Infamous (3 page)

He looked surprised and a little uncomfortable as the intern hurried away. “That’s really not necessary.”

“Get used to it,” she told him, walking backward so that she could look at him as she led the way to the row of production trailers, one of which was her office. The resemblance was really remarkable. “It comes with the territory. Where on earth did they find you?”

“Find me?” he echoed. He had a slightly puzzled look on his face, as if she were speaking a foreign language and he was having trouble translating.

“Strange new world, huh?” she said. “I’m with you there, Alice. I fell down the same rabbit hole myself, just a few weeks ago.” She rephrased her question. “Where are you from?”

“Alaska,” he said.

Alison laughed. “No wonder you look shell-shocked. You’re a long way from home. I’m from Boston myself and every time I go outside, I feel like I’m stepping into an oven. People are going to tell you that you’ll get used to the heat, but they’re lying. You won’t. You’re going to have to drink a lot of water. And always carry a hat.”

He smiled at that, and it softened his face and made at
least five of those extra years disappear. “It’s been a while,” he said as they crossed the street and headed back behind the town’s single motel, where the production trailers were hidden out of camera range, “but I’ve spent plenty of time in the desert. I know how to handle heat.” He cleared his throat. “What I can’t quite figure out is … how did you know who I am? Did … someone call you or …?”

“I haven’t checked messages yet this morning. Truth is, I recognized you.” Alison took out her keys as she led him to the narrow door of her office, unlocking it. “It’s been a particularly crazy day.” She stepped back and gestured for him to go in first. “Better duck. This thing is a death trap for tall people. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hit my head. You’d think I’d eventually learn.”

He had to both duck and angle his shoulders slightly to make it through the door and into the trailer.

It was silly for her to have let him go first, because now he stood there, at the top of the stairs, gazing at the piles of books and papers that crowded not just her desk but every available surface—including the enormous leather sofa that lined one whole side of the tiny room. The thing must’ve been built in there—or the trailer constructed around it—according to some actor’s contract, circa 1985.

“Sorry about the mess,” she said, shutting the door firmly behind her in a pathetic attempt to keep the cool air in and the scorching heat out. “And it’s not really as bad as it looks, I know exactly where everything is, so let me … Excuse me.” She squeezed past him—he was extremely solid in addition to being tall—and cleared off space on the sofa for him to sit.

“Organization is actually one of my strengths,” she added, “but—and I don’t know how many movie sets you’ve been on—but everyone who knocks on my door needs something done
immediately
, top priority, drop everything, including whatever five minutes ago’s screaming priority was, so filing nearly always gets pushed to tomorrow. Sit. Please. I figure I’ll get it all filed the day after we wrap.”

“I haven’t,” he said as he lowered his big frame into the
huge couch, making it look not exactly tiny, but certainly more average-sized. “Been on a movie set before.”

“So it’s been stage plays, then,” she deduced as she moved behind her cluttered desk and sat down, too. “This must be so exciting for you.”

“Um,” he said, glancing around the room again. “Well …”

“You’re probably stressed about how last minute this all is,” she sympathized. “We’ve already started shooting, and you’ve got a lot of research to do in a short amount of time to get up to speed. But don’t worry. I’m here to help you. It’s going to be fine. You probably have a million questions, but I want to preface this part of our discussion by freely and openly confessing that I am and always have been an admirer of Silas Quinn. I’ve done extensive research on this man who was, in my opinion, easily the most tragically heroic figure in the history of the American West. Needless to say—but I’ll say it anyway—my opinion of Kid Gallagher is neither charitable nor unbiased.”

Their Gallagher was nodding. “I’ve read your book. You made that … pretty clear.”

“But I don’t go into much detail about Kid Gallagher’s long list of crimes,” she told him, happily surprised that he’d already read her book, without her having to push it on him. That was always awkward—or at least it had been with both Trace Marcus and Winter Baxter, the actress who was playing Melody. Neither of them were big readers, and their eyes had immediately glazed over when she’d pulled out the thick book. “And the list was long. Gallagher had quite a rap sheet, so to speak, starting right when he left home at age fifteen.”

She used her toe to open the file cabinet that was wedged in next to her desk, and pulled out her hefty Gallagher file. “He came from Philadelphia, from a wealthy family,” she continued as she handed the actor the file, which he opened immediately and began looking through—his eagerness winning him even more points in her opinion. “And although there’s no record of this, I’ve always imagined him as one of those horrible little boys who drowned puppies and pulled the legs off insects.”

He looked up at that, glancing briefly around the room before meeting her eyes, his dismay apparent.

“I know,” she admitted. “There’s no proof—it’s just my prejudice showing. But after he left home, his family never mentioned him again. It was as if he’d never existed—as if they’d disowned him and didn’t want him to come back. One theory is that he was gay and his family’s rejection turned him into an outcast and it wasn’t a big step from that to outlaw, but there’s also no proof of that so … I’ve spoken to Henry Logan at length about the Kid’s character—have you talked to him yet?”

He looked up from the file again, his dark blue eyes somber. “No. I haven’t. Um …” He cleared his throat, glanced around the room again. “Dr. Carter—”

She cut him off again, which was probably rude, but he was a slower talker, and she had information that she knew would, immediately, relieve some of his trepidation. “I know Henry’s got this reputation for being a real perfectionist when he directs his movies, but I’ve found him to be open to discussion. He’s sincerely interested in listening to different ideas, so don’t be shy about speaking up. But the one thing you should know is that he’s particularly interested in making Kid Gallagher multidimensional in his film. All of the other movies about the gunfight at the Red Rock Saloon have portrayed the Kid as psychotic, which comes out as extremely one-note. But something I’ve heard Henry say, over and over, as we’ve discussed this particular character, is that no one is ever the bad guy in his own movie, or in his own life. And that was probably true of Kid Gallagher. He probably didn’t see himself as a villain.” She couldn’t keep herself from adding, “Despite the fact that he was a bank robber, a kidnapper, and a cold-blooded killer.”

Their Gallagher smiled at that. “Bank robber, kidnapper, and cold-blooded killer,” he repeated, shaking his head and laughing softly. “What if I told you that you were a hundred percent wrong?”

When Dr. Alison Carter laughed, her light brown eyes sparkled.

“Wow,” she said. “You
are
good. Talk about not being the bad guy in your own movie.
You are a hundred percent wrong,”
she repeated, with a horrendous, over-the-top, Yankee-fied imitation of his barely-there drawl. But she wasn’t mocking A.J. She was truly delighted, and it was actually pretty cute.

It was hard not to laugh along with her. Which made her smile grow even wider and warmer.

“That was fantastic,” she enthused. “Henry’s going to love you.”

Cute
was probably not a word that many people used to describe this woman.
Gorgeous
probably wasn’t used very often either, although she was that, as well.

She was much taller than she’d looked in the black-and-white author photo on the back of her book, and slender to the point of almost skinny, with long arms and legs that on a less graceful woman might’ve made her seem like an odd, ungainly bird. Instead, she made him think of ballet dancers, of strong, athletic bodies in astonishingly beautiful motion.

Her hair wasn’t the salt and pepper he’d imagined, but instead a rich, gleaming golden brown that hung to her shoulders and caught the light whenever she moved. It was almost the exact same color as her eyes—eyes that had distracted the bejeezus out of him more than once in the short time
since she’d first spoken to him in the street outside the movie star’s trailer.

If eyes truly were the window to the soul, hers was lively, intelligent, and passionate, with a great sense of humor.

She’d been mortified—he’d seen that in her eyes, too—that the little redheaded man had used her to help him tell his lies.

Don’t you ever
, ever
do that to me again
.…

It was possible that A.J. had fallen in love with her, right at that very moment, when she’d been on the verge of reaming the redhead a new one.

Which was just as bizarre as A.J.’s using the word
cute
to describe the woman. He didn’t fall in love, and certainly not with strangers.

Even strangers whose books he’d read.

Strangers who were supposed to be fifty-something and grandmotherly, not thirty-something and undeniably sexy.

And as long as he was making a list of everything unusual or odd about today, he had to add that—also out of character for him, considering he was in a four-year-long dry spell—he’d fallen completely in lust with the woman, too, when she’d examined him like a piece of meat and announced that she could tell he was wearing briefs beneath his jeans.

He’d gone without sex of the non-solo variety for so long, he could only vaguely remember what it was like. Until he’d gazed into Alison Carter’s highly educated eyes and gotten a vivid sense of what it would feel like to push his way between her knees as she clung to him.

And now she’d just asked him something, but he had no idea what she’d said, because he was sitting here, imagining himself having sex with her. Again. Way to go, particularly since he was in her office due to her misconception. She thought he was the actor hired to play Jamie Gallagher in this movie.

She also—obviously—thought that they were the only two people in this little room.

She was wrong about that, too, even though A.J. was the only person on the planet who could see the ghost of his great-grandfather—a ghost that had been haunting him for more than two weeks now.

And now the ghost, too, was looking at A.J. expectantly, as if waiting for him to answer Alison’s question.

“I’m sorry,” A.J. started, but he was saved from having to admit that he was an idiot by her phone’s shrill ring.

She glanced at the clock that was above the hobbit-sized trailer door and gave him an apologetic smile. “I really have to take this. I’ll try to make it quick, though. Do you mind terribly?”

“Of course not,” A.J. said. He lifted the file she’d given him. “I’ll just, um …”

She smiled again, and he realized that it was her mouth that probably kept her from being called gorgeous—at least by the rest of the world. It was too generous, too wide and not pouty enough to compete against the perceived perfection of cookie-cutter teenaged models. And yet it was her mouth that he found himself watching when he wasn’t hypnotized by her eyes. She seemed to always be on the verge of smiling just a little, about to share a secret or a kiss.

“This is Alison Carter,” she said into her phone, turning slightly away from him.

Meanwhile, the ghost cleared his insubstantial throat and spoke. “Turn the page.”

A.J. sighed as he looked down at the file that contained the so-called historical background on Jamie Gallagher, his great-grandfather. He turned the page so that the ghost of that very same great-grandfather, who was reading over his shoulder, could see the text that A.J. had already skimmed.

“Oh,” Jamie’s ghost said, his words dripping with his disgust. “Nice. I was known for slitting throats so that’s probably how I killed Melody. First it was that I shot her through the heart, but I guess that wasn’t awful enough. Turn the next page. Come on. Let’s see what else I’m guilty of, even though I’ve never slit a throat in my life.”

A.J. closed the file. “It’s all just more of the bullshit that Quinn concocted,” he murmured, well aware that talking to someone that no one else could see or hear tended to raise eyebrows.

“Is there any truth in there at all?” Jamie asked.

“Not one single thing,” A.J. breathed, and great—Alison glanced over. She’d overheard him talking to his imaginary friend. Perfect.

But she was still on the phone, and she turned away again to say, “But … No, no, no, nuh, no, Henry … Henry. Shh. You’re paying me for my opinion, so you really need to let me speak and … Thank you, yes. The layout of the saloon hasn’t changed, right? It hasn’t, so Quinn
had
to be up on the second floor when the shooting started. There’s no way he could have survived those odds otherwise.”

“Quinn survived,” Jamie’s ghost told her, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him, “because I was there. Because I wasn’t one of the Kelly Gang, I was just passing through—until Quinn himself brought me into it.”

For a man who’d been born nearly a hundred and thirty years ago, Jamie looked sharp. And young. He’d been ninety-one when A.J. was born, and had died the year A.J. turned ten.

He’d never seen his beloved gramps without a face full of wrinkles, but aside from the very first time the ghost had appeared to A.J., he usually chose to manifest himself this way.

As a man who was decades younger than A.J., which was weird.

Assuming that being haunted by one’s great-grandfather’s ghost was less weird if the spirit looked like an old man.

But Jamie—it was hard thinking of him as “Gramps” when he looked like one of A.J.’s old army drinking buddies—could apparently pick and choose how he appeared. And he chose to look much as he had back when he first rode into Jubilation all those years ago, his hair thick and black, his face unlined. He dressed, too, as the professional gambler that he’d been, in black pants, a black waistcoat, a crisp white shirt with one of those brightly embroidered vests he was so fond of, and a string tie around his neck. His black boots were polished and his chains and spurs gleamed.