by Dana Mentink
What could possibly go wrong?
Ten
Stephanie lost herself again in the rapture of Sea Comes Knocking. Jedd Pimm and Agnes, barely out of their teens, strike off on their own, settling first in an old cabin in the Olympic Mountains. The story tugged at her heartstrings just as it had when she was a teen. For Ian, it was the rugged adventure that called to him. Somewhere between the dedication and the cliffhanger ending that left the world wondering, Ian had dreamed up the Pink and Pink Literary Agency. It was textbook Ian, a dreamer who could make everyone fall in love with his vision. He was that kind of boy, the kind who was easy in his own skin and happy with himself, the kind who could lift up others around him with the pull of his effervescence. People followed Ian like migrating birds seeking the warmth of a southern climate. He had that light of love in him that charmed the cynicism right out of others. He’d managed to convince their eighth-grade class that the best prank ever was not to fill the bathrooms with shaving cream, but instead to hire a mariachi band to follow the principal around for an entire day. People loved Ian. It was impossible not to.
We’ll represent the best authors, Steph. The stories that change the world will come through our office. Can you see it?
She could not, not with the same conviction her brother did, but she saw the passion shining in his eyes, the glorious belief that together they would change the literary landscape shoulder to shoulder. Pink and Pink.
Holding the book to her nose, she inhaled the musk of old paper. The familiar page called to her, the description of the landscape lonely and forbidding, bleak as Agnes’s emotions after Violet, her newborn, succumbed to an inexplicable sleep from which she had never awakened. She read the passage again where Agnes wandered the quiet cabin in the night, padding along bare floors, certain she’d heard the soft rustling of a baby, the tiny, quiet murmurs of life. How cruel imagination could be, or did those taunting echoes originate in the memory?
After Ian died, Stephanie had felt the same, awakening absolutely convinced she’d heard him in the kitchen rooting through the refrigerator for a jar of the pimento-stuffed olives he’d adored.
Why is the heart so slow to learn? Agnes wrote, as she felt the cold sheets of the empty cradle. Jedd says I should give this question to God. I do, shouting it from the lonely, scoured mountain peak, the cold biting into me with poisonous fangs. Why? Why? Why?
God does not reply.
He hadn’t answered Stephanie either. Tears crowded her eyes and she put aside the book and got up. It was silly to be so emotional. All the talk of Spencer and the toll of the ridiculous cross-country trek were probably getting to her.
She reached for her phone, determined to send an e-mail update to Mr. Klein. Her finger hovered over her mailbox, but instead she found herself drifting to the Internet, typing Rhett Hastings’s name into the search box. The sun had disappeared behind a wall of storm clouds and the bedroom was dim, so she propped the flashlight against a pillow and turned it on.
Google search.
Rhett Hastings.
Her screen filled.
Wow. Hastings, whoever he was, rated his own Wikipedia page. She skimmed the facts. Rhett was, she did the math, 32 years of age, born in Linton, California, raised by his now deceased factory-worker father, no mention of the mother. There was no mention of any marriages either, only one younger sibling, Karen. Stephanie breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed Rhett was telling the truth about his sister, owner of the blue nightgown. More proof that he was not a serial killer. Comforting. She read on, plucking bits of information like shells pulled from the sand.
Expelled from high school at age 17.
Whoa.
Bought his first movie theater at age 19.
Whoa!
Arrested for assault and lost above theater.
She sat up. Assault and a high school dropout?
Went on to purchase a chain of theaters in California and then in Texas and Utah.
She made the screen bigger when she read the next factoid. Hastings Theaters is now ranked the largest cinema chain in the United States and Canada.
Electrified, she hopped onto another site, a “dish the dirt” web page that might classify as more gossip than news.
Billionaire CEO Rhett Hastings, known for his ruthless practices and less than politically correct commentary, has purportedly abdicated his position as CEO. Acting CEO Don Walker refuses to comment at this time. Rumors abound that the move may hint at some internal investigation regarding Hastings’s recent hostile takeover of B and G Entertainment.
There was a picture of Rhett wearing an Armani suit, eyes hidden behind sunglasses, sliding behind the wheel of a Maserati as members of the press jostled to get a quote from him. Another of him giving a thumbs-up from the pilot’s seat of a small airplane.
More headlines blazed at her as she thumbed faster and faster through the search screens.
Rhett Hastings, the bad boy of the movie biz.
Hastings’s take-no-prisoners attitude nets dollars and enemies.
Hastings Theaters’ founder and CEO, corporate thug or tenacious tiger?
Rumors rampant about Hastings’s departure.
She raced through the articles until her phone died. Her heart thumping, she sat on the bed with only the glow of the flashlight. Her pulse pounded an anxious rhythm as she tried to make sense of what she’d learned.
This man, traveling around in a busted-up camper on his way to pick up his sister, was Rhett Hastings. The Rhett Hastings. The Donald Trump of the cinema business.
And she’d thrown a bag of flour at him.
And accused him of being a serial killer.
With each realization her heart ebbed a little lower.
It must be a mistake. He was someone else, another Rhett Hastings, yet the rugged profile and sardonic smile sure matched the Maserati picture.
Had she really forced bologna and processed cheese on a man who could purchase her whole apartment building with the change in his pocket? There was only one way to find out.
Rhett shut an annoyed Sweetness inside and lugged his supplies out the door. The rain had tapered off considerably, so he figured he might have a shot at covering the leak before it started again. The travel trailer roof was a sloped affair, a sort of half level protruding above the lower level to accommodate the upstairs bedrooms. He had a vague memory of watching his Uncle Mel standing on a ladder trying to jimmy the levered window panels one long-ago summer, but Rhett didn’t have much of an idea how to go about stopping a leak. This was the kind of thing he’d paid other people to do. And he’d probably not even bothered to give the fixers a passing glance. Arrogant. When had he forgotten his own humble roots, the days he’d spent cleaning toilets at the local theater and scraping away gum stuck on the bottom of theater seats? The days he’d cleaned up after kids who couldn’t make it to the bathroom to be sick or relieve themselves?
God was teaching him a thing or two. Or three.
He had no ladder at the moment, so he found a hefty wooden crate lying on its side on the asphalt and climbed up. Though Rhett worked out diligently, he found his gym-perfected muscles were not up to the ungainly task of hauling himself onto the wet trailer roof. His father, a hard man who never encountered anything he could not repair, would have ridiculed his son for the awkward way he levered himself into position.
You take after your mother. All thumbs.
But they’d turned out to be thumbs that earned millions.
Didn’t matter to Franklin Hastings, who never saw any value in the cinema. Throwing away money on daydreaming, he’d said of Rhett’s favorite pastime, watching every movie he could afford to see, as many times as possible.
The cinema was a way to deliver people from their pain, their humdrum, day-to-day routines, their messed-up decisions. For a few dollars, they were transported from their own lives into someone else’s. Maybe that’s what appealed to Stephanie about novels. He’d have to ask.
There was s
omething special in a darkened theater, the slow unfolding of a shared story between people who would enter and exit as strangers, but in between they would share the most intimate of bonds. The cinema let you take a journey alone and together at the same time. Why did that move him so much? Very little else on planet earth did.
Rhett made it to the roof, rain pattering lightly around him. Sliding his fingers along the slick metal, he found the bent part where the lower level met the upper one. It must be there, in that rusted wound, where the water was seeping in. Shielding the space with his body, he wiped the area dry with a towel and covered it with the plastic bag, quickly securing it with duct tape before the rain began to pound again.
Not exactly a textbook repair, but not bad for a guy who wasn’t the handy type. He wiped his hands on the towel and scooted backward.
He heard the trailer door swing open.
Sweetness shot out into the night, followed by Stephanie.
“Stop right there, dog!” she yelled. True to form, the dog did not obey, plunging onward away from her.
Standing quickly to see where Sweetness had gone, he lost his footing on the slippery surface.
He toppled backward off the trailer roof. It seemed like a very long time before he crashed to a halt onto the oily asphalt. His breath was driven out of him in a brutal whoosh. His eyes stayed open for a moment, his vision dazzled with stars.
Stephanie’s shriek echoed through the air. She clapped a hand over her mouth.
And then she sprinted away.
Eleven
RUN!
Panic flashed through Stephanie’s body, fueling her sprint, her arms pumping and legs churning, as she followed the primal directive from her instincts. She’d nearly reached the warehouse when her brain chimed in.
STOP.
She didn’t listen, continuing her mad dash until she careened up to the warehouse, pressing her forehead to the cold metal doors, hands splayed on the rusted walls, panting. Her muscles quivered in terror.
Go back, common sense demanded. The thought repeated itself, louder now than her stuttering breaths. Stephanie, you’ve got to go back and help him.
But what if…
Her throat dried up. Oh, could she face that “what if”?
What if the life was drained from Rhett Hastings and he was suddenly plucked away, like Ian, like Agnes’s Violet? Gone without warning or preamble, without a moment to say goodbye. Then there would be the horrible quiet, the sudden ceasing of life and spirit and she could not take that. Not again.
She couldn’t go back. Her fingers balled into fists now, she pressed her back harder against the metal, the tang of rust sharp in her nostrils. All her body systems felt as if they had gone offline.
Fear, terror, panic. What was the antidote? Someone had suggested deep breathing to her in the past, but this situation was way beyond that strategy. A sudden image of Mrs. Granato from the bus popped into her mind, the woman who represented spiritual common sense. Mrs. Granato would tell her to pray. That calm lady, illuminated from the inside by some light that did not shine on Stephanie, would be strong enough to pray.
Could that be the answer?
“Oh, God,” she whispered, clasping her clammy palms together. It was as far as she got, but somehow, pushing the syllables past her lips brought a modicum of sense back into her twitching brain. She must not run. She must turn and face it. One deep breath. Two. A sliver of calm, just enough, and she found herself turning around.
One step, then two, then a dozen.
He lay still on the asphalt. What if he was dead? She felt the panic return.
She swallowed and grabbed hold of some wisdom from the fictional world in which she’d steeped herself. This running away business, it was not the stuff great female heroines were made of, and she happened to be the only heroine around at the present. Rhett needed help. Rhett needed her.
“God, keep my feet moving, okay?”
Forcing herself, she continued, closer and closer to the stricken form lying motionless on the ground. So still. Each stride accelerated her pulse another notch. It wasn’t a great distance to have fallen…unless he’d landed on his head and broken his neck. Or ruptured his heart. Or fractured a bone which had caused internal bleeding. It was time to give up reading medical thrillers.
She found it hard to swallow as she crept forward.
She was close enough now to see that he was lying on his back. His eyes were closed. The rain had teased his hair into curls, glazing the planes of his face, strong chin, and thick eyebrows. He looked younger than his thirty-two years, like a rugged cowboy thrown from his horse, which might end his rodeo career and cause him to become a hermit until a spunky veterinary doctor taught him how to live again. She shook her head. Oy. Best to give up cowboy novels for a while too.
“Don’t worry, Rhett,” she said, voice shaking. “This…I’m…it’s going to be okay.” She moved closer, kneeling in a puddle at his side and running her trembling fingers along his face and neck. His skin was warm and satiny. Check for a pulse. That’s what all the cop heroines did. And CIA agents. And reporters. It was a universally agreed-upon strategy.
Only her hands were shaking so badly, and her fingertips so cold that she couldn’t feel anything anyway.
Check for breathing.
Right.
Lowering her cheek to his lips, she went still. Was that a puff of breath? Or a swirl of wind?
“Oh, for the love of tuna, it’s never this hard in books,” she muttered.
Call for help.
Right. Only her phone was dead. She’d have to use his. Where was it? Maybe in his jacket pocket?
She reached into his left coat pocket. Nothing.
Panic rising, she tried the other one. Victory. She started to pull it free.
“Am I being mugged?” Rhett said, his eyes opening suddenly.
Stephanie screamed. And once again her legs took her several yards at a sprint before she forced them to stop. Whirling around, she hollered.
“I thought you were dead!” she yelled, hugging herself. “It’s not nice to suddenly spring back to life like that without warning me. It’s creepy.”
He carefully raised himself to a sitting position. “Sorry. Not dead. Stunned. Wasn’t that bad a fall.”
She edged closer, keeping several yards between them. “Are you hurt?”
He blinked. “I’m still taking inventory.”
“I was going to call for help with your cell.”
“Very practical.” He shook some water from his hair. “I’m considering getting up now. Do you want to move farther away in case I really do die this time?”
Her face went hot and she realized she was standing back as if she was expecting him to detonate. She slogged forward.
“Sorry.” She bit her lower lip. “I, um, didn’t know that about myself.”
“What?”
“That I would bolt like a startled deer during an emergency.”
He smiled. “You did get some pretty good speed there.”
Humiliation almost choked her. “Yeah. Well, this scene in my life book is going to need some editing.”
“Or revision?”
“I’m sick of revisions.”
“I understand.”
“I mean, a person takes a fall and the other person runs away. That’s just terrible. It wasn’t because I don’t care about…It’s just that, I wanted to know that you were okay, but I was afraid…” She started to cry. “I was afraid you were dead.”
“Like I said, it wasn’t that bad of a fall. Nothing serious.”
“And my brother just had a little bug. We thought it was the flu, nothing serious.” She hadn’t meant to blurt that out, and now that she had, she saw confusion and, even worse, sympathy playing across Rhett’s face. He held out his hand.
“Come here,” he said softly. She knelt beside him and slid her hands into his. He pulled her close. “You came back. That’s all that matters.”
Her sob
s subsided into whimpers as she allowed the relief to sink in. He was okay. Rhett was okay. The rain began to fall harder as she fitted her arm under his and he got to his feet with a groan. He leaned against her for a moment, and she propped up his muscular frame as best she could.
Clumsily, they made their way inside. She led him toward the living room, headed for the sofa.
“No, I’m wet. The kitchen chair.”
Though it hardly seemed the time to worry about wet cushions, she did as instructed, and deposited him in a chair, bustling about fetching things which served no purpose other than to distract her from her own ridiculous meltdown.
“Do you want me to call for an ambulance?”
He considered that, taking the towel she handed him and wiping his face dry. “I think all my limbs are still functioning. No need.”
“In the books the heroine always insists that the hero go to the hospital to check for a head injury,” she said firmly.
He looked at her, his head slightly cocked, moisture glimmering on his lashes, a slow, full-lipped smile breaking across his face. “Happens in the movies too, but my head is fine,” he said quietly. “It’s been a long time since anyone thought of me as a hero.”
She couldn’t hold it back. “But you’re Rhett Hastings. The Rhett Hastings.”
He sighed. “You googled me.”
“Yes. You’re a bazillionaire. A self-made man.”
“Most of my money stayed with the company except for a trust fund I set up for Karen. I’m not a bazillionaire anymore.”
“But people write books about you, and you’re in the papers all the time and on Facebook memes.”
“Yeah.”
“That makes you something special, doesn’t it? You’re the man everyone is talking about.”
His eyes grew sad, and for a moment she wanted to cup her hand to his cheek and wipe the raindrops away. His tone was flat and dull when he answered. “I’m a massive success. Who wouldn’t want to be Rhett Hastings?”
Puzzled, Stephanie raised her eyebrows. “Aren’t you proud of all you’ve achieved?”
“Absolutely.” There was the arrogance that made his eyes sparkle and gave his words a snap. “No one else could have accomplished what I did with what I had.”