"There's no helicopter on the shooting schedule," Gloom said, frowning. "And that one has-is that a machine gun?"

Lucy peered at the ugly-looking contraption bolted to the right skid. "I think so." She bent to pick up Pepper. "I don't think it's on Connor's schedule either. Look at him."

Connor's shoulders were set as he reversed direction and headed for the chopper, walking past the brunette without even acknowledg-ing she was there until she grabbed his arm again. Honey, never interrupt him when he's on a mission, Lucy thought and looked back at the helicopter.

A man got out, ignoring the blades whooping by just over his head, broad shouldered and slim hipped in Army camouflage, with none of Connor's electricity or glossy good looks, just tan and solid in the middle of the noise and wind. He walked forward out of rotor range and halted to look back at the chopper, his lantern jaw in profile, completely still in the storm, and Lucy lost her breath.

"Tell me that's my action star," she said.

Another man dressed in jeans, a black T-shirt, and flip-flops got out of the copter on the other side, tripping over the skid as he stumbled out from under the blades. Then he stood up and joined the quiet man on the edge of the road, swaggering as he went.

"That's your star," Gloom said. "Bryce McKay. Medium-famous comedian. Great at pratfalls. Action? Not so much."

"Right," Lucy said, but her eyes went back to the quiet man, so much like Bryce physically, so much his opposite in every other way. Anybody that still had to have his act together. None of that macho garbage that had driven her away from Connor after six months of marriage.

Connor shook off the brunette and moved down the bridge to the helicopter, his focus on the newcomer, his hands out at his sides. Hell, Lucy thought. He's already gunning for this guy.

The quiet man turned to face him. Connor stiffened, and the other man stared back, not moving.

"Oh, boy," Gloom said happily.

"Oh, great," Lucy said. "And they're both thinking, 'Mine's bigger than yours.'"

"I love this," Gloom said. "It's like High Noon. Maybe somebody will finally outdraw that son of a bitch."

"Yeah, that would be good except this is real life, not a Western," Lucy said, exasperated. "Why don't they just pull them out and show them to each other?"

"Pull out what?" Pepper said.

"Their binoculars." Lucy put the little girl down. "I have to go see what's going on, baby. You wait here with Gloom."

"I want to come," Pepper said, her smile gone.

"Oh, I do, too." Gloom picked up Pepper. "I think this is going to be my party."

"Try to control your joy," Lucy said and headed down the bridge to contain the disaster, trying not to admire the quiet man for remaining so still in the midst of the chaos.

Captain J.T. Wilder stood as still as possible in deference to his screaming hangover, looked around at what he'd figured was going to be a good deal, and thought, Clusterfuck.

Beside him, Bryce McKay, Wilder's cross to bear, shouted over the whine of the copter's engine and the whoop of the blades: "This is what a real movie set looks like. Well, usually there are more people."

A real movie set looked like a mess to Wilder as he looked down the bridge, although that was not something he was going to share with Bryce, since he wanted to keep his new temporary job. Play nice, he thought. Do the man's stunts for him. Make lots of money. Then get the hell out of Dodge. He heard the engine on the Little Bird start to shut down and winced, knowing that his second cross to bear was going to get out of the chopper and hang around, which had not been in the plan.

Wilder's attention focused on the pissed-off-looking ex-military guy heading their way, an angry brunette following him. The guy had a gun, a big one, resting on his hip in a quick-draw rig, something Wilder hadn't seen anywhere outside of, well, a movie. So he guessed that made sense, although Bryce hadn't said anything about this being a Western.

Wilder's buddy LaFavre came up after shutting down the chopper, surveyed the scene from behind his aviator sunglasses, and said, "Circle jerk."

Wilder said, "Pretty much."

"What, Major LaFavre?" Bryce said anxiously, and Wilder almost felt sorry for him. The poor guy had been trying to buy LaFavre's beat-up flight jacket for the past two hours on the flight from Fort Bragg and got nowhere, then he'd gotten airsick when LaFavre had played chicken with the crane, and now he wanted to bond. Not going to happen.

"Nice day," LaFavre said.

"Yeah." Bryce nodded.

"You can go now," Wilder said to LaFavre under his breath, regretting his drunken call the night before to have LaFavre fly up to Bragg and fetch them.

"Not yet. I came to see the actresses," LaFavre said, cheerful as ever. "Would that be one?" He nodded toward the pissed-off brunette, who'd caught the arm of the guy with the gun.

"No idea," Wilder said. The brunette looked like the kind of woman who was always unhappy, the kind of woman who sucked the life out of a man. Angel of Death, Wilder thought and almost felt sorry for the guy with the gun, who wasn't getting away from her anytime soon.

"Perhaps I should introduce myself," LaFavre said, and Wilder shook his head and then winced.

"No, you should not. Goodbye." His hangover was getting worse. If he could get rid of LaFavre, shut Bryce up, and defuse the dickhead with the fast-draw rig, he could find out what they needed him to do, do it, get paid, take some aspirin, and go to bed. "Who's the guy with the gun?" he asked Bryce.

"That's Connor Nash, our stunt coordinator. Connor planned all the stunts and picked the bridge. Isn't it great?" Bryce gestured to the steel suspension cables above them. "It's won awards and stuff. It's going to look awesome on film when the helicopter comes down."

"You're going to land a helicopter on this bridge?" Wilder looked up at the cables on either side and the light poles along the center and then glanced at LaFavre.

LaFavre shook his head. "Have to be a real hotshot pilot to get a chopper down on that roadway without doing a major crash and burn. If you fast rope in, you can't get back out unless you use STABO, and even that will be touch and go with the limited space between the cables. Hate to get a STABO line caught in one of those cables. Take out the man and the chopper."

Wilder knew LaFavre had lost Bryce even though the actor was nodding his head as if he completely understood.

"But they're not going to land it," Bryce said. "They're just going to bring it in low enough so that the bad guys can put the loot into the cargo net that hangs underneath it. Nash has it all storyboarded out."

"What kind of chopper are you using?" LaFavre asked, keeping one eye on the brunette, probably in case she took her sweater off.

"A Huey," Bryce said, clearly proud that he knew the name.

"Well, hell, boy, forget the net and just load it in the Huey. Damn things are big. Not that you're ever going to get it down on this bridge." LaFavre nodded at the cranky brunette, who was glaring after the guy with the gun-Nash-as he headed for them again, looking mad as hell. "She ever been in the movies?"

"No," Bryce said. "So they wouldn't have a cargo net?"

He sounded crushed, so Wilder tried for damage control. "They'd need one if they had a lot of people in the Huey. Five or six-" He stopped because Bryce was shaking his head.

"Only one. The head bad guy kills the others."

"Dumb bad guy," LaFavre said. "So you got any actresses around here?"

'Til have to check with Nash on this cargo net thing," Bryce said in a low voice, sounding worried.

Yeah, Wilder thought. Tell him the cargo net isn't right. That's going to make me popular. He jerked his head, trying to signal LaFavre to leave, but the pilot missed it, staring down the bridge past Nash, who'd stopped a good ten feet away, his jaw set.

"What the hell is this?" Nash said, and Wilder almost winced when he heard the Australian accent. Made him think of beer commercials.

Bryce said, "Hey, Connor! Meet Captain J. T. Wilder and Major Rene LaFavre. Guys, this is Connor Nash, you know, I told you, he's our stunt coordinator?" He sounded like an anxious puppy, looking from Wilder to Nash and back again.

Wilder nodded, and Connor Nash's head twitched, not quite a nod, which Wilder took to mean that he wasn't happy to see him.

Bryce walked between them to clap Nash awkwardly on the shoulder, and Wilder thought, Get out of the kill zone, you idiot. Bryce, he'd learned in the past two days, had absolutely no survival instincts.

"My, my," LaFavre said, and Wilder followed his eyes as Nash turned and looked, too.

A tall woman, her hair in a long dark braid over her shoulder, was coming down the bridge toward them, her blue shirt blowing back in the wind to reveal a well-filled-out white T-shirt that made Wilder rethink white T-shirts. Amazon, Wilder thought. If Nash hadn't been standing there, he'd have looked longer and possibly smiled, but the stunt coordinator was a wild card, mad as hell about something and not to be ignored. Mission first, women later.

A tall, gangly man followed the Amazon, holding a little blond kid. He was grinning at Nash, but it wasn't a friendly grin. More a fuck-you grin. Wilder liked him.

"She an actress?" LaFavre asked Bryce, dropping his voice as he nodded toward the Amazon.