Expecting to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

In her career as a cop, she’d seen more than her share of drug deals go down, from street hoodlums and prostitutes to white-collar workers and doctors, or kids and a friend’s parent or older sibling, so she recognized the quick, secretive action, but it was more than a little bold right here in a damned candlelight vigil with parents, friends, and the cops around. What kind of idiots were they?

Kids, she told herself. With the bodies of men and the brains of children. Boys who think they’re invincible and way smarter than they are.

So, if those dunderheads were hiding something about Destiny Montclaire’s death or Lindsay Cronin’s disappearance, they were bound to screw up, and she was going to catch them.

She only hoped it happened before someone else died.

* * *

The forest around Reservoir Point was nearly dark.

Eerie.

A sliver of moon rising through the wispy clouds.

It was much like the night Bianca had been running for her life, certain a monster was chasing her down the mountain, bearing down on her, its hot, horrid breath at her back. She could remember the feelings. The terror. Calling up those raw emotions for this, her big scene recreating the moment “Big Foot” chased her into the canyon, was easy.

The crew had set up at the top of the very trail she’d run down almost a week earlier. There were lights in play, enough to pick up the action, but dim enough to make it obvious to the viewers that it was night.

Bianca closed her eyes. Gathered herself. Tapped into her raw emotions of terror and pain as she waited at the top of the trail, wedged between two huge boulders, standing on her mark, ready to race down the hillside.

She was pumped. Adrenaline raced through her bloodstream and her heart was pounding, her nerves tight.

Get this right. Do it!

She’d read the loose script, and Barclay Sphinx had talked to her about what he wanted from each scene.

For this one, she was supposed to run through the woods as if she were scared out of her mind, to keep looking over her shoulder and to show panic, fear, and pain. All she had to do was remember how she’d felt that night and she was there. The cameraman—a bearded guy named Rob—would basically be playing the part of the monster chasing her, the lens Big Foot’s eye, so she’d have reason to turn her face and really emote. Showing pain shouldn’t be a problem. Running on her ankle was certain to ensure a level of agony. Even now, while she was just waiting, it throbbed. She gritted her teeth. Her doctor would freak if he knew she was doing this, but she didn’t care. Poised for flight, she rotated the kinks from her neck, then swatted at a mosquito that buzzed near her head.

She’d been told that since Rob would be following her, she was supposed to look like she was running fast and hard, when, in essence, she would be slowly jogging so he could keep up without jostling the camera too much and they could get good, clear footage that wasn’t too jerky.

Other camera operators would catch the action as she headed downhill, one midway and the other at the bottom of the incline when she pitched headlong into the creek, where the “dead body”—really little more than a life-sized doll—was in place beneath the water. It didn’t look real with its fake hair and painted eyes, but she had been assured it would appear genuine in the film. And it could be doctored, made to look more real through computer-generated imagery, post filming. The images of it would be grainy and distorted, so the viewers would only get a glimpse before the camera cut away; most of the horror was left to the viewers’ imaginations.

Sphinx had explained to Bianca that there would be several takes of her run down the hillside and all the footage would be reviewed, edited, and spliced together to make the filming appear seamless and “real.”

Mentally she’d turned a corner by pushing back her doubts about Barclay Sphinx’s motives. She told herself they didn’t matter, that the filming tonight was the first step to achieving her goals of becoming a star, even though she was a little disappointed in the script as the story line surrounding this episode of the series was only minimally about her.

Still, she was one step closer to Hollywood.

“Okay, everybody. Places!” a disembodied voice called from somewhere behind her, and then, “Action!”

She took off. Jogging headlong down the path, breathing more loudly than she needed to, looking over her shoulder, hoping that raw panic was evident on her face. She remembered frantically racing down this very path, the twists, the turns, the sheer terror of the monster chasing her, and oh, yeah, the pain! She winced as she passed the second camera, maybe overplaying it as she hobbled, but the pain was real enough, each step downhill sending a jab of agony through her ankle.

She heard the cameraman behind her, pretended it was the monster she’d seen the week before, and kept glancing fearfully behind, reminding herself the red light blinking on the shoulder cam was that gold eye of whatever creature had torn after her through these stands of hemlock and pine.

She heard the creek before she saw it, noticed the camerawoman on the bank, and headed straight for the stream, which rushed and cascaded more loudly than it had before, as the crew was piping in more water from a truck situated upstream, out of view of the cameras.

For effect, Bianca was panting loudly as she passed the camerawoman on the fly. She recognized her mark, the edge of the stream where the water eddied and pooled, saw the exact spot where she was supposed to trip over an exposed root and fall with a little scream into the water.

Almost there!

From the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of the mannequin, lying just under the surface, half hidden in the dark pool and tethered by an invisible bit of fishing line. Everything was in its place.

Now!

Her toe hit the root and she pitched herself forward, her arms flying out as she screamed for effect and hit the cold rush of water. Uncomfortable, but not terrible. God, she hoped it looked as if she’d stumbled. She submerged and focused on the doll.

The mannequin stared back.