Gia never could claim that he’d broken that promise. It did happen again and again later that night and the next morning in Seth’s bed at his attractive and comfortable Silver Lake home.
He’d also said he would call her after she returned to New York.
That was a promise Seth Hightower never kept.
Three
PRESENT DAY
Seth had promised himself he’d be free for Charles Trew’s visit at three o’clock, no matter what catastrophe occurred in the makeup room today. Luckily, his partner in Hightower Special Effects—his niece, Joy—had promised to cover for him for the meeting.
Charles was an old friend from their Army intelligence days, and was now the assistant district attorney in charge of Special Operations for the County of Los Angeles. Seth could immediately tell from Charles’s brisk manner on the phone that he wasn’t calling to get together to watch a football game, rehash their old Army days and shoot the shit. No, Seth had a sinking feeling his friend was calling him for a consultation.
It wasn’t that Seth was against helping out for a good cause when the situation arose. He’d done it before. There weren’t that many ex-intelligence operatives who possessed Seth’s specific skills for disguise, after all. It was just that he was on the final day of a grueling schedule. Not for just any movie either, but a high-budget zombie flick. They were reshooting two short, but major, scenes that involved a lot of special effects makeup. A horde of zombies and free time just didn’t go hand in hand, not for the co-head of the makeup department.
Seth finally peeled off a silicone throat-and-chest prosthetic from an actress and replaced it carefully on a stand. He glanced up and saw Charles walking toward his station.
“That’s it, Sherry. You’re officially back to being a human for good. Thanks for all your patience, and congrats on finishing up,” he told the actress.
“Thanks, Seth. You too. It’s been so great working with you. I hope I get the chance to work with you on another project sometime soon. Good luck with the rest of the day, and I’ll see you at the party later?”
“Sure,” Seth said when Sherry went on tiptoe and gave him a brief hug and kiss.
Activity in the lab was high today, given their tight final-day shooting schedule. Seth saw Charles approaching in the midst of the chaos. Without a spec of blood and gore on his conservative suit and with his meticulously neat, modernized crew cut, Charles looked like zombie bait approaching.
Sherry turned to go and halted, smirking slightly when she noticed Charles’s startled expression as he stared at her. She unhurriedly finished buttoning her “bloody” costume shirt over her bare breasts and walked away.
Charles whistled softly under his breath and met Seth’s amused stare.
“I knew I should have gone into showbiz instead of law school after the Army. You have all the luck,” Charles mumbled, still gazing after the departing actress. “Who was that? Anyone I should know?”
“I doubt Cara thinks so,” Seth replied, referring to Charles’s wife of eight years and Seth’s friend.
“I didn’t mean should I get to know her. I meant is she famous? I couldn’t recognize her with her hair under wraps like that and all the paint.”
“I doubt you’d be able to come up with an identification by staring at her tits and ass,” Seth said without an ounce of inflection in his voice.
“Yeah, but it never hurts to scan the whole territory,” Charles replied, turning to him with a broad grin. Seth chuckled and began scrubbing his hands and forearms briskly in a nearby sink. He’d bunked with Charles in basic training and served with him for three out of his five years in Army Human Intelligence in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was enough time in the trenches for Charles to know when Seth was ribbing him and when he wasn’t.
“Is Joy around?” Charles asked. He’d met Seth’s niece on several occasions. Seth had told him during their recent phone conversation that he’d asked Joy to join him in heading Hightower Special Effects.
“She’s doing some fabrication for me so I could meet with you.” Seth toweled off and stuck out his hand in a belated greeting.
Charles shook it warmly. “Which I can’t thank you enough for in advance. If you can help us out with this in any way, there are quite a few others who will be lining up to thank you as well.”
“Let’s go over to my office and talk. I assume this is top secret business?” Seth asked dryly, but to no effect. Charles had become distracted yet again. A few feet away, a female extra had whipped off her robe in preparation for a prosthetic application. Charles stared as she stood there wearing nothing but a nearly nonexistent G-string, while one of Seth’s female artists started to paint adhesive on her chest with a brush in preparation for an application.
Charles sighed and waved Seth in front of him. “I really did pick the wrong job,” he said resignedly.
* * *
Charles sat in front of Seth’s desk in the ad hoc office he shared with Joy, cradling a cup of coffee between his bent legs. The din of the makeup room was muffled to a hum in here, but they still spoke in low voices. As Charles began talking, an uncomfortable, tight feeling had started to rise in Seth’s chest. He had a feeling he knew why Charles was visiting him.
Knew who this whole meeting was about. He found himself both dreading and wishing for Charles to just say her name out loud.
“I was wondering if you were working on the McClarin case,” Seth told Charles quietly after they’d talked for ten minutes. “I haven’t noticed your name in the papers. Nice job on the indictment.”
“We didn’t get him for a fraction of what we wanted to pin on him. We’re glad to have something solid to get Sterling McClarin out of circulation. So are the feds. The FBI is still building their own case for suspected white-collar crimes i