Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 83986 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83986 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
“Pardon me?” Nash said, his tone clearly saying he took offense.
“You seem…twisted up.”
“Emotionally constipated,” I offered.
Ash groaned and smacked me on the shoulder as my buddy’s eyes narrowed.
I shook my head at him. “I have worked with you too long for that face right there to scare me. None of the ire you think is coming at me is, in fact, coming at me.”
“Yeah, we’re just getting the…what did you say?” Owen asked me, baiting Nash.
“The emotional constipation,” I reiterated.
“Yeah, exactly,” Owen said.
“Leave him alone,” Ash ordered me and Owen.
“All done now?” Nash growled at us, arms crossed, biceps bulging, looking the picture of annoyed.
“He’s actually very kind,” Owen defended the man whom we’d all take a bullet for, giving Nash a hard pat on the shoulder. “It’s just, until you know him, all you really see is the hard outer shell and none of the warm gooey center.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Nash snapped at him.
“He’s a lot like Locryn,” Owen went on, directing his words to me. “Locryn is even more closed off, except with people he cares about. Nash is the nicer of the two.”
“Really? You think that?” I asked him.
Owen was silent a moment. “Well, other than us, Nick, of course, and his mother, Sherri, can you think of anyone Locryn doesn’t growl at?”
Now it was my turn to put some thought into that.
“Oh, for the love of—we have shit to ask you,” Nash barked at Ash. “So come over here and siddown so we can.”
The movie star turned to me. “Does he know who I am?”
I grinned. “Maybe don’t open with that.”
Ash scoffed playfully.
Moving from the living room to the dining-room table, the four of us all took a seat. Ash took my hand. Already, one of the best things about him was that he could not keep his hands off me.
“Okay,” Owen began, smiling at his favorite actor.
I understood the feeling. It was surreal. Normally Ash was on a screen, and we watched him. Big ones, small ones, we took him places with us on our phones. The characters were like friends we counted on to make us feel a certain way. And now, suddenly, here he was, speaking back to us. Surreal was exactly what it was.
Slowly, Owen turned his laptop around so Ash could see Voss’s picture. “Do you know this man?”
“Sure. That’s Kit Riggs.”
Owen shook his head. “No, that’s Elliot Voss.”
“No. That’s Kit Riggs, and I’m sure of that because first, I know him well, and second, he came to the meeting looking like that, transformed into Voss for the pitch.”
The three of us just stared at him.
“I was amazed,” Ash gushed, oblivious. “I couldn’t get over it, so though I’m not usually the one taking pics, this time I simply had to snap a few because it was seriously impressive.”
No one spoke. It was hard to wrap my brain around what he was telling us.
“I mean, between the makeup and the prosthetics—that is so not Kit’s nose—it’s an incredible transformation.”
We were all still staring at him.
“Was that it?” Ash sounded a bit disappointed.
“You’re telling me this guy right here”—Owen pointed at the man who looked so remarkably like Elliot Voss, I would have sworn it was him—“is not Voss?”
“That’s right.”
We were all silent again.
Ash said, “May I ask something?”
“Yeah,” Owen answered him.
“Why do you care who I was having lunch with?”
“We only cared because it looks like you’re sitting with a wanted fugitive.”
“Oh, I see. Because if I’m recalling the Torus contract correctly, I cannot participate in any illegal activity while being protected.”
“That’s right,” Owen said, going with that, though it had been a much bigger deal earlier when the three of us were discussing what the FBI wanted with Ash.
“Okay, well, you can definitely let Mr. Colter know that I was not, in fact, meeting with Elliot Voss, but instead with a friend of mine who wants to play him in the movie he’s looking to have made.”
“So your friend was pitching an idea to you?”
“Yeah. He wants to make a movie based on Voss’s life and—” He stopped himself, thinking a moment. “I want to say it’s called Maelstrom or Heart of the Maelstrom or something like that, but yeah, he had an idea for a movie about Voss, and because he loves the writers who work on his show Snap Back, he had them write the screenplay.”
“And he pitched it to you in San Francisco at lunch a week ago.”
“Is that where it—yeah, that’s right. Sorry, I’ve been globetrotting lately, but I had some other meetings there, and since I’ve been putting him off, when he said he would fly up from Palm Springs where he’s shooting Peace Out, I just gave in.”
“Peace Out is that sci-fi series on Netflix, right?”
“Yeah. He got an Emmy for that last year, which was very much deserved.”