by Sam Cameron
She thought fast. “Too much money, too much unoriginality, too much reliance on opening weekend box office instead of long-term economic viability.”
Charlie squinted at Michael Lake, who was huddled with the cinematographer and one of the camera operators. “So you think cheap independent filmmaking is the wave of the future?”
“It’s the wave right now.”
“It’s a wave that’ll drown you,” he scoffed. “My roommate and her boyfriend, they maxed out their credit cards and borrowed from his parents to make an indie film in Los Angeles. Nine months of backbreaking work, hoping to get it into Sundance. No dice. Sank without a trace.”
The sun glared right into Robin’s eyes. She wished she’d thought to bring her sunglasses, but they were back at Lina’s condo. Everyone else on the crew had definitely remembered theirs. “You’re from L.A.?”
“Some of us, yeah,” he said. “Don’t move there. It’s hell. If the smog doesn’t kill you, the traffic and unemployment and posers will.”
More scenes, more retakes. Robin began to long for the nice cool corridors of the Bookmine. She couldn’t think of anything interesting to report for when she eventually posted to her blog. Filmmaking was a long, tedious, meticulous process that eventually came together with music and special effects and judicious editing, but for right now meant she was getting sunburned and dehydrated.
By three o’clock, Liam’s scenes were over, but he still had interviews to do. Cayleigh rotated a steady group of reporters under the awning where he sat. Robin hovered on the periphery. Liam was by turns charming, snarky, swaggering, and thoughtful as he answered the same kinds of questions, over and over again. More than once, he was asked about how he felt about Karen as his new costar.
“She’s got a great energy,” he said. “She brings a whole new angle to a scene that you’ve never thought of before.”
Between reporters, Liam sipped from a water bottle and sucked on ice cubes. He’d left the sling off and it was obvious from the way he rubbed his arm that he was feeling some pain. On one hand, Robin admired his work ethic. On the other, he was clearly an idiot. She palmed her phone several times and finally called Austin.
“How is he?” Austin demanded.
“Maybe he’s pushing himself too far.”
“Damn fool has his phone off.” Austin paused for a moment. “All right, I’m going to send you a text message and I want you to show it to him. But you’re not to read it yourself, understand?”
The message came a moment later. Liam was busy with the lady from Entertainment Weekly. Robin heroically resisted reading the words. Her phone buzzed again, proof of Austin’s impatience. Again, she waited. When the reporter’s time was up, Cayleigh swept her away. Robin seized her chance to sidle up to Liam’s chair.
“I have a message for you from Mr. Saunders,” she said and handed him her phone.
Liam squinted at the words and read them aloud. “‘Found Juliet’s address here in Key West. Call me.’”
She snatched the phone away, but already he was glaring at her.
“She’s here?” he demanded. “You know where Juliet is?”
Chapter Seventeen
Frantically Robin thumbed through her screen. “Not that message, this one!”
She tried showing him the words Austin had sent, but he wouldn’t even look at them. His face had gone red. He ordered, “Tell me about Juliet.”
Cayleigh was approaching with another reporter and cameraman in tow. Robin said, “It’s a long story and you don’t have time.”
“I have all the time I need,” he said, and boy, wasn’t that a hissy fit. “Tell me!”
Cayleigh must have seen that trouble was brewing. She stopped, blocking the reporter’s view of Liam. Robin followed her lead and stepped in front of Liam’s chair.
“Only if we go back to your trailer,” she suggested. “Otherwise anyone could overhear, and nobody wants that.”
He glared at her. Robin didn’t back down.
“Fine, let’s go,” he said, and bolted up out of his chair.
A second later, he was falling against her. Robin was so surprised she nearly didn’t catch him. Liam was deadweight, his eyes closed, his face drained of all color. Somehow she got him to the ground without letting him bang his head or face on the asphalt.
“Medic!” Robin yelled.
Ellie came running with her first aid kit. Production assistants converged. Cayleigh steered the reporters away from the awning. Robin was worried they’d have to take Liam to the hospital again, but one whiff of smelling salts had him blinking up at everyone. First he looked confused, and then he looked irritated.
“Back off,” he said and insisted on sitting up. “What happened?”
“You fainted,” Ellie said.
“I never faint.”
Michael Lake and Karen arrived, both of them worried, but after taking Liam’s pulse and blood pressure, Ellie declared that all he needed was rest and some air conditioning. He insisted on going back to his trailer on his own two feet and told Ellie thanks, but he didn’t need her. If she was truly worried, she could always check on him later. Michael Lake insisted on walking beside him, and Robin trailed uncertainly behind.
“It won’t happen tomorrow,” Liam said, sounding rueful.
“It’s fine. We’re almost done for the day,” Michael Lake replied. “Get some rest, Liam. We can’t afford to have you down for the count.”
Cayleigh blocked Robin from the rest of the conversation. “You’re done for the day,” she announced. “I hope you have the good sense to respect a person’s medical privacy in your little project.”
“Cayleigh,” Liam said wearily from his doorway. Michael Lake had already left. “I need to talk to Robin. Let her through.”
Clearly unhappy about it, Cayleigh stepped aside. Liam said, “Will you go get some sandwiches from that café? The Cuban place? A bunch of them, six or seven.”
“I can send one of the PAs,” she said.
“No, get them yourself. You know that always turns out better.”
If Cayleigh realized she was deliberately being sent away, she showed it only by clicking her heels extra hard as she stalked off. Liam closed the door, sat on the nearest sofa, and immediately slid down on a pillow. Austin came out of the back, took one look, and said, “What the hell happened?”
“He fainted from the heat,” Robin said.
Liam groaned. “I don’t faint.”
“They had to use smelling salts,” Robin pointed out.
Austin shook his head. “Where’s your sling?”
Liam turned his head into the pillow as if giving up on the world. After a moment, he dug something out from under his arm and threw it on the coffee table—the leather bound shooting script. It landed with a thud. Abruptly, Liam pulled himself up and blinked at Robin.
“Tell me about Juliet. Where is she?”
Robin figured she might as well tell the truth. “I saw her on Duval Street last night. My friend Sean—Joe Hardy, remember?—went down there today to see if he could track her down.”
“Little Juliet caught playing hooky?” Austin asked flippantly. He brought a wet cloth and glass of ice water to Liam. “Drink this, and don’t move this.”
Liam suffered the indignity of having the cloth draped on his head. “I thought she was up in Miami. Michael’s little game must have flushed her out.”
Robin asked, “What game?”
“The recasting,” Austin said. “Nothing makes an actor show up for work faster than the threat of being fired. The studio head and Michael Lake came up with the idea of recasting the part as a way to get her attention.”
“And then they had to go through with it,” Liam said.
Austin nudged him. “Drink more water.”
The air conditioning and water and sofa time were making Liam’s color come back. Robin was reasonably sure he wasn’t going to pass out again anytime soon. But her own knees were getting a little wobbly as s
he thought through his words.
“How could they be sure she wasn’t really kidnapped?” Robin asked. “The plan wouldn’t work if she was being held somewhere against her will.”
Both Liam and Austin gave her pitying looks.
“There never was a kidnapping,” Liam said quietly. “Karen’s been on the phone with her all along.”
*
Robin was so furious that her hands were shaking on the steering wheel. That probably wasn’t safe, so she pulled her car over and let it idle at the curb. Then she remembered that idling was bad for the carbon dioxide emissions and killed the engine.
She’d rather kill Karen, who apparently had been lying to her for days.
Robin’s phone rang. Sean. She ignored it. She didn’t want to know anything about what he and Steven had found.
Her phone rang again. Austin. She ignored that, too, but for entirely different reasons. Storming out of their trailer in search of Karen hadn’t been her finest hour. She suspected there’d been steam coming out of her ears. And okay, maybe losing her temper was an entirely normal reaction, but she hated playing the part of some overly emotional girl.
Still. Lying. For days. Maybe since that kiss in the Bookmine. Maybe since the very first minute Karen had brandished that ransom note.
Luckily for Karen, she’d already left the set when Robin went looking for her. Robin couldn’t decide whether she should try to confront her at the hotel or drive back to Fisher Key in outrage.
A message from Sean: What are you doing?
Robin took her phone, rolled down the window, and pitched it into some bushes.
After a few minutes of staring out the windshield, she decided she couldn’t afford to abandon an expensive piece of technology. Plus, if the battery leaked it would poison the grass. She climbed out of her car and rummaged around the bushes. The phone had sailed right through the bars of the five-foot high iron fence behind it. She looked for a gate, but it was all the way around the corner.
Robin scaled the fence, managed not to impale herself, jumped down to a tidy green lawn, and hoped that she wasn’t being tracked by some camera that would plaster her face on the nightly news. The only witnesses, electronic or biological, were three cats sitting in the grass and eyeing her with lazy gazes. On the way back over the fence, her shorts snagged and she had to stop before she ripped the whole leg off.
She was still freeing herself when a police cruiser pulled up.
“Hello, Robin,” Officer Michelle Boyle said from inside the car. “What are you doing?”
Chapter Eighteen
Robin flushed. “I’m not—it’s just—I dropped my phone.”
“Dropped it?”
“Threw it,” she admitted. “I’m not having a good day.”
Boyle nodded thoughtfully. “Want to talk about it?”
Which is how Robin found herself sitting in a “mostly vegetarian” café on Southard Street with Boyle, who had called in for her dinner break. “I’m working a double today, so they owe me,” she explained. “Did your car get towed again?”
“That would be too easy,” Robin said.
“What’s more complex?”
She wasn’t sure how much to confide to a police officer. She probably shouldn’t have even said yes to Boyle’s suggestion. Robin wished for a rewind on the whole rotten day. She looked past Boyle to the big poster on the wall that said WELCOME TO PRIDE WEEK! The café was clean and cozy and full of same-sex couples gazing sappily into each other’s eyes. Robin was the only single person in the whole place. Probably in all of Key West.
“I found out that someone I like has been lying and manipulating me,” Robin said with a sigh. She picked up her avocado-tomato sandwich. “And it sucks.”
“I bet it does. Someone like Toni?”
Robin nearly dropped her food. “What? No. She’s fine. It’s someone on the film. I’ve been working there, sort of.”
Boyle stirred sweetener into her iced tea. “How did you go from being a stalker to working on the movie?”
“I’m totally not a stalker,” Robin said and then caught Boyle’s slight smile. “Okay, fine. You got me again. But I’m not. Only that once. Or twice.”
“Tell me more,” Boyle said.
“Confidentially?”
“Not if there’s any law being broken, no.”
Robin thought carefully about the situation. She didn’t think it wise to mention the kidnapping hoax specifically, but all else seemed straightforward enough.
“Juliet Francine’s been AWOL from the set,” she said. “Karen Francine asked me to find her, but I think she’s known all along where she is. Karen also pretended to be interested in me, but that was a lie. She might or might not be seeing this girl Molly, who I think would like me but thinks she’s dating Karen. But Karen said she’s infatuated with her, and so maybe she’s lying about that, too.”
Boyle leaned back in her chair. Her expression was slightly amused. “You have a complicated love life.”
“I don’t have any love life at all,” Robin said miserably. “That’s the problem.”
“I didn’t either when I was your age.”
Robin couldn’t believe that. Not someone as pretty as Boyle, growing up somewhere as liberal as Key West. Fisher Key was a small island with few opportunities. Key West was a buffet table.
“No, really,” Boyle said, interpreting Robin’s expression. “I was too painfully shy to ever do anything. It wasn’t until high school that another girl was actually interested in me, and the first thing I did was run in the other direction. It took a lot to get me to stop running.”
It was the most Boyle had ever said about herself since Robin had known her.
“What got you to stop?” Robin asked.
A quick frown, wiped away as Boyle lifted her iced tea. “Going to Afghanistan. I was nineteen. Got my first girlfriend in our platoon over there. Realized what I’d been denying myself.”
Robin tried to imagine being sent to a desert on the other side of the world to fight a murky war no U.S. politician could adequately explain. She and Boyle were both island girls, accustomed to the ocean and tides, the smell and noise of the tropics. She tried to imagine Boyle as a shy teenager with a gun and helmet, flung so far from home into the arms of her first love.
“Did she die?” Robin asked.
Boyle coughed iced tea into her glass. “What? No. Why would you think that?”
Robin reddened. She couldn’t very well say that it was a perfectly tragic story: first love, unwinnable war, devastating loss. Like a Nicholas Sparks book. Not that she ever read any, but they were very popular at the Bookmine.
“You sounded sad,” she said lamely.
“Afghanistan was a sad place,” Boyle said. “But that was then and this is now. What are you going to do about Karen Francine? Are you going back to work tomorrow?”
Robin had already considered that question. She couldn’t decide. She hated that she couldn’t decide.
“I agreed to work for someone who’s trying to stay incognito,” she said. “If I leave, then he won’t have anyone to keep an eye on his stupid boyfriend.”
“Why is his boyfriend stupid?”
“Because he’s egotistical and has this ridiculous luxury trailer—” Robin stopped herself. Groaned. “I didn’t say that. You never heard of it.”
Boyle, however, had already processed the information. “Liam Norcott has an incognito boyfriend?”
“You promised confidentiality!”
“Totally confidential,” Boyle said. “I don’t care if he’s dating a goat. Some of the guys in my department have a crush on him. At least now they have a chance.”
Robin pushed the last bits of her sandwich aside. “They have no chance. These guys are so over the top in love that I might get diabetes from the sweetness.”
“So why stick around?” Boyle asked.
“I made a promise.”
“When does the movie end?”
“Tom
orrow,” Robin said.
“Can you live with Mr. and Mr. Too Sweet until then?” Boyle asked.
“I guess,” Robin said. “You think I should?”
“I think you should. But who am I? Just a cop trying to get through to the end of my shift so I can go home and take a hot shower.”
The idea of Michelle Boyle in the shower was too enticing to think about without flustering herself. Robin joked, “No hot date in the middle of Pride Week?”
“Chili’s working double shifts, too,” Boyle said. “The salon’s around the corner. Want to meet her?”
“That might be too depressing,” Robin said. Immediately, her face colored. She hadn’t meant for Boyle to know about her inner thoughts. “Sorry. I think standing in the sun all day did something to my inner filter.”
Boyle smiled. “You’ll find someone, Robin. It’s only a matter of time.”
The bell over the door rang as a customer came in. No, not a customer, just Sean. He was so annoyed that he didn’t seem to notice Boyle.
“Why aren’t you answering your phone? We’ve been calling you for an hour about that guy—” He started. Abruptly, he shut up and reconsidered his words. “Hello, Officer.”
“Hello,” Boyle said agreeably. “Sorry I’ve been monopolizing Robin’s time.”
“How did you find me?” Robin asked
“Your phone GPS,” he said. “You gave me your password.”
“Because you’re looking for some guy,” Boyle said, prompting. “Some more movie business?”
“Yes,” Robin said. No way did she want to explain that they were after Jake the Mermaid. Boyle would want to come along, interrogate the suspect, and take over the situation. That was what the police did. “Thanks for the advice.”
“You’re very welcome.”
Out on the sidewalk, Sean said, “You could have at least spent one minute to tell us you were off on a date. I’d like to be on a date, but someone asked me to find this guy and then she doesn’t answer her phone—”
“I was getting valuable police information,” Robin said defensively. “Where’s Steven?”
