Page 81 of Good Enough

“I’ve dealt with way worse,” he admitted. His arms slid down to hold her elbows, thumbs brushing over the skin as if soothing a frightened animal. “Kubrick, what is the deal with him? Why is he gunning so hard for you?”

She sighed and dropped her head. She turned in his arms, laying her head on his chest and wrapping her arms around his waist. “I wish I knew, but it always comes back to money with him. From day one, it is all he has ever harped about with me. I don’t get it since I still have a record of coming in under budget and producing good films. It’s part of why I work the actors the way I do right now.”

He nodded. “The layering. I get it now. Working multiple angles creates efficiency as long as you’re not doing too many things at one time.”

“Right. It’s something I learned in college. So I just kept doing it everywhere else as well. As a woman director, I needed every advantage to sell myself. I was studying business, not film, but I became intrigued with movies. I made some really low-budget shorts as samples of what I could do. I mean really low budget. Several with no budget at all. My first full-length film, I basically sold my soul to get in the door.” She looked up at him. “I promise. Just my soul.”

He smiled at her understanding of what his concern would be. “Thank you for that.”

“Anyway, when I was offered this job, I considered turning it down. Big Bird’s reputation is legendary. But I desperately wanted this chance, so I figured I could manage to make it work. But he’s been relentless. Every penny must be accounted for. He always seems to find shit to question me on.”

“Is that why the obsession with the invoices?”

“Yep.”

“Hmmm. I know he’s the money guy, but is that normal? Seems weird to me.”

“There are always bean counters raising questions, but not like him. I can only assume that the reason he’s so rich is he’s a scrooge when it comes to expenditures, wringing every single penny out of a production.”

A new angle for Midas to dig into?

He reached up to smooth her hair back. “You know,” he dropped his voice lower, “I think that tomorrow’s another day, and someone promised a certain Neanderthal a roll in the sheets.” Tilting her head to his liking, his lips found hers, a hand curving around her jaw to hold her in place, the other dropping to her hip and banding around her back to pull her closer.

When he let her come up for air, her eyes were closed, a satisfied smile on her face. “I guess I did,” she whispered back.

Turning, she slipped into the bedroom, Waters following close behind. He stopped her at the side of the bed and gently stripped her clothes from her. He pulled back the sheets and urged her under them. After she was settled, he took her clothes and folded them, neatly placing them on her dresser, then pulled off his own clothes, doing the same with his own. He crawled into the bed where he laid face-to-face with her, each of them with one arm beneath the other, hands smoothing over skin as lips met in soft, short kisses.

While she wouldn’t have refused him going farther, he recognized her body starting to sink into a relaxed state. Curling her into his chest, he held her tight, kissing her temple. “Sleep, baby. I’m right here.”

“But—”

“Shh. Tonight sucked, and you need your strength for tomorrow. I’m not going anywhere, and right now, holding you just feels right.”

He felt her relax, signaling he made the right choice. Within a few short minutes, her even breathing filled the room. Only then did he feel like he could close his eyes, but it was some time before he actually slept.

28

MARCH 24TH

Waters

The actors and crew had been filming for eleven days. For the most part, it had gone smoothly, but Big Bird’s presence on the set definitely brought continual increasing tension. In the last day or two, he had been disappearing for short intervals back to the house. Last night, he took a Jeep into Coxen Hole, refusing to have one of the locals hired to maintain vehicles drive him in. Nemo had been on “Birdwatch,” but there wasn’t anything to report. The producer had gone to a bar at the main hotel in town, had a few drinks, talked to no one, and returned to the house in the early morning hours.

Waters turned to look at Kubrick and saw her using a Jeep hood as a desktop, rifling through her Backpack of Death. She was struggling with it as she had a huge handful of loose papers in her left hand, allowing her only the right to go through the remaining contents.

Waters grabbed the stack in her hands. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t find the invoices for the ammunition,” she said, diving back inside the backpack. “I need to order some additional squibs and caps, but with my new laptop back at the house, I have to call to order them, and that means I need an invoice for my contact’s number and the inventory numbers. I could have sworn I ordered twice the number we have, and when I spoke to the company yesterday, they claimed that amount was sent. But they’re nowhere to be found.” She huffed in frustration. “The last thing I need right now is to get hung up in filming because I’m out of ammunition.”

Waters leafed through the papers. “I checked in those materials myself since they are connected to the weapons. Are you sure the invoices aren’t here? Could they be with the crates?”

“I thought of that since we opened everything and counted to verify it was all there. But that doesn’t help. The crates aren’t here either.”

“What do you mean they’re not here?”

“I mean, they’ve vanished. We loaded them on the plane and unloaded them when we got here, but now they’re nowhere. I sent Christoff earlier for some additional product, and that’s when we discovered they were gone.”

His brow furrowed. “What would someone want with squibs and caps? It’s not like they’re useful to anyone other than a special effects crew.”

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