Chapter Fourteen
Kate stood up and addressed her meeting. “A minor emergency. It sounds like we’ve got the first two scenes scheduled. Given the short hours we’ll have for filming, that might be as ambitious as we can get. If you can all go back and figure out what night scenes you can be ready for soonest, we’ll continue with the night schedule for now. No need to kill everyone’s sleep schedule with too many changes.”
They all stood up and stretched.
“Email me your best schedules and I’ll amalgamate from there,” Kate told them as she followed them out of the trailer.
She hurried over to the extras tent, which would be empty today and rounded the canvas to the front and ducked inside. It was a well organized chaos inside, with dressing areas, lighted mirrors, tables and chairs, racks of costumes and the processing area – a big empty area fronted by a long bench where the P.A.s sat with their laptops and processed the extras through the agency-supplied databases, checking them in and out to ensure they all were on-site and got paid. Stories about extras signing up for three movies in one day then taking the day off to go to the beach and collecting three days’ worth of pay at the end of the day had been around since the golden age of Hollywood. Running their own database check was one way of circumventing those types of scams. Only the extras that were actually on-site and in costume got paid.
Adrian was standing in the big open area. So was the computer guy. Kate reached for his name. Henry. Terry. And there was a third guy between them. A small man, which made Kate realize that Terry was a lot taller than she had first noticed. He was at least as tall as Adrian.
The man standing between them was short, with shorn greying hair that was thinning on top. But he had sharp clear eyes that from where she stood seemed either light blue or grey. But his face was unlined and his neck, disappearing inside the leather jacket, was thick with muscle.
“What’s going on?” Kate demanded, looking from Terry’s angry face, to Adrian’s carefully neutral one. The guy between them seemed unconcerned.
Terry shook the man’s arm and for the first time Kate noticed that both Adrian and Terry had hold of an arm each.
“Terry caught him rooting around in the server trailer,” Adrian said.
“He left the door open,” Terry added.
Kate could feel tiredness pulling at her. All this drama over a minor case of unlawful entry? But there was more to it than that – the fury boiling around the room told her that much. She couldn’t afford to blow it off or she would offend someone. “Explain it to me,” she said to Terry, who was the most upset one in the room. Tent.
“The sand storm,” Terry said, as if that explained everything.
She frowned. “What about it?”
“He left the door open and the wind blasted the sand into the computers. They’re delicate. More delicate than your average laptop. They’re supposed to be kept in cool, perfectly dry conditions, which is why they get their own air conditioner and generator. The sand didn’t do them any favours at all. The network is down. The sand scoured the first two towers.”
Kate grabbed for her cellphone, alarmed. Of course, she reasoned to herself, she was worried about everyone not being able to conduct business. How this would impact morale.
“Relax, your cellphone reception isn’t carried by the network. But if you have apps that demand a Wi-Fi connection, they won’t work,” Terry told her.
She put her phone back in her pocket. She hadn’t even thought about Wi-Fi-based applications.
The first thing she had flipped open was Twitter.
What had she been thinking of?
Kate glanced at Adrian. “How did you get involved?”
“I saw them scuffling, outside the trailer.” He shrugged. “I helped out.”
She looked at the mystery man. “And who the hell are you?”
The man grinned. “Bob Gunther. Senior Writer for Hollywood Tales.”
“A journalist? Let’s see your credentials.”
His smile grew wider. “That’s for the old school. Tales is a news site.”
“A blog newspaper,” Terry interpreted with a snort. “How the hell did you get a seat on the press bus without credentials?”
“Just lucky, I guess,” Bob replied, his grin positively radiating good cheer.
“Then let’s see some I.D., asshole,” Adrian growled, reaching into the man’s jacket.
“Hey!” Gunther called, his smile evaporating. He pushed Adrian’s hand out of the way. “Easy, dude.”
“Now,” Adrian demanded.
“Okay. Okay.” He pulled a wallet out of his jacket and flipped it open so they could see the California driver’s license in the clear plastic window. Robert Peter Gunther.
He flipped the wallet closed again. “Happy, now?”
“Not by a long chalk,” Kate replied. “What were you doing in the server trailer?”
“My job. No one goes in there much, except this tall dude, so I thought I’d check it out and find out what gives.”
“You didn’t think to ask?” Terry said. “Anyone could have told you what was in there.”
“And now you’ve destroyed our Internet connection and made a lot of people very unhappy indeed,” Kate added. “Including me. Exactly what did you think you might find while you were investigating, Mr. Gunther?” She tried hard to keep her tone reasonable, but it sounded tense even to her.
The problem was, they needed to suck up to the press in every way possible, because every inch of exposure and every minute of air time on the major networks was thousands of dollars extra at the box office.
But because each network, newspaper, magazine, on-line site, blog and radio station was in sharp competition for a scoop, a photo, an angle, each representative and each camera lens jostled and fought in sharp competition with the other and the whole press corps behaved more like a pack of rabid hyenas than responsible journalists.
Expecting them to stay in the hastily erected media tent and feed from the official releases and interviews Mary-Ann was working nearly around the clock to provide to meet their ceaseless demands was asking them to go against their nature.
Kate found them popping up on the set just as she was filming and there had been more than one scene ruined because of a whirring camera or flash going off at the wrong time, either distracting the actors or the sound being caught on the soundtrack, forcing a reshoot. Bob was just the latest – and admittedly the worst – in a long line of petty incidents involving wandering journalists poking around at whatever caught their interest.
Tripping over them back here at the main site, once they were back after the day’s filming was more tiresome, as most of the cast and crew considered themselves off duty when they returned to the campsite and didn’t have their public guard up.
And now this. No Internet. No connection back to the big world. No relief from the small number of slightly whacky creatives they were all forced to keep company with. No entertainment. No distractions. No communications. No shopping, no browsing. Unless Terry managed to pull off some small miracle and get it up and running again. She would personally pay him a month’s salary in bonus if he did. At least.
Kate stared at Bob Gunther and tried not to hate the man for the job he did. She needed his kind, but she despised them. He didn’t give a damn about the mess he had created. As far as he was concerned, it was a small price to pay in search of his story.
Gunther was studying her. “You never know where you might dig up a story, now, do you? I heard an interesting one about Patrick Sauvage’s sweetheart deal with you. Only it wasn’t so sweetheart, was it? You made him wear a human watch dog in case he tries to climb inside another bottle or syringe.”
Kate managed to ride out her shock and keep her face steady. “You answer my questions, Gunther. You’re the one who damaged property. It’s called breaking and entering. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”
He made a move. Perhaps it was the start of a lunge toward the door behind her, and freedom. But that was all he made, was the beginning of a move. Adrian and Terry both latched onto him, their hands around his arms and a hand each on his shoulders.
“No, you don’t,” Adrian growled.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Terry added.
“Fuck you,” Gunther muttered. “All the weird shit going on in this place…I was just finding out. It’s my job!”
Kate almost laughed. “Weird? If Patrick Sauvage has a watchdog, Gunther, and I’m not admitting to anything at all, here, let’s make that very plain. If he had a watchdog, he wouldn’t be the first actor in Hollywood to have one. I think calling it weird is reaching a bit. Are you that desperate for a story?”
Gunther cocked his head to one side and just looked at her. Kate realized with a touch of cold surprise that there was pity in his expression. “Lady, you’ve got no idea what’s going on under your own nose. And this is your set.”
Kate wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh at his melodrama, or be offended. Or scared. Was there something happening on her set that she didn’t know about? Of course there were always petty little dramas – someone was always secretly fucking someone married or otherwise inappropriate. Scandals and gossip she tended to let run beneath her notice unless they were impacting on morale or efficiency, or the production of the movie. But from Gunther’s tone, this was something bigger.
Or was he simply trying to justify his own actions?
“There’s no need to be so rude,” Terry said, removing her need to respond.
“Nah, I don’t have to,” Gunther said, still looking at her. “I can see from her face she hasn’t got a fucking clue what I’m talking about.”
Adrian shoved the back of his shoulder.
It was meant, Kate was sure, as a warning to Gunther to keep a civil tongue in his head. But the shove was not a light one and Gunther stumbled forward. As he stumbled, he reached into his jacket.
It was the way he was reaching. Not high up for something that would be tucked into an inner pocket. But around, for something near the ribs…
“Gun!” she screamed even before she saw the weapon he was pulling.
It happened very fast.
Terry, amazingly, leapt for Gunther. It was a whole-body movement that lifted him off the ground in a gymnastic motion that covered the four feet and widening space between them.
Adrian was moving, too. Past Gunther and straight for her. She had no idea what he intended, but he slammed into her with an impact that lifted her off her feet. Then she knew.
There was no time to be shocked or horrified. Or protest. She couldn’t stop what he was doing because her feet weren’t touching the ground. She had no leverage.
Adrian was holding her, moving her out of the gunman’s way, using his body as a shield at the same time.
Presidential style.
The gun went off. It sounded a lot louder than she thought it might, but not nearly as loud as they rigged them to sound in the movies. Remember that for later, a tiny voice whispered.
“Whore’s son!” Terry exclaimed. His voice was somehow deeper and definitely angrier. Adrian came to a halt with her in his arms.
Outside, barely heard over the howling of the wind, she heard someone call out. “Was that a gun?”
For a long second or two, no one moved inside the tent. The only sound was the screaming banshee voice of the storm outside, making the loose sides of the tent snap and beat against the poles, testing the strained ropes and pegs.
Adrian put her on her feet. Kate realized she was shaking.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked, lifting her chin to look at her face.
“Did you hurt me?” She choked back her laughter, knowing it was a shortcut to hysteria. Instead she stepped around him, tamping down on the retrograde panic trying to claw its way out of her brain and heart.
Terry was on the ground with Gunther. Amazingly, he had him locked in a choke hold, his arms pinned. The gun was next to Terry’s hip, well out of Gunther’s reach.
“Who the fuck are you, really?” Kate demanded.
Terry got to his feet, dragging Gunther up with him. It was a movement that should have required enormous amounts of strength, but it didn’t seem to tax the geeky computer whizz very much at all. “We don’t have time for that,” he said flatly. Firmly. “That shot was heard.”
Adrian gently squeezed her shoulder. “He’s right. We need to get this guy out of the way and pretend that nothing happened at all. With the storm, they’ll think they imagined it. Terry, is there somewhere you can stash him for a while?”
Kate looked from one to the other of them, feeling a touch of bewilderment and buckets of concern flooding her. “You don’t mean to cover this up, do you?”
“Yes,” Adrian said flatly. “I’ll explain later.”
She felt herself drawing backwards. She didn’t quite step back. Then she caught hold of herself. The time to wrestle with this was later. Adrian had proved, so far, that he understood her priorities and concerns at least as well as she did. She had to trust him at least for now.
After all, he’d just stepped in the way of what might have been a lethal bullet for her.
The fine trembling threatened to overwhelm her again, but she shook it off with another deep breath and grabbed Adrian’s arm. “You can’t let Terry try to handle Gunther all alone. You go with him. I’ll stay here and handle anyone who comes to find out about gunshot sounds.”
Adrian glanced at Terry. Terry wasn’t quite smiling, but Kate knew expressions and nuances of expressions. She spent all day behind a viewfinder studying them, waiting for just the right inflection of a smile or a frown or a wistful look to appear to know when she had got her perfect take.
Terry was trying not to smile, she’d bet her life on it.
Adrian shook his head. “I’ll get them out of the tent the back way. I’ll be back in less than a minute. Stay here.” He slipped sideways passed Terry and Gunther and around the rack of Byzantine warrior costumes, heading for the back of the tent. Kate assumed he was going to lift the bottom of the tent, to let Terry shove Gunther out under it.
Terry touched the gun with his sneakered foot. “Don’t forget to hide this,” he said. Then he force-marched Gunther around the end of the rack.
Kate picked up the gun and flipped it over to check that the safety was on. Then she shoved it down the back of her jeans and pulled her shirt over the top of it. It would have to do for now.
Barely ten seconds later a shadow crossed the opening of the tent. One of the lighting crew – Kate wasn’t even sure of his name, but she knew his face – took a step into the tent and saw her.
“Oh…hi, Kate. Sorry to bother.” He frowned. “Did you hear a gun go off, a minute ago?”
“A gun?” She raised a brow. “There are no guns on this movie.”
“I could have sworn…” He shook his head. “This storm has got me jumpy, I guess. Thanks.” He backed out and was gone.
The shakes were welling up inside her again and this time, she let them come.
“Kate,” Adrian said, just behind her.
Damn, he could move silently!
She turned and found herself turning right into his arms. She had no objections to that at all. Adrian pulled her up against him and simply held her.
It felt astonishingly good to be held hard and tight like that. Her shaking subsided. Kate wound her arms around his neck and lifted her head away from his shoulder so she could look at him.
Unlike Terry, Adrian’s expression was utterly closed. He was giving nothing away. And he was watching her for clues, too.
For three days, she had seen nothing but this wary watchfulness from him. Ever since Garrett had kissed her.
There was no way he could know about the kiss, so it was merely his instincts that made him wary. Adrian’s radar was far too sensitive. By telling him to stay away that single night and drinking herself into oblivion, she had told him far too much.
Yet he had just stepped between her and what might have been a bullet with her name on it.
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
“Hide Gunther away? I promise a much longer explanation later, Kate, but the short answer is, he has nothing to do with your movie and he is the last sort of publicity you need right now.”
She shook her head. “I trust your gut on Gunther. That’s not what I—”
“You do?” Finally, finally, he was showing a genuine expression. Surprise.
“You’ve proved a few times you understand me better than I suspected anyone has a right to, given how easy I make it to get up close and personal.” She grimaced. “I tried to warn you, didn’t I, that hanging with me for the entire shoot would test you in ways you probably couldn’t imagine.”
“You did,” Adrian agreed. “But having me here was supposed to preclude the need for other men, Kate.” He said it evenly, without bitterness or anger. Like it was just a fact.
Her gut and heart seemed to turn cold and heavy. She stared at him. “What is it do you think I’ve been doing?”
His smile was tiny. But it was there. “You’re not fucking anyone else. I’m not stupid. But you’re thinking about it.”
All the air seemed to evaporate out of her lungs. She just stared at him.
“Under the circumstances,” he continued, as if they were chatting casually. “I figured that someone has to be Garrett, which I find wildly ironic.”
Kate tried to swallow and found that her mouth was utterly dry. She realized that she was staring at Adrian with no schooling of her expression. He was probably reading on her face every last shred of horror and dismay she was feeling.
Adrian smiled again, and gave a tiny shrug. “I know you, Kate,” he finished.
“I thought I was starting to know you,” she whispered. “How can you be so calm about this?”
He considered it for a moment. “I have a long range view of things, I guess.” His smile returned, this time warmer and with more humour in it. “Besides, as your personal sex toy, it’s my role to know exactly what you want, isn’t it?”
“That joke is getting old,” she muttered.
“It’s the conditions you insisted prevail if I came on site with you.”
“If that’s the case then why are we arguing about what I want?” she asked. “If it’s really your job to give me what I want, then technically, shouldn’t you give me Garrett?”
Even as she said it, she hated herself. It was a cheap shot. And it was a false argument that she was using just to score a point. But his calmness in the face of her duplicity was stirring huge vats of guilt and she didn’t like that feeling at all. A petty low blow felt like a way to even the score. But now she had lashed out, she knew it wasn’t worth it.
The neutral, wary mask dropped over his face once more, tightening his features. “You want him that bad?” he asked quietly.
“No. No, Adrian, I don’t.” She rested her hand against his chest. “Please forgive me. That was…it was inexcusable. You’re making me feel like a piece of dog meat, and you’ve just done the most heroic, the most marvellous thing…”
He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“The gun. You stepped in front of me.”
His frown smoothed out. “That wasn’t heroic.”
“Yes, it was,” she insisted. “You could have been shot — what is it?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. Kate, heroes are the ones who go into battle scared out of their fucking minds about dying, but doing it anyway because they want to serve their country, or fight for a cause they know is just, or just the right side of the war. What I did was simply…expedient.”
“Not to me, it wasn’t.”
He blew out his breath and looked at her. “I give up,” he said, ruefully.
“Do that.” She slid the hand she still had resting on his chest up to stroke his cheek. “For a sex toy, you argue far too much.”
“I thought you were sick of that joke?”
“I think you stopped being a sex toy three days ago, Adrian.”
“What happened?” he asked, his voice low.
“Garrett kissed me.”
She smothered his quick inhale with her fingertips, and hastened to add, “He kissed me and I realized how much I’d have to give up, if he did more than that. And I knew I wasn’t willing to give up you.”
He drew in a deep, slow breath. His expression didn’t change, but she felt him change. It was there in his eyes. An intense sort of focus. Behind it lay all sorts of emotion. And it was for her.
She shivered. “Kiss me, Adrian. I’m sick of you not kissing me. It’s time.”
“You’re going to be very bad for me, Kathrine Lindenstream,” he whispered, just before his lips touched hers.
It was everything she had hoped Adrian’s kiss might be. His lips were surprisingly soft, but there was a driving force behind them – call it passion, lust, or just the iron will of his personality. His arms tightened around her and his body became her prop as she melted against him like butter in July. His tongue swept into her mouth, thrusting. Kate throbbed with renewed need at the implied promise.
The kiss may have lasted for seconds or minutes. Kate wasn’t sure. But when Adrian finally released her lips and lifted his head from hers to look at her, she had genuinely lost track of time. She found herself smiling broadly. “I can’t believe I waited so long for that.”
His mouth curled up in a smile, too. “That’s one of the nicest things you’ve ever told me.”
She reached for the fastening on his jeans, her throbbing body too primed and ready for her to ignore.
Adrian caught her hand. “I need to take care of Gunther,” he said. “Terry is watching him, but dealing with him permanently is a two-man job.”
“Permanently?” she repeated, all sorts of horrible possibilities occurring to her.
“Nothing illegal,” Adrian assured her, his thumb stroking her cheek. “But you shouldn’t know the details.”
“Plausible deniability? You’re joking.”
He grimaced. “I wish I wasn’t.”
“Now you’re really worrying me. Who is Gunther if he has nothing to do with my movie?”
“You really don’t want to know, Kate. Trust me on this. If you keep asking, you’ll end up with information you really wish you didn’t know about. It won’t let you sleep nice at night.”
She licked her lips. “I already don’t sleep.”
“You do, if I’m there,” he replied. “So let me go fix this so I can be there.” He kissed her again, a quick, but not light, press of his lips to hers. Then he turned her and pushed her toward the tent entrance. “Go on. Go do what you do. Be normal.”
She snorted. “Define ‘normal’.” But she kept walking, anyway. A few steps on, though, she nearly stumbled and turned back to ask a thousand more questions. Only one thing kept her moving toward the tent entrance: the fact that Adrian had shielded her. There was no way to ascribe any motive to that single action other than a desire to protect her. Ergo, he meant no harm to her. She had to trust him.
But she longed to turn back to demand to know why there was blood on the temporary flooring at just about the same place where he would have been when the shot had been fired.
And she hadn’t seen his back since that moment. He had kept it turned away from her.