The Bruise_Black Sky

by John Wiltshire

  Nikolas couldn’t summon words, so he just tried to look encouraging. Peyton didn’t appear to notice, he was still gazing at his idol. “I’m gonna be BenRider when the game comes out.”

  “It was a tribute? You’re telling me you did it as a tribute?” Nikolas rose to his feet, pulled the gun out and held it to Peyton’s head once more. “Then what about the ones to Oliver Whitestone? Were they a gift too?”

  Peyton’s eyes gave him away. Score two for the tactic. He knew about them. A tiny flicker, but Nikolas saw it. The fat man sighed. “Some really weird fuckers in this world, man.” He closed his eyes and a trickle escaped. “Fucking killed him.”

  “You sent them.”

  Wide-eyed once more, Peyton shook his head so rapidly that rivulets of sweat flicked off him like a dog shaking seawater from its coat. “I just found them!”

  “Found them?”

  “I hacked…I mean…sure, I saw them, awesome work, man. But I’m better, and I thought I’d send Ben…You didn’t think that was a threat! Hey! Oh, my God, do you know Ben Rider? You, like…wait, wait, fucking wait…” His fingers began their dance once more. Nikolas considered the gun, sighed, and tucked it away again. Now he knew why he’d never even tried torturing Americans before. They were too…

  “Oh, oh, oh, look, you do! It’s you! I knew it…” Peyton relaxed back in his seat and murmured, “Fucking wish I’d not had those large Cokes now.”

  Nikolas swallowed and kept his eyes on the screen. It was a shot of him on the set in Paradise. A gallery of pictures put up online. Many were of Ben on the beach on the first day of his arrival.

  “Who are you? I mean…fuck. The real deal. I’ve gotta call Jedi, man, he’ll be stoked. Can I, like, have my phone back?”

  “You hacked Peter Cameron’s computer, found Oliver Whitestone’s death threats and based your…tribute…to Ben Rider on them, using photos from this gallery?”

  Peyton seemed to think about this for a long time. “Yeah.”

  “You don’t want to kill Ben Rider?”

  “Kill him? Man, I want to be him!”

  Nikolas raised his brows and considered a reply. Then he had a thought. He looked around at the computers and screens. “Hacker, huh?”

  “Can I plead the fifth on that?”

  §§§

  Peyton only had one chair, so Nikolas had to stand while the fat digits worked their magic, but he wasn’t too keen on sitting anywhere that Peyton had sat anyway. He wandered back to the window to admire his new vehicle. “Someone is sitting on the couch in your garden.”

  “Huh? Oh, that’ll be Jedi. He comes round to watch TV.”

  Nikolas frowned, bemused, as the man outside reached into a refrigerator and pulled out a beer and did appear to be watching something on the box. He wrinkled his nose. He had lost a war to these people. He was deeply shamed.

  “Here you go.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s the address the threats were sent from.”

  “But that’s here. Louisiana.”

  “Sure is…Salt Island. I’ve heard that name recently…”

  Nikolas straightened. “Yes. So have I.”

  He kicked the remains of the door out of his way and ran from the house towards the Hummer.

  After the Wars was filmed on Salt Island.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Nikolas arrived on the set the next day just as Ben was being shaved and titillated, ready to film his training scene with Santiago.

  He took in everything rapidly, noting Squeezy standing just off to one side.

  He flicked his head at him to follow.

  Behind the dark glasses it was impossible to tell if the man saw him.

  He repeated the gesture, more openly.

  Nothing.

  With a sigh, he heaved out his broken phone, tapped it for a moment to get it working, and texted him. 11 o’clock arc. Look.

  He watched, incredulous, as Squeezy rummaged in his pocket and consulted his phone. He didn’t look in Nikolas’s direction, but appeared to be texting something back. Nikolas glanced at his screen.

  I fucking saw you.

  Incredulous took on a whole new meaning. He stabbed the keypad. Follow me, you fucking moron.

  Squeezy read this, glanced up then strode over. “I thought it was like a fucking test or something!”

  “Test! What—?”

  “You show up and see if you can get me away from his side!”

  Nikolas opened his mouth to comment on this idiocy, but only gritted his teeth and began to stride towards the trailers.

  When they were in the one Ben was using, Nikolas took a bottle of water from the small fridge and began curtly, “The original death threats to Oliver were sent from someone on the set. The stuff sent to Ben was unrelated. Someone sent threats to Oliver Whitestone, killed him, and then had it covered up as suicide. I think they saw the pictures sent to Ben, saw the similarity to what they’d sent to Oliver, and took the opportunity to try and kill Ben, too. But I have no fucking idea why. Who’d want to kill the fucking star of their own show? Then kill the guy playing him in an unrelated movie?”

  He flung himself into the seat opposite Squeezy. He’d expected a more enthusiastic reaction. “Are you going to contribute to this damn process, or am I fucking talking to myself here?”

  “Oh, I agree with you. One hundred percent.”

  “Well, hallelujah, the moron agrees with me.”

  “The moron knows who the killers are, too.”

  It was one of those moments Nikolas absolutely loathed. Being pulled out of a sinking car…being found nearly dead in the snow and rescued…and now this. And the bastard was gonna drag it out…make him ask…

  “This is Ben.”

  Squeezy sat straighter. “Yeah. Sorry, boss. It’s the Sasquatch and his misses.”

  “W—?”

  “Bigfoot—Santiago Molina—and Gina Cameron.”

  Nikolas digested this for a while. “And you know this how?”

  “Easy. Did what I do best. Well, ’sides being a soldier. And fucking, course, and I guess—yeah, sorry, so anyway, I chatted this bird up, see? Fodder in me hands, so to speak. Putty? Nah, fodder. Diesel thinks I went on a date with her, ’cus he’s like that—suspicious and worried about people cheating on him…wonder why that is…so, anyway, it was pretty fucking obvious. I was watching him, see? When Tattoo thought Ben was gonna take Oliver’s place as SushiYoshi. I saw Bigfoot’s expression. I saw hers, too. Everyone else watching Ben, like. As you would, given he’s usually the best fucking thing there is to watch. Not me. I was watching them. They weren’t fucking happy and they were fucking together in that unhappiness. If you get my drift.”

  “I haven’t understood a single word you have just said.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Bloody foreigners! Gina Cameron and Santiago Molina are bonking. I reckon they’ve been bonking for a long time now. Writer of show wants new toy boy to get the lead role, what’s she gonna do?”

  “Write Oliver off the show. But she can’t, because he’s too good. Too popular.”

  “’Xactly. Second best?”

  “Persuade him to go.”

  “Ding. Right answer again. How she gonna do that…being a writer an’ all, maybe?”

  “Write threats…”

  “And when they didn’t work?”

  “Fucking hell.”

  “That, my big…I mean, sir, is exactly what I fucking said.”

  “They killed him.”

  “But then what happened? Something they couldn’t bloody predict?”

  “Her husband says he wants to make a movie about Oliver to explain his death…”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figure. All that raking up of stuff they managed to get nicely packaged up, buried, and explained away as suicide.”

  “The Katrina-Wood windfall.”

  “The what when it’s at home?”

  “They got it hushed up because the local cops didn’t wan
t it known that a big star got killed on their patch.”

  “Convenient, but we’ve got no fucking proof of any of this.”

  Nikolas picked up his phone, started to call Kate, but then changed his mind and dialled another number. The call was answered, but no one said anything. “Hello?”

  “Oh, man, that you, Hummer? Jedi said orange fucking V8, man. How cool is that? Can’t be too careful who you pick the fucking phone up with these days. You see what happened to the god?”

  Nikolas closed his eyes for strength. “The what?”

  “Kim Dot, man! Fucking raided. By the fucking CIA! Illegally! I gotta be careful. What’d’ya want? Can you hang on? I gotta…never mind. You want more hack—investigations?”

  “Yes. A man called Santiago Molina flew to Wellington sometime last week. I want you to trace his movements when he was there. And a Gina Cameron.”

  “Okayyyy. No probs, man. Where’s Wellington?”

  §§§

  When he’d told Peyton exactly what he wanted, Nikolas clicked off and rubbed his hands over his face for a moment. “Don’t tell Ben anything until I have proof. He’ll need certainty before he agrees to—”

  “No, I say do it now. Easy as breathing.”

  “I know that.”

  “Yeah, but you only know it theoretically…as a diplomat…don’t you…sir.”

  Nikolas tuned him out. He was learning from Ben.

  §§§

  Nikolas went back into the studio to watch Ben fight his would-be killer.

  He could barely walk across the lot against the wind, which gusted alarmingly, coming at him from unpredictable directions. The sky bore down, pregnant with unleashed rain, a vast bruise above him, staining the air.

  The heat weighed him down. The storm fried what little ability to think he had left.

  Perhaps it was the dilemma crushing him—what to do. Even if Peyton came back and confirmed what was obvious to him now—Santiago Molina had pushed them off the mountain in Queenstown—what was he going to do about it?

  A terrible thought struck him. How many actors had died on sets in freak accidents? Could they kill Ben with a misplaced blow to the head? A snapped neck? A fall…a helicopter accident in a post-apocalyptic landscape…?

  When he reached the big filming shed, Ben was fighting Santiago…Yoshi battling Nalusa Falaya…no, Oliver training with Santiago Molina. Fiction was blending too seamlessly with life, and Ben was being sucked further and further into the mix.

  Even Nikolas could hardly tell him apart from Oliver Whitestone now.

  He was in costume—tight stretch black shorts that hid nothing. Every single muscle stood out on his sleek frame. Although fractionally shorter than Santiago, there was no question who would win the fight. The other man was bulky and heavy. He had power, but Ben, like Ollie, had grace. Ben didn’t just work out, he ran. Running was his true love, and his superior runner’s agility worked in his favour now. Santiago could hit harder, but he couldn’t connect as often. He couldn’t dodge like Ben, duck and roll, and he definitely couldn’t flick himself to standing from being on his back on the ground. Nikolas had to smile. He’d not seen Ben do that trick before.

  Watching Ben was something of a revelation for Nikolas. He tried to put himself into the position of seeing Ben as someone who didn’t know him—someone who just wanted him. What would that be like? To stand here and want that man? That unattainable man. He had seen Ben Rider once and wanted him. Then he’d engineered to bring him to his office in London and recruited him.

  Then seduced him.

  As if he sensed the scrutiny, Ben glanced over in Nikolas’s direction. There was an annoyed, “Cut!” Then, “Take a break everyone. Back in two hours.”

  Ben appeared contrite and annoyed with himself for ruining the take.

  He looked something else, too…He came over quickly, trying to pass himself off as a man greeting his bodyguard. Nikolas smirked. “You’re not a very good actor.”

  Ben wrinkled his nose. “I keep forgetting not to look at the camera.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I think you’re glad to see me. Guess how I know that.” Nikolas deliberately raked his gaze down Ben’s naked, sweaty chest to the hiding-nothing shorts.

  Ben winced and hissed, “Stop it! It’s not funny.”

  Nikolas raised his eyes. “How do you stop it doing that…on camera?”

  “Bloody hell. Come on.”

  Ben led the way outside. He staggered at the force of the storm then held his arms wide to it, laughing, spinning around. “This is incredible!”

  Nikolas, focused on the stretched, slick, beautiful figure with the obvious tenting, had to agree—it was incredible.

  Suddenly, a piece of corrugated iron whipped past them. It was the sort of crazy accident that people couldn’t believe later—taken out by a piece of wriggly tin. Standing arms akimbo in the blast suddenly didn’t seem like a very good thing to be doing. They ran for some shelter towards the trailers, but changed their minds when they saw one lift slightly before resettling.

  “Follow me.” Ben’s words were almost whipped away by the swirling heat, but Nikolas tore after him across the lot and followed him down a set of steps.

  Ben pushed through some doors, and they were suddenly in the dark and cool and quiet. Ben found a light switch, clicked it, and there was a feeble buzzing as a series of bulbs came on. Nikolas grunted in surprise. Ben grinned. “Welcome to Yoshi’s slave cell.”

  He began to walk slowly through the warren of tunnels. It was almost icy, and Nikolas handed him his jacket.

  “So have you found the guy then? What’s happening?”

  The lights crackled louder, went out for a moment, then flickered back on, weaker than before. “What is this place?”

  “Salt mines. It’s how the island got its name. It’s the perfect filming location for the show because they’ve got the old mine workings being the post-apocalyptic city, the water for the flooding, and then they film all the slaves-in-their-cells scenes here.” Ben stopped and smirked, running his hands over a section of the stone. “Remember this?”

  Nikolas shook his head. He was checking his phone to see if a message had been received.

  “The episode where Yoshi is wounded? He comes back from the arena and…”

  “The one with tattoos all over his face rapes him.”

  “That was right here.”

  Nikolas frowned, looking up. “How do you know? It all—oh.”

  The wall was surprisingly cold when you were pressed face first into it.

  Ben was lean and hard against his back, pressing him on. “Yoshi couldn’t fight back, his ribs were…” He slid his hands up under Nikolas’s shirt and stroked his unbroken ribs, eager hands on hot skin. One by one, he undid Nikolas’s buttons then peeled the shirt off, letting it fall to the floor. Then they had naked skin to join. Ben ground his chest into Nikolas’s back until he ripped him around and seized his mouth for a savage kiss. There was no hiding Ben’s intent. The Lycra gave it away. He eased his mouth away, grumbling, “I wish you’d shave.” He flung him around once more face first into the chill rock. “It’ll have to be like this then.”

  Nikolas was laughing, which he knew wasn’t the response Ben really wanted, but it was hard to simulate resisting something you desperately wanted. When Ben sank deep into him, Nikolas felt a surge of savage pride that having been surrounded by near-naked men all day, Ben apparently only craved him. And Ben did hunger for him. You couldn’t fake the delight he could hear in Ben’s ragged breathing, couldn’t mistake the meaning of his meaningless murmurs, or misread all the signals he sent, every inch of his body engaged in the rising urgency between them.

  He changed position slightly, coming up at Nikolas on the balls of his feet. The extra height and thrust made Nikolas cry out, but it wasn’t something he did, so he cut it off, choked it back, and the sound was like the piece of tin whipping past them—gone before they’d really been aware of it. Ben was panting l
oudly now, the thrusts painfully hard, and Nikolas was slammed into the rough surface again and again, but then he reached the place Ben had been trying to send him, and he cried out again, shot a hand back to hold Ben on and in and deep, and felt Ben filling him, tension draining from his body with the release. Nikolas’s spill splattered on the wall and trailed down, fresh salt in the old eerie, abandoned mine.

  Ben leant forward and fastened his teeth onto Nikolas’s shoulder. He bit hard and hung on, licking skin. Nikolas arched back and then there was no respite, no moment he might have sunk into for rest and rejuvenation, for he was hard again, swollen on the sudden pain. He turned, dislodging Ben, who now stood almost illegally indecent, his shorts hooked down around his cock and balls. Nikolas groaned and cupped the warm offering as they kissed, kneading, working. He could feel Ben rising and tightening to the play of his fingers.

  Nikolas brought their cocks together and enfolded them both, rubbing them, stimulating them as their tongues danced and played above. He squeezed Ben even closer then gripped him around his firm cheeks, their cocks engaging independently as they ground their hips together.

  They erupted at the same time, releases mingling, and still they kissed, biting lips, sharing taste with wide-open mouths and greedy, careless sucks. Shuddering into each other, knees weakening, with rueful glances and a last flick of tongue or lip, they eased apart. Ben laughed into Nikolas’s bare shoulder. “I missed you.”

  They sank to the ground, backs to the wall.

  Nikolas was thinking about cigarettes, but was dragged out of his gloomy reverie when Ben murmured, “I feel him in here—Oliver.”

  Nikolas shrugged. He saw dead people. It didn’t mean he wasn’t rational. “Maybe.”

  “What would happen if the world changed and didn’t want men like us anymore?”

  “I have not noticed the world wanting us much now.”