Remy looked doubtful. “Are you sure about this? I’m a rank amateur at best. What if I screw up?”
“Just do the best you can. I have to go.”
“Good luck,” Cade said.
Jessie paused. “Thanks. I’ll try to give you a good show.”
Then, she took off at a slow jog, mentally running down her pre-performance checklist. “Everybody ready?” she asked, joining the group assembled at the picnic table behind the Sentinel Pass Post Office. A quick head count told her someone was missing. “Where’s Zane?”
“We don’t know,” Eerik answered. “He left on his bike before I finished passing out the Team Shockwave fliers and hasn’t come back.”
Winding mountain roads, a Harley and a speed demon. What could possibly happen?
She fished out her cell phone. No messages. “Crap,” she muttered. “If he found some bar and forgot about the show, I’m going to throttle him.” She replaced the phone in her knapsack and pulled out the gray-blue shirt she’d borrowed from wardrobe that morning. She quickly changed shirts. “What about J.T.? Anybody seen him?”
“Yeah, he’s around here someplace. Probably too ashamed to show his face.”
Jessie looked at Marsh—by far the most stable, easygoing member of the Shockwave team. “Why?”
“He said he got drunk last night and forgot to charge his battery. He used the spare for the shoot this morning. Sorry, Jess, I know you were counting on the footage.”
The producers of Kamikaze had asked her to submit a new audition tape. Apparently, they’d seen the YouTube video of her rollover and wanted proof that she was healthy enough to participate. With any luck, Remy would get sufficient footage to send with her formal application.
“So, no Zane means one of you gets to be my hero. Drag J.T. into position and make this happen. No excuses,” she said, quickly buttoning the ugly shirt. She swept her hair into a loose ponytail and pulled on a regulation U.S. Postal Service employee cap.
She did a couple of deep stretches while she ran over the story line in her mind: ordinary postal worker trudging back to work gets accosted by three—no, two—hoodlums. Movie-star hero-type comes to her rescue. After a brief skirmish, good guy realizes he can’t fight them all and urges the woman to run for it.
The Freerunning that followed would pack its usual visual punch, employing existing structures, as well as a couple of well-placed obstacles—her car, for one. The tower at the end of the street was the ultimate challenge. Jessie and her hero would make it to the top; the bad guys would fail spectacularly.
“Cue the music,” Jessie hollered. “Stay safe, everybody.”
There came a point in any stunt where backing out was not an option. And for Jessie, forward momentum was her personal mantra. Keep moving. Keep doing. Keep going. And maybe, just maybe, the demons won’t catch up.
Then she picked up her fake mailbag and marched to the yellow tape. “And go,” she called out.
Once she rounded the corner, she let instinct take over.
Fear—the thing every smart stunt person knows to expect and respect—made her senses sharpen. She and the others weren’t actors per se with marks to hit and set lines to say. This was mostly ad lib, although the five of them had worked together often enough to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
Marsh and Eerik would play the bullies, she gathered, when the two entered Main Street near the corner coffee shop. Please let that mean Zane is back, she prayed.
The crowd parted to let them through. Low-riding pants, sloppy sweatshirts, hats worn off to the side, they looked like gang members out for trouble.
Jessie walked fast to reach the first mark they’d sketched out the day before. She ignored them completely, although she never completely lost sight of them in her peripheral vision.
“Yo, postal beyotch,” Marsh called. “Whatcha got in your bag?”
He did an impressive little hop, twirl and backflip to land directly in her path. The crowd let out a small cry of surprise. Eerik ran straight at the brick wall of the building to her right and continued up the side then dropped backward to land on his feet, eliciting applause.
Not to be outdone, Marsh grabbed the old-fashioned metal pole that supported the building’s overhang with both hands and swung around so his body was perpendicular to the pole, creating a pencil-straight line blocking her path.
The cheers pleased her. The guys were on their game and things were only going to get better, she hoped.
Marsh swung around and let go of the pole to reach for her bag. “Gimme that. I bet there’s money in there.”
Her character wasn’t the weep-and-cry kind of girl. She’d put up a fight even if the odds were against her.
“Messing with the mail is a federal offense,” she said, speaking loudly so her voice would carry to the onlookers.
“Oh, yeah? Who cares about Uncle Sam? We want what’s in that bag, ho,” Eerik snarled.
The script had called for Zane to rush to her rescue the moment Marsh picked her up and twirl her overhead like a sack of potatoes.
Marsh reached for her, but before he had them both in position, she heard a voice cry, “Leave her alone.”
The wrong voice. What the hell? Jessie spun around to see J.T. approach. J.T.? She nearly groaned out loud. “What are you doing here?” she asked—the right line but with a different meaning than originally intended.
“I’m here to help. Because, no matter what you do or say, I love you. And I know you love me. And need me.”
Jessie was honestly and completely speechless. Either his acting had improved or he really meant what he was saying. Yes, Dar had told her as recently as a week ago that J.T. was still mooning over Jessie, but even Dar admitted the two were completely incompatible. J.T. was a control freak. A micromanager. Jessie was as independent as they came.
She looked over her shoulder toward where she hoped Remy was filming. Her sister wasn’t there. She didn’t know what to do—yell “Cut” or try to fake it.
“I…” She looked at her two colleagues, pleadingly.
Marsh made the call. He grabbed the front of J.T.’s shirt and gave him a shake. “Ain’t that sweet. Her hero decided to show up. Let’s show him what we do to heroes.”
The script called for a fight scene—an artfully choreographed kind of battle where no true contact was made. Jessie doubted J.T. knew how to avoid walking into a punch. She decided to jump ahead in the program.
“Leave him alone, you bums,” Jessie shouted. “Did I forget to mention I have a black belt in karate?”
She assumed a fighting stance. Eerik understood to keep a visibly squirming J.T. restrained while Jessie did her thing. Her skirmish with Marsh was like a dance—feign, dip, twirl, kick, duck, roll, rebound.
The crowd cheered for her and booed every time Marsh knocked her down. On cue, Eerik released J.T., faking a loud “umph” as if J.T. had elbowed him in the gut.
J.T. stumbled in his haste to reach Jessie, but when he did, he grabbed her arm and pointed toward Yota—the only car parked on the street. Its boxy shape and overall height was perfect for launching yourself into the air for a couple of backflips or twists.
“Run,” J.T. cried, pulling her arm the same moment she pitched her mailbag through the open door of the post office. Although she could appreciate his enthusiasm and lack of experience or training, the force of his tugging wrenched her off balance. She would have fallen flat on her face if he hadn’t been there to catch her. Once she regained her balance, she had to stifle the urge to send him to the ground in pain with a swift kick to the groin.
The script called for her anonymous hero to lead them on a circuitous route up and over Yota, vaulting across strategically placed planter boxes and making use of light poles in an attempt to lose the bad guys. Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that the only way J.T. could keep up with her was by not doing any of the stunts. That was fine with Jessie. This was supposed to look serious, not comedic.
“Wait here,” she cried, pushing him into the doorway of the abandoned building they’d been given permission to use. A narrow alley between two brick exteriors provided the right gap for her to spider-walk from ground level to the roof. With hands and feet pressed firmly against the opposing walls, she hopped upward a foot or so at a time.
The crowd cheered, but the effort was so taxing, Jessie barely heard a thing over the sound of her breathing and the blood rushing through her veins. When she reached the top, she dug the fingers of her left hand into the lip of the roof to swing her body over.
“Oh,” the crowd cried as she dangled by one arm.
With a graceful arc, she lofted up and over the edge. Breathing hard from the effort, she bent over to watch her team follow. The script called for only one of the mock bad guys to make it, although both were perfectly capable of doing exactly what she did.
She turned and danced across the edge of the roof, balancing like a gymnast above the street.
“Be careful.”
“Watch out.”
“Oh, no,” people cried from their vantage point across the street.
The wall she was running across was actually two feet wide, which is why she’d picked this building. That and the fact it had an exterior fire escape within view of the street. Made of wood nearly a hundred years ago, the rickety-looking structure was surprisingly sound. Jessie eschewed the steps, choosing to dive for the open railing then swing from level to level like a monkey in a rain forest until she reached the bottom landing.
With only a few feet to get up to speed, she pumped her legs hard: step, step, go. She launched her body into the air, flying up and out toward the street. When she was certain she’d cleared the sidewalk, she executed a neat tuck and roll to come up on her feet in front of the climbing tower.
J.T. was waiting for her.
“You can’t do this trick,” she whispered, her breathing strained from the exertion.
“Neither can you,” he said. “Not alone.”
She looked over her shoulder. As scripted, only one bad guy was still on her trail. Marsh. Unfortunately, the script also had called for Zane—not J.T.—to lead the way up the tower. Partly because he was supposed to be her hero; partly because the two dismount lines that had been added to the tower were slightly outside Jessie’s reach. A design flaw she blamed on Zane’s ego. In practice that morning, Jessie had needed his help to reach her line.
But Zane would not be waiting for her at the top. Was that J.T.’s plan? Had he convinced their friend to let Jessie face failure so she’d be forced to see that she needed him?
She looked him straight in the eyes. “Watch me.”
As planned, she ripped off her ugly blue shirt and kicked it to one side. The crowd cheered. Jessie knew her bright orange tank enhanced her image of a strong, fit, woman athlete. Now, she had to live up to her image.
Instead of reaching for the blue route—the one she’d picked during the practice run—she chose Zane’s path. Black. “Scary enough to make the spectators piss their pants,” he’d crowed.
In the back of her mind, she hoped Remy was positioned close enough to get the best perspective. She’d watched the others practice and had been impressed. The person climbing resembled a superhero…or a very large bug.
Although her fingers were starting to cramp from a couple of the holds and her triceps burned, she ignored the discomfort and visualized hauling herself onto the very top where her dismount rope was waiting.
She heard a muffled commotion below and assumed Marsh and J.T. were faking some kind of skirmish. The pounding in her head made everything surreal. For her, climbing produced a sense of moving in slow motion, even though she was pressing hard not to lose her momentum. Finally, after what felt like minutes but was probably only seconds, she took a deep breath and power-lifted herself up as high as possible to grasp one of the corner uprights and swing herself onto the top.
The obelisk was designed to be raised and lowered by a hydraulic pistonlike contraption. When deflated, the unit could be hauled by a semitruck from venue to venue. It wasn’t meant to be straddled like a bony horse. The molded fiberglass—or whatever the thing was made of—was bumpy and irregular on the very top. And surprisingly slick.
She locked her feet under one of the steel braces as she tried to figure out how best to reach the rope—just inches outside her reach. She started by scooting closer to the corner. Hand-over-hand, she carefully inched forward then pulled her knees up to the topmost handholds.
Since the other side had an indentation in the same spot, she had to trust her balance as she pulled herself up. Almost. Almost. I can do this.
“Yes,” she cried softly, her fingers closing around the rope.
Her heart rate began to normalize once she had the safety line in hand. She pulled her opposite leg over the top to balance on the lip of the tower a moment. After a few seconds, the noise from the crowd sank in. The applause drowned out the shouts coming from her colleagues, who were now grouped around J.T. at the base of the edifice.
Jessie waved with one hand and gave a quick bow that nearly unseated her. Silently scolding herself for showing off, she shook out the rope. As planned, it stopped six feet short of the ground. The script had called for her and Zane to make back-and-forth passes, swinging close to each other until they finally united, literally, at the end of their ropes. From that point, they’d do a tumbling dismount and take their bows to thunderous applause. They hoped.
Reaching up slightly so she could turn around and rappel backward down the climbing tower, she felt the rope slide a tiny bit. She dug her toes in and looked down, trying to make sense of the odd sensation.
Vertigo?
She checked all four guylines, worried for a moment that the twenty-five-foot edifice was going to topple over.
The tension on the outriggers appeared rock solid, but when she looked at the rope, it struck her that this was not the same one she’d use in practice. Smoother. A slightly different weight. And the surface appeared slicker.
“What the hell?”
More disgusted than panicked, she wrapped the rope around her fist then pushed off. She hung there a moment, recalling how she and Zane had joked about which of them had the better Tarzan yell. In truth, they’d both sucked.
As she bounced back toward the tower, she relaxed her knees and tried to place her feet for the best advantage of angle. Unfortunately, her shoe lost its grip at the worst possible moment, knocking her off balance. She overcorrected and the rope slipped through her fingers a good five or six inches, as if greased. Had it not been for the safety loop she’d instinctively used, she might have kept going, like a runaway train without the least bit of friction to slow her down.
What is going on? she thought, desperately locking her legs around the part of the rope dangling below her.
So much for grace and showmanship.
She needed to get down in one piece, and at this point, that was not a sure thing.
Another thought followed.
Someone did this on purpose.
CHAPTER THREE
CADE HAD TO ADMIT THAT watching Jessie Bouchard climb that ridiculous tower, freehand, without any of the safety harnesses novice climbers would be required to wear, was heartbreakingly exciting. She was power, grace and determination combined in one sexy package.
He could feel Shiloh’s fingers digging into his arm the closer Jessie got to the top. His heart rate had kicked up a notch or two and his mouth was so dry he couldn’t have spit if he’d wanted to.
“It’s really tall, isn’t it, Dad?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How far up it was I?”
He looked at her. “Too far. Now you know why I was scared.”
“What are those men fighting about?” she asked, pointing to the three men at the base of the tower. Cade couldn’t hear their words over the cheering of the crowd, but they appeared to be having a real argument, not a staged one.
“Oh,
God,” a voice said from behind him. “She’s in trouble. For real. I can feel it.”
Cade turned to see Remy a few steps away, a digital camcorder in her hand. He looked from her to the tower. It took him less than a second to realize she was right. Instead of the graceful descent Jessie had been making a moment earlier, she was now floundering, her descent rope wrapped around one calf, her fingers grasping and regrasping the rope as if it were greased. She made a desperate grab for one of the knobby, molded plastic handholds and her fingers slipped from it like butter.
“Oh, shit,” he swore. “Shiloh, stay here. I mean it.
“Hey,” he said, approaching the trio of stuntmen. “Your friend is in trouble. What are you going to do about it?”
The guy who had been running beside Jessie earlier—the one who looked least like a stuntman—groaned fatalistically. He looked upward, his face showing a full gamut of emotions Cade didn’t completely understand. Fear, for certain. But something else, too. Regret? “Didn’t I tell you something was going to happen? Why wouldn’t she listen to me? She thinks she’s freakin’ invincible, but she isn’t. Tell her I’m sorry. I gotta go.”
He turned and took off running. The blond surfer dude started after him, but the other man stopped him. “Let him go, Eerik. Jessie needs us.” He looked to Cade for direction. Obviously, these guys either followed a script or waited for a director to tell them what to do.
Cade looked at Jessie. She’d grabbed the second rope and appeared to be stable for the moment. From the corner of his eye, he spotted the rustic wood building that housed the Sentinel Pass Volunteer Fire Department. There had to be someone on duty, he thought. “Go get some help. A ladder. A fire truck. Something. And call 9-1-1 while you’re at it.”
“No way,” the younger guy protested. “We can get her down safely. All we have to do is lower the tower.”
The dark-haired one looked at Cade for confirmation.
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