“You fucked her on the furniture?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You implied it.”
“Do you know who Felicity would really like to fuck?”
“Craig? Who could blame her?”
“You.”
“What?”
“Felicity occasionally expresses an attraction for someone of her own gender — and you’re just her type.”
“I...? ‘Her type’?”
“Ask her, if you don’t believe me.”
Jamie lay back in bed and thought about that. “I wonder if she’s my type.”
“Oh? Do you also have the occasional attraction to someone of your own gender?”
“Well, not since college, and then just once. Maybe twice.” She sat up in bed. “Wait a minute, you’re violating our contract. No judge would allow that.”
“I would tell a judge that you opened the door, making it a subject for questioning.”
“‘Opened the door’? Is that a euphemism for sex?”
“Sometimes.”
“Why do you think Felicity is attracted to me?”
“Did she place her hand on your knee at dinner?”
“I thought that was Craig.”
“That would have been your other knee.”
“There were hands on both my knees.”
“Then you are very popular.”
“I have an awful lot to think about,” Jamie said.
“Sweet dreams,” Stone replied.
Stone was already in the basement gym the following morning when Craig Calvert arrived with a short, muscular man in his fifties with a broken nose and short-cropped gray hair. “Good morning, Craig,” Stone said.
“Good morning, Stone,” Craig replied. “May I introduce Mick O’Leary?”
Stone shook his hand. “Good to meet you, Mick. Are you Craig’s trainer?”
“He’s more of my restrainer,” Craig said. “I tend to get a little too enthusiastic at times, and Mick is here to see that he can deliver me to the set, undamaged, on the day.”
“Dat’s right,” Mick said.
“You’re not Irish, are you, Mick?” Stone asked. Everybody laughed.
“Well,” Craig said, “Mick and I had better get to work. Just ignore us.” The actor stripped off his sweat suit to reveal a physique that, while trim, Stone found intimidating.
“How much time do you spend in the gym, Craig?” he asked.
“Ordinarily, two hours a day, but the month before I start a film I do four hours a day.”
“God, I’m glad I’m not an actor,” Stone muttered. He went to the weight system and started his routine of lifts, pull-downs, curls, and sit-ups. It didn’t last very long.
Mick put Craig through a long regimen of stretching, then Craig got back into his sweat suit. “We’re going to do a little run before I start on the weights,” Craig said. “Join us?”
“Sure,” Stone said, retying his shoelaces.
They left the house and Stone pointed them toward a route away from the country hotel next door that would keep the guests from hanging out the windows, staring at Craig. Mick followed in one of the estate’s golf carts. Every couple of minutes, Craig would run a hot sprint, and then return to Stone and Mick. “I’ll have to do a lot of that in the film,” Craig said, having rejoined them. “These days, there are as many chases on foot as in cars.”
“Well, you never have to run more than thirty yards,” Mick said. “It’s in your contract. More than that, they have to bring in a stunt double.”
“For which I am grateful,” Craig said, “especially when it’s over rooftops. I’m terrified of heights.” He pointed ahead. “Is that an airstrip?”
“It is,” Stone said. “It was originally built during World War II as a testing ground and a runway for light bombers carrying explosives or Special Air Service commandos to France. The ancestral owner of the place kept it up for his airplanes after the war, and I land my own airplane there.” He pointed at the open hangar, where the nose of the Latitude could be seen.
They were almost at the hangar when Craig yelled and fell to one knee. Mick drove alongside and pushed him all the way down as he jumped out of the golf cart to cover Craig’s body with his own.
“Shit!” Craig yelled. “I’ve been shot!”
Stone got down on the ground, too, and looked around. “I didn’t hear anything.” Half a mile away, an unmarked van crossed a meadow and left the estate. Stone got out his phone. “I’ll call the police and an ambulance,” he said.
“You’ll call neither,” Mick said. “I’ll handle this.”
Stone took charge of the golf cart, while Mick hustled Calvert onto the rear seat.
“I don’t think we’ll be shot at again,” Stone said. “I think the shooter was in the van that just took off in such a hurry.” They got Craig into the house gym through a back door.
“I’m going to need a first-aid kit and some light,” Mick said, helping Craig onto the massage table.
Stone hurried to the office of Major Bugg, the estate manager. “Where’s your medical kit?” he asked.
The major took it from a closet and followed Stone to the gym. “What’s happened?”
“One of our guests has had a mishap.” They entered the exercise room where Mick had Calvert lying facedown on the massage table, his pants and shorts stripped off. There was a bleeding trench running across Calvert’s right buttock.
Mick opened the case and began removing things. “Lidocaine, good. Penicillin, too. And here’s a suturing kit.”
“Do you need a doctor’s help, Mick?”
“I’m a licensed physician’s assistant,” Mick replied. “I can do suturing.” He injected lidocaine around the wound and cleaned it carefully, then he trimmed the edges with scissors, threaded a suturing needle, and completed a dozen stitches. “There,” he said, “that’ll hold him. He’ll need a tetanus shot, though.” He found the vial and used a fresh syringe. “You’ll be fine, Craig, until the lidocaine wears off and you have to sit down.”
“Who the hell would want to shoot me?” Craig asked nobody in particular.
“I think the shooter was likely aiming at me,” Stone said. “You just happened to be in the way.”
“Felicity said something like this would happen, and it has.”
“For God’s sake,” Stone said, “don’t tell her she was right.”
4
Stone found Craig another pair of sweatpants and tossed his bloody ones into the trash, while Major Bugg returned the medical kit to its home.
“You’re sure you don’t want to call the police?” Stone asked.
“Don’t even think about it,” Mick said. “Somebody at the police station will leak it to a reporter and by cocktail time it will be all over the news. You’ll have two dozen photographers crawling all over your estate trying to snap a photo of Craig Calvert’s ass. And we don’t want that, do we?”
“I don’t want Felicity to know, either,” Craig said.
“Where is she today?”
“At her office. She left early this morning.”
“Go back to her place, pack your bags, and leave her a note saying you’ve been called back to London for a script conference. Then come over here, and we’ll put you up for a few days. You’re not going to want to answer anybody’s questions about why you’re limping or sitting funny.”
“Stone is right,” Mick said. “If the insurance company hears that you’ve been shot, they’ll put you in hospital for a whole new physical. That, and the resulting publicity, will screw up the shooting schedule. It will also increase the insurance premium, and your producers won’t like that.”
“Thank you for the offer, Stone,” Craig said. “I accept. Let’s go pack, Mick.” He hobbled out of the house and, with Mick’s help, headed for the dock in the golf cart.