Read Online Hot Target by Suzanne Brockmann - Free Book Online Page A

to take a phone call. It was hard to know if Jack was deaf or if he just didn’t care. “But do you know how many producers I’ve worked with who would’ve extended an open invitation both to the set and to the viewing of the dailies to an eighty-four-year-old opinionated queen?”
    “One,” Robin answered. This was not the first time they’d had this conversation.
    “That’s right,” Jack said. “Jane.”
    “Considering this movie is about your life—”
    “She treats everyone with respect,” Jack said. “Star, best boy, caterer’s assistant . . .”
    “Here’s our little angel now,” Robin said as Jane crossed in front of them to sit on Jack’s other side. Up on the movie screen his face was gigantic and— Shit, was there something nasty in his nose?
    “HeartBeat wants a Normandy scene, Jack,” she told him in true Janey fashion—point-blank. “I know you weren’t part of the D-Day invasion, but Hal was, and I think I’ve come up with a compromise.”
    “A D-Day dream sequence,” Jack said.
    Jane glared at Robin across the old man. “Did you tell him?”
    “Did you see my nose in that last shot?” he countered.
    Jack spoke over him. “Your assistant did. It’s a good idea. Make it a nightmare.”
    “I intend to.” Janey ignored Robin. “I’ll run it past you first, all right?”
    “You don’t have to,” Jack said. “I trust you.”
    Janey kissed him. “Thank you. That is
so
nice. But I’ll still run it past you first.”
    “You guys always talk through my scenes,” Robin complained. “Always.”
    “Because you always do your scenes perfectly,” his sister said. “Every take is usable. We know that, so we don’t have to watch.”
    “Yeah, well, you missed a
perfect
unidentified object in my nose just then. Do not let that scene get into the movie,” Robin told her. If it did make the edit, he just knew he’d end up nominated for an Oscar, and—just his luck—that would be the footage they’d show when his name was announced as a nominee. He’d have to sit in the Kodak Theatre on the big night with his hand over his eyes, unable to watch.
    “We think we’ve finally found the actor to play young Jack,” Janey told old Jack.
    “Think?” he repeated. “Shouldn’t we be past the
think
stage by now?”
    Absolutely. They were well past the wire, having started filming. They’d better have found the right actor this time around. “His name’s Hugo Pierce,” Robin said.
    “It’s Pierce Hugo,” Janey corrected him. “We have his screen test—it’ll be up in a sec. But first, shhhh! Listen.”
    On the screen, old newsreel footage appeared, accompanied by a voice. Hey, that wasn’t just
a
voice; it was Jack’s voice.
    “It was 1943. Looking back at the recent history of the gay rights movement, one might think, peering down through the murky tunnel of time, that 1943 was the dark ages for gay men in America. But the truth was, darlings, 1943 was a very good year to be queer.”
    “God,” Jack said. “I sound old.”
    “Honey, you are old,” Jane shot back, which made him laugh.
    “Young men enlisted or were drafted into the armed forces,”
Jack’s reedy, crackly, voice continued,
“leaving their farms and small towns by the millions. We all crowded together in the big cities—Los Angeles and New York—as we prepared to go overseas to fight for America, for freedom.
    “And, indeed, it was freedom we found, even as we prepared to fight and die. Those of us who knew that winning the Peoria Husband of the Year Award absolutely wasn’t in our future discovered—some of us for the first time—that we were not alone. We found each other in those cities that teemed with uniformed young men, away from our homes and our parents—away from all small-town, middle-class expectations, and our impending, unavoidable failures.
    “In December 1942, I was twenty-one and slightly ahead of the game, having come to New York the previous September to attend art