AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’s different with Nadia,” I said. “It’s fine.”
Ryan didn’t call me out on the lie. Instead he asked, “Have you ever said it to someone before?”
“Once,” I admitted. “But I didn’t mean it. My girlfriend said it to me at senior prom, and I repeated it back to her because it would have been too awkward not to. We broke up two months later when I graduated.”
Ryan stared off at nothing. He started to lift the bottle of scotch for a drink, then stopped himself and set it down on the ground. “Don’t do anything you would regret,” he said softly. “Take it slow, just in case. Nadia is…”
There was something in my friend’s eyes I’d never seen before. Affection? Concern? It was a strange sight from the normally hardened man. Finally he shook off the daze.
“She’s special,” he said. “So don’t fuck it up.”
I spread my hands. “I’m trying.”
We took one-hour shifts keeping watch outside in the alley by the fire escape. It was cold and boring, and creepy in the New York night. I was terrified someone would see me lurking in the alley and call the police. It was the kind of sketchy behavior you’d expect from a purse thief, waiting for a victim to wander by.
The night passed slowly as we alternated tasks, taking turns sleeping on the stage while the other person kept watch. The sleep I got was light and not refreshing. I wished I had a pot of coffee.
I was sleeping soundly on the stage when I was woken by a noise.
I sat upright in my sleeping bag, straining my ears in the silent darkness. Ryan was asleep next to me, snoring softly, but that’s not what I heard.
There. Another noise backstage.
I shook Ryan awake. When he rolled over and glared at me, I put a finger over my mouth and pointed backstage. The sound was constant now, like the shuffling of feet on a dusty floor. Sweep sweep sweep.
I glanced at my watch. It was 5:00 a.m.. Far too early for someone to be here.
Silently, we both crawled out of our sleeping bags and tip-toed to the edge of the curtain. The swath of backstage that we could see was completely dark. After a few moments of our eyes adjusting, I could just barely make out the outline of a stack of crates by the electrical box. Grey against black.
And then a person-shaped shadow moved toward it. The crates shifted as they reached out and touched them.
My first instinct was that Nadia might have come to bring us breakfast. I dismissed that theory when I remembered we’d locked the door behind her when she left. This was someone else.
Ryan patted me on the back, then put his mouth right up to my ear to whisper. “Go around the other side to surround them.”
I slipped away from stage right and exited stage left, curling around the curtain in a wide arc that would take me around the back side of the person. I moved as slowly as I could, planting one heel and rolling the rest of my foot down to the floor silently. The person was still up ahead, making a rustling noise that I couldn’t quite place. As I moved along the row of crates, the edge of the person came into view.
I stopped. My eyes had adjusted enough now that I could tell who it was: Director Atkins. He had a plastic shopping bag in one hand. Relief flooded into my body like coolant.
Before I could call out to him, Ryan roared and leaped forward. He slammed into Atkins, tackling him to the ground. The shopping bag went flying through the air.
“Wait!” I shouted, running forward. I flipped on the lights by the electrical box. “It’s Atkins!”
Ryan gripped Atkins by the collar while using his other hand to shield his eyes from the sudden light. “The fuck are you doing here?” he asked.
Atkins groaned and replied, “What are you doing here, asshole? Get off me!”
While Ryan helped him up, I picked up the shopping bag. It had a Fry’s Electronics logo on the side. I glanced back at the director suspiciously. The remote controlled carabiner that had dropped the sandbags could have been bought at Fry’s.
Ryan saw the bag and my reaction. “What electronics did you buy?” he asked carefully.
Atkins snatched the bag out of my hand, then reached inside. The box he pulled out had a picture of a mounted IP camera on the side.
“I got the funding from John Vandercant for a security camera system.”
I felt a moment of guilt for suspecting the director. “How’d you convince him to give you the funding?” I asked.
Atkins grabbed his hip and winced. “After the detective left last night, I drove to Vandercant’s condo and gave him a piece of my mind. Ranted for at least ten minutes about the lack of funding for the show, all the cost-cutting measures he’s taken, and how I think he doesn’t really want the show to succeed. He wrote me a check for the funding then and there. After buying the cameras I came over here early to set them up so you guys didn’t have to…”
