Jillian fought nausea as Chris led her toward the building.She was about to fly through a glass window while a rigged charge exploded behind her, but all she could think about was stupid tabloid pictures.She started to sweat.The protective gear she wore felt like a furnace.Underneath her costume were a thin Nomex suit soaked in fire retardant gel, a second suit to keep the retardant from evaporating, and spinal and body padding to protect her when she fell.
“You okay?”Chris asked.
She nodded.
“I know Shay is your friend, but the woman gossips too much.”
Jillian opened her mouth to ask him if he’d seen the papers, but she clammed up.She tried to focus on the task at hand.She looked up at the makeshift two-story building she was about to jump from.Kenny Mittack waved down at them.As usual, his curly blonde hair was unruly and his clothes a little wrinkled, but all she could think about was whether or not he’d seen the papers.
Stop it.Your head should be on the stunt.
She blew out air, and Chris misunderstood.
“It’s okay to be nervous.Just stick to what you did with Kenny during the dry run and everything will go smoothly.”
Jillian nodded and gave Kenny a thumps-up signal.Kenneth “Kenny” Mittack was Chris’ right hand.Chris usually hired several assistant stunt coordinators, stuntmen, and stuntwomen for each film.Most were new, but a few, like Kenny, were regulars.While Chris was in charge of everyone, Kenny often worked one-on-one with Jillian.He made the tedious preparation bearable by talking about their favorite subject, extreme sports.
The entire team, which included the pyrotechnicians and the director, had done a detailed briefing of the stunt and rehearsed the scene several times.They’d narrowed the timing between Jillian being pushed off the air ramp platform to simulate the aftershock and the explosive charges detonating down to milliseconds.Still, things could wrong.She shouldn’t be distracted by what she couldn’t control.
Focus, stay in control, and when in trouble, improvise,she chanted under her breath.
“Make a clean jump,” Chris said when they reached upstairs.“And, Jillian?”
She glanced at him.
“You’ll be fine.”
“I know.”His faith in her was never misplaced, but this time… Stupid paparazzi.
Still chanting her rules, Jillian walked to the window and checked on the ground crew.They were inflating the air bag.Her eyes found Lex where everyone was gathered.The director must have told them to clear the set.He touched a finger to his lips.Jillian blushed and turned to face the others.
~*~
“What’s going on?”Lex asked as they approached the crowd.
“Jillian is about to jump through that window,” Michaels said.
Something cold clutched Lex’s gut.“What?”
“It’s perfectly safe,” Michaels said.“They’re using sugar glass, which looks like real glass but is fragile and breaks easily,andrarely causes injuries.An air bag will break her fall.She’s also wearing a padded bodysuit to protect her from scrapes.”
None of what Michaels listed made Lex feel better.He looked at the window and felt a little sick imagining her jumping from it.Through the crowd gathering near the building, he could see a team of crewmen and women adjusting a giant blue airbag.
“She’s an amazing stuntwoman, Lex, and Chris is a meticulous stunt coordinator.He goes over scenes, double and triple-checking everything.The detonation will happenaftershe jumps.”
Hell!“What detonation?”
As Michaels explained, Lex started to sweat.If he’d been shitting bricks before, they were now boulders.His chest hurt and sweat pooled on his forehead.He’d braved the Himalayan summit, surfed giant waves in Tasmania, kayaked Siberia’s Bashkaus River, and swam with the great white sharks in South Africa, but none compared to standing at a damned set in Burbank waiting for his woman to jump.
Lex swallowed, the waiting making him antsy.He didn’t give a rat’s ass that the window was made of sugar glass and that the broken pieces probably wouldn’t cut her.He didn’t like this.He was a businessman and knew that nothing ever went according to plan.Odds shifted.Equipment failed.
“Does she have protection against fire in case something goes wrong?”
“There’s fire retardant in her suit, hair, wig… Everything she’s wearing is doused with it.”
Which meant there was a chance she could catch fire.Fuck.This was worse than he’d thought.Lex tried to focus on the images of Jillian from last night and this morning.The taste of her, the feel of her skin, the sounds she made…
What the hell was keeping her?The ground crew had stopped fiddling with the air bag.Two teams appeared to be ready with their wide-lens cameras, one on a crane above the building and another below it.Like the first camera crew, Barbs was elevated on a crane and was talking to someone on an ear walkie-talkie, her eyes on the window.He followed her gaze.
