Don't Look Down

Chapter 18

Lucy had taken Pepper back to Daisy, listening with half an ear to Pepper's enthusiastic recount of her time spent with Major LaFavre.

"He is a very good person," she told Lucy.

"I'm sure he is," she said and knocked on Daisy's door.

Daisy opened it, looking bleary-eyed. "Hey, pumpkin," she said to Pepper. Then she looked at Lucy and her smile faded. "What?"

"Don't come to the bridge tonight," Lucy said, as Daisy stepped back to let them in the room. "Pack your things and I'll pick you up as soon as filming is over. We're leaving right away."

"To go to New York?"

"Maybe. I don't know." Lucy sat down on the bed and almost knocked over Daisy's pill bottle. There were only four left. Good. "For right now, just away from here."

"What do you mean, 'maybe'?"

Lucy took a deep breath. "I mean, maybe we'll stay here. Maybe we'll start over here."

Daisy sat down beside her. "Really?"

Lucy looked at her. "J.T. knows we were in a foster home."

"So?"

"I've never told anybody that."

Daisy blinked. "Why?"

"Nobody's business."

"I agree. Why did you tell J.T.?"

"I didn't. He guessed. Well, he guessed we weren't sisters and then the rest… just came out."

Daisy nodded. "And what does this have to do with us staying in the South?"

Lucy swallowed. "I think J.T. is the rest of my life. I know I move too fast, but I really think he is. And that's a new life. And you want a new life. And I want to be with you, I want to play Barbies with Pepper until she's too old to play Barbies and then I want to talk about boys with her."

"Cool," Pepper said.

"So I think tonight after the shoot is over, we get in the camper and we drive to Charleston or Atlanta or someplace, I don't know, and we find a nice hotel and we sit and we figure out what we both want, and we pick a place and we start over. Together. Both of us. Partners."

Daisy drew a deep breath. "I'd like that very much."

Lucy nodded. "Yeah. So would I."

"What about your career?"

Good question. "Well, Atlanta's a big advertising town," Lucy said, trying to sound more positive than she felt. "And I'm sure they have many talented dogs there. Gloom can run the business part from New York. He loves my loft, he can move in." Actually, the more she talked about it, the more it all made sense. Something new. Brand-new start. Brand-new day. Brand-new love. "This is what I want to do, it's what you want to do, it's good. We'll have to figure things out together-"

"We can do that," Daisy said eagerly, and Lucy saw tears in her eyes. "We can so do that."

Lucy felt her own tears start. "You sound like Pepper."

Daisy swallowed. "I feel like Pepper. It'll be the three of us."

''And J.T.," Pepper said, watching them wide-eyed, as if waiting to find out if the crying part was good or not.

"And J.T.," Lucy said firmly.

"And Rene," Pepper said.

"Who?" Daisy said.

"Rene," Pepper said. "He's J.T.'s best friend. So we will cook dinner and they will come."

"Cook dinner?" Lucy said, not sure.

"I'll show you how," Daisy said and then grinned. "Yeah. I'll show you how to do something."

"Cool," Pepper said.

Lucy nodded. "Cool."

Daisy took a deep breath. "And we will have such a good time."

Lucy started to laugh. "Okay, so you pack and I'll go finish up this… movie…" Oh, hell. The CIA and the Russian mob. "And then we'll have a new life."

"Okay," Pepper said and went to drag her pink Barbie rolling carry-on out of the corner.

Lucy stood up. "I'll call you after the shoot."

"We'll be ready." Daisy stood up. "We will be so ready. Lucy, thank you."

"Hey." Lucy slung her arm around her and kissed her cheek. "This is good for me too. Everybody wins."

I hope.

Lucy had finished packing her duffel and put it next to J.T.'s case when someone knocked on the door.

Nash, she thought. He's found out we're stripping the crew off the bridge. "Who is it?"

"It's me," J.T. said. "Who were you expecting?"

She unlocked the door and threw her arms around him so that he had to drag her with him as he came in. He kicked the door shut behind him and kissed her, and she hung on tight, so relieved to see him, she was speechless. Damn LaFavre, making her worry.

"I could get used to coming home to this," he said into her neck.

"Never leave me again," she said, and he pulled back.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she said. "Well, I was worried. And Nash came by after you left."

His face turned to stone and she said, "No, nothing happened. Hey, you'd have been proud of me." She gestured at the Beretta on the nightstand. "I pulled a gun on him."

He shuddered and then wrapped his arms around her again. "He's not a good person to pull a gun on, Lucy. Don't do it again unless you're going to kill him. If you hesitate, he'll take it away from you. And then…" He held her tighter.

"Well," Lucy said, trying to breathe, "if he'd come any closer I would have killed him."

"Lucy, you didn't even take the safety off. I can see it from here. So could he."

Hell. "I forgot."

"Yeah." He kissed her cheek. "Don't pull a gun on him. On anybody, but especially not him. You only point a gun-"

"If you're going to kill somebody. I know, I know." Now that she was calm, she noticed he was soaking wet. And smelled like swamp. She pulled back. "Where have you been?"

"In the swamp," he said, letting her go. "Finnegan is dead."

Lucy felt sick. "You killed him?"

He looked insulted. "No. Jeez, Lucy."

"Sorry." She sat down on the edge of the bed. I'm sleeping with a man I know could kill people. She should have found that disturbing, not comforting, but there it was.

He kept talking as he unbuttoned his wet shirt. "I thought Nash did it, but if he was here with you…"

"He was here with me part of the time." Lucy crossed her arms. She was going to have to change her shirt, too. It smelled of swamp, thanks to her taste in men.

Well, J.T. was worth a little swamp stink.

"He wouldn't have had time to see you and get to the swamp," J.T. said as he stripped off the body armor. "You okay?"

Am I okay? Lucy considered the situation. "We still shooting tonight?"

"No," he said, and the way he said it made her pay attention.

"What happened?"

"I'm pretty sure Finnegan was tortured."

"Oh, God." Lucy swallowed. "I don't believe Nash would torture. He's crazy but he's not an animal."

"I think it was the ghost."

"Who?"

"The guy who Pepper's been seeing in the swamp. She was right. He's been there all along. He was there that night with Pepper and the gator."

"The ghost." Lucy swallowed.

J.T. pulled off his wet pants and got a fresh shirt out of the case. "But if he's moved up from shooting out helicopter skids and crashing a van to torture and murder, then anything could happen. You're getting out of here."

"Me?" Lucy straightened. "W'hat about you?"

His cell phone rang before he could answer. He clicked it on and said, "Wilder," and then he sat down next to her on the bed, turning the phone so she could hear, too.

"What the fuck is going on?" Crawford's voice crackled.

J.T. looked unimpressed. "Reference?"

"Two bodies in the Savannah Wildlife Refuge and a missing Irishman."

Two bodies and a missing Irishman? Lucy looked at J.T.

"Two bodies?" he said.

"Some fat guy and another guy with tattoos, looks like a weight lifter."

J.T. relaxed a little.

He knows who they are, Lucy thought. Jesus.

J.T. said, "Finnegan is dead, not missing."

"How the hell do you know that?"

"Uh-" J.T. looked at her and Lucy thought, Something else he didn't tell me. "Well, I found part of his shirt. An alligator got the rest of him."

Not Moot, Lucy thought, and felt ill.

"Why the fuck were you out there?" Crawford said.

"Checking on things."

"Did I tell you to check on things?" Crawford didn't wait for an answer. "So much for the bug that was going to lead us to Letsky."

Oh, you're a real humanitarian, Lucy thought, and the look on J.T.'s face said he was thinking the same thing.

J.T. said, "Did you have him killed?"

"Oh, yeah, sure," Crawford snarled. "I killed the one link I had to my priority target. We noticed the bug wasn't moving for a while and went in to check. Found it on his cane. But no Finnegan."

"Why would Letsky take him out?"

"Letsky wouldn't take him out," Crawford said, clearly fed up. "Letsky wants his fucking Viagra art. And Finnegan was going to get it for him."

J.T. straightened. "I thought Finnegan already had the art. He just needed to deliver it."

"I do the thinking here."

"Then think," J.T. snapped, and Lucy thought, That's my boy. "Who do you think took out Finnegan?"

"Nash."

"Nash was here at the hotel when Finnegan was getting chomped up."

"How do you know that? You just told me you were in the swamp."

"Take my word for it," J.T. said. "I've got no reason to protect Nash. So who took out Finnegan if it wasn't Letsky or Nash?"

"Fuck."

The look on J.T.'s face told Lucy that wasn't the answer he wanted. The CIA had no idea who'd murdered Finnegan. We're definitely not filming tonight, Lucy thought.

"Okay." By his tone, Crawford was making a big attempt to regroup. "Here's the new plan. You bug Nash. If he makes the meeting with Letsky, we've got them."

"Does Nash have the art?"

"Uh. No."

"Then why would Nash make the meeting?"

"You just do as ordered. Bug Nash. Let this thing play out. If he gets the art, we'll let him make the meeting."

"Where is the art?"

"Just finish your goddamn movie. Do you understand, Captain?"

"How were the other two killed?"

"One shot each, in the head."

"Close range?"

"No. Looks like seven-point-six-two. Rifle."

J.T. looked at Lucy and smiled what he probably hoped was a reassuring smile. Pathetic, she thought and loved him more for trying.

"Captain Wilder?"

"Yes."

"Bug Nash. Leave him alone. Let him do his thing."

"Nash may be having problems."

Crawford breathed heavily into the phone. "What kind of problems?"

"His pilot canceled the cargo net that was supposed to hold the jade. I think that's what it was supposed to hold."

"So where are they going to put it?"

"In the chopper. Which makes me think there won't be as many people in there as Nash had planned."

"Double cross and Nash figured it out," Crawford said. "Fuck." He was silent for a moment. "They got the coordinates from Finnegan. They cut him out. Nash is delivering the art without him. Bug Nash."

"Crawford-"

"Just do it, damn it."

The phone clicked off.

"Well, I would but you didn't give me a second bug," J.T. said to the dial tone.

"Oh, great," Lucy said. "Who else was killed?"

"Two of the guys who attacked Bryce and me in the bar. They worked for Finnegan, his muscle. The fight wasn't an accident. Finnegan wanted to take me out early in the game."

"There were three guys," Lucy said, her heart pounding. "Do you think the third guy is the killer?"

J.T. shook his head immediately. "No. Thin Man is the one whose knee I took out. I think he probably crawled away to hide until things clear up. Like Judgment Day, maybe."

"Thin Man?" Lucy said. "Thin Man. You named them, too?"

"Got to identify the targets," J.T. said, but Lucy could tell his mind was elsewhere.

"What was the seven-point-sixty-two thing?"

"Seven-point-six-two," he corrected. "Caliber of the bullet."

"Is that important?"

"Everything is important," J.T. said. "Means the ghost probably used a sniper rifle to take the security guys out. Then came in close with a smaller caliber suppressed weapon to finish Finnegan. Which means he wanted something from Finnegan." J.T. shook his head. "This is over. It's too damn dangerous now. These people will do anything."

Lucy sighed her relief. "Thank you. I told Daisy to pack because we were getting out of here right after the shoot. But we can tell everybody to go now. I don't care where we go, just so it's out of here, away from this damn bridge and that helicopter."

"LaFavre's quarters at Hunter Army Airfield," Wilder said. "You'll be safe there for the next twenty-four hours."

"Good." Lucy picked up the phone to punch in Daisy's room number. "Pepper will be thrilled to be on the road with you. She'll probably want to ride in the Jeep with her WonderWear and LaFavre's sunglasses."

"Works for me," J.T. said.

"And when she finds out she's staying with her buddy Rene," Lucy said and then frowned at the phone as it rang again. "Come on, Daisy, pick up." It rang again and again, and Lucy began to feel cold.

"What's wrong?"

"She's not answering." Lucy swallowed. "J.T., she's not answering."

"She's probably in the bathroom," he told her, but five minutes later, Lucy made him open Daisy's door with a credit card and they found her on the bed, unconscious, a glass overturned on the bedside table.

"Daisy," Lucy said and then saw the empty pill bottle next to a glass. A second glass.

"She had a drink with somebody," she said, but J.T. was already calling the front desk, telling them to send a doctor fast.

Lucy turned to him, shaking. "She's breathing, but she's out cold. I can't rouse her."

"Pepper?" J.T. called out. "Come out, honey, it's okay. Pepper?"

Lucy lost her breath. "Where is she? Pepper?"

"I don't know." J.T. looked ill. "Fuck, I should have listened to you and got you all out of here."

"Oh, God, they didn't take her, tell me-"

Her phone rang and Lucy started.

"Answer that," J.T. said grimly. "He's going to tell us what we have to do to get Pepper back."

Wilder watched Lucy pull the phone from her bag, her hand shaking. He wasn't sure if it was fear or anger or both, but he was sure she wasn't going to be able to handle the call. He held out his hand and Lucy passed the phone over as it rang again. "Talk," he snapped into it.

There was a short burst of laughter. "This my man from the swamp? I've got the girl. You and your woman, the Director, you do the stunt tonight. You stay out of the way, and the little girl's back to you. Unhurt. If not…Well, there was Finnegan. And his two guards."

Wilder reined in his anger. "Prove you have her."

The laughter again, an edge of craziness to it that Wilder had heard before, but only in combat. "Sure. She never shuts up anyway. Hold on."

There was a pause and Wilder looked up to see Lucy staring at him with desperate eyes. He tried to give his reassuring smile, gave up on that, and just mouthed, It will be all right.

Lucy's expression didn't change.

"J.T.?"

Wilder recognized Pepper's voice. She sounded a lot saner than the man who had her and more calm than the two people in the room here terrified for her.

"Hey, sweetie," Wilder said. Lucy was holding her hand out for the phone, but Wilder knew that was not a good move. "Are you okay?"

"I do not like this babysitter," Pepper said.

"I don't like him, either," Wilder said. "But for right now, be nice to him. Then we'll come and get you."

"I know," Pepper said. "He said mean things, and I told him you are very dangerous when you are protecting me."

"Very dangerous," Wilder said and thought, I'm going to kill the son of a bitch. "Be brave and we will come and get you."

"Soon?" Pepper said, her voice going higher.

"It's going to be a while, Pepper," Wilder said. "We have to shoot the last movie scene before the babysitter will bring you to us. But we will hurry."

"Okay," Pepper said, not sounding okay.

"Pepper, I will get you as soon as I can," Wilder said, wanting to crawl through the phone to her. "I swear to you-"

"I know," Pepper said. "I'm your egg.''

"Damn right," Wilder said, his throat closing, and then the ghost took the phone back.

"She's alive. Do everything I say, and she stays that way."

"You hurt her, and I will spend the rest of my life tracking you down."

"Oooohhhh. I'm scared." He laughed. "I'm too fast and too good. You were slow in the swamp. You'll be too slow again."

"What did you give Daisy?' Wilder demanded.

"Not a damn thing. Wasn't even there. Just do the stunt tonight and you get your egg back. Try anything funny, and hey, eggs crack."

"No," Wilder said. "'They don't. I want you to answer with proof of life from this phone every time I call, or we stop filming."

"You stop filming and-"

"You hurt the kid, you're done. You keep her safe and happy, we do the stunt exactly as planned."

The phone went dead. Wilder hated turning the phone off.

"Who the hell was that?" Lucy demanded.

Wilder looked at Lucy. "The ghost." He saw the look on Lucy's face and realized he'd used the sledgehammer without meaning to. "We do the stunt, we get her back."

Lucy swallowed. "He's the guy who tortured Finnegan." She looked ill.

"We will get her back," Wilder said as somebody knocked on the door. "I swear it."

Then he went to let the doctor in.

Tyler stood on edge of the roof of the abandoned grain tower, the highest place around other than the bridge and the hotel, and stared across the river at the bright lights of Savannah. The sniper rifle rested on the concrete to his left, complete with bipod and thermal sight. Ready and waiting.

He pivoted right and looked at the bridge. The film crew was beginning to set up lights and cameras and put out cones, closing off the side of the bridge heading from Georgia into South Carolina. Damn right.

"So you should have games and stuff."

"What?" He turned to see the Kid sitting on the roof behind him, her back against a smokestack. She'd gotten dirt on her hands and then wiped them on her cheeks and she looked like hell.

She glared at him. "Babysitters have games and stuff. Connor said you were my babysitter. Where are the games?"

"Here's a game: You shut up." He looked back at the bridge.

"That's not a good game."

Here's a good game. I throw you off this fuckin' tower. He could probably get a shot in before she hit ground. But proof of life, that's what that bastard Stranger had said.

"I'm hungry."

"Shut up, Kid."

His cell phone buzzed. Not the Stranger for proof of life. He knew who it was and he knew what she wanted. What he had drawn out of Finnegan with the knife. The phone buzzed again.

"You should answer your phone."

Tyler barely noticed the third buzz. When it sounded a fourth time, he took it and canceled the incoming call. Then he punched in the coordinates that Finnegan had whispered to him through his agony. He hit Send, thinking, This is the dumb bitch who tried to cut us out. Women. He'd wanted to kill her but Nash had said no, she was the only pilot they had and they had to have the helicopter.

Well, when this was over, she had to land sometime.

Tyler heard a rustling behind him and turned to look.

The Kid was eating his Cheetos.

"These are not very good," she said, frowning at him. "They're not crunchy."

"They've been in the swamp," he said, wounded. "You try to keep anything crunchy in a swamp."

"If you had closed them up better, they would be crunchy," she said, her snotty little chin in the air.

"Not in a fucking swamp" he said, really wishing he could kill her.

"Bad word," she said.

He ignored her. It was either that or kill her, and there was that damn proof of life-

"Did you see Moot in the swamp?" she said.

"What?"

"Moot. The alligator with one eye. Did you see her?"

"Yeah, I saw her." Tyler checked the time. They should be heading for the bridge soon.

Behind him, the bag rustled again.

Fuck, he wasn't going to have any Cheetos left.

"You smell," the girl said.

Tyler thought, You die, and put his eye to the scope.

Lucy met J.T. and Gloom on the bridge. Three days before, she'd been new on the bridge, watching a helicopter land and J.T. get off. It seemed like a thousand years ago now.

"What did the doctor say?" J.T. asked her as she joined them.

"Daisy will be out for a while but she'll be fine. Estelle is sitting with her. The doctor's on call. She's going to be all right." Lucy swallowed. "We should get Pepper back before she wakes up, though."

"Jesus," Gloom said.

"Gloom just got here," J.T. said. "I called him-"

"Good," Lucy said. "Because that was my next move. We need a plan." She set her jaw. "This is out of control. We have to take back control. We can't just wait for them-"

"We're not going to," J.T. said. "What's the fewest people you can film the stunt with?"

Lucy stopped, forcing her mind away from Pepper. "We're way ahead of you. We have the crew set everything up and then they leave, except for me to direct, Gloom on clapper and camera, and you as

Bryce's double. The stunt team because the assholes want to be here for their damn plan. And then Bryce, unless we can convince him to leave the bridge during their big scenes."

"That's it, then," J.T. said. "We keep everybody else down in base camp."

Gloom nodded. "Okay, but here's what I don't get. J.T. just told me that all Nash and his cronies are doing is taking the helicopter and flying out to meet this Latsky-"

"Letsky," J.T. said.

"-But why a helicopter? It's not like there are mountains around here they have to fly up to. Why not a car or a boat? It'd be a lot less hassle and a lot less noticeable. Hell, with a boat and all these islands…"

"The weight?" Lucy guessed. "Jade penises have to weigh a lot. What difference does it-" She stopped because J.T. was frowning.

"Cargo net," he said. "They needed the cargo net for the art. But when they picked up Finnegan and the art, they could have just loaded it in a boat…" He closed his eyes. "Jesus, of course, that's it. They don't have the art."

"What are you talking about?" Lucy said.

J.T. pressed his hands against his temples. "I asked Crawford this morning where the art was and he told me not to worry about it. I got the feeling that Nash didn't have the art yet, that Finnegan had it. But-yeah, okay, this makes sense now-I bet you anything that Finnegan didn't have the art either, and the stunt is a cover for them getting it. They swoop down in the helicopter to wherever it is, load it in the net, and take off to go to Letsky. Nobody follows."

"Who's Crawford?" Gloom said.

"The CIA," Lucy said, frowning at J.T. "Well, why haven't they already done that? What's so important about tonight? Because they took Pepper to make sure we'd shoot tonight." She swallowed, thinking about Pepper alone out there with a madman. "I'm going to kill them all. That stuff I said about not shooting the gun? I can shoot the gun."

"The CIA is involved?" Gloom said, appalled.

"Actually, the CIA would be J.T.," Lucy said. "Can we-"

Gloom drew back. "I thought he was a Green Beret."

"He's that, too," Lucy said, feeling her temper rise. "Later, he's gonna open for Aerosmith. Can we get Pepper back now?"

"The art has to be close," J.T. said to Gloom. "That's why Nash picked the Talmadge for the stunt."

Gloom leaned back. "It's in a truck coming across the bridge? We'll only have the two lanes on one side shut down. The other half of the bridge will still be open to traffic."

J.T. shook his head. "I wouldn't take down a truck on the bridge. Too conspicuous, too hard." He looked out over the choppy river. "And in this wind, impossible. But Lucy's got a good point, the timing seems to be critical. The schedule is the thing that Finnegan and Nash have been insisting on."

"I don't care," Lucy said, ready to scream. "I don't care, I don't care. How do we get Pepper back?"''

"We follow them," J.T. said, calm as ever. "I would like to know exactly what they're doing so I know where they're going, but bottom line is, we follow them. When whatever it is goes down, we each take one of the team. I follow Nash, you follow Doc," he said to Lucy. "As for Karen…"

"I'll do anything," Gloom said. "But it's only fair to warn you, I don't think I can take Karen. She's a black belt in karate. I'm a Ralph Lauren cowhide with brass grommets."

"You're going to run base camp," J.T. said, taking out his phone.

"Who's got Karen, then?" Lucy said.

"LaFavre."

"Poor Karen," Gloom said, brightening. "She's toast."

"Fuck Karen," Lucy said. "She's part of the team that took my Pepper. LaFavre can toss Karen out of the helicopter for all I care. So we wait for one of them to lead us to Pepper? That asshole could have killed her by then." Her voice caught. "God, J.T.-"

"She's not going to die," J.T. said. "They're going to need her alive to get what they need."

"The jade?" Gloom said.

"No. The helicopter," J.T. said. "We're going to make a trade." He checked his watch, pulled out his cell phone, and punched in a number. "Don't make me wait," he snapped when it was answered after the fifth ring. He listened for a minute and then his voice changed, soft and light. "Hey, P.L., how's it going?" He smiled as he listened to what she said next. "We'll get you crunchy Cheetos when we get you home. Aunt Lucy wants to say hi." He handed the phone to Lucy and nodded.

"Pepper?" she said, trying to keep her voice light.

"Aunt Lucy?"

"Yes, baby." Lucy felt her throat swell. "How are you?"

"I am hungry and the Cheetos are bad," Pepper said. "Can you come get me?"

"Soon, baby," Lucy said. "We just have to shoot the stunt and then that man will tell us where you are."

"We're up high in this building," Pepper said. "We can see the brid-" And then Lucy heard her say, "Hey. "

The asshole came back on. "Not playing fair, there, buddy-boy."

"You hurt her, I'll kill you," Lucy said, trying to be matter-of-fact.

"Whoo-ee. This the mother? No, no, wait a minute, she's out cold. This is Aunt Lucy. Aunt Lucy with the great ass."

"If you hurt her-" Lucy felt her temper rise to the breaking point. Steady.

"Honey, you can come get me anytime you want."

"I will fucking castrate you, you limp-dicked-"

J.T. grabbed the phone from her. "I'll call again," he said and hung up. He looked at Lucy. "If you can't stay calm, you can't talk to him."

Lucy blinked back tears as Gloom put his arm around her. "Okay, we trade her for a helicopter. How the hell are we going to get a helicopter?"

"We aren't. LaFavre is." J.T. punched in the numbers.

Lucy thought about LaFavre taking the helicopter away from Karen. "He's not going to be able to charm her out of it."

"He has other skills." J.T. spoke into the phone, leaving a message.

"I hope they're painful." Lucy took a deep breath. "Listen, Pepper said they were high up in a building. She said they could see the bridge."

Gloom turned to survey the landscape. "That could be anywhere."

"But close," J.T. said. "That's something."

"That's not enough," Lucy said. "I want to do something now."

"Good," J.T. said. "You can learn to fall off a bridge."

"What?" Lucy said, jarred out of her fear for Pepper. "What happened to 'the molecules won't part for you?"

He handed her a harness. "A controlled fall. On a rope. If something goes wrong, you need to be able to go over the side of this bridge, and I'm going to show you how to do that."

"Will it help me get Pepper back?" Lucy said.

"Yes," he said.

"Then show me," she said.