Chapter Three
“And, cut!”
I breathed a sigh of relief, wiping my brow with the back of my hand. The sun hung high in the sky. We’d gotten back to the dig site at about quarter after one, and even though the hottest part of the day was past, the thermometer still seemed to be reaching new heights.
The set had a different feel to it. Usually at the end of shooting a scene, even a small one, there would be something like a release from everyone on set. People would congregate and murmur, looking over the footage and adjusting equipment, or tearing down the set to bring it somewhere else. And sure, things were moving around, but the tone was different. The members of the crew spoke in quick, hushed spates. As the set moved, the motions seemed jerky, like everyone on the set had been replaced with a robot.
And, like a stony guardian, a police officer stood at the edge of the set. His badge gleamed in the sun, the edges of the star razor-sharp. He wore a baseball cap, and the brim concealed most of his face in shadow, giving him a sinister and brooding appearance. His gun hung in the holster at his hip, and while the officer had made no effort to reach for it, everyone noticed it, felt like they were going to be staring down its barrel if they so much as spilled a cup of water. I felt compelled to hide, but on a set as open as this one, there was nowhere.
“Cari,” a voice said behind me.
I turned around. It was Nolan. “Nolan,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I scratched the back of my neck. “Am I okay? I guess so, all things considered. How about you?”
“Just checking,” Nolan said quickly, glancing around. “Just making sure you were okay.”
“I’m fine,” I reiterated. “I mean it, everything is peachy.”
“Good. Let me know if things stop being fine.” Nolan tipped a piece of camera equipment over his shoulder and headed toward the site of the next scene.
I breathed heavily and made a beeline for the refreshment table. Jasper stood nearby. Before I’d even closed the distance, he was fishing a bottle of water from the cooler, twisting off the cap.
I accepted it gratefully, tipping it back. The cool, refreshing liquid sloshed into my belly. I felt like I’d been wandering the Sahara for the last two days. “I hate this,” I said under my breath, as though telling a secret.
“Hate what?” Jasper asked as he continued to scan the site like a hawk.
“This. I feel like we’re all under house arrest, like everyone is walking on eggshells.”
“It’s good,” Jasper said. “It means everything is under control.”
I took another drink of water. “It doesn’t feel that way,” I said. “It feels like a powder keg is about to explode. You know how when you were younger, you’d stretch out rubber bands until they were stretched as far as they could go? You could always tell when they were about to snap. That’s how this site feels to me today—like a rubber band that is about to snap.”
“I can’t relate,” Jasper said.
“No?”
Jasper shook his head. “Nah. I used to make guns out of rubber bands and shoot them at pretty girls.” He eyed me. “You’d have been shot a couple of dozen times by now, I think.”
I rolled my eyes. “Come on, Jasper, I’m being serious here.”
“I am, too.” He cast me that crooked smile. “If we were playing Dungeons and Dragons, I’d have slain a half dozen dragons to get your attention by now.”
“How did you ever get laid before me?” I leaned against the table. God, he was a geek. And I kind of liked it—liked that there was a wholly unexpected, not so cool side of him that he let me see. “You can’t protect me if you’re hitting on me.”
“I’m keeping my eye on the prize,” he said. “I’ve got you in my sights. Nothing can happen to you while I’m looking at you, right?”
“Right, I guess.”
“Right. So it’s a good thing if I keep my eye on you.” He gave me the elevator eyes. “And I’ll keep my eyes on you from head to toe.”
“Do whatever you have to do,” I said, finishing off the water bottle and tossing it into a nearby trash can. “I have to get ready for the next shot.”
I’d spun on my heel to follow the crew to the next scene when Jasper’s phone rang. I paused, looking back at him over my shoulder. His face remained stoic and solid as he spoke.
“Yeah? Speaking. Yeah? How’s he doing? No kidding? Yeah, I’ll see what I can do.”
He hung up.
“Your conversational skills are magnificent,” I told Jasper.
“You’ll never guess who that was.”
“I don’t know. Someone who wants to offer you a fantastic timeshare opportunity?”
“The hospital,” Jasper corrected. “It’s Daly. He woke up.”
I frowned. “Good for him. Send him an extra helping of Jell-O and put it on my tab.”
“No, Cari,” Jasper said. “He wants to see you.”
…
Ugh, hospitals.
Big, long, sterile halls. Nurses walking around with solemn faces—and always urgently, like the next emergency could be right around the corner, probably because the next emergency was around the corner. Patients in rooms, groaning and moaning and in some cases screaming or crying. And of course, doctors, with their fake smiles and their big, ten-inch needles and shiny metal tools that looked less like medical instruments and more like relics from a seventeenth century torture chamber—
“You seem tense,” Jasper said.
“Who, me?” I asked. “No, I love being in hospitals. There’s something about antiseptic and whitewashing that really gets me going. Can we get this over with, please?”
“Relax,” he said. “The guy just woke up. You talk to him like this, you’re going to give him a heart attack.”
“I’m not too worried about how much other people are stressed right now,” I said shortly. “I have my own stress to worry about. Hook me up to one of those blood pressure thingies, and it’ll probably explode.”
Jasper called me out. “I didn’t think you’d want to be hooked up to anything in here.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “So let’s get this over with. Is this the room? Tell me this is the room.”
“This is the room.”
Jasper gently pushed open the door and peered inside, his hand hovering near his crotch where his gun was tucked. He used his body to block the entryway until deeming the room clear, at which point he opened the door fully and let me inside.
“…and I’ll have you know, you’ve caused me no end of trouble, young lady.”
A doctor with long blond hair stood between Daly and I, but I’d recognize that tone anywhere. If Hollywood ever wanted to do a remake of the film Scrooge, I’d know just who to recommend.
“That’s Dr. Miller to you, sir.” The doctor’s voice was playful—she’d probably dealt with cranks like Daly before—but there was still an unmistakable edge to her tone.
“Yes,” Daly said. “Miller. Do you have anything else for me, Ms. Miller?” The doctor paused, and Daly sighed audibly. “Doctor Miller?”
“No, not right now. You should get some rest.” Dr. Miller turned to find Jasper and I standing there. “I’m sorry, I don’t think it’s a good time for Mr. Daly to be receiving visitors.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” Daly said. “Let ’em stay.”
Doctor Miller turned to him. “I really must recommend—”
“Doctor, I’ve been in this place for the last twelve hours. The rates you charge, this has cost me enough to put your kids through some fancy medical school to become doctors, just like dear old ma. Do you think I could have a few minutes with my friends?”
Doctor Miller sighed. “Fine.” She passed Jasper and I, giving us the evil eye. “I do hope they’ll be quick, however.”
“We’ll be quick,” I said meekly.
“Come, come, it’s good to see you,” Daly said, gesturing us over.
Oh, sure. I bet he said that to all the girls.
The room was one of those two-person rooms where there was a sliding curtain as a barrier between beds. The other patient seemed to have all the windows to himself, but I didn’t think it was unfair. Every now and then, the mystery patient groaned. He didn’t sound like he was in pain, just that he was in intense discomfort. As though sensing my thoughts, Daly gestured me close.
“That fella over there?” he said, with a mischievous grin. “Tried to eat a tin can. Chopped it all up with some machine and tried to eat the shavings. Got about halfway through before he developed a hell of a stomachache.”
“That’s…special,” I said.
Daly waved that off. “He’ll be fine. They pumped his stomach. Far as I know, they’re just waiting for the last of the lid to pass. Come, sit down.”
There were two seats facing the hospital bed. They looked sterile, like they’d been coated with some kind of antibacterial poison. I could practically smell it in the room.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I’ll stay standing.”
It had been easy to hate Daly all this time, when he wasn’t around. Now, seeing him in the hospital bed, it was a bit harder. He seemed to have aged by a decade over the last twelve hours, appearing even older and more decrepit than he had before. His movements seemed slower and more deliberate, and his body seemed almost skeletal—though, based on the empty plate and bowl on his tray, it wasn’t for a lack of food. His face was blotchy and bruised, with red streaks on his forehead and black bags under his eyes. Daly, ever the strong-but-silent type, seemed to wince as he moved, but made no effort to draw attention to his discomfort. Seeing him in this state made him hard to hate.
The patient in the next bed groaned.
“How are you feeling?” I ventured.
“Like a TV show squatted on my land and held up my development, then punched me in the face, that’s how I feel!” Daly said.
Okay, so maybe I could hate him a little without feeling guilty.
“Can we get to the point, Daly?” I said. “I’d like to get this out of the way…”
“All right, all right, no need to get all het up. God, you see an old man in a hospital bed and you take off like a jailbird who’s seen a police car.”
“Well, that, and what happened last night…”
“One thing at a time, honey,” he said, cutting me off. “About the site. You know, I was thinking. I got a wife. And she loves me. Just now, she’s down at the Chinese place up the street, picking me up some real food. None of this regurgitated cow shit they keep trying to feed me here. She’s a good woman. And my kids—they’re busy, they are, just like you. Ain’t got no time to see their old grandpa. Always out trying to save the world. Always somewhere to go, nowhere to be, spinning their wheels. But, fuck it. They’re mine. I love ’em. This here was a hard lesson from the man upstairs.”
At this, Daly laid his head back against the pillow and looked up at the ceiling. “Ah, as it’s always been. You see this in the shows on TV and in movies and whatnot. The old man reaching the end of his life and looking back and realizing that he’s spent his whole life working and missing the stuff that matters the most. Always struck me as cliché, but there’s some merit there.” Daly turned his head to look at us. “I got kids, and I got my woman, and I got my grandkids—I don’t need to be doing this kind of stuff anymore.” Daly chuckled to himself. “I ain’t as young as I used to be. Years ago, maybe I could have cleaned that guy’s clock, but not now. I don’t need this shit.”
I cleared my throat. “That guy,” I said. “So, you’re saying it was a guy?”
Daly nodded slowly, winced, and pressed the button for more morphine. “It was a guy.”
“Do you have a description?” Jasper asked from behind me.
Daly shook his head. “It’s all fuzzy. I know it was a guy, because I was ready to tear into him. I wouldn’t have reacted that way if it’d been a woman. Me and women—we don’t always get along, but I was brought up with the understanding that, while women have their place, it ain’t at the end of a man’s fist.” Daly thought it over for a moment. “At the end of a woman’s fist, maybe while they’re wrassling around in a bowl of Jell-O…now that’s all right.”
In the next bed, the patient groaned again. I barely held one back, myself.
“So it was a man,” I said, more to myself than to anyone else. “At least it’s something. We know it’s a man.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Daly said. “Said if he couldn’t have you, he was going to kill you. That was what got me so fired up. You might be a royal pain in the ass, Dunn, but a man who’ll lay a hand on a woman is no man at all.”
“What were you doing at Cari’s room, anyway?” Jasper asked. “I thought you couldn’t stand her.”
“I was there to show her the amount of money I was dumping into the project!” Daly exclaimed, before sputtering into a series of coughs. “Maybe talk some sense into her. I figured if you saw just how much money we were talking, you’d have a change of heart. It doesn’t matter anymore, though. Since this happened, with your ‘secret admirer’ or whatever you want to call him, it doesn’t matter. I’ve had enough of the business. I got a family.”
I rubbed my forehead. “So, that’s it, then? You know it was a man, but you don’t remember what he looks like? And he says if he can’t have me, he’s going to kill me?”
Daly nodded solemnly. I looked over my shoulder at Jasper, who met my gaze with his own stony, unreadable stare. “I guess it’s better than nothing,” I said, turning back to Daly.
“It’s more than you had,” Daly said.
“Well, thank you,” I said. “I guess we’ll have to work with it.”
“Sure, sure,” Daly said, scooping a cup from the tray and sipping at the contents through a straw. “Now get on out of here. My granddaughter’s going to be here soon, and I got to make myself pretty.”
Jasper and I turned around to leave. As I did so, Daly called after me: “That’s the stuff. Give me a wiggle of that ass on the way out!”
We stepped into the hallway and I rolled my eyes.