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“You’re not killed with a knife, your son is,” Caro muttered, not even really paying attention. “Your wife is strangled, and you get shot.”
Then she turned her attention to Charlie and Joe, who had just completed a sound check and finished setting up lights to capture the cast as they entered the foyer. By the time she turned back around, Smithback was nodding at Mick. He looked quiet, chastened and, amazingly, cooperative.
“How’s this?” he asked Caro.
Before she could answer, he flopped over onto his belly, sprawled his arms and legs in different directions, and buried his face in the carpet.
“Good,” she murmured, silently counting the seconds he remained totally still.
One. Two. Ten. Thirty.
“Um…can you breathe?”
“He can breathe,” Mick said.
“That’ll do, Mr. Smithback.”
The man continued his carpet dive.
“Okay, Eldon. I think she’s got it,” Mick said, raising his voice a few levels. Then he glanced at Caro. “He wears his hearing aid in the right ear, the one closest to the wall. Couldn’t hear you.”
Mr. Smithback sat up, sucked in a few deep breaths and gave Caro a hopeful look.
“That was fine, Mr. Smithback,” Caro said. Then she whispered, “My God, would he have suffocated himself if you weren’t here to tell him to stop?”
Mick merely shrugged.
“What’d you say to him to get him to drop the idea of dying on camera, anyway?”
“I reminded him of what happened during his Moose Club trip to Las Vegas three years ago. He might not want his, uh, weekendwifeseeing him on TV and recognizing him. He was very grateful for the reminder.”
Caro grinned, acknowledging not for the first time just how good Mick was with people. That was a gift. One that had both attracted her and concerned her back in the old days. It was too easy for Mick to make people like him. People? Okay,women. That was the part that had bothered her in the old days.
But not anymore. Because, after all, after Thursday night, she hated the bastard, she really did.
He walked over to help deal with the old lady extra, who was being slightly hysterical about having to lie on the floor in her lovely new dress. Caro didn’t want to think of what the woman was going to say when she found out how much fake blood was soon going to be scattered all over the other two victims. As the one strangled, the female extra should’ve been grateful.
Mick gave her a quick grin and a wink as he got the woman calmed down within ten seconds. And Caro had to admit, hate him or not, Mick was proving to be a godsend.
“All right,” she called, watching the makeup people finish putting the fake knife and gore on the chest of the third extra. “Let’s practice some dying!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ONCE THAT FIRST day was over with, things actually started to go well on the set. Jacey told herself it was just because she knew her job. In truth, she was entertained watching this microcosm of society—the cast—begin to team up and draw lines, to find their place in the show, and to form alliances.
It was always the same. Whether the show was aSurvivortype, or a manhunt, or a lust fest, the people competing reacted in the same, predictable manner.
Ginger had come out a lot stronger than first impressions had led Jacey to believe, and Mona absolutely as weak. Professor Whittington got on everyone’s nerves, and Willie the truck driver just wanted to get laid. Jacey would lay money that the schoolteacher from Des Moines, Deanna, had already hooked up with James, a store owner from Baltimore. That didn’t seem to sit well with Logan, a computer geek from Chicago.
As for the others—well, Frank from Fresno was a freaking loser who always wanted his way and wasn’t above whining to get it. Jacey really wished somebody would shove a handful of glue into his mouth one of these days. There were one or two more men, and the other women hadn’t impressed her enough for her to even remember their names.
That could also be because they, like Ginger and Mona, always seemed to be hovering around everyone’s favorite contestant. Mr. Popular. Mr. Stud. Mr. Hero.
The guy walking toward her.
“Hey, Jacey.”
“Digg,” she replied with a nod, turning her attention back to the breakfast soufflé she was consuming in the nearly deserted dining room of the Little Bohemie Inn very early Sunday morning.
