I sent the target back to the mark. I’d briefly considered bringing Trey’s nine-millimeter. A matte black P7M8, it was the smoothest handgun I’d ever shot, too heavy to haul around in a carry purse, however. He still practiced with it, still cleaned and maintained it, but ever since he’d pulled it on his boss in a moment of spectacularly bad judgment, he’d relegated it to the personal gun safe next to his bed. Whenever I asked when he might carry it again, he shook his head and changed the subject.
The men next to me high-fived each other. I felt a tap on my shoulder—Patrick, the range guy. I turned up the amplification as he pointed to my tote bag in the corner. “Your phone’s going off.”
“Sorry about that! Thank you!”
He tossed off a little salute and continued down the line. I placed the gun on the counter and knelt beside my bag. Seven missed calls in the last three minutes. All from Trey.
I felt a wash of nervousness. Something had gone wrong, bad wrong. I had my thumb poised to call him back when it started ringing again. Trey. I pushed through the first set of doors, then the second, yanking off the headset.
I put the phone to my ear. “What’s happened?”
“You have to go.”
“Go where?”
“To the meeting with Nicholas Talbot. There’s an accident. I can’t get off the interstate.”
“Call and reschedule.”
“I can’t. I…hold on.” Horns sounded at his end, woven with the wail of an ambulance. Police sirens too. His voice was tight with frustration. “There’s no way out. I’m blocked. If I can get to the next exit, I’ll be there, but I’ll be late. You have to go.”
“Trey—”
“He’s on set at Kennesaw Mountain. Go to the parking lot at the summit, next to the trail entrance.”
I pulled off my goggles. “And what am I supposed to do when I get there? They’re not going to let me in. You’re on the security list, not me.”
“I’ll call and get your name added.”
“But—”
“There’s no time. He could change his mind. The Talbot board could reconsider. There may not be another chance.”
His voice held an edge of panic. I heard another horn, this time from the Ferrari. I felt a larger stab of worry. Trey was not a lay-on-the-horn kind of driver.
“Are you okay?” I said.
“I’m fine. But this is the second time the truck beside me has swerved into my lane. He’s not paying attention, he’s texting. Nobody is paying attention, and the wrecking crew hasn’t even…hold on.”
He hit the horn again. I was suddenly relieved he didn’t have his gun, because if some unfortunate soul tapped that car, Trey would go ballistic, and nobody wanted actual ballistics in his vicinity if that happened.
I steadied my voice. “Trey. Listen to me. You need to calm down.”
“I am calm.”
“No, you are not.”
“Go to the meeting.”
“But I have no clue what to—”
“Please. I think it’s a fair request. Considering.”
He didn’t have to explain what needed considering. All the times he’d stood by me as I dug some hole deeper and deeper. All the times he’d helped me out of those very same holes.
“Are you seriously playing the ‘you owe me one’ card?”
“I am.”
I checked the clock above the coffee bar. 5:45. I could just make it.
“Fine. I’ll go.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much. Remember, only Talbot and his brother know why we’re there, so be discreet. I’ll be there in…” Another honk of the horn, and what sounded like a muttered curse. “As soon as I can.”
Chapter Fifteen
Both peaks of Kennesaw Mountain belonged to the National Park Service, as did the almost three thousand acres of fields and woods at its base. The park itself didn’t allow camping, but the surrounding pastureland was in private hands and popular with local reenactment groups. On certain nights, when the fog rolled thick through the knee-high grass, and the only sound was the low talk of men around a campfire…on those nights it felt as if I’d slipped into a crack in time and found myself a hundred and fifty years in the past.
This afternoon the past was truly past, though, and Hollywood had conquered where even General Sherman had failed. I found the base camp by following the yellow directional markers with the word “redbird” on them until I reached the second parking lot, closed now to tourists. The coded signs were necessary to keep the lookie-loos from finding the set, but the Moonshine folks had put in extra protections, including portable chain-link fencing, roving security guards, and a check-in station.
I had to park on the grass because the paved portion of the lot housed a collection of silver trailers and utility vans. At the entrance to the trail head, a cherry-picker hoisted a camera crew three stories high. Men and women in jeans spoke into handheld radios, while other people schlepped screens and umbrellas and reels of cable back and forth. In the center of this bustling mechanical chaos, in a circle all by herself, stood Mad Luna Malone.
Not Luna, I reminded myself. Portia Ray. An actress.
But all I saw was Luna.
She wore clothes typical of her 1920s moonshiner character, a homespun sleeveless tank and men’s trousers held up with suspenders, but the low afternoon light highlighted her otherworldly presence. Her pale skin gleamed, her hair tumbled in white-hot tangles, and her biceps looked cut from marble. In one thirteen-episode binge, I’d watched Luna defeat both crafty revenuers and rival bootleggers, battling her way to the top of her werewolf clan only to be left for dead in a cliffhanger season finale. And now here she was, three-dimensional flesh and blood, emphasis on the blood—a rusty blotch on her chest, a smear along her forehead, a clotted bite on her shoulder.
She held a machine gun in one hand and a LeMat revolver in the other as a photographer circled her with a light meter. I knew diddly about the automatic weapon, but I’d sold the
