Best Served Hot, page 16
Alex’s brow creased. ‘How could it be? I know I’m in that video, but I… I don’t know. I haven’t got that much to lose yet. But you’ve built something. You made your name mean something. People say it, and it conjures a person who can do something, who’s good. In all the ways that count. He doesn’t get to take that.’
Nicole smiled at Alex, and it all felt easy again. ‘I like you so much.’
Alex looked surprised, then touched. ‘Ditto. That’s why it’s crucial to get rid of that video. I want us to be free of all this. You’re the only thing I want to think about,’ she said, reaching out a hand.
Nicole took it, relieved. She’d sort of thought that this last stunt Ethan had pulled might have been too much for Alex. That she might have decided that being with Nicole wasn’t worth the trouble it brought.
Nicole realised that she was waiting for something to go wrong with Alex. Why was that? Alex had never given her a reason to think she would take back anything they’d said or done. It was probably history getting in the way.
With Ethan, she’d had to ignore what her gut was telling her to try and make something of a bad marriage. With Alex, she had to learn to trust it again. Holding Alex’s hand, it felt possible.
It was funny. Nicole had thought that when she got married, that was the end of her romantic story. But looking at Alex now, her marriage was a blip. Just a terrible starting point that was leading her here. This was what she’d been waiting for without even knowing it.
Nicole nodded. ‘I want that, too. All of this—you.’
They looked at each other for a long time. Nicole felt like she might pass out from the sheer power of it. But she collected herself enough to ask, ‘So how do we get hold of that phone so we can be together without a cloud hovering over our heads?’
‘That’s a good question, which I don’t have the answer for,’ Alex said.
‘Don’t worry, I think I can handle that part,’ Nicole said. She checked her watch. ‘Hmm, Max’s face is probably as smooth as a baby’s arse by now, so we’d better get back to set.’
Alex nodded. ‘Right.’
They left the cupboard and went to find Zeke caressing Max’s newly naked face. ‘Oh, wow,’ he was muttering. ‘That’s amazing. I can’t find a follicle.’
‘You can thank makeup,’ Max smiled. ‘They did the whole hot towel thing. So, you ready to snog me or what?’
Zeke gave a very enthusiastic thumbs-up and then spotted Nicole coming in. ‘Oh, Nicole, brilliant timing. I think we’re ready to rock.’
Nicole slapped her hands together. ‘Great. Let’s get in first positions, shall we?’
Soon enough, Zeke was on top of Max, having a grand old time. Nicole loved it when a plan came together.
Speaking of which, she didn’t think it would be too hard to get Ethan’s phone away from him so she could get rid of that recording and carry on like none of this had ever happened. Except for securing a divorce, of course.
She wanted her life to start. She didn’t want to waste another minute on Ethan. She had better things to do—like falling in love with Alex.
Thirty-Four
‘AND I WAS NEVER PREGNANT!’
‘OK, cut there,’ Nicole called.
Laura, the actor spilling the beans about her lack of fertilisation, took a breath and then groaned. ‘Jesus, people never tell you how much shouting hurts your back.’
‘You alright, Laura?’ Nicole asked.
‘Nothing some ibuprofen won’t fix,’ Laura assured her.
‘Let us know if it’s still an issue tomorrow, and we’ll have you checked out,’ Nicole said.
Alex knew that she meant it. She was big on caretaking actors. Alex thought that she could have benefited from knowing her back in the day, before the breaking of ribs and the puncturing of lungs.
She could have benefited from knowing her in just about every way possible, come to think of it. Well, at least Alex knew her now. Better late than never.
‘Great, let’s wrap there for the day. Good work, everyone!’ Alex called, off Nicole’s nod.
The crew began to take down equipment while the actors left the set.
‘Are you ready?’ Nicole muttered to Alex, who nodded.
They were just waiting for everyone to disperse to commence the plan. They needed to make sure one person hadn’t buggered off, though.
‘Lena, can I check something with you?’ Alex asked.
Lena turned to her, instantly annoyed. ‘What?’
Alex could very faintly hear the sound of a small splat out of their eye line.
‘I just wanted to check if you had those pages for, umm…’ Alex noted the last person leaving. It was just her, Lena, and Nicole. Alex turned as though to pick up her iPad to check something. There it was, right behind her—a small puddle of water, almost unnoticeable. Unless you were looking for it. With your foot.
Alex thought back to the previous night. She’d been practising this on a piece of cardboard all evening. She didn’t mind getting a bump on the head. She was practically expecting it. But cracking her skull open like a cantaloupe was another thing altogether. She had to hope her technique was on point.
She braced herself, pushing her foot forward, and whoosh! She was up, she was horizontal, and she was back down again with a thud. No skull thump. Though her coccyx was gonna feel it later.
‘Aaaahhh!!!!’ she cried out. She was no actor, but she didn’t have to be. Her back had slapped the floor quite mightily. She looked up to see Lena looking down at her with something that was near concern. ‘CHRIST!’ Lena yelled.
Nicole was over quickly. She looked down at Alex, and the concern was big, even though they’d planned this. Alex had vowed to her fifty times that she could do this, and it would be minimal pain. It was a little more than that, but survivable.
‘Alex!’ Nicole exclaimed. ‘Are you OK?’
Alex looked up and blinked three times. That was code for, ‘I’m all good,’ while her mouth told a different tale. ‘I don’t know!’ she exclaimed. ‘I can’t move.’
Lena looked faint. ‘I need to fetch Ethan.’ She legged it.
As soon as the door banged shut, Nicole looked down at Alex. ‘Seriously, are you OK?’
‘I’m a bit sore, but I think it went pretty well,’ Alex assured her.
‘I don’t think we should have done it like this,’ Nicole said. ‘It should have been me.’
‘It’s done now. So focus up and make it count,’ Alex told her firmly. Though it was hard not to feel touched by how worried Nicole was.
Nicole took a deep breath. ‘You’re right. OK. I’m ready.’
‘Good, make sure the puddle’s ready. He won’t be long.’
Nicole did as she was bid and poured out a fair bit of water from her bottle to join the tiny splat that had lubricated Alex’s feet to start with. It was now a very noticeable puddle that even Lena wouldn’t have missed. The stage was set. Lights, camera, action.
Thirty-Five
The doors thumped open. Ethan was among them. It was the first time Nicole had to share oxygen with him since his little audio-visual presentation yesterday. It was unpleasant, but she would bear it.
‘What’s all this?’ he asked. He sounded annoyed but also worried.
That was all Lena. She’d have gone in there like the aggrandising drama queen that she was and probably screamed Ethan’s office down about snapped spines, just as they’d hoped.
And now Ethan was sweating. Not because he cared. It was a bad accident on his set. It could be a problem if it was due to negligence. That was exactly what they wanted him to feel. Blinding panic.
‘It’s Alex. She slipped,’ Nicole told him. She didn’t look at him because she didn’t want to. But luckily, that played into the whole thing. She was focused on Alex, as he would expect.
‘On what?’ Ethan demanded, coming over, looming over Alex and examining her like she was a problem he didn’t need.
‘Water. Someone must have spilt,’ Nicole said, gesturing to a very large puddle.
‘Fuck me! This is a catastrophe! How could you let this happen?!’ he demanded. He turned to Lena. ‘You didn’t see this?’
Lena looked at it, shocked. ‘No. How the hell—’
‘It must have happened as people were leaving. It wasn’t there during shooting,’ Nicole explained. ‘Anyway, this would fall to the production manager.’
‘She wasn’t here. So it falls to you!’ Ethan said, clearly very concerned about the injured person on his set.
‘Can we talk about this later? Alex is hurt!’ Nicole shouted. She didn’t have to fake the anger.
‘Christ!’ he swore, looking down at Alex, making actual eye contact with her for the first time. ‘What’s the situation? How hurt are you?’ he asked her. There was no care in the question.
‘I don’t know,’ Alex replied quietly. ‘But I can’t move yet.’
‘Oh, for fuck…’
‘This floor is hard. Could you give me something for my head?’ Alex asked the room.
Nicole looked around. ‘I don’t have anything. Ethan, can I take your jacket?’
Ethan sighed and took off his suit jacket. This was the tricky part. Nicole took the jacket and began to fold it up, feeling it, squeezing it, pretending she was trying to make it comfortable. She couldn’t find the bump she was looking for. Ethan, who put his phone in his inside pocket ninety percent of the time, had left it elsewhere. This had failed.
But just as she began to put it down, lifting Alex’s head gently and sliding it underneath, she heard a clunk as the jacket hit the floor. Something hard in the jacket. It was in there. Nicole had just missed it.
‘Let me just get you comfortable,’ Nicole said to Alex, who, as ever, understood exactly what Nicole was trying to say. She lifted her head, giving Nicole the space to keep fiddling about. ‘Just unfolding it a bit to make sure your neck is supported.’ Nicole found the entrance to the inside pocket pretty quickly this time. She put her hand on the object it contained. It was the phone.
Now she had to slip it out without Ethan noticing. ‘Ethan, can you please help with her head? I’ve got to make sure we don’t exacerbate anything.’ She hoped he’d focus on the job and be less likely to see her pilfering his device.
Ethan blew out a pissed-off breath and stepped over to help. But his eyes were everywhere. Nicole felt he’d spot her slipping the phone out easily. This wasn’t going to work.
And then Lena said, ‘Should I call the insurance company to let them know?’
Ethan turned to her in wide-eyed panic. ‘What! No! Why would they need to be called?’
‘Well, just in case—’ Lena asked quietly.
‘Would you shut the fuck up?!’ he said furiously.
While he was eyeballing Lena, Nicole slipped the phone out and into her own pocket. ‘Right, I need to get the first aid kit.’
‘What for?’ Ethan asked. ‘They don’t have a bloody neck brace in there.’
‘Yes, but I think there’s a booklet with information about slips and falls,’ Nicole said.
There might be, but she didn’t know that. Which meant Ethan definitely wouldn’t know. He was not what you’d call detail oriented about his job. That skill set only extended to treachery.
‘Fine. Be quick!’ he barked.
Off Nicole went, casting one last glance at Alex. Alex looked back at her, and they shared one of those psychic moments they seemed to have often. Alex knew she’d got it.
Nicole went into the cupboard, and now came another tricky part. Ethan’s phone was locked, of course. He was a serial cheater, so he didn’t tell anyone his passcode. Though it did have face recognition. Nicole had spent quite some time looking into how to trick it. It wasn’t as simple as printing off a picture of Ethan’s face because it relied on 3D scanning and wouldn’t be fooled.
Unless you could ask someone with access to 3D printing—say the prop department of a TV show—to have a 3D mask created of their boss, telling them it was part of a practical joke they would be playing for his upcoming wrap party. Oh, and could it be to scale? Thanks, I’ll explain the prank later.
Nicole had the mask ready in a drawer, and she went straight to it, praying it would work. She showed it to the phone. Nothing happened.
She spent several seconds panicking, wondering what the hell she was supposed to do next. Until she realised. It was the eyes. She’d asked props for a mask, and they’d obliged, cutting out eyeholes for its wearer. The phone needed to see pupils, or it wouldn’t recognise that it was looking at a face. Nicole sighed and—somewhat grossed out—slipped the mask on and looked at the phone. Whoosh, open sesame.
Nicole didn’t waste time celebrating. She went straight into the photos and deleted that bloody recording. Then she went into the deleted folder and cleared that out. Into email and yes, he’d sent it to himself. What a technical genius. She deleted it and cleaned it out of the sent as well as the deleted folder. Last but not least, she needed to delete the iCloud backups and she needed to do it fast. Before Ethan noticed how long she’d been—
‘What the fuck are you doing?’
Nicole turned to see the door wide open, Ethan standing there. ‘Is that mine?’ he asked.
Nicole had his phone in her hand, and there wasn’t much she could say about that.
‘I knew it. I knew it! This whole thing was way too fucking fishy right from the start,’ he yelled. ‘You were after my phone to get rid of that video, weren’t you!?’
‘Ummm…’ Nicole responded.
She hadn’t prepared herself for getting caught. Everything they’d done was only to get the phone unlocked. Somehow, she’d believed that getting this far meant she was safe. If she’d locked the door behind her, she probably would have been. She’d been too eager to get the phone away from him and get the thing unlocked. Those had seemed like the major obstacles. Yet here she was, caught. Because she forgot to turn a bastard lock.
Still, it wasn’t all disastrous. If he hadn’t backed up his cloud in the last day, or if it wasn’t set to do it automatically? That was the real risk. Because he could load that earlier version and have the video right back in his grubby paws. If he knew to do it. But if not? They could still be golden. Only, she couldn’t be sure about any of that.
‘Look, Ethan, it’s too late,’ Nicole only slightly bluffed. ‘I’ve gotten rid of it.’
He was livid. ‘You deleted the video?’ He walked over and snatched the phone from her. ‘Unbelievable,’ he muttered, starting to scroll. Nicole liked how upset he sounded.
Alex burst in, bent over like an old lady. ‘Hey, Ethan, where are you going?! I think my back got better!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s a miracle!’
Nicole shook her head at Alex. Alex immediately dropped the act, straightening her back.
‘How far did you get?’ she asked Nicole, not caring if Ethan heard.
‘She deleted it!’ Ethan answered for her, and Nicole did her best not to breathe a sigh of relief. ‘You pair of scumbags! I’m going to the police!’
‘And what are you going to tell them?’ Nicole asked.
‘That you stole my phone and unlocked it… Wait, how the hell did you even do that?’ He glanced around and found the discarded mask on the floor. ‘Jesus Christ! Is that my face?’ He picked it up and looked at it.
He looked back at them. ‘You’re out of your minds. Seriously. Completely out of your tree. Who would go to this much trouble? And for nothing.’
‘Your phone is in your hand, so I don’t know how you’re going to prove we stole…’ Nicole’s voice died away. ‘Wait, what do you mean it was for nothing?’
Ethan was angry, but he started to look a bit buoyed. ‘Oh, yeah. Right. You go into my email, I take it?’
‘Yes, we deleted it from there,’ Nicole stated matter-of-factly.
‘Not before I downloaded that email to a USB stick from my laptop,’ he said proudly. ‘But still! To go into my phone and go through my shit. I’m going to report the pair of you. This is too fucking far!’
Nicole’s soul left her body. ‘You have it on a stick?’
‘Of course I do. I’m not stupid. Despite what you might think. Really, Nicole. I would think you’d know me well enough to know I wouldn’t play fast and loose with something like this.’ He seemed deeply offended. ‘I’ve hidden it somewhere you two will never find it. So don’t bother looking.’
