This was her chance, she thought, as she found one of the few remaining parking spaces, grabbed her microphone and cell, then dodged a speeding bicyclist to wait for the informant.
In the meantime, she made calls and did research, studied the skyline of the west side of the river, where skyscrapers rose against a backdrop of forested hills. After an hour, her irritation growing with each passing minute, she finally gave up. One more time a promising source had turned out to be a dud and she was stood up, once again.
She walked back to her car and flopped inside. As she twisted on the ignition, she decided that she would do whatever was necessary to nail this story and if she had to be . . . uh, creative? . . . so be it. She wasn’t above bending the truth a little, or even staging a little drama.
Within reason.
There were lines she wouldn’t cross, of course. She had her ethics. But she also had a story to tell, a story that promised her a new echelon of fame.
And she deserved it, by God.
Life hadn’t been fair to her, and this time she wasn’t going to let the brass ring slip through her fingers. Not when it was sooo close.
Licking her lips, she plotted her next move.
How far would she go to get what she wanted?
Again, her lips twitched.
Pretty damned far.
“But you’re not well, not strong enough to leave,” Dr. Sherling said to Cassie after breakfast. She was a kind woman, who never wore makeup, her white hair a cloud, her cheeks naturally rosy, her skin unlined though she had to be in her seventies. Slim and fit, Virginia Sherling had been a competitive skier in her day, according to the nurses’ gossip. Beneath her bright, toothy smile and soft-spoken, easygoing demeanor lay a will of iron. Cassie knew. She’d tested the psychiatrist several times during her stay here and had witnessed the color rise in the older woman’s face and her slight English accent become more pronounced. Now, however, upon walking into Cassie’s room and finding her packing, Dr. Sherling was calm. At least outwardly as she stood next to the rocker in the room.
“I’ll be okay,” Cassie assured her.
“Have you talked to your family? Your mother?”
Cassie threw her a glance. “Have you?” she asked, double-checking that her phone and charger were tucked inside with her clothes and makeup bag. Everything was where it should be. Except for the bottles of meds that were tucked into a side pocket. No need for those. She grabbed the three bottles, read the labels, then threw them all into a nearby trash can.
The doctor’s lips tightened. “You can’t just stop those,” she said. “You need to taper off. Seriously, Cassie, I strongly advise you wean yourself carefully.” She walked to the trash, scooped up all three bottles, and dropped them into Cassie’s open bag. “These are strong drugs.”
“Exactly.”
“Please. Be responsible.” The doctor’s eyes behind her glasses were serious and steady. “You don’t want to come back here on a stretcher.”
Cassie’s jaw tightened.
“Have you talked to your mother?” she asked again.
The answer was “no,” of course, and Cassie suspected Dr. Sherling knew it and was just making a point.
When the older woman spoke, her voice was softer, more conspiratorial, as if they shared something personal. “Jenna’s concerned.”
For a second Cassie flashed on her mother. Petite. Black hair. Wide green eyes. A once-upon-a-time Hollywood beauty, Jenna Hughes had been a household name years before either of her daughters had tried to follow in her famous footsteps, before a monster, a deranged serial killer, had tried to destroy them all. Cassie shuddered, knew that the terror from all those years before had chased after her, unrelenting. Those memories, the horror, fear, and gore, were the dark well from where her blood-chilling nightmares sprang. For years she’d kept the terror at bay. Until the near-murder on the set and Allie’s disappearance. Now they’d come back again, with a vengeance.
“You entered the hospital voluntarily,” the doctor reminded her softly, as if she could read Cassie’s thoughts. That much was true, though she’d felt pressured into the decision. “You know you have unresolved issues.” A slight rise of the doctor’s white eyebrows punctuated her thought. “Night terrors. Hallucinations. Blackouts.”
“They’re better.” Cassie zipped her bag. Thought about the nurse she’d seen in her room. Not a hallucination; she had the earring to prove it. Still, she’d decided not to mention the visitor; nor would she rat out Rinko. There was no reason to make more trouble.
“Are they?” the doctor asked, her eyes narrowing behind her rimless glasses.
“Mmm.” A bit of a lie. Well, maybe more than a bit, but she nodded, pushing aside her doubts. “I was freaked out after the near-murder on the set. You know that. It’s why I came here. Voluntarily. To sort things out and get my head right.” She stared the doctor squarely in the eyes. “I’m still convinced someone was gunning for Allie.”
“It was an accident,” Dr. Sherling reminded her, a theory Cassie didn’t buy. There was an ongoing investigation after the “incident,” of course; the actor who’d pulled the trigger more shocked than anyone, the prop gun having been tampered with. So how was that an accident? This was the kind of thing that was never supposed to happen. Never. There were fail-safes in place.
And yet, Lucinda Rinaldi, who had miraculously survived after nearly two weeks in a coma, was recovering. She was now out of the hospital and, according to a mutual acquaintance, had graduated into a rehabilitation center on the other side of the river, where she was putting her life back together, all the while contemplating a lawsuit against the production company and anyone attached to Dead Heat.
An accident?