Cole sighed and grabbed his cell phone, rising from the table with a sigh.

It looked like, for the immediate future, his new role was as Brad DeLuca’s bitch. A role he’d never played, a role he already hated.

CHAPTER 19

I’d had a variety of jobs since my graduation from Quincy High. Fresh out, my new diploma stuffed in a drawer, it was Davis Video Rental. That was in the early Cole Masten days, when he was a twenty-five year old playing sexy high school quarterbacks who dated the nerdy girl and made her popular. I spent my days alphabetizing titles, catching sticky-fingered teens and watching movies on the twenty-seven inch mounted in the store’s upper corner. Each night, I’d bring home a couple of titles and watch more. By the time I’d worked through the entire Comedy and Drama section, Horror and Classic, I put in my notice. Life was too short for Sci-Fi or Western.

After Davis Rental, I drove down to Tallahassee. Applied at a handful of restaurants and bars, striking out until I found a Moe’s with a flirtatious manager who hired me on the spot. I struggled a little there. It wasn’t the restaurant or the stoners I worked with. It was the students, each ding of the door bringing in a fresh wave of individuals who were doing something, going somewhere. Each new face was a subtle point to the invisible sign on my chest that said UNDERACHIEVER in big bubbly letters. Prior to that job, my lack of continuing education, my lack of a life plan… it had never bothered me. I didn’t apply to colleges because I wasn’t really interested in them, didn’t have a childhood dream of leaving Quincy to become a marine biologist or whatever it was that high-schoolers were supposed to want. I liked to read and watch movies. I loved to cook and work in the garden. Before that job in Tallahassee, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with those simple pleasures. But for some reason, with that job, those students… I felt like less of a person each day that I walked in those double doors. And then one day, sitting in the parking lot before my shift, I couldn’t do it anymore. I just started up my truck and drove back home.

After that, I stuck to the county limits. Got the Holden job and moved in, grew roots through my soles and into the plantation’s dirt. I blocked out the images of smiling student faces and focused on the simple things I loved. And slowly but surely, the happiness creeped back in. And around that time, Scott Thompson started coming by. Once he won my heart, there wasn’t much thought about plans or college or Life Outside of Quincy. Love did that to you. Sucked you in and blurred out everything else.

It was after Scott that I started thinking about leaving. It wasn’t so much that life in Quincy felt inadequate, and it wasn’t the shame that I’d felt at Moe’s. It was more that, after my experience with him, I wanted something different. I wanted to be someone different, someone without scorn, someone without a past.

Someone with a future.

CHAPTER 20

Justin Hitchins got the call when on Sunset Boulevard, leaving The Coffee Bean with a double espresso, one wheat bagel with light cream cheese, and a container of sliced strawberries. He stopped his step into the crowded street, moving back two paces, until he was safely out of harm’s way, in between two parallel-parked cars. He reached for his cell, almost dropped everything, then glanced around, carefully depositing the espresso on the hood of the black Mercedes to his right. Digging in his pocket, he answered the cell a moment before it went to voicemail.

“Morning.”

“This guy’s a fucking lunatic,” Cole Masten hissed, his voice at whisper level.

“He’s what you wanted. Did you see the dossier I emailed over with his list of cases? He’s never lost—”

“We are going to the airport right now, Justin.” There was a muffled bump across the line. “He wants me to go to Quincy now, to get out of LA. And call the production company—we’re keeping the original timeline, no delays on filming.”

Not an entirely bad plan, seeing the path his employer’s life had taken recently, but Justin swallowed that opinion in light of more pressing issues. “You’re going to the airport right now?” He would need to call the scout, see if Cole’s house was ready for occupancy, see if their local restaurants had a list of approved meals, see if… his mind jumped hurdles, moved through crowds, and had a minor panic attack all in the three seconds it took Cole Masten to respond.

“Yes, right now. I told you… insane.”

“Why are you whispering?” The Cole he knew—had worked for over thirteen years—stood straight and ordered. He hadn’t ever heard a whisper out of the man unless it was printed in a script.

“You meet the guy and tell me you aren’t going to hide in a plane restroom and whisper when you complain about him.”

Justin smiled at the visual. “Okay, when are you landing?”

He didn’t hear the response. It was drowned out by a loud horn, typical in Los Angeles, the accompanying screech of tires another norm. He turned his head, saw the Range Rover swerve, saw the blur of bright white and Xenon headlights slam into the back of the black Mercedes and realized, several moments too late, what was about to happen.

The Range Rover slammed the parked Mercedes forward, not far, but enough to collide with the minivan parked before it, Justin Hitchins a soft cushion in between the two vehicles.

The espresso sloshed up and out in the air, his cell flew from his hand, and Justin Hitchins’ world went black.

CHAPTER 21

The call went dead in Cole’s hand. He glanced down at the cell, the plane dipping, his hand bracing the wall for support, and cursed. Damn service. He pocketed the phone and opened the door, stepping out into the jet’s short hall, a bedroom to the left, seating to the right. In one of the chairs, Brad DeLuca spoke into a phone. Apparently his service worked just fine at forty thousand feet.