Don't Look Down

Chapter 9

It took Wilder eight minutes to make it to the diner, and when he entered, he saw Crawford in the same booth. Predictable, which was not good in covert operations. Hell, nobody was doing anything right.

"Move," he ordered.

Crawford looked up, startled. "Why?"

Better than "what," but not by much. Wilder pointed at the other side of the table, and Crawford reluctantly vacated the seat that had its back to the wall and took the one across from it. Wilder figured he'd get the why in about four or five years.

Wilder sat down. "Who have you got in the swamp?"

"What swamp?" Crawford said, looking genuinely confused.

"The swamp by the Talmadge Bridge, near the movie base camp. Who's in there?"

"Nobody," Crawford said. "Why would we have anybody in there?"

Wilder sat back as the waitress approached.

"Beer," Wilder said.

"Same," Crawford said without looking over his shoulder at the waitress. When she was gone he said, "We've got nobody in the swamp, but I have some intelligence for you," as if he was eager to please. "Lucy Armstrong. She's worked in film for over fourteen years, the last twelve on her own as a director of commercials. She specializes in animals, does pretty good, but this project is her first feature as director. The previous director, Matthew Lawton, died Friday. We checked: heart attack, no foul play. Neither one of them had a file."

Wilder understood that. Most normal, red-blooded, apple-pie-eating, tax-paying Americans did not have an FBI or a CIA file. You had to get on the radar to get a file. So Armstrong wasn't on the government's radar. And that jived for Wilder, except that she was on his damn radar. He shook that off. "If she didn't have a file, how'd you find out this stuff?"

Crawford blinked. "I googled for it."

Jesus. "Finnegan called Armstrong this morning and threatened to sue her if she didn't follow the schedule."

"Could you get the number off her cell phone?" Crawford asked.

"You think Finnegan would be stupid enough to call her on a traceable line? Or leave caller ID?" That would save everyone a lot of trouble, Wilder thought. But the odds of that were the same as Finnegan showing up on the set.

"You're right. Neither Armstrong or Lawton had any apparent contact with Finnegan before this movie-financing thing. We don't know if they've ever met face to face, and we still don't think Finnegan is even in the States. We've got no reason to believe that Lawton knew about Finnegan's background. We think he just took the money to finish the movie, keep some of it for himself."

The waitress came back with their beers, and Wilder waited until she was gone to ask, "And Connor Nash?"

Crawford frowned for a second as he searched his mind. "Nash- he's a foreign national, right?"

"Speaks Australian, which is just like English but different."

"What?"

Wilder took a deep breath, and waited.

Crawford pulled out a PDA. Wilder wondered where that had been at their first meeting. "Let me see. We did run a check for non-U.S. citizens on the set. I mean the FBI did. After 9/11 it's been standard-"

Wilder didn't need a speech on protocol and how 9/11 fucked the country up in more ways than people realized. "What do you have on Nash?"

"Here it is. Not much. Australian, like you said. Been in the States on and off for the past eight years."

"Where is he when he's off?"

"Urn, we got three trips back to Australia. One to Germany." Crawford squinted at the PDA. "Hmm, this is odd. He's been in Iraq four times. Sixty-day stints working for a company called Blue River, whatever that is."

Wilder sat straighter. "Blue River is a security contractor." Wilder knew plenty of guys who'd worked for the security contractors in that true clusterfuck of a country. It was the one place that made the movie set look like a well-oiled machine. "Nash was gunslinging for them. What else?"

"Gunslinging?" Crawford asked, and Wilder thought, He's never been out of the country if he doesn't know that. A real cherry.

"A lot of new companies sprang up after the Second Gulf War, making easy money off all the contracts being let by the U.S. Most of the security work was done by private firms, guns for hire. Gunslingers."

"Oh." Crawford looked like he was carefully filing that away for later, and Wilder began to feel as if he were teaching CIA 101. Crawford continued tapping the screen with the stylus. "Nash was in the Australian army. Did seven years as an NCO."

That also made sense. Wilder had had no doubt from their first meeting that Nash had been military. "What was his specialty?"

"Something called SAS."

Wilder went cold. "Special Air Service. Who Dares Wins."

"What?"

"Who Dares Wins. That's the motto of the SAS. They're the Australian equivalent of U.S. Special Forces. They were rounded as the Australian version of the British SAS. Bad guys to go up against, good guys to have on your side." He'd been glad to be on their side during the early days of the Second Gulf War. Not so glad now that he might be going up against one on the set. Fuck, he thought. Connor Nash.

"Does it list his specialty?"

"Weapons. Secondary of demolitions."

Damn. Figured. They didn't have dishwashers in the SAS. "Anything else?"

Crawford took a cautious sip of his beer, as if the liquid were going to attack him. "Nash has worked on fourteen movies in the past twelve years. This is his second one with Armstrong. Which means she could be in on something with him now."

"No." Wilder processed it. So Nash worked for Blue River in between movie gigs. That made sense. With his SAS background he'd earn top dollar. Enough in sixty days to live on for a year if he was reasonably frugal. Then he had his movie income, although Wilder had no idea what a stunt coordinator pulled in. They didn't seem to be living in the lap of luxury on this movie. "Did Nash do any time in Ireland where he might have run into Finnegan?'

"No record of it."

"How about Mexico? Was Nash down there when Finnegan got nabbed?"

"No."

There was a long silence while Wilder tried to figure out the connection between Nash and Finnegan, and then Crawford cleared his throat nervously. "Finnegan did some things in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam. Smuggling."

Bingo, Wilder thought. "You should have told me that up front, damn it. What are we playing, hide the intelligence here?"

"I didn't put it together until right now," Crawford said. "I mean, I

read the files, but there was so much information I didn't see the possibility of Finnegan and Nash meeting there."

Wilder shook his head. "Anything could have happened after Baghdad fell. The Army had planned on using six divisions, but the politicians screwed up the assault from the north and there were only two and a half. The place was wide open. A lot of vultures just like Finnegan flew in to pick over the leavings." He picked up his beer. "You have a picture of Finnegan?"

"Taken eighteen years ago." Crawford pulled it out of his coat pocket, flashing his revolver again, and handed it to Wilder, who checked his nemesis out: a burly, handsome man with white hair and piercing blue eyes in a truly bad Hawaiian shirt.

Wilder was impressed. The kid had done okay boiling it down and following up on the old director. Of course, he had to be smart; the CIA had probably recruited him out of some Ivy League school that would never have allowed Wilder to look at their catalog, never mind enroll.

Crawford leaned back so that his jacket fell open, again exposing his revolver. "You're probably wondering about my gun."

Nope.

"It's my dad's."

Oh, crap. Wilder ran his hand along the side of his empty mug and gestured for the waitress with two fingers. There was silence until she came and left.

"He was a cop," Crawford said, picking up his beer and taking a deep drink. "He'd been a cop but hurt his knee chasing down a bad guy. They retired him at quarter pay and he couldn't take care of a family on that. So he worked security at a supermarket."

Wilder wanted to leave. There was Armstrong with Nash dogging her, and Finnegan lurking in the background, making money for shit-head terrorists, and the ghost in the swamp… He cut off Crawford's life story: "Could Finnegan have somebody in the swamp?"

Crawford looked disappointed at having his story interrupted. "What makes you think someone is there?"

"I felt it today. I heard a strange noise."

Crawford made a face. "Probably just some fisherman or hunter."

"No," Wilder said. He figured telling Crawford about Pepper's ghost wouldn't go over well. "There's somebody bad in there. What are you not telling me?"

Crawford froze and then tried to shrug it off. "Nothing. I'm telling you nothing."

"Screw you," Wilder said, shoving his chair back. "Your man almost got a little kid killed-"

"No, no," Crawford said. "We really don't have anybody in the swamp."

"What then?"

Crawford hesitated, and Wilder stood up, leaning forward toward the CIA agent.

"Wait." Crawford swallowed. "When Finnegan was nailed in Mexico he was buying the art on consignment. For a Russian named Simon Letsky."

"That doesn't sound Russian."

"A Russian Jew. Known as the Smart Don."

Aw shit, Wilder thought and sat down. Why couldn't it be the Dumb Don?

"Letsky is reported to be the most powerful organized-crime boss in Russia. My source couldn't tell me much, but Letsky is considered by many insiders to be a very bad man. Finnegan stole the jade for him."

Wilder glanced at the white-haired smiling Irishman in the photo. You asshole, you're in way over your head, aren't you? "And Letsky probably wasn't very happy about his fifty-million-dollar Viagra shipment being taken."

"XT "

No.

Wilder tried to figure the angles, but hell, he was just a Special Forces guy, not a cop. "And you think Finnegan is laundering money through the movie for Letsky in order to pay him back?"

Crawford shrugged. "It's the logical deduction."

"No, it isn't. Four million isn't close to the fifty million Letsky paid."

"I can do the math," Crawford said, looking sullen. "But Letsky most likely didn't put the entire amount up front. Probably just enough to entice Finnegan to get the jade, with the balance paid on delivery. But that's it. That's all I know. I'm not keeping anything else from you, I swear."

Wilder gave up. He stood, sliding the picture into his pocket, shook his head, and walked out.

When he was on the sidewalk, he looked back into the diner. Crawford had switched seats and was facing the door, almost smiling.

Wilder paused. Why was Crawford smirking? He'd missed something. He could feel it. He shook his head again and went toward his Jeep. It was late and he just wanted to get some sleep before the next fuck-up happened.

With Crawford in charge, there was bound to be another one along pretty soon.

The next afternoon, Lucy met Daisy when she got off the shuttle at the Wildlife Refuge.

"How are you doing?" she asked. "You okay?"

Daisy nodded, still a little wobbly. "I think that cry did me good. Well, the cry and you. Thanks for rescuing me again."

Lucy waited for a smile and didn't get one. "Well, that's my job. Daize, about the pills-"

"I didn't take any today," Daisy said, tiredly. "I figure you're here, maybe I don't need them. Just hand everything over to you, no worries." She sounded brittle, almost angry, but then she finally smiled- weakly, but still a smile-and said, "So where's your secret weapon?"

Lucy nodded to the side of the road, where Wilder looked less delighted to be dressed just like Bryce, who looked less than delighted, especially with his copy of Bryce's knife strapped across his chest. Wilder was so much the real thing that he almost made the knife look right. "The swelling's gone down on Bryce's face so that's all right. We're good to shoot. How's Pepper?"

"Looking for craft services, of course." Daisy's smiled wavered "Aunt Lucy needs her apples since Stephanie is falling down on the job."

"Stephanie is mad as hell about something," Lucy said, resigned to having an assistant who hated her. "She's stomping around sneering at people. But then, what else is new?" She looked around for Pepper and didn't see her. "Pepper didn't go-"

"Into the swamp? No." Daisy sounded sure. "And she never will again without J.T. She was really terrified in there until he rescued her. She says she's J.T.'s egg now, which I don't get, but if it keeps her out of the swamp, what the heck." She looked at Lucy. "You really hit the mark with her, buying that Wonder Woman outfit. The only reason she didn't wear it to bed last night was because I told her she couldn't wear it today if she did. She put it on the chair beside her bed and stared at it until she fell asleep. You did good, Aunt Lucy."

"Good." Lucy put her attention back on Wilder, looking lean and tough in camouflage, and Bryce in the same getup, looking like he was going out for Halloween.

"So they're still pals?" Daisy said, looking at them, too. "Even after Althea?"

Lucy shook her head at the mystery that was men. "I'm guessing Bryce doesn't know that Rambo did Bambi. Plus, Wilder did save Bryce's butt in that bar fight, so Bryce has to love him for that."

"J.T. saved a lot of people yesterday," Daisy said.

"Fucking hero," Lucy said, trying to keep the warmth out of her voice. Thank God, Gloom was too busy to hum Bonnie Tyler at her. Change the subject. She nodded toward the long straight road ahead of them leading into the Savannah Wildlife Refuge, now crowded with cast and crew, one of whom was reporting to Finnegan. "Great location. No trees to screw up the chopper and we don't have to pay to shut it down to traffic."

"Yep," Daisy said. "Great place for J.T. to fall out of a helicopter."

"Well, at least it's keeping him out of bars," Lucy said. "I don't like the way that fight happened."

Daisy shrugged. "Couple of good old boys trying to be tough, beat up the famous actor."

"Bryce isn't that famous. Plus, he's a comedian. It'd be like kicking a mime."

"Very tempting," Daisy said.

Lucy grinned at her. "You are feeling better."

"Yeah." Daisy sighed. "Listen, I probably overreacted last night with that crying fit-"

"Your kid lost in a swamp full of gators?" Lucy shook her head. "No, I'd say you were right on the money."

"I could not find Crafty," Pepper announced from behind them, and Lucy turned and saw her, looking frustrated in her blue-and-white-starred skivvies and blue cape, her binoculars around her neck. "I wanted to get you apples and then look for my ghost, but I cannot find Crafty."

"It's over there, honey." Lucy nodded toward the table full of junk food that was set up out of the way of the cameras.

"Great," Pepper said and started toward it.

"No candy," Daisy called after her. "Only fruit." She shook her head and started after her daughter, and Lucy was still smiling when she turned and found Connor in front of her.

"She okay?" he asked, nodding toward Pepper with real concern on his face. "I heard this morning-"

"Where were you last night?" Lucy said, wanting to smack him. He'd given Daisy drugs, damn him.

"Rehearsing with Karen," he said, looking taken aback. "You know, the helicopter pilot-"

"I know," Lucy said.

Nash frowned at her. "Damn, Lucy, if I'd had any idea Pepper was in trouble-"

"What were you rehearsing?"

"This stunt." He grinned at her. "Hey, you want to know what I'm doing, you need to stick closer."

He might have been with Karen, but he hadn't been rehearsing, she thought. That was why Stephanie was looking like murder. Lucy looked past him to Wilder, the antithesis of him in every way. "I don't want to know that much about you," she said and walked over to the monitors, leaving him stunned behind her.

Wilder had been having a trying afternoon. First there was Bryce's gun: It was a stunt gun, but Bryce held it in a way that made Wilder nervous. Then there was Wilder's outfit: He was dressed identically to Bryce in the stupid tiger-stripe fatigues and web gear with his copy of that damn knife strapped across his chest, looking like an idiot. And finally there was Armstrong across the road, distracting him, talking to Daisy, looking a lot like Wonder Woman except for that long dark braid down her back. II he ever got close enough, he was taking that braid down-"

"How do I hold this thing?" Bryce said, frowning at the gun.

Wilder sighed. "Here." He held out a hand for the submachine gun.

Bryce reluctantly parted with it, and Wilder took the MP-5 in his hands. It was a German-made gun, the weapon of choice among counterterrorist units around the world, the same as the one Wilder had cached close by, except that his would work for real. Out of the corner of his eye, Wilder could see Nash watching them.

He removed the magazine and then checked the chamber. The rounds were blanks and there was a blank adapter plugged into the barrel. He checked to see that the adapter was secure, since it could be lethal if it became a projectile fired by the blast from the blanks. Just to be safe, Wilder knelt down and quickly thumbed out the thirty rounds from the magazine onto a box, making sure every single one was a blank. Then he began reloading.

"What are you doing?" Bryce asked.

"Making sure no one gets hurt, particularly you."

Bryce nodded. "That's good. I remember that guy died making that movie. You know, Bruce Lee's kid."

Wilder remembered reading about that. The stunt gun had malfunctioned. "That won't happen here. Nash did a good job."

"Thanks a fucking lot, mate," Nash said from behind them. He looked at the gun in Wilder's hand. "Satisfied?"

"Just doing my job."

"So am I. And I've been doing it a hell of lot longer than you have. Don't mess with my gear after I've prepped it."

Wilder nodded and glanced over at Armstrong and caught her watching them. She turned her head, and he thought, Go away, Nash. Far away. Iraq would be good. Afghanistan. Pluto.

Nash looked pointedly at his watch. "You guys good to go? Or you got a bar fight you got to get to?"

"I want to be in the chopper," Bryce said, lifting his chin, and Wilder forgot Armstrong to focus on this next disaster.

"You will be in the chopper," Nash said. "For the ground shot once we land the bird after the air shots. It will look like you're in the air, so don't worry."

"No," Bryce said. "I want to be in it for the first part. Where it catches up to the car. The skid sequence before the jump."

Wilder thought, Oh, fuck.

"No." Nash said it as an order.

That's telling him, Wilder thought. Not that it's going to work. Bryce had that mule look on his face again.

Bryce drew himself up, his face blotchy with stress. "It's a daylight shot, so I should do it. People have to see me in action scenes to think I'm an action hero. I can do it. I held my own in the bar fight. Just ask J.T."

Nash looked at him, one eyebrow raised.

"Bryce didn't hesitate," Wilder said, truthfully. He got in the way, but he didn't hesitate.

"Lucy isn't going to-" Nash began, but Bryce cut him off.

"So don't tell her until it's over. I'm the star here."

Nash looked at Wilder, mad as hell but fighting to keep a lid on it. "Are you saying he can do this? That you will guarantee he won't get hurt?"

"Nope," Wilder said.

"I'm getting in that copter," Bryce said, "and I'm going to stand on that skid, just like a real action hero." He caught himself. "I am a real action hero."

"Uh, Bryce," Wilder said.

"And if I don't get to do the stunt"-Bryce drew himself up-"I might get so upset that I couldn't shoot for a while. I ill maybe next week. That would cost you more than the insurance."

"Fuck," Nash said, his voice savage now.

"It will save you time with the helicopter," Bryce said. "You won't have to keep it here to do my shots on the ground because they'll already be done."

"Listen, Bryce," Nash began in a totally new voice, almost begging. "We've storyboarded this and-"

"I'm in the helicopter on the skid or there's no more shooting this week."

"Lucy will go crazy," Nash said.

"I'm the star."

Wilder sighed. He'd seen behavior like this before. A three-star general had come to Afghanistan and demanded stupid things in exactly the same manner. Wilder had been tempted to toss a grenade his way.

Nash glared, looking like he wanted to chuck a grenade or two himself. "Fuck it. It's your ass." He stalked off, pulling his cell phone out.

"Let's get this done," Bryce said, his voice deeper now that he was feeling macho.

Wilder ignored him and cocked his head as a familiar sound reached his ears, sending a surge of adrenaline through his body. Inbound helicopter. It's just a movie, Wilder reminded himself, but it didn't matter. Going in on a mission or getting pulled out, that's what the sound of a helicopter meant to him.

''Let's go," Bryce said, channeling G.I. Joe, as a four-seater Bell Jet Ranger with the doors off touched down.

Wilder followed him to the helicopter. Once inside, he leaned forward to get the pilot's attention, easier to do because the doors were off. Her name was Karen Roeburn, Bryce had said when he'd pointed her out, the same tough-looking brunette in an Army flight suit that Armstrong had pointed out the day before. His second ex-wife used to come home dressed like that, smelling of jet fuel.

Wilder tapped the pilot on the shoulder, and she turned and lifted her visor.

"I'm Wilder," he yelled over the sound of the rotors.

"I know," she yelled back. "Captain. J.T. One each. Government issue."

"Bryce is going to be on the skid today in the air, so keep it low and give him a smooth ride."

The look on her face told him what she thought about that. "I take orders from Nash, not from you."

"Right." He sat back, noting that she was programming a handheld GPS, a global positioning system that she had attached to her knee-board. He found that odd; it wasn't like it was hard to find this place in the daylight.

"What are you doing?" Wilder shouted to be heard above the chopper noise.

She looked startled for a second. "Fixing waypoints."

"Why?"

She stared at him. "You a pilot?"

"No, but-"

"Let me do my job."

Boy, everyone was getting real touchy, Wilder thought. It wasn't like they were going into a hot LZ.

Bryce settled into the front right seat, trying to be nonchalant but looking pale, and Nash finally arrived and sat down in the back beside Wilder, his equipment bag at his feet. "Let's go, Karen," he said, patting her on the shoulder, and with a slight shudder the chopper lifted.

Bryce got paler as the ground receded beneath them.

Wilder leaned across and tapped him on the shoulder. "Buckle up."

The actor jerked at the tap and then nodded. He fumbled with the shoulder straps, his hands shaking, and finally managed to get the male end into the female end. Wilder hoped he was better with women than with seat belts.

"We're airborne," Nash announced into his headset, which Wilder had to assume was part of his standing operating procedure since any fool within miles would be able to see that.

He watched Nash get the gear ready for Bryce's big scene. He hoped there was a barf bag in it. Bryce looked like he was going to be needing one.

Nash hooked a thin metal cable to the locking snap link on the back of Bryce's hidden harness and played out its eight-foot length, making sure there were no kinks, routing it so it wouldn't catch on anything inside the bird, competent and professional. Wilder began to relax.

Then Nash untied the six-foot loop of climbing rope attached to the other end of the cable and clipped the cable directly to a tie-down point on the floor of the chopper, and Wilder tensed again.

That wasn't right. The rope was the cushioning for the steel cable, one-third stretch built into the nylon. Without the rope, the steel cable had no play at all. If Bryce fell out, the cable would keep him from splatting onto the road below, but the snap of the abrupt halt eight feet down could break his back. Wilder had seen the rig on the bridge and this was different. There was no need for different.

Nash was stuffing the loop of rope back into his kit bag. Wilder put his hand on the bag and his head next to Nash's and yelled over the sound of the rotors, "What are you doing?"

Nash glared at him. "Bryce is going to put his feet on the skids of the chopper," he yelled back. "He's going to have three points of contact with the aircraft at all times. The cable is just a safety."

Bryce looked over his shoulder. "What's going on?" His voice was almost drowned out by the sound of the blades, and he was definitely green now.

Wilder gave him a thumbs-up and turned back to Nash. "Why'd you take the rope off?"

"He doesn't need it."

"It's part of the gear, right?"

"Yeah, but we don't want it caught on film and it adds three extra feet of fall and we're going to be low and I don't want him scraping along if he does fall."

"What are you guys talking about?" Bryce yelled. "J.T.?"

He sounded scared. Damn it, Wilder thought. Why was Nash dick ing with things? "Everything's fine," he yelled to Bryce. "We're almost set." He tried to pull the kit bag out of Nash's hands, but the stunt coordinator hung on.

"The slack rope goes back on," Wilder yelled.

"It's my stunt."

Nash glared at him, and Wilder held his eyes. Come on, don't make me take it away from you. Put the rope back on.

Nash looked away, out at the horizon. "All right. All right." He took the rope loop out and hooked it up again. Then he leaned forward and tapped Bryce on the shoulder. "We can still put Wilder in your place," he yelled.

Bryce's face was pale and damp, but he shook his head.

Wilder stuck his head next to the other two. "Really. It's no sweat, Bryce. I've lost count of the number of aircraft I've hung out of or jumped from. Normal part of my workday."

Bryce swallowed as he glanced out the open door to the ground. He shook his head firmly. Wilder had seen that look before, when he'd been a jumpmaster for inexperienced jumpers. Bryce was scared but he had made up his mind to do it. Wilder glanced at Nash, who looked none too pleased.

"Seat belt off," Nash ordered.

Wilder watched Bryce fumble with the buckle and realized that the actor's hands were shaking badly now. Probably should have stuck with comedy.

Wilder checked the outside. They were already a half mile down the road and the car was less than ten feet in front of them. The camera truck was about fifty feet in front of that. The road was perfectly straight. It should be simple.

Nash yelled to Bryce, "Okay, mate, feet on the skids."

Bryce turned toward the open door and cautiously slid his feet out, searching for the skid by feel, trying to look down.

"Eyes on the horizon," Wilder yelled. He pointed over Bryce's shoulder. "Look at those towers." He kept his eyes on Bryce edging his way out the door and in his peripheral vision kept a lock on their relative position with the picture car. Althea was looking over her shoulder at them. Maybe she'd be impressed that was Bryce out on the skid and fall back into his bed.

Nash stuck his head out the back door to do a quick check on where Bryce's feet were. Wilder resisted the urge to give him a nudge out the door since he didn't have a safety cable.

"Okay, mate," Nash yelled to Bryce. "Put your weight on your feet. Don't worry, we've got the cable just in case. And the chopper will be steady. Right, Karen?"

"Roger that," the pilot said.

"Now point the gun at the car," Nash yelled.

Wilder watched as Bryce awkwardly tried to aim the gun, but it was obvious the actor's entire focus was on the hand holding on to the chopper's door frame, not the one holding the MP-5. Well, he'd still give him points for effort. Bryce might be an idiot, but he was a game idiot. "Looking good, Bryce," he yelled and then sat back.

It was going to be a very long afternoon.

Below them, Lucy had checked with the EMT's leaning against the ambulance at the end of the toad, making sure they were the real deal and not some scam Connor had cooked up to cut costs. Reassured, she went back and sat down at the monitors beside Daisy and Pepper, who were squinting up at the sky.

"Is J.T. in that helicopter?" Pepper asked, handing her an apple.

"Yep," Lucy said, taking it. "Thank you. He's going to be okay, Pepper, he's probably jumped out of a hundred helicopters-"

"Nice day for a disaster," Gloom said, sitting down on the other side of her.

Daisy grinned at him, and Lucy felt better than she had since they'd pulled into the base camp lot two days ago. Mission accomplished, she thought as she bit into her apple. Or it would be as soon as she got Daisy out of there the day after tomorrow.

"Hello, Gloom," Pepper sang out.

"Hello, Peppermint. Taken any walks lately?"

"No," Pepper said. "I am staying right here, and watching J.T., and looking for my ghost."

"All right then." Lucy picked up her headphones. "How we doin' out there?" she said to Gloom.

"Ask me when the stunts are over," Gloom said.

Above them, Wilder edged his way out onto the skid, holding on for dear life as the wind beat at his tiger stripes.

"Funny," Gloom said, squinting up at him. "I thought he'd be more dashing than that."

"You try being dashing on a helicopter skid," Lucy said, but she was disappointed, too. From down here, Wilder's body language pretty much communicated "terrified." So much for her secret weapon.

Well, he was still impressive on the ground.

"He's probably just being extra careful," Daisy said, her voice doubtful.

"Ready when you are," Connor said over the headphones.

Gloom stood up. ''Here we go," he called to the set. "Stand by."

"Roll sound," Lucy said, and listened to the set echo back, "Rolling."

"Take one," the guy with the clapper said, snapping it shut in front of the camera.

"Action," Lucy said and watched the copter in the monitor, Wilder standing stiffly on the skid. She put her apple down half eaten on the edge ok the monitor cart. It's not dangerous, he's cabled in-

"Afternoon, ma'am," somebody said from behind her in a deep Cajun accent, and she jerked around to see a tall, handsome, weather-beaten man wearing aviator sunglasses and a worn leather flight jacket tipping his crumpled pilot's hat to her. She'd seen him before, she knew that, but at the moment it didn't come to her.

"Cool sunglasses!" Pepper said.

"Gloom." Lucy put her eyes back on the monitor, and Gloom turned toward them. "We got a gawker."

"1 hank you very much, darlin'," the man was saying to Pepper. "And may I say, that's a very fetching outfit you have on today."

Pepper smoothed down her WonderWear and beamed, and then he nodded to Lucy as Gloom stood up to get rid of him. "I was just wondering if you could direct me toward Captain J. T. Wilder."

Gloom sat back down again.

"Or failing that," the Cajun said, "a friendly actress in need of companionship. You wouldn't be a friendly actress now, would you, cheri?"

"No, I'm the director and we're shooting a scene right now." Lucy stared at the monitor where Wilder looked positively wimpy on that skid. He really should stay on the ground, she thought. He's so good on the ground.

"Very pleased to meet you," the man said. "I'm Rene LaFavre, J. T. Wilder's comrade-in-arms."

"You're a friend of J.T,'s?" Pepper said, delighted. "So am I!"

"J. T. is a man of discernment in his friendships," LaFavre said, smiling at her.

"Yeah," Pepper said. "Do you want to come to my party tonight?"

LaFavre put his hand over his heart. "Tragically, I have a previous engagement."

"Mr. LaFavre," Lucy said, staring at the copter, where Wilder now looked rigid with terror.

"That's Major LaFavre, darlin', but you can call me Rene."

"Thank you, Rene. Captain Wilder is on that helicopter skid up there."

LaFavre looked up. "I don't think so."

Lucy squinted at the helicopter as it dropped closer and then looked at the monitor. "Gloom," she said, her voice rising. "That doesn't look like Wilder on the skid." She looked again as the helicopter dropped closer.

"That's not Wilder," Lucy said, standing up. "That's Bryce. Connor," she yelled into her headset. "What the hell is Bryce doing on that skid?"