‘Owen and I want to share a theme – do something different so we stand out from the crowd. He has to work behind the bar but all the Xcel staff will be in costume as well as the Starlite team. Really, I can’t wait.’
As the gondola jerked and came to a halt near the old mine, Macy jumped out ahead of me. She was about to run to join the technical team setting up for the morning’s filming when she had second thoughts and waited while I stepped down from the lift. ‘Did something bad happen?’ she asked as the empty chair jerked, rocked then set off again.
I nodded, but this wasn’t the time to explain about the bodyguards. My heart was beating too fast and it was all I could do to keep the lid on the panic that kept on rising.
‘Sorry, I should have asked sooner,’ Macy sighed. ‘I could see you weren’t doing well at breakfast.’
‘It’s cool. I’m still working out what to do to get Orlando out of here.’
‘No, really – I’m sorry. I get an idea in my head and I run with it. Right now I can’t seem to think of anything or anyone except Owen.’
‘I noticed,’ I said with a wry smile as she linked arms and walked me away from the movie set. ‘But really, what do you actually know about him?’
‘Nothing, and I don’t give a damn. Stupid, huh?’
‘Or brave.’ What did I know? Only that the single thing that stops most of us from acting the way Macy did is the fear of rejection.
‘My problem is, I don’t know how to live my life any differently. I guess it’s the way I’m wired.’ There was a long pause as we walked up the mountain between some snow-laden redwoods, then Macy eased her arm out of mine and stopped to gaze down into a steep-sided, sparkling white valley. ‘If you want to know the truth, my life is crappy right now,’ she confessed. ‘I don’t have anyone – no long-term relationship, no family to lean on.’
‘It won’t always be like this,’ I said. ‘You’ll find someone to love. Everyone does.’
‘That’s so true. I found Owen.’
I held back from pointing out that her twenty-four-hour relationship with the good-looking barman hardly ticked the long-term box. ‘See, guys are attracted to you – you’re smart and cute, and one thing you definitely do is stand out from the crowd.’
‘Owen is a fascinating guy,’ Macy insisted. ‘He likes to work out, that’s obvious. But I did find out another side to him. He studies American history, he reads classic literature and guess what – he’s been to acting college in New York. When he was thirteen years old he auditioned for a part in a Spielberg movie.’
‘I hope he makes it,’ I said, standing back from the ledge. I admit that I felt scared for her as she talked herself into believing in her latest boyfriend.
‘He only took this bar job because he knew they were shooting a movie here. He figured he could get himself noticed. That was a smart move. He knows you have to be in the right place at the right time. It’s the secret to success.’
‘Macy, don’t go any further,’ I warned. A cold wind blew from behind and pushed her closer to the edge.
She laughed and spread her arms wide. ‘Imagine if we could fly!’
‘Step back.’
‘Whoo! Like an eagle soaring over the mountains.’
The wind caught her and tipped her forward. I lunged, grabbed her arm and dragged her back. ‘Let’s go,’ I insisted.
That morning Larry shot the final scenes between Jack and Angela. I shadowed Lucy in her role of assistant director, handing out rewritten scripts to the actors and crew.
‘This is the last change we need to make,’ Larry instructed. ‘Jack, you stagger out of the mine with the gunshot wound to your left shoulder. No dialogue here – we took it out. But you see Angela ready to climb into the ski lift. She realizes you’re still alive, aims her gun and fires. You take a second bullet. We get you in close up then fade.’
‘Am I dead?’ Jack asked, flipping through the next few pages of his script. ‘Christ, no – I survive. I’m a man of steel.’
‘Let’s not waste time,’ Larry snapped. ‘Charlie, stand by. We need you for the next action sequence.’
You could have cut the tension with a knife as Jack went through the motions – stagger out of the mine with right arm clutching left shoulder, drop to knees as Angela fires gun, fall sideways into snow.
‘Cut!’ Larry called as the fake blood flowed.
And that was all that Jack needed to do: stagger, clutch, drop, fall. His work for the day was over.
‘They got me out of bed at six thirty for this!’ he muttered as a driver picked him up and drove him down the rough mountain track to the hotel.
After that, Charlie took over, swinging into action as the cameras rolled. First he raised himself from the blood-soaked ground then staggered on towards the gondola, where Angela Taraska’s body double aimed her by-now empty gun. Realizing she was out of bullets, Charlie grabbed the back of the gondola as it set off down the mountain. Angela’s stand-in leaned out and bludgeoned Charlie’s hands with the gun. He clung on, was raised from the ground and dangled from the lift, swinging himself up and into the gondola, where he and the Angela double fought to the finish.
I saw the gondola rock violently and held my breath as Charlie was almost thrown out. He was left dangling a second time, and again he swung himself back in. This time he overpowered his opponent, forced the gun out of her hand then shoved her clean out of the gondola. She screamed as she lost her grip. I watched her fall.
‘Cut!’ Larry yelled.
We broke for lunch and trooped down to the hotel restaurant, which was crowded with all the people I dreaded seeing. Top of my list were Orlando and Gwen, though Weller, Daniel and Jarrold came a close second. Ryan James’s dark angel bodyguards were playing slot machines in a bay by the entrance.
Daniel turned and gave me the smile that I remembered from Black Rock - easy and alluring. I recoiled as if I’d walked into a blast of scorching hot air.
Jarrold kept his back turned but looked ready to spring into action at any small signal from their boss, who was holding court at a table in the centre of the room. Ryan was dressed in grey sweats, straight from a workout in the gym, calling for his favourites to join him.
‘Natalia, sit beside me here. You know about the party on Saturday, right? You get to dress up in any costume from the Oscar-winning movie Carnival – crinolined gowns, beautiful seventeenth-century hats and masks. Just ask and it’s yours!’
I watched Natalia slip into her grateful, gracious mode. She smiled, tilted her head, rolled her eyes and batted her lashes at Ryan, ignoring a whispered remark from Jack when he sat down heavily at the same table.
‘I said, why not go as yourself?’ Jack repeated. ‘Wear the red dress the paparazzi went crazy for at last year’s Oscars – slashed to the thigh, maximum exposure.’
Ryan moved the muscles in his face that still worked enough to show disapproval. ‘That’s not fancy dress.’
‘Sure it is,’ Jack sneered. ‘Everything my wife pours herself into for the cameras qualifies as fancy dress. You think she looks this good in private?’
‘Ignore him,’ Natalia told Ryan. ‘That’s just Jack’s weird sense of humour.’
‘Yeah, go ahead and ignore me, Ryan.’ Leaning back in his chair, Jack pulled his fingers, cracking the knuckles one by one. ‘Everyone else does.’
The chair wobbled dangerously and he had to jerk forward and catch the edge of the table to stop himself from tipping backwards and sprawling across the floor. I was surprised how fast his reactions were when it mattered.
Jack grinned then leaned forward confidentially. ‘I’ll let you into a secret, Ryan. Natalia ignores me so successfully that she neglected to tell me she filed for divorce.’
People close enough to hear this remark took sudden, sharp intakes of breath. Ryan instinctively turned to his bodyguards. Natalia sat without any visible reaction.
‘What?’ Jack mocked. ‘Come on, it’s a no-brainer.’
‘Not now,’ Natalia protested quietly.
‘Am I spoiling someone’s lunch? Did I break the rules and say out loud what people have known for ever?’ He scraped his chair back from the table and stood on it, spreading his arms to make a public declaration. ‘Natalia and I have split. She filed for divorce. It’s official!’
The scraping of the chair set my nerves on edge. I noticed Jarrold and Weller approach Jack while Daniel made sure that no one else came into the restaurant. Gwen, who had been hovering by the door with Orlando, asked to leave but Daniel blocked her exit.
‘OK, guys!’ Ryan waited for Jarrold and Weller to take up position on either side of Jack’s chair. ‘Everyone in this room is an employee of Starlite and you all signed a confidentiality clause in your contract. That means nothing gets out beyond these four walls. Nothing!’
‘Yeah, like I said – ignore me,’ Jack laughed, pushing against Jarrold as he jumped down from the chair. ‘It must be last night’s whisky doing the talking.’
Jarrold took a step back then blocked Jack’s intended route out through the French doors into a festive courtyard decked with baubles, lights and a tableau depicting a Christmas sleigh pulled by fake reindeer. A nod from Ryan brought my Central Park thug forward, leaving Jack with no place to turn. The only thing left for him to do, other than punch his way out, was walk with the bodyguards towards the main exit, where Daniel held the door open to allow them through
‘OK, the show’s over,’ Ryan insisted as the tension broke and a low babble of voices filled the silence. ‘Remember, no leaks to the press, and nobody goes on Facebook or Twitter to inform their buddies.’
‘And now we have work to do,’ Larry announced. ‘Lucy, I need Rocky and the extras back on the mountain, ready to start shooting in thirty minutes.’
‘I’m out of here.’ I whispered to Macy that I needed fresh air but I had to pass within five paces of where Gwen and Orlando stood, steeling myself to walk out of the restaurant under their hostile gaze, through the lobby and along the driveway towards the ski-lift terminal.
A strong wind blew, light snow was falling as I climbed the steel steps to the platform and waited for the next gondola to arrive. I looked at my watch. One forty-five p.m. That gave me fifteen minutes to make it to the overlook and my planned meeting with Grace and Holly.
13
The sudden switch of temperature made me shiver as I waited for the gondola. I’d come out of the warm hotel into minus ten degrees and now back into the artificial warmth of the glass and steel terminal, all the time looking over my shoulder to make sure that no one was following me.
In fact, I was so busy checking the empty slopes behind me that at first I didn’t notice Rocky Seaton sitting on the bench by the window, quietly minding his own business. He was wearing a black knitted hat and a blue padded jacket with a thick paperback jammed into one pocket.
‘Up here at ten thousand feet the wind cuts right through you,’ he observed. ‘I hope you’re wearing layers.’
‘Yes, thanks – I’m good.’
‘Only, you look to me like you’re freezing.’
‘I’m cool.’
‘In case you’re wondering, the operator discovered a fault on the bullwheel,’ Rocky explained as I looked in vain for a gondola. ‘He switched off the motor and went to find an engineer.’
‘That’s not good,’ I sighed. Another look at my watch told me I now had only five minutes to make it to Carlsbad overlook.
‘Don’t worry – they’ll wait for you, whoever they are.’ Rocky had considered things for a while then took a stab at the reason I was leaning out of the door watching anxiously for the engineer. ‘Anyway, it pays to keep your boyfriend waiting occasionally.’
‘I’m not meeting my boyfriend,’ I protested, relieved to see two businesslike figures hurrying up the hill.
‘No? Aren’t you with the kid who got the internship when we were shooting in New York – the tall, dark guy?’
‘Orlando. No, I’m not with him any more,’ I mumbled as the chairlift operator led the engineer up the steps on to the platform and showed him the problem with the bullwheel.
‘What happened? Did he get sucked in by the bright lights and glamour?’ Rocky asked.
‘You could say that.’
‘Sorry, I’m being too personal.’ He checked his own watch then asked the engineer how long it would take to repair the fault, before taking up the conversation where we’d left off. ‘It’s Tania, isn’t it? I just thought you looked like you needed someone to talk to.’
‘No, I’m cool, thanks.’
Luckily all the engineer had to do was switch to back up while he replaced an electrical fuse. ‘Ready to roll,’ he reported, flicking the switch to restart the motor.
‘But if ever you do need someone.’ Rocky insisted on me stepping into the first gondola while he waited for the second. ‘Remember I’m a pretty good listener.’
OK, so I’d be late. The gondola rose unsteadily up Carlsbad in the icy wind, moving slowly towards the first steel tower. But Holly and Grace would wait for me; they would understand. I looked down on the group gathered by the entrance to the old mine – technicians whose footprints had churned up the smooth surface of the snow and who were now crowded around cameras and sound equipment, plus a bunch of actors standing under a canvas shelter, taking direction from Lucy and Larry. I made out Charlie Speke heading with Adam towards the nursery slope then looked ahead to judge the distance up to the overlook. It was then that I felt the gondola jerk and come to a halt.
Crap – another fuse must have blown on the bullwheel and I was stranded high on the mountain. Wind rocked the car suspended from the taut steel cable and a sudden flurry of snow swept down from the summit. Fear seized me by the throat. I pictured the stretched wire straining, fraying and snapping. I saw myself plummet to an icy death.
I hear wings beating in a white wilderness. The world is ice bound and silent. I have come face to face with the first incarnation of my dark angel. Like an eagle with a sharp beak and cruel talons, his black wings spread wide.
Sheer cliffs of ice tower to either side. I am alone in a deep, frozen crevasse.
Stranded on the chairlift, I had plenty of time to remember Zoran’s final attack.
‘Be brave. Find out the truth.’ Pale-gold light breaks through clouds. Adam’s voice is carried on the wind. It emerges from the snow flurry and chimes in with the sweet voices of Maia and Zenaida, my small team of good angels. ‘Catch the devil by the throat.’ They chant their mantra. ‘Be strong.’
‘Thank you,’ I murmur as their light warms my face.
Then the overhead cable moved again and I was carried towards the terminal on the summit of the mountain.
The first thing I expected to see when I stepped out of the gondola was Holly’s car. It should have been in the parking bay backed by a rough fence, next to a sheer fifty-foot drop. But no. What I saw in its place was a familiar grey truck belonging to Orlando’s dad – the car Orlando had driven from Bitterroot to Mayfield last Tuesday evening.
Orlando was here on the overlook. Had he already seen Holly and Grace and said something that had made them turn around and head for home? Squashing the questions that fluttered inside my head, I grew angry at the idea that Orlando might have tricked them and, worse still, that they might have believed him. So I strode towards the truck and wrenched at the door handle. It was locked. I swept snow from the windscreen and peered inside.
‘Orlando!’ He was sitting at the steering wheel, staring out with the empty, blank expression I dreaded. ‘Open the door. What are you doing here?’
Still he didn’t react so I thudded my fists against the driver’s door until at last he unlocked it and allowed me into the cab. I climbed in, brushing snow from my jacket and shaking it from my hair. ‘How long have you been sitting here?’ I demanded.
Slowly he turned his head, his gaze unfocused and with a frown knotting his brows. I thought I knew every millimetre
of his face – the smooth texture of his skin, the exact angle of his cheekbones and jaw, the way his lashes curled. But now as I looked at him, I hardly recognized him. What was different? Not the shapes and the angles, not the grey of his eyes and the forward sweep of his dark hair. No, the difference was in the stillness of his features, the paleness, the emptiness, the lack of life in his eyes.
‘Say something!’ I pleaded. ‘Explain why you’re here.’
Still moving slowly, he turned away, leaning forward to switch on the engine, turning on the wipers to clear the screen. They laboured under the heavy weight of settled snow as Orlando began to reverse the truck off the overlook on to the single-track road off the mountain.
‘Stop. Where are we going?’
He didn’t reply until he’d completed the manoeuvre and we were pointing downhill. ‘Sit back,’ he muttered as he leaned forward to clutch the wheel and rev the engine. ‘Don’t talk.’
‘Did Gwen send you?’ I demanded. ‘What’s her plan here? Are you and I supposed to go through the whole thing again – me begging you to come home, you telling me I’m crazy, rejecting me, telling me it was all a mistake, that you never loved me? Is this where you finally break my heart? Don’t bother. It’s already broken.’
Part of what I said must have got through because Orlando took his foot off the accelerator and slumped forward.
I saw by the way his hands gripped the wheel that a struggle was taking place inside him and I reached out my own hand to try and reconnect.
‘Come back to me,’ I pleaded. ‘Orlando, it’s not too late. You must keep on fighting what Gwen is trying to do to you – please!’
He held the wheel so tight that his knuckles turned white. When he spoke, his voice was slow and slurred. ‘Tania, I can’t do this. She told me not to talk to you, said I can’t be near you any more.’
‘So why are you here?’
‘She wanted me— No, you don’t want to know,’ he groaned, stamping on the pedal, making the tyres spin and whine on the icy surface. His defensive barrier was quickly back in place as we slid sideways and the back end of the truck lodged in a gulley. He swore and put his foot down hard, only succeeding in churning up the snow and digging us deeper into the ditch.