What Have We Done (32)
Jenna smiles as she turns the corner. Of course. It’s Friday night in Washington, D.C.
Sabine is having a dinner party.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
NICO
Nico’s in his trailer. Shannon stands with her iPad clutched in her hand, like always. Shannon is a capable showrunner; she’s been doing reality shows for a decade and should be the one filling in as EP while Nico takes some time off. But she likes being behind the scenes. She and her wife keep a low profile generally. Rural West Virginia isn’t always the most enlightened place. And Davis, the fuckstick from the network, keeps insisting that he should host The Black aftershow while Nico recovers. The guy is such a douche.
Shannon waits for Nico to finish tapping on his phone. His seventh sports bet since he was pulled to the surface. He looks up at her.
She says, “The kid with cancer is scheduled to be on-set today. Given everything that’s happened, Davis wants me to reschedule with the organization that set it up.”
“He knows this kid is dying, right?”
Shannon doesn’t say anything. She’s not keen on getting in the middle.
“You can tell Davis I said we’re not canceling, and let the cast know that they’d better be there.”
The teenager’s last wish—to meet the cast of The Miners—wouldn’t be on Nico’s own bucket list, but he sure as hell isn’t going to cancel.
Shannon walks him through other show issues and Nico pretends to listen. He wants to make a few more bets before the day gets away from him.
When Shannon wraps up, he says, “I need to tell you something.”
“What’s that?”
“The mine—it wasn’t an accident—someone tried to kill me.”
She chuckles. “I suppose it was only a matter of time.”
There with that asshole thing again. Studying him now, Shannon says, “Oh shit, you’re serious.”
“Someone pretending to be Roger sent me a text to meet him at Mine B. I thought it was the usual Maverick nonsense. But I called him this morning and he swears he didn’t send me a text.”
“And someone, what? Set off an—”
Nico nods, cutting her off. “After they impaled me with some weird weapon.” He gestures to his shoulder, which is in a sling.
She eyes him skeptically, and he gets it. Getting stabbed or shot might make sense. But pierced by a rod of steel projected through a weird weapon that looks like a Maglite? Nearly buried alive by an explosion?
“It’s all gonna leak soon,” Nico says. “The sheriff says he’ll give me time to duck out of town to avoid the circus, but he can’t wait too long. NIOSH and the other government agencies will figure out this wasn’t methane buildup, that the explosion was intentional.”
“Is that why you checked out of the hospital so fast?”
He nods again.
“Who?” She pauses. “Why?”
“I have no idea.”
Shannon gives him another skeptical look. She’s one of the few people who know about Nico’s gambling. She says, “The Feds have asked for any footage we have from security cameras, so maybe that will identify who it was.”
Nico doubts it. He doesn’t think there are any cameras outside the mine. And he doesn’t mention that Maverick told him he’d met a woman that night, “a hot tamale from out of town.” That she’d gone home with him and he doesn’t remember jack shit from the moment they had a drink at his place.
Nothing was stolen, so he didn’t think much of it. But Nico wonders if she used Maverick’s phone to lure Nico to the mine.
“Have you told the network?” Shannon asks.
“Nope. You’re it.”
Once the news breaks, they can expect a media onslaught. There’d been an accidental shooting on a movie set in New Mexico a couple years ago and it stayed headline news for months.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“I’m fine,” he lies. He thinks of those rats with their red eyes.
“You know everyone loves you. You may not remember, but there was a massive crowd at the rescue site. Maverick, Elmo, the lot of them were there. I swear Headboard had tears in his eyes. And there’s been an outpouring on Twitter.”
He shrugs. The cast was there for the cameras. The rest are keyboard junkies who don’t even know Nico. He’s checked his messages. Mostly reporters. His ex, Natalie, hasn’t called.
“I’m gonna be off the grid for a few days. Decline interview requests. Request privacy as I recover.”
“I’ll draft a statement.”
Nico nods.
“Where will you go?”
He flips his lucky silver dollar, which he isn’t so sure is that lucky, and looks at its face.
“Somewhere I hoped to never return.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
DONNIE
Donnie and Reeves sit next to each other on the United flight. It has been a long time since Donnie has flown first class and it’s nice to have some legroom. Though, somewhere along the way, the airlines have managed to screw up first class. Back in the day, they’d be in mini-cabin-like pods where the seats would recline flat and a divider would make it so you didn’t even have to look at the person seated next to you. Now, at least on the flight from Miami to Philadelphia International, it’s basically a bigger seat, free wine from a box, and tepid beer.