Page 70 of Dream (Fighting Fate)

“All right, then. You can tell me if you think anything needs changing.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, that reminds me. Mike wanted us to go over the notes your parents have prepped for the UN meeting next month. I got some screenshots of the notes David sent, but I haven’t got the ones your dad sent. Do you have those?”

Unlocking my cell, I opened my pictures and scrolled through what I still had. “I’ve got four pa

ges of notes in relation to the human trafficking, as well as the list of names and ages. I think I’ve also got the one Mike e-mailed last week.”

She frowned, scrolling through her own cell. “Which one is that? I’ve only got the one he sent on Tuesday.”

Turning my phone around, I held it out for her to see. She leaned forward, squinting at the words. “Damn, I need new contacts,” she muttered. Holding my hand steady, she tried to read it again.

Laughing, I pushed it farther toward her. “Just take the damned thing. And yes, you need to go get your eyes checked again.”

She gave me a dirty look before using her fingers to enlarge the writing on the screen. “Yes, I’ve got this one. I think it was the one before that, he was talking about. The one with the St. Petersburg attachment.”

“Oh, okay. That’s there, then. I think it’s a couple before that one.”

I watched her flick across my screen, her gaze focusing even harder before she flicked again. “Oh, shit, I went too far.”

I smirked at her, ready to grab the phone and find the damned thing myself, but her expression made me pause. Her eyes rounded as she stared at whatever she was looking at, then she looked up and met my gaze, her mouth dropping open a little. I thought it might’ve been one of the pictures I had of the kids back in Gulu. Some of those were pretty hard to look at, but her next words shut down my thought process completely.

“You know Joshua Emerson?”

Oh. My. God. I’d totally forgotten about the picture. Well, that was a lie, but only a little lie. I’d meant to put it away in a hidden folder, but I hadn’t actually got there yet.

My mouth popped open, but nothing came out. I actually had no words. My mind was blank. I was painfully aware that Sam had previously worked at a blog that focused on celebrity gossip, so I was seriously panicking I’d just fucked up in a major way.

Sam turned the phone around so I could see the picture of Josh and me on the screen. “That’s him, isn’t it?”

“Uh . . .”

The corner of her mouth crept upward. “It is. Okay, so there’s way more to your story than you’ve told me so far.”

I wanted to deny it. Not for my sake, but for Josh’s. He’d been so worried about our time together getting out, and I didn’t want it to be because of my stupidity. “Can we just pretend you didn’t see that and go back to what we were talking about before?” I asked hopefully.

Her head tilted to the side a fraction as she studied me. After a long while, she gave me a tiny nod. “All right, but I expect at least a partial explanation one day. Deal?”

I had no idea if I could trust her, but what other option did I have? Looking her square in the eye, I nodded back. “Deal.”

I only hoped she was true to her word. Or things were about to get messy.

Chapter 42

Josh

Standing in the set kitchen, I reached for a dish towel and picked up a sudsy dish off the rack. With my face molded into an expression of contemplation, I dried it and placed it on the counter beside the sink. Then I picked up another.

When I was almost done, I whipped my head upwards in a sudden, deliberate movement, and looked out the window with fear. I let my eyes rapidly flash from one point to another, as though I was searching the darkness outside for answers to the distress I was feeling.

My body tensed, my hands tightening on the plate, my chest began rising deeper and slightly faster. A second later, I clenched my jaw and pushed my brow into an expression of pain, leaning forward to slide the plate onto the counter, while I pressed my palms onto the edges, hanging my head, helpless.

“And cut!”

Straightening, I sighed and rubbed my neck. This was the third take we’d done, thankfully, all just from different angles.

“All right, Josh. That looks good. Take fifteen while we set up for Hannah,” Steven said, giving me a little salute.

I nodded, heading for the snack table. I was starving. We’d been running the home scenes since dawn, and there hadn’t been many breaks at all. I didn’t mind too much, though. The quicker we got these scenes done here, the sooner we could head back to LA.

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