“When I wasn’t working as a waitress fifty hours a week to support the two of us, along with your career. The expensive haircuts, the facials, the Pilates classes.”
“I was always more ambitious than you, Felicia. More serious about the craft.”
Her emerald eyes flashed like hot gems. “You never sent for me, Jack. Never offered to help me get a break after all the years I sacrificed to help you get yours.”
“You see, you are angry. That’s why you’re doing this.” He dropped the Eastwood look and switched on the George Clooney, showing his perfect teeth. “Why don’t I get into some clothes? We can go down and get a cup of coffee, patch things up. You don’t want old wounds to affect your professional judgment, do you, Felicia? You’ll only regret it later.”
“Nice reading, Jack. Your delivery was impeccable.”
“Felicia, please—”
“Step aside, and let us into the room.” Her hard eyes pinned his, and her hand went to her gun. “I won’t ask again.”
He swallowed with difficulty and reluctantly stepped back. Three times he’d been voted Most Popular Male Star at the People’s Choice Awards. Maybe the critics didn’t like him, he suddenly realized, but the people did, and that’s what counted. But a scandal involving an underage girl could ruin him at the box office. The soaps might not even want him after this. He felt a part of himself shrivel as fear ran through him like a shiver during a nude scene on a cold set.
Felicia brushed past him with unmistakable authority. Ryan’s knees trembled and his mind raced, trying desperately to figure some way out of this.
“I don’t know how it happened, Felicia. I came from my shower and found her on the bed, passed out like this. I never thought she’d take so many pills.”
Ryan stood outside the shower stall, wringing his hands and looking on anxiously as Felicia pressed two fingers to the girl’s throat, trying to find a pulse. She’d posted the uniformed cop at the front door the moment she’d discovered the unconscious girl, telling him to keep any strangers from entering the room. She held the girl’s wrist, then touched her cheek with the back of her hand. When she stood to face the man she’d once known as Jack Gluck, there wasn’t a flicker of sympathy in her cold eyes.
“Forget unconscious, Jack. This girl’s postmortem.”
His eyes opened wide with shock. “What?”
“No pulse, no breath, cold to the touch. Beyond saving now.”
“Oh Jesus.” He turned away, feeling as if he might throw up.
“Maybe if you’d called nine-one-one when you first found her—”
He faced her again, still queasy, glistening with sweat. “My God, what am I going to do?”
“If you’d been truthful with us at the outset, she might still be alive. We could have induced vomiting, given her a fighting chance. As it is, you could be looking at second-degree murder.”
“It was an accident!”
“Voluntary manslaughter if you’re lucky.”
“I didn’t force her to take those pills.”
“She’s sixteen, Jack. You’re old enough to be her father.”
“She doesn’t look sixteen. She told me she was twenty.”
“I’m sure your attorney will convey all that to the jury.”
“Felicia, for God’s sake!”
Felicia stared down at the innocent-looking face. “She’s a very popular girl around here. Good student, never a hint of trouble. Her father’s one of the most respected men in the county.”
“The mayor,” Ryan said dismally.
“The unpaid mayor,” Felicia pointed out, “who works hard for Pine Haven and runs a gas station to make ends meet. On the other hand, you’re a Hollywood big shot who makes buckets of money and dabbles in drugs, with a history of womanizing and a taste for young girls. I don’t imagine this is going to go your way, Jack, when it gets to trial. You’re facing a stiff prison stretch for sure.”
“I’m too good-looking to go to prison!”
She smirked. “Maybe your attorney can bring that up, when it’s time for sentencing.”
Ryan slumped against the sink, his face in his hands. “This can’t be happening.” He looked up, desperation distorting his handsome features. “I’m at my peak, Felicia. Everything’s going my way. I’m signed with the biggest agency in Hollywood. Producing my own pictures now. I’ve even found the perfect script. Passing Through, the one we’re shooting. I’ve been looking for years for a script like this that would launch me to another level. I paid a million dollars to take it off the market.” He glanced at the corpse in the shower, shuddering pitifully. “And now this.”
“A million dollars,” she said. “For one script?”
He nodded bleakly. “The script is everything. That’s where it all starts. Without a great character and a great story as a foundation, all the rest doesn’t mean much.”
Her voice got tougher. “If a script is worth a million bucks, how much is a life worth?”
He stared at her imploringly. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
She sneered with disgust. “You haven’t even asked her name.”
“I’m sorry.” He studied the lifeless figure in the shower, deeply ashamed. “Of course, I want to know.”
“Rebecca. Her friends call her Becky. Her parents call her Beck. Her hard-working, churchgoing parents, who just lost their only child.”
He stared miserably at the tiled floor. His words came softly, full of remorse. “I’m sure they’re a fine family. Apparently, you know them pretty well.”
Felicia shrugged. “It’s a small town. You know how that is.”
He glanced up, studying her keenly. “It still seems strange, finding you here.” His smile was small, wistful. “You were so crazy about New York. All the theaters. So many plays, so many musicals. You always dug that scene.”
“Like you said, Jack, people change.”
“You’re really happy here, so far away from everything?”
She hesitated. “I have to admit, a small town has its drawbacks.”
He heard something in her voice, a shift in tone. He perked up a little. “Not the quiet paradise you thought it was when you came here fifteen years ago?”
She steadied her shrewd eyes on him. “Maybe it’s begun to wear on me a little.”
He chose his words cautiously. “That can happen, I guess.”
“Lately, I’ve had an itch to travel. Maybe even relocate. Live another kind of life.”
His heart raced with renewed hope. “We all need a change of scenery now and then.”
“Not so easy to do on a cop’s salary. Especially not in a little burg like Pine Haven, where the pay’s at the low end. When I retire, my pension won’t add up to much.”
“I guess you start thinking about things like that as you get older.”
“I’m only forty, Jack.”
It was the perfect opening, just the line he’d been waiting for.
“Young enough to still do all the things you’ve dreamed of doing, Felicia.” He paused with skilled precision, the way he’d seen the great ones do it—Brando, Olivier, Streep. De Niro, before he’d started making all those second-rate comedies for the big paychecks. Ryan added carefully, “That is, if you had a way to finance it.”
Their eyes met. Maybe they hadn’t seen each other in fifteen years, he thought, but he could still read Felicia Farwell like a cue card. That had been her problem as an aspiring actress. No subtlety. Always too obvious, too on the nose. He’d never told her that. He’d been careful not to bite the hand that fed him. He certainly wasn’t going to tell her now.
“Maybe we should cut to the chase,” he said.
“You’ve got a problem, Jack. Problems need solutions.”
He finally had a reason to smile again, for real this time. “How much would it take to make my problem go away?”