Page 11 of Act Like You Don't Care
Jim nodded and frowned down at the paper. “If the guy’s touchy about his image, he’ll probably want something really low key.” He pulled the second page off the printer tray and began to read.
“That’s my guess.” I opened the worksheet I’d made up to help me profile stalkers and gathered all the paperwork and the pictures together. “Does his own stunts, a bit of a know-it-all when it comes to filming. He’s backed down a few directors on how a scene should be shot.”
“Diva or just that good?” Jim asked.
I shrugged as I started to type. “Could be either. I need more information. What does Odette know about him?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know, she’s on location right now.”
“Hey, she got the part?” This was great, because I knew Odette’s struggles with her acting career had been causing some tension in his marriage.
Jim shook his head. “Not the one she read for, but still the same film. Hope this will open some doors for her.”
I made some noise of agreement and avoided the subject, which Jim seemed to be okay with. But I watched him as he disappeared and wondered if the cracks I’d noticed in his marriage before I left for New York were turning into chasms.
* * *
Mom stoppedby a few minutes after Jim left with coffee and a danish, placing them wordlessly on my desk and leaving as quietly as she’d come. Without taking my eyes off the letters I was rereading, I picked up the danish and shoved half of it in my mouth, then washed it down with a mouthful of coffee.
The letters had started out inoffensive enough--mostly compliments, some of which were inappropriate, but nothing that read to me like the writer was unbalanced in anything other than his social acumen. A few wishes for Tam's happiness, another that Tam would get whatever it was out of his system and start doing something that would truly fulfill him. Farther down, one sentence buried in the middle of a paragraph where the author wished Tam would go home. It was paired with a sentence in one of the forum posts that stated straight out that Tam was being foolish in the way omegas were and that the writer expected he'd come to his senses soon. The tone of the writing and the choice of words was escalating along the timeline, but threaded through all the text was a common paternalistic attitude, the evidence that the writer wasn’t socially competent, and occasional descents into anger when something Laydon had done or hadn’t done didn’t meet with the letter writer’s expectations.
You're a talented man.And smart. Smart enough to know that what you're doing is against the laws of man and nature. Why you would do this to yourself, I don't know. Or why the people around you would let you curse yourself in this way. It seems obvious that they care less for your immortal soul than they do for their own comfort and the fruits of this mercenary world. They don't understand the true nature of the omega, and so they allow you to stray, drive you to actions which will, in the end, be the death of you and will sentence you to eternal purgatory. I refuse to let that happen. You must listen to me, Thomas. Do not doubt me as your namesake doubted his rightful lord.
I sipped at my coffee,made my notes, and carefully worked through the rest of the information. The religious commentaries could have been a red herring, but my brain kept zeroing in on them, so I suspected not. The passages he was choosing dovetailed closely with the trend to talk down to Laydon as if being an omega made him less capable of good decision-making than another person. I’d need more information to finalize my profile, but for now I figured I could confidently say that our fellow was looking for a relationship with our client, though I wasn’t ready yet to rule out some sort of diagnosis. The next step would be to determine the likelihood of this guy escalating. So far, the studio hadn’t reported anyone trying to make contact with the star personally, but there were a lot of steps a stalker might work through before they ever made themselves known to their target.
Mom strolled by the door a couple of times, but she never disturbed me. I figured it was simply her way of judging how much longer I’d be and getting a sense of what the case would or could bring. She could read my body language like no one else in the family, which had been disastrous a couple of times for me in high school.
Dad walked through, dropped off some more pictures taken by drone to give us the lay of the land where the trailer was, and disappeared through to the back of the building where the real business happened.
I took a glance at the photos, but they were going to be more useful for Jim than me, so I set them aside to focus on my brief summary profile of the stalker, finishing it just before the deadline for Dad’s phone call with the movie’s producer.
I locked everything down, then took my empty coffee cup to the breakroom, looking for my mother. I needed a head to bounce ideas off.
Tam
Another long night of dancing ended with me leaving alone. So out of character for me, but when it came right down to it, I couldn’t. Everyone looked like a threat, and every guy that came onto me carried with him the smell of pig’s blood and the potential for violence. Which was stupid, but by the end of the night, all I wanted to do was go home and cuddle my cat before hiding away in my own bed.
My sleep that night was full of strange dreams that fragmented and dissolved with my morning alarm, leaving behind nothing but a sense of unease that made my skin crawl.
I was too tired to drive, my brain on some other wavelength than the one I needed it to be. Before I knew it, I was already five minutes late and I wasn’t even finished getting dressed. I called a cab and raced down to the front doors of my building, still buttoning the shirt I’d grabbed at random from my closet.
The taxi jerking to a rough stop outside the front gates of the studio woke me from an uneasy doze. I bolted upright, arms flailing until I figured out where I was. "Hey, thanks," I said, sliding out of the car with a sense of unreasonable relief.
Security let me through with a grin, and I wondered what stories were out already on the gossip sites, then decided it couldn't be any worse than usual. Besides, all publicity was good publicity, right?
The trailer still smelled when I got there, but mostly because someone had finally given up on scrubbing and had come in with a bucket of paint to cover up the graffiti. On the door was a note from Will telling me that the shooting schedule had changed again and they didn’t need me for rehearsals until nine-thirty.
Thank God.
I fell into the cot, the clean chemical smell of new mattress and sheets soothing in my nose, and was out like a light.
Will woke me up. "I brought you your pages for rehearsal," he said once I was vertical for long enough I wasn’t likely to just pass out again.
“You brought coffee,” I said, like he’d brought me gifts of frankincense and myrrh. It smelled better than either of those and I drank half of it sitting there on the cot with my pages forgotten on my lap.
“You might want to rebutton your shirt,” Will suggested and took the coffee cup from me. “You look like a three-year-old dressed you.”
I glanced down—I’d missed a button starting, so the shirt was crooked. No wonder security had smirked at me. “You are the best assistant in the world,” I declared and quickly sorted my clothes out before taking ownership of that cup of caffeinated ambrosia back.
