I’ll be there in thirty. Maybe forty, depending on if I run into delays. Call back if Melissa can’t do the sketch, and we’ll put a writer on sub material. Someone’s gonna earn his paycheck.”
“Or hers.”
Rhett smiled, remembering Steve had three daughters. “Right.”
Steve hung up and Rhett sighed. He liked working with Timberlake because the dude was straight-up cool and knew how to play off Rhett, but Bieber had matured enough to recognize that self-deprecating humor endears an entertainer to a broader audience. After a period of screwing up, the pop star had finally gotten his shit together.
Rhett tapped the navigation screen and clicked on his preferred music for the drive into the studio. Retro country.
No one would guess that the slick and funny Rhett Bryan liked to sing along with Barbara Mandrell and Merle Haggard, yet Rhett knew you could take the boy out of rural Carolina, but you couldn’t take Carolina out of the boy. Something about singing along to the music that had poured from his grampy Pete’s tinny radio centered Rhett. He lived in California and rubbed elbows with the grossly rich and too famous, but his audience wasn’t made up of Beverly Hills socialites. His audience was made up of mechanics with grease beneath their nails and housewives who’d left a sink full of dishes to watch him tell jokes and interview people who’d forgotten what it felt like to scrub a toilet or drink a non-craft beer. It served him well to remember who he’d once been—just a South Carolina small-town boy with big dreams and his radio tuned to Garth Brooks.
The late morning was typical of a Southern California summer—bursts of hibiscus and green palms against an Easter-egg-blue sky. He wound through the streets, leaving his quiet neighborhood to join the battalions of shiny convertibles and Smart cars marching toward purpose. He slid on his aviator sunglasses and opened the sunroof. Days like this, he could hardly remember sultry southern nights with biting no-see-ums buzzing around his head. He could almost forget the thick palmettos and the Spanish moss dripping from the interlocked oaks. But the country music reminded him.
God, he loved California.
No, he loved his life. He was living a dream—the one he’d set his eye on during his freshman year of college, when he’d tried stand-up and found out he was pretty damned good. He’d studied classic Carson and dissected Leno and Letterman. Interning, writing, then performing on other late-night shows and in comedy clubs were stair steps to the dream offer that had come three years ago. Rhett Bryan was the youngest guy on late night . . . even if Jimmy Fallon looked younger.
He braked as he came to a red light, picked up the banana, and peeled it. He had worked out before showering and dressing for the day. He always had a smoothie and a banana on the way in. Once he made it through meetings and a brief rehearsal, adrenaline would see him through the rest. After the show, he’d have a bigger meal. Maybe a steak. Or rare tuna.
The light turned green and he took off, roaring down Franklin, heading toward the studio that sat on Hollywood Boulevard. Patsy Cline crooned about weeping willows as a blinking yellow arrow warned of construction ahead.
“Damn it,” Rhett muttered under his breath as he shifted lanes, doing a quick survey of the area. If he hooked a turn to his left, he might be able to circumnavigate the construction and save precious time. The neighborhood was a collection of lower-income apartments and overpriced duplexes but would kick him onto Hollywood Boulevard in a few easy turns. If he was lucky and didn’t run into a lot of other people doing exactly the same thing.
Rhett had a good sense of direction and kept the blur of the elevated 101 in sight as he wove through the narrow streets. Please don’t let me get stonewalled by a dead end. I need to review the script and talk to Bonnie about audience participation. I need to remind an intern to screen a few guys, find the perfect person who won’t get bent out of shape if he gets a little green slime in his hair.
Reaching down to the cup holder, Rhett grabbed his protein drink and gave it a hard shake. Sliding a glance toward the carton in his hand, he grimaced. “Ah, crap. Effing strawberry?”
His sigh of disgust amplified into a yelp of surprise as something darted toward his car. A blur of red, a flash of brown.
“What the—” He stomped his brakes, making the car squeal and fishtail. The sound of his car thumping into whatever the blur was made his heart lurch, his stomach immediately cramp.
Whatever he’d slammed into, his front tire had rolled over. His car rocked to the left before his seat belt jerked him back into the smooth leather.
Rhett slammed the car into park with hands that shook so hard that they couldn’t be his. His legs flushed hot as a thrum of adrenaline vibrated his body. Darting a glance toward where the blur had come from, he met the stunned face of what looked to be a ten-year-old boy. Their gazes locked, and something cold slithered into Rhett’s stomach. “Oh God.”
Only a second had passed, but an eternity stretched in front of him.
What had he hit? A dog?
God, please let it be a dog. It had to be a dog. Or a cat. A cat would be good. Or not good. But better than—
The boy’s mouth opened and closed. Then abject horror flashed on the child’s face, relaying that what lay beneath the car wasn’t a dog. Or a cat. Hot acid boiled up into Rhett’s throat. He was going to vomit.
He pressed a hand against his mouth, begging his body to obey the dictates of his mind. Hold it together. Get out of the car. You’re an adult. React. Deal.
Yet his body wouldn’t move. The only sound he heard was his heart beating in his ears and the muffled something beneath his car.
A piercing scream jarred him from his trance, forcing him to unlock his frozen body. Somehow, he opened the car door. He wasn’t conscious of climbing into suffocating heat, but suddenly he stood outside.
“Dios mio,” a woman screamed, running toward him, passing him. “My baby. My baby.”
Rhett rounded the car and nearly fell to his knees.
He couldn’t unsee the sight that met him. Pink high-tops with glitter laces. Legs encased in tight jeans jerking beneath his car.
“Oh Jesus no,” someone said.
Rhett realized it was his voice.
The boy who’d locked eyes with him reached down and picked up the soccer ball that bumped against the curb. Then the child sat down hard, his thin arm falling helplessly beside him as he turned away, clutching the ball to his gut like a pillow.
A rush of movement came from his right—the woman falling to her knees, pulling at the child beneath his car, sobbing. “Josefina, meu bebe, meu bebe.”
Blood bloomed from beneath his tire, crimson ribbons unchecked by the small brown hand curled into a fist, a fist that fell open. Little brown hands with pink fingernails.
Rhett began to shake harder. What should he do?
911.
Call 911.
More yelling. Sobs. Screams. Horror.
Rhett lurched toward his open door and grabbed the cell phone sitting in the door pocket.
“911. What’s your emergency?” The dispatcher’s voice was nasally.
“Send an ambulance. Now. Hurry.” His breath came in spurts. He couldn’t breathe. The air was too thick. And his heart banged too hard against his ribs. It wasn’t supposed to do that. Maybe he was having a heart attack. Or maybe he was about to pass out.
“Sir, what’s your emergency? Can you give me an address?”
“I’m not at my house. I’m at . . . where is this?” he yelled at a man running toward his car.
The man’s eyes rolled wildly as he advanced. “Oh my God. Sweet Jesus. What have you done?”
“I just turned off Franklin. By the . . . oh shit . . . where is this?” Rhett said, panicking, searching for a clue about where he was. Several yards away he saw a street sign. “North Kingsley. It’s North Kingsley. Hurry. Please, God, hurry.”
He heard riffling on the other end, clicking and stuff rattling. The dispatcher made another call and then said, “Sir, can you give me your name? Are you calling from your number?”
“My name’s Rhett Bryan. Please hurry. There’s been an accident. A child ran out in front of my car.”
“Rhett Bryan?”
“Yes. Please hurry.”
“I have someone en route, sir.”
“Thank you,” he said, feeling a small measure of relief. The initial shock tumbled into absolute horror.
He’d hit a child. He’d run over a child. Oh God.
“Rhett, can you tell me more details about the accident?” Her voice softened, as if she could sense what had happened. As if she could see the blood, feel the thud of a body against his car. Maybe she was sincere, or maybe dispatchers practiced stuff like this. It was a weird thing to wonder in such a terrible moment.
On wobbly legs, Ryan shuffled toward the side of his car. The wailing woman, who wore shorts and a paint-splattered T-shirt, pulled at the child’s legs, sobbing and muttering words in a language he couldn’t understand.
“I was driving down the street and something came at me. She was chasing a ball. A soccer ball.” His voice cracked on the sob that tore from him. “A little girl. Oh God, it was a little girl. I didn’t see her. She came out of nowhere. I don’t know what to do. She’s under my car. I don’t think we should move her. I think my car’s on her.”
His legs buckled and he crumbled to the hot asphalt. From the corner of his eye, he saw someone with a phone aimed toward him. It wasn’t uncommon. People filmed him all the time, taking covert pictures or asking for autographs. But not in a moment like this. Never during something like this.
“What do I do?” he asked the dispatcher. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Can you tell if the child’s breathing? Is she conscious?”
“She’s under my car. There’s blood and . . . I can’t look. Please, it’s bad.”
“Okay, sir, paramedics are on their way. Stay calm.”
Sirens sounded in the background as more people clumped together, speaking rapid-fire, stunned words he couldn’t understand. He’d never felt more alone.
The dispatcher was silent for a moment, but he could hear her tapping on her keyboard. Finally, she asked, “Sir, can you see the ambulance?”
“I can hear them.” His throat closed up and he could feel panic close in on him. Breathing was hard, darkness skated in . . . then back out.
“Good. Just a few minutes more, Rhett.” Apology shaded her voice.
Seconds later, a police car arrived, pounding feet, baying sirens, wails of grief. The dispatcher hung up. He stared at his phone, refusing to look at his car. At the broken headlight. Bent fender. Life bleeding onto the asphalt.
Someone pulled at his arm. “Sir?”
“I can’t. I can’t move,” he said.
“Sir, stand up. I need to move you,” a policewoman said. “Over here, please.”
He told his legs to move. Tilting forward, he crawled, eventually getting his feet beneath him. When he stood, his legs shook so badly, he could hardly support his weight.
He should have done something. He should have helped. Maybe CPR. Something.
But he knew. God, he knew. CPR wasn’t going to work. He knew this the same way he knew the sun would set that evening.
Sobs shook his shoulders. “Oh God. I’m so sorry.”
The policewoman tugged his elbow. “Sir, let’s get someone to check you out.”
“No, help her. I’m not hurt. I’m okay.”
But he wasn’t okay.
Rhett Bryan would never be okay again.