Dark Angel 03: Broken Dream (18 page)

‘So what’s their next move?’ Holly wondered.

‘You know what it is!’ I cried, breaking through Grace’s calm logic. ‘Gwen got through the seduction part with Orlando. She worked her spell. Now he’s turned his back not just on me but on all of his old life – his mom and dad, his high school friends, his college buddies.’

‘You don’t think he’ll come home?’ Holly checked.

‘Not in a million years.’

Grace agreed. ‘If you’re right, the next move is some kind of initiation ceremony for Orlando – a celebration.’

‘Which is when he actually steps across to the dark side,’ I confirmed. ‘They win. We lose.’ It sounded so scary put into words that I began to shake.

‘But it hasn’t happened yet.’ Holly was the one to think ahead. ‘We still have time.’

‘How? What do we do?’ The trembling got worse. I hyperventilated and felt my hands and arms begin to tingle.

‘We try to find out a few things. For starters, who exactly is Gwen? What can we find out about her?’

‘Holly’s right,’ Grace agreed. ‘We learn all we can. That’s how it works. Once we know more facts about the dark angels we can start to take back some of their power.’ She held my trembling, tingling hand until the wave of fear had passed. ‘What about your good angel? Has she shown up yet?’

‘He, not she.’

‘Who is he? What does he say?’

‘He tells me to hold his hand and be brave.’ I shook my head and sighed. I missed the strength of Maia and Zenaida, who had been there for me before, heading up the army of good angels who did cosmic battle against the forces of darkness. ‘He’s really young. I’m scared he’s not strong enough.’

‘But you have to trust him,’ Grace told me.

It touched me and made me smile – her total faith in Adam, my good angel. ‘Thanks,’ I told her.

‘And remember, Gwen won’t be acting alone,’ Holly reminded us. ‘There are others. We have to work out who they are.’

‘If I knew I would tell you,’ I sighed. ‘There was my mugger in New York – he was one for sure. But now look around you here on Carlsbad. We know there’s Gwen but she can’t be the leader.’

‘Why not?’ Grace asked.

Thanks to her and Holly, I started to take deep breaths and slowly got back to trusting my instinct. ‘I don’t know. She just isn’t.’

‘We’re looking for a cult figure like Zoran,’ Holly decided. The room was empty now except for Macy still at the bar with Owen. ‘How about Jack Kane?’

‘That just doesn’t seem right either,’ I argued. And I shattered some illusions by telling them about the dirty underbelly of megastardom – the booze, the girls, the self-destruction.

‘His wife?’ Grace suggested. ‘Could Natalia be the one?’

‘Again – no.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’d have to meet her to know why not; she’s an amazing person. She stepped in and helped me and Orlando when we were in New York. As soon as she heard we were studying film and costume, she got us on to the set as interns. Plus, she’s a great mother to her three kids.’

‘You admire her,’ Grace said softly, curiously.

‘I do. Doesn’t everybody?’

‘Everybody?’ she pressed.

‘Apart from the guy who married her. But then Jack doesn’t admire anyone except himself.’

‘So Natalia has charisma.’ Holly saw where Grace was leading. ‘Which means we need to check her out. Plus the director of this movie …’

‘Larry King,’ I reminded her.

‘Plus Jack’s co-stars and the technical crew – anyone from Starlite who’s connected to
Siege 2
.’

‘Add Charlie to the list,’ Grace insisted. She’d spotted him coming into the bar and talking to Owen and Macy. ‘He’s Gwen’s brother, remember. If she’s on the dark side, Charlie’s a definite possibility.’

My first reaction was, ‘No way! Charlie is the one who helped me in Central Park. He’s everyone’s hero.’ Then the false move he’d made last night hit me again – the slug of alcohol from his flask, the bed with the satin throw, moonlight streaming in.

‘Yeah, definitely Charlie.’ Holly picked up my hesitation and brought him into the frame.

Across the room, Macy leaned across the bar to give Owen a peck on the cheek plus an eyeful of cleavage. Charlie didn’t react. He simply passed on a short message to Owen then walked away, past the table where Holly, Grace and I sat.

‘If you see Jack any time soon,’ he said to me, ‘tell him Larry’s made some late changes to his script. He might need to read through before he goes on set.’

‘Cool.’ I was still knocked off balance by our new suspicions about him. Light to dark, good to evil – it was a major shift and it hadn’t fully sunk in. But I hid my confusion by picking up the cup of coffee that Gwen had left on the table.

‘Why do I feel my ears burning?’ Charlie asked with his drop-dead gorgeous grin. He couldn’t do anything about his smile – it was just part of him.

‘What makes you think we were talking about you?’ Holly challenged without missing a beat. Boy, she was good. ‘Either you’re so vain – as in you totally know you’re the hottest topic of conversation for every girl you meet – or maybe it’s based on actual evidence.’

Charlie’s smile broadened, the dimple deepened. ‘Tania, tell them I have supersonic hearing. While I was standing at the bar I picked up every word you three girls said.’

For half a second even Holly was thrown. Then she laughed and asked him to warn us about any other superpowers he might be hiding from us.

‘Later,’ he promised, finally leaving the bar.

‘Oh my God!’ Holly cringed. ‘He didn’t hear … he couldn’t … could he?’

Through the window I saw Charlie leave the building and cross paths with Jack and Adam, who were coming off the nursery slopes. Jack carried his son’s skis, hat and gloves and was looking relaxed for once, but when Charlie spoke – presumably to pass on Larry’s message about the script – his mood quickly changed. Thrusting the skis on to Charlie, he left him to take care of Adam and stormed into the hotel alone.

He headed straight for the bar, bringing with him a blast of cold air mixed with the whiff of testosterone and stale breath. ‘Get me a whisky,’ he told Owen. ‘Make it a double.’

Macy put a hand on his arm. She said something that made him push her away so hard that she toppled against a stool then dropped to the floor.

I went to help her up.

‘Whisky,’ Jack snarled at Owen, who slowly reached for the bottle on a shelf behind him and poured the drink into a glass.

‘Wait,’ I protested. ‘Jack, what are you doing here?’

He didn’t turn his head but his eyes slid sideways to catch sight of me still trying to help Macy to her feet. ‘I’m minding my own frickin’ business,’ he said savagely. ‘Tell your buddy she should do the same.’

‘What did you say to him?’ I hissed at Macy, making sure I stood between her and Jack.

‘I passed on Charlie’s info about the rewrites.’ The knockback only seemed to make her more determined to get the message into Jack’s thick head. ‘Hold back on the whisky, Owen. Holly, Grace – go fetch Charlie. Tell him we have a situation.’

‘“Go fetch Charlie”!’ Jack mimicked. He leaned across the bar for the glass but Owen was there before him, swiping the whisky out of his reach. The liquid in the glass sloshed and spilled on to the polished granite surface. ‘What exactly is it with Charlie? Is he my stunt double or my full-time jailer?’

‘Did you two just have a fight?’ I asked, wondering what had pressed Jack’s buttons.

Jack’s answer was a stream of abusive adjectives followed by ‘Charlie frickin’ Speke’. Then he launched an attack on Owen for grabbing the glass and spilling the whisky, on me and Macy for breathing, on the whole world for existing.

‘So Larry needs you on set,’ I said, trying not to blink and grimace as spittle sprayed from Jack’s mouth.

‘They’re filming a scene outside the entrance to the old silver mine,’ Macy told us. ‘It’s at the end of the dirt road, just down from the overlook. Holly could drive us up there.’

As she went off to ask Holly the favour, Jack ran out of venom and slumped forward on to the bar. He breathed heavily and there was sweat trickling down his face.

‘You OK?’ I asked, noticing that Owen had retreated through the swing doors into the kitchen behind the bar.

He leaned forward to rest his head on his arms, letting the air out like a deflating balloon. ‘My life is a mess,’ he groaned. ‘My kids hate me and my wife has decided to file for divorce.’

I gasped, unable to find any words beyond, ‘Jeez, I’m sorry.’ Not really equal to the occasion, I admit.

‘Yeah.’ Jack looked up with tears in his eyes. ‘She files for divorce and she doesn’t even tell me in person. She gets my frickin’ alter ego, her messenger boy, to deliver the news instead.’

‘Just now, when you came off the nursery slopes with Adam?’

‘Yeah, right there,’ he sighed. ‘Charlie announces Natalia and I are through. This is the day I lose my kids, my wife, everything.’

N
ow Jack Kane and I had plenty in common.

I’d lost my starry-night lover; he’d lost his beautiful wife and family.

People fall apart in different ways but the actual moment when the heart breaks must be the same for everyone. Pain is universal. Suffering is something we can all relate to.

Macy fixed the ride up the mountain with Holly and Grace and between us by some miracle we managed to get Jack on set in time for Lucy Young to hand him the rewritten screenplay to study before Larry called for action.

‘Charlie told us you couldn’t make it,’ she confided. ‘Larry was ready for him to stand in for everything except the dialogue.’

‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ Jack grunted, and snatched the flimsy script from the assistant director. ‘So Charlie can go to hell.’

‘I’ll go tell the guys in make-up,’ Lucy promised, hurrying off towards a trailer parked on the overlook.

‘You’re sure you can do this?’ I checked with Jack. Up here on Carlsbad an icy wind whipped up a top layer of loose snow that swirled around our feet. It was so cold that our faces, fingertips and toes soon felt frozen solid. I thought of the shock news Charlie had given him and of the effect it would have on his already wrecked nervous system.

‘Yeah, if you give me that drink,’ he joked, kidding around by extending his hand and making it tremble big time.

‘Sure, that’d solve everything.’

Grunting, he shot me a glance then cleared his throat. He began to read through his script, ignoring Angela the Vamp when she emerged from the trailer in the latest skiwear, ready to shoot a sequence of her emerging from the entrance to the old mine carrying a gun, looking over her shoulder then running towards a cable car, climbing in and setting off down the mountain.

As she got into position, I took in the mine entrance – a rough arch hacked into the rock, supported by ancient timbers – and for a second, pale monsters from my underground nightmare roared out of the darkness, wailed and flew up into the bright sky then melted away.

‘Scene twenty-five. Exterior. Entrance to silver mine. Angela’s character just shot me,’ Jack explained. ‘There in the interior of the old mine. We’re partners in a big gold heist back in the city. Rocky plays the undercover cop who finally catches up with us. We have to ski across country then hole up in the mine, hoping he won’t find us. We’re under siege for three days then bad weather forces Rocky and his men off the mountain. This is the part where Angela double-crosses me. She stashes the gold deep in the mine, shoots me and leaves me for dead.’

‘Nice,’ I muttered. It was no stretch for Angela Taraska to play a character who would shoot a guy for money.

‘Before she fires her gun, I say to her, “Don’t kill me.” She says to me, “Give me a good reason why not.” I now say, “Because in this state they still have the death penalty. You think I’m worth the risk?” She shoots me anyway.’ Laughing at the idiotic script, Jack tossed it in the air.

I watched its pages separate then flutter down on to the snow, looking up only when Lucy called for Jack to come to the trailer while Larry King asked Angela for take two.

Later I spotted Natalia on set with Charlie and the kids and wondered how come she was acting as if she hadn’t just called time on her marriage. ‘Acting’ is the operative word here, I guess.

‘Hey, Tania!’ Natalia waved me across to where she stood. She seemed very together – beautiful as ever in her dark-red coat, wearing big Ray-Bans and her hair loose over her shoulders ‘I was worried about you. Are you doing OK?’

I sighed and shook my head. ‘I talked to Orlando but I couldn’t get through to him. It feels like he’s definitely made up his mind to stay with Gwen.’ Keep it short, I thought. Don’t go into dark angel detail. I smiled weakly at Phoebe perched on Charlie’s shoulders, then at Adam, who stood slightly apart from the group.

‘I truly am sorry,’ Natalia told me. ‘We did our best to break them up before the relationship really got into gear but it doesn’t seem to have worked. For one thing, it turns out Larry insisted that Gwen keep her job.’

‘Yeah, I was wondering about that.’ Listening to her smooth explanations, I studied her pale, sensitive face for any sign of what was happening between her and Jack.

‘So she’s still around and I guess it’s time for you to move on,’ Natalia suggested, and she seemed impatient when I didn’t respond. ‘No – not ready yet?’

Again I shook my head. I could have come clean then and declared that I’d never be ready to move on and abandon Orlando, that I ached for him every moment of the day and I was desperately working out my own way to drag him back from the dark side. ‘I’ll never, never give in,’ was what I would have said if I’d let Natalia see what was in my bruised and battered heart.

What prevented me was partly the idea that she’d switched focus since our last meeting. It was hard to pin down – just that she seemed more detached, less interested in my problems. Call it a loss of empathy. And the other reason I held back was that Gwen’s brother was there, sharing our conversation.

Charlie swung Phoebe down from his shoulders, took the baby from Natalia and promised to take care of him while she went to the trailer to give Jack his five-minute call.

‘It’s like having a fourth child,’ she sighed as she left us. ‘I have to organize Jack’s day from the time he gets out of bed to the minute his head hits the pillow at night.’