Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 72945 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72945 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
I exchange a look with Baptist and roll my eyes before we hurry after him.
“Truth or not, we have paperwork,” I say, catching up with him down in the foyer.
“Take it to my lawyers.”
“We already did that. You have to sign.”
“I do not have to do anything.” He hurries down the stairs. When he reaches the bottom, he stops and turns around, hands on his hips, grinning. “But I will if you fetch something for me.”
I exchange a look with Baptist. He doesn’t seem happy, but I’m not even a little bit surprised. I head down and join Cowan in the foyer, and Baptist places himself slightly between us like he’s purposefully putting me behind him.
“Why can’t you have your assistant pick up your laundry?” Baptist asks.
“I suppose I could give him a producer’s credit as well.” Cowan looks disgusted as he turns away.
“We’ll do it. Whatever it is.” I give Baptist a sharp look. He’s about to contradict me but his mouth snaps shut and he looks annoyed, but not about to blow this up in my face. “Just tell me what you need.”
Cowan turns back, grinning sharply. “I knew you were a shark, suit. I saw it the second you walked into my life.”
“What do you need, Cowan?”
“There’s a safe in the basement of a home I own up in the Poconos. Inside is a very old, very important mask from the Roman Republic era. I want it for one of the scenes I have planned. Go find the mask and bring it back.”
“Easy,” I say then hesitate. “What’s the safe’s combination?”
“No combination, just a key.” Cowan nods at the brass key in my hand. “Which you already have.”
I hold it up and take a deep breath. “You set this up.”
“I did. Now get going, it’s a long drive.” He turns and strides out.
“Where’s he going?” Baptist asks softly before shaking his head. He walks to the window, looks out, and tenses. “We can’t keep running his errands, Webb.”
“You want to lose this movie because you’re too good to pick up a mask?”
“It’s not that.” He looks back at me, his face serious. “Cowan’s playing a game. If we let him dictate the terms, we’re never going to get out from under his control. This whole thing will be a nightmare at best and we won’t have any say in what happens.”
“I don’t think we’ll have any say no matter what we do.”
He grunts in response. We linger in the empty foyer looking at each other, and I remember the darkened stairwell when we kissed, and the feeling of his mouth against mine in the back room, and my hands twitch toward my abdomen.
“Let’s get going then,” he says finally as my phone chimes.
It’s an address and a note from Cowan. Don’t fuck up. The mask is priceless.
Chapter 7
Baptist
I drive. Blair sits shotgun. It’s a couple hours to the house, according to my phone’s GPS, and we kill the first half listening to music and discussing our personal preferences in film and TV. Shockingly, we align on most things, although there are a few key differences.
“Godard was a total fucking hack,” I say, shaking my head. “I can’t believe you buy into that French bullshit.”
“It was groundbreaking and genre defining. Godard changed the way we think about narrative and film.”
“He was a cranky old man that made purposefully difficult movies nobody actually likes.”
“You’re just mad you can’t make them like he can.”
I roll my eyes. “The last thing I’d want to make is some pretentious Godard film, thanks.”
Blair sighs and looks out her window. The landscape hasn’t changed much as we’ve barreled up Route 33, alternating from small town to rural farms to woodland. “Like him or not, at least Godard knew what he wanted. He had a vision and he stuck to it for years.”
I grunt in response. “I can agree with that.”
“What is it about Cowan you like, anyway? He’s pretty artsy too, you know.”
“True, but he doesn’t leave character and narrative behind. That’s what I love about him. His movies are so beautiful and raw, but they’re about people wanting things when you get past all the artful framing.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then: “What he said to me about wanting. It hit something in me.”
“Yeah? Cowan’s already getting to you?”
She shakes her head and changes the radio. “Not like that.”
“Like what, then?”
Another long pause as she studies the road. I’m not sure what she’s thinking, but I want to admit that Cowan’s gotten to me, too. Except where he managed to suck her into his little world, I’ve been repelled. I came into this thinking he’d be difficult and depressing, but not that he’d be actively dangerous and outright insane. Now I’m beginning to wonder why I thought I could be the one to pull another movie from that psychopath director when everyone in the industry I talked to about him told me to run the hell away.