Don't Look Down

  Althea leaned close to her. "I need to ask you something. You know, girl to girl."

  "Uh," Lucy said, thinking, Kill me now.

  "I mean, I know you're really busy because this is your big break—"

  "Not so much," Lucy said. Where are they getting this big break stuff?

  "—But what do you think of Bryce?"

  "Fine actor," Lucy said automatically.

  "No, I mean, you know." Althea began to look impatient. "As a man."

  Lucy tried again. "He seems like a really nice guy."

  Gloom called, "Let's go," and Lucy smiled at Althea.

  "Okay, that last take was a great one, so let's do another one to make sure."

  Althea nodded. "Could you come back while they're doing the next camera setup?"

  "Sure. You bet."

  Lucy went back to the monitors and watched while Althea and Rick nailed another take and thought, This could work. "Fantastic," she called to them. "Reset, please."

  Pepper climbed into the seat beside her. "I brought you an apple."

  Lucy said, "Thank you," thinking, I'm going to die of an apple overdose, and then glanced at Daisy.

  She looked like leftover death, her eyes red, her eyelids drooping as if she were struggling to stay conscious.

  "You sure you're getting enough sleep?" Lucy bit into her apple, trying to act unconcerned.

  "Uh huh." Daisy kept her head bent over her notebook.

  So much for acting. "Daisy, what the hell—"

  "Working here," Daisy said and kept her head down.

  "Lucy!" Althea called, and Lucy went back to her, looking back over her shoulder at Daisy as she went.

  When she reached Althea, she said, "That was great, Al," but she kept an eye on Daisy, slumped in her chair at the monitors.

  "Thank you," Althea said. "Listen, anybody who can make Connor do what she wants knows what she's doing."

  "What?" Lucy said, distracted from Daisy.

  "I need your advice," Althea said. "About men. I want security, that's why I'm with Bryce right now, because he's good for my career. But I want something permanent, too, you know?"

  "Oh," Lucy said, as Pepper came up to join them. "Well, Bryce is probably rich. He's done pretty well for himself—"

  Althea frowned at her. "I don't mean for him to support me, I'm going to get my own money, I've got a line on that, but I don't want to be alone. I want security, you know? Somebody I can depend on?"

  "Oh." Lucy nodded. "Emotional security." And you're sleeping with an actor?

  Connor came up to the rail about ten feet from them to direct the camera basket in, and Althea turned her hip so that he could see her concave stomach and the bulge of her breasts in her tank top. Pepper watched her and then tried to do the same, her little potbelly sticking out where Altheas abdomen collapsed toward her backbone.

  Connor looked over at them, much too offhand, and nodded, but Lucy saw his eyes connect with Althea's.

  Althea met his stare and held it until he nodded again.

  Oh, God, don't let Althea be cheating on Bryce with Connor, Lucy thought. Bryce did not look like a man who would take well to being dumped for a stunt coordinator. And if he found out and sulked, goodbye shooting schedule.

  Althea turned back to Lucy. "Not just emotional security. I want physical security, too. I want it all."

  "Physical security. Like bodyguards?" Lucy said.

  "No, like…" Althea's eyes went to Pepper. "Uh, satisfaction security. You know."

  "Oh," Lucy said, caught off guard. "Well. The best way to be, uh, secure—" she glanced down at Pepper, who was listening with great interest, "is to know things yourself." Althea looked confused, so Lucy added, "I think you have to know what you need and tell Bryce. Show him if you have to."

  "Huh?" Althea said. "I mean in bed."

  "Pepper, go get me an apple, please," Lucy said.

  "Okay." Pepper ran for the craft services table.

  "Because sex is really important." Althea didn't frown, but she was clearly thinking hard. "And I'm running out of time. I want seventy-four to be somebody who knows what he's doing and who will stand by me."

  "Seventy-four?"

  Althea nodded. "Stephanie told me about this article by this math woman that said that if you slept with seventy-five people, the person you were supposed to be with would show up."

  "I see," Lucy said, thinking, I must have a long talk with my assistant. Then the meaning sunk in. "Seventy-four?"

  Althea nodded again. "Bryce is seventy-three. After Stephanie said that, I counted."

  "Uh huh." Lucy tried to sound supportive.

  "And Bryce isn't… working out," Althea said, "so then I thought about Nash because…" she shot another look at the stunt coordinator, "he is hot. No wonder you're back together."

  "We're not. Now—"

  "I'd like somebody like him," Althea said, looking past her. "Somebody tough like him who would stick by me. I bet somebody like him would be good in bed." She blinked up at Lucy. "Is he good in bed?"

  "Not very," Lucy lied, shafting Connor without guilt. "But I'm sure Bryce…" She let her voice trail off because Althea was now smiling past her.

  Lucy turned and saw Bryce, looking perfectly normal next to his new buddy, J.T. Wilder, who looked pretty damn good if you liked deadpan, tight-assed, monosyllabic military men. She turned back to Althea.

  Althea appeared to like deadpan, tight-assed, monosyllabic military men.

  Damn it, Lucy thought. "Bryce is really a good guy. And he's a star, Althea. Big security."

  "Comedies," Althea said, still staring at Wilder. "He acts goofy and tails down. Big deal."

  Lucy gave up. "Althea, there are only four days left in this shoot. Please don't upset him until Friday or the shot schedule will go to hell."

  "He wouldn't be upset." Althea looked back at Wilder. "He's doing one of the makeup girls. Mary somebody. Do you think J.T. likes me?"

  "Everybody likes you," Lucy said grimly, as Pepper came running back with the apple.

  "I had to look for a Gala," she said, presenting it to Lucy. "They were mostly Red Delicious. That's not as good, right?"

  "Right." Lucy took the apple while watching Althea, who was still zeroed in on Wilder. "Thank you, Pepper, you did exactly right." And now I have to eat another apple.

  "So," Althea said, "J.T.'s, like, in the Army?"

  "You're welcome," Pepper said, frowning at Althea.

  "Evidently," Lucy said. "Bryce seems to have found him at Fort Bragg."

  Althea licked her upper lip. "What do you know about him?"

  "Absolutely nothing." Lucy bit hard into her apple.

  "He looks like a guy you could count on, you know?"

  Lucy swallowed. "Althea, if you're looking for dependability, don't go to men. If you've—" she looked down at Pepper, who was listening intently, "dated seventy-three of them, you must have noticed that they often leave."

  Althea transferred her interest back to Lucy. "You think Nash is going to leave? Is that what happened the last time? When you were young?"

  Lucy looked at the twenty-something actress with distaste. "No. When I was young, he lied to me and I left."

  "J.T. doesn't look like a liar," Althea said, going back to her first interest. "But I don't think he's really warmed up to me yet."

  "J.T. is not a liar," Pepper said.

  Lucy followed Althea's eyes to Wilder, standing alert and still in the middle of chaos, watching everybody with those flat, cold eyes. "I don't think Captain Wilder warms up to anybody." Although it certainly would be interesting to make him try.

  "I can make a man warm up," Althea said, and Lucy felt a spurt of irritation that was as legitimate as it was hypocritical. "And he looks dependable. He might be marriage material."

  "J. T. Wilder does not strike me as the marrying type," Lucy said with complete sincerity. "Now, about this next scene—"

  Althea turned obediently back to her mark. "Do women count?" br />
  "What women?"

  "The women I've… known," Althea said, keeping an eye on Pepper. "Because if they don't, I'm only at seventy-one."

  "They count," Lucy said.

  Althea nodded, and Lucy looked back at Bryce and his new buddy and felt like kicking them both. She didn't want to fight for Bryce— the dumbass was doing the makeup girl, she'd have left him, too— but she only needed four more days. And she'd have them if J.T. Wilder would stop dazzling Althea, damn it.

  "Gators do not eat apples," Pepper said.

  Althea smiled down at her, probably recognizing a kindred spirit in somebody who would say anything to get attention. "You know a lot about gators."

  Pepper nodded. "They're my Animal of the Month."

  "Oh," Althea said, and Lucy thought, And now she'll want an Animal of the Month, too, and thought of Wilder.

  "Tell me something scary about them," Althea said to Pepper, evidently gearing up for more terror.

  "They can outrun a horse," Pepper said solemnly. "Although not for very long. You couldn't race them or anything."

  "And they have sharp teeth," Althea said.

  "No," Pepper said sternly. "They have dull teeth. They don't bite, they clamp down. And then they thrash their victims to pieces."

  Althea's eyes widened.

  "Okay," Lucy said cheerfully. "Enough gator lore. Why don't you go wait for me at the monitors?"

  "Okay," Pepper said without moving. "I know what I need. You know, what you asked me? I need a Wonder Woman Barbie. I have all the Super Hero Barbies except that one and I should have them all so that when I have friends, we can play with them."

  When I have friends? Lucy looked at her, appalled. Pepper didn't have friends. Well, she wasn't in school, Daisy tutored her, so how could she have friends? That's got to change.

  Meanwhile, Pepper had stopped, perplexed. "You know, SuperGirl has white mittens. I don't get that."

  Lucy smiled at Pepper. Get her into school later, make her happy now.

  "A Wonder Woman Barbie. I'll look into that. But for right now, go back to video village, baby. Tell Gloom I'll be right there."

  Pepper nodded and walked away, her little shoulders slumping.

  "Sorry about the gator lecture." Lucy peered at Althea. "You okay?"

  "Well, I don't like Moot so much anymore," Althea said, but then she stopped, her eye caught by something behind Lucy.

  Lucy turned and saw J. T. Wilder, looking stone-faced and dangerous.

  Althea wiggled her fingers at Wilder.

  Wilder looked at Althea as if she were Moot.

  You'll never outrun her, Lucy thought, she's faster than she looks.

  "I'm ready for my close-up now," Althea said, still staring at Wilder.

  "I'll tell Mr. DeMille," Lucy said and went back to the monitors, more annoyed than she should have been.

  Wilder watched Armstrong head back to video village under the lights or the set, attacking another apple as she went, and thought, Apples and women. Not a good history there.

  The night wind picked up and blew back her shirt, exposing her curves in that white T-shirt again.

  Course, he'd never been any good at history.

  His satellite phone vibrated in his pocket and startled him out of staring. He turned and walked away from the set into the darkness as he pulled the phone out. Nobody had his number except Group and an ex-girlfriend who was so ex she was probably married with four kids by now and who wasn't supposed to have the number anyway since it was an Army-issue phone. Which meant this was an alert.

  Fuck, Wilder thought. Alerting him on leave meant a real mission. He glanced at the display before answering: blocked.

  "Captain Wilder," he snapped into the phone, and Bryce looked up from playing with the clasp on the knife sheath, impressed.

  The voice on the phone said, "Captain Wilder." what the hell? He'd just said that. He waited and there was nothing but static for several moments, which Wilder recognized as a scrambler being used by whoever was calling him. That, combined with the fact that the call was bouncing through secure military satellites, confirmed that whatever was coming was going to be bad news.

  "Captain Wilder, you have been seconded to the CIA and you need to make a meet. One hour. A diner in a small shopping mall in South Carolina right after you come off the Talmadge Bridge. Eddy's."

  The static ended and Wilder pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it. What the hell?

  He put the phone away and caught sight of Bryce, looking serious, mouthing, "Captain Wilder," with different expressions, evidently trying to get the same look Wilder had just had.

  If I really look like that, Wilder thought, I'm going to stop answering the phone.

  Bryce caught him watching and flushed.

  "Okay if I take a break?" Wilder said. If he says no, I have to quit. Fucking CIA.

  Bryce grinned at him and nodded at the phone in his hand. "Girlfriend?"

  "Uh, yeah," Wilder said. Me and the CIA. We're close.

  "Take all the time you want." Bryce winked.

  Wilder nodded back toward the set. "What about Armstrong?"

  "I'll take care of her, buddy." Bryce winked again.

  "Thanks." Wilder walked away before he got a third wink, almost grateful for the call.

  He headed for his Jeep and then caught Armstrong watching him with a look he couldn't quite make out. Not my day, he thought. She hadn't wanted him, and Bryce had forced the issue. Might be a smart idea to take a couple of minutes, try to mend things. Hell, he could practically see where the meeting was to be, just north of the bridge. He had an hour to get there. He could check out with the boss lady, make her feel like she was in charge, scope out the T-shirt. Plus, he was in no rush to make this meeting. Anything, even being on this screwed-up set, was preferable to a meeting with the CIA.

  He changed course and headed for Armstrong.

  "I'm on leave, but I just got a call," he told her when he reached her. "Bryce said it was okay if I left for a couple of hours."

  She shrugged, which did nice things for the T-shirt. "If Bryce is fine with it, just come back tomorrow afternoon. The set call is for one."

  "Right." He shifted his feet, trying to think of a way to make peace. "Is your daughter okay? I didn't mean to scare her when I grabbed her."

  She looked startled. "Pepper? She's not my daughter and you didn't scare her. She's my niece and she's fine. Thanks to you."

  Okay, that was good, she was grateful and Pepper wasn't her daughter. "Uh, my appointment's in this shopping mall over… Do you need anything?"

  "A Wonder Woman Barbie," she said and then caught sight of something over his shoulder. "Thank you again for Pepper, Captain Wilder," she said and moved around him, toward whatever problem she'd just spotted, and he could smell her scent, not perfume, something softer, soap maybe.

  "Right," he said, as she walked away from him. "Wonder Woman." He shook his head, took a deep breath of fresh air, and escaped to his Jeep.

  The CIA was starting to look better.

  Wilder found Eddy's Diner in a dark, seedy, little strip mall, half the stores empty under a rusting sign that said cherry hill plaza. It was flanked on one end by Eddy's and on the other by Maraschino's, A Gentlemen's Club, which sounded familiar. One of the guys had talked about it, Wilder thought. Probably LaFavre. He had a thing for strippers.

  The other occupied storefronts were a florist, a sewing machine shop, a place painted black with jax comix in Day-Glo pink letters painted on its dingy window, and an insurance agency. No toy stores, but there was a poster of Wonder Woman in the comic-store window, the only store open this late. Wilder imagined Armstrong's face if he showed up with a Wonder Woman doll. Then he remembered her walking up the bridge and the wind blowing her shirt back.

  The CIA could wait. Forever, if Wilder had his druthers.

  The shop was dim inside, lots of black shelves full of videos and DVDs and bins full of comics in clean plastic sleeves. Beh
ind the counter, a skinny twenty-something with a shadow of a mustache leaned over a comic book, his hands planted protectively on each side of it while he argued with a kid of about twelve, up past his bedtime. The guy behind the counter stopped arguing when he saw Wilder. "Can I help you?"

  "A Wonder Woman doll?" Wilder said, ignoring the twelve-year-old's snicker. He looked past the guy to see a mannequin on a shelf, one of those with the head and arms and legs cut off so the whole thing stood on its thighs. Stretched over its chipped flesh was a thin red T-shirt with skinny straps that had a double yellow W printed across the bustline and beneath that tight blue shorts with white stars on them.

  "WonderWear," the guy said, following Wilder's eyes. "Wonder Woman cami and panty set. One hundred percent cotton. Very popular. Twenty-five bucks. For sixty bucks we got the whole costume including the cape, the bracelets, and the Lasso of Truth."

  Lasso of Truth?

  The guy looked Wilder up and down. "We got the Superman boxer with the Super Size shield, too. Twelve bucks."

  "Just the doll." Wilder turned away to see a full-size stand-up cutout of a woman wearing the same outfit, more or less, her long dark hair curling thickly around her face while she stretched a yellow rope between her hands. She did not look like his vague recollections of Wonder Woman as a shiny, happy camper; she looked like a strong-jawed, patriotic dominatrix. Worse than that, she looked like Armstrong.

  Yeah, I needed that picture in my head, he thought, trying not to dwell on the rope. Lasso of Truth. Made sense. If Armstrong wore that outfit and tied him up, he'd tell her anything she wanted to know. Everyone talked under the right pressure. They did teach that at Bragg. He looked at the cutout again. Yeah, Armstrong in that outfit would be the right pressure. He caught the twelve-year-old looking at him and stared the kid down.

  The guy put a large blue box on the counter. "Wonder Woman doll, Masterpiece Edition. Comes with the hardcover history and a reprint of the first comic. Very hard to find, seventy bucks."

  The woman pictured on the box also did not look like his memory of Wonder Woman. She looked like a picture of his Great-Great-Aunt Maude. In a hurry.

  "But for you today," the guy said, "sixty."

  Behind him, the WonderWear throbbed. Armstrong could do a lot for that underwear. He wondered what her hair looked like when not in that braid.