"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.

Bryce squinted and then dropped his voice, too. "No. I think that's the new director. Nash's ex-wife. She directs dog food commercials or something up in New York so he got her this gig. It's her big break."

"Healthy-lookin' woman," LaFavre said with appreciation, and Nash evidently heard, because he turned his stare on LaFavre.

Not so ex, then, Wilder thought and looked at the woman again as she came closer. She was tall, probably six foot, and she looked determined. Powerful. Hot. Yeah, she would be a hard woman to walk away from.

Maybe she was the one who'd walked. That sounded better.

Bryce added, still under his breath, "Nash'll still run things. It's mostly stunts this last four days. I think she's just here to make things look right."

She's got her work cut out for her, Wilder thought, and put his eyes back on Nash.

"Looks right to me," LaFavre said, still staring at the Amazon, and Nash's face darkened. "Does she like heroes? I could show her my medals. Women are usually real grateful to heroes."

"Go away," Wilder said, seeing disaster loom. LaFavre would hit on her, and then Nash would kill him. Or try to. LaFavre was remarkably hard to kill.

Right now he just looked wounded, or as wounded as anybody could look in aviator sunglasses. "What about my actresses?" he said.

"I'll get you one later."

"Let's go get a drink, then. Fly with me back to Hunter. There's a strip club-"

"No. Go away."

"Coin check."

"Screw you." Wilder fished his Special Forces coin out of his pocket and held it up. "Now go away."

LaFavre grinned, tipped his World War II flight hat to Bryce and then belatedly to Nash, smiled warmly up the bridge at the Amazon, and ambled off toward the chopper.

"What's a coin check?" Bryce said, watching him go.

"Special Forces thing," Wilder said, keeping an eye on LaFavre to make sure he kept on going.

"Bunch of bullshit," Nash said.

Bryce nodded at the Amazon as she reached them. Her dark eyes swept them all and, Wilder was pretty sure, missed nothing.

"Lucy Armstrong?" Bryce said.

She smiled and held out her hand to Bryce, walking between Wilder and Nash to reach him. Into the kill zone, Wilder thought. These people wouldn't last five seconds in a gun battle.

"Bryce McKay." The Amazon shook his hand, her profile to Wilder. "Very pleased to meet you."

"Welcome aboard." Bryce nodded at her once, looking oddly serious.

"I cannot see," the little kid said, and Wilder looked down to see her holding up her binoculars, surrounded by adult legs, her face perturbed under its blond bowl-cut.

The Amazon-Armstrong, Bryce had called her-stepped back to let the kid out of the circle as Bryce said, "I want you to meet Captain J.T. Wilder, my new military consultant."

Armstrong turned those eyes on him and said, "Hello." She put her hand out and Wilder took it, still watching Nash, trying not to get distracted. Her grip was solid. And warm. He met her gaze and liked what he saw: Somebody was definitely at home in there. He'd been looking at Bryce for too long. Bryce's eyes said, "Back in a minute." Armstrong's eyes said, "Brace yourself, I'm coming at you."

"J.T. is a real Green Beret, just like Rambo," Bryce was saying to Armstrong, and Wilder flinched as Nash laughed.

Armstrong shot Nash a look that could have cut glass.

Rambo, Wilder thought. Fuck.

"Hey," the little kid said, but Armstrong had already turned back to Wilder.

"A Green Beret," she said. "Very impressive." She sounded as if she meant it, and Nash lost his sneer.

Wilder felt better.

"This is my assistant director, Gleason Bloom," she said, and the smile she directed to the lanky guy was affectionate. "Gloom, you know our star, Bryce McKay-"

Wilder watched while Bryce stood straighter when she said "star."

"-And this is Captain J. T. Wilder, his… friend."

"Military consultant," Bryce said, and Gloom shook first his hand and then Wilder's. Good strong grip with nothing to prove, Wilder thought. Armstrong had traded up if she'd gone from Nash to Gloom.

The little kid was staring out at the swamp through her binoculars, staying very still, leaning forward, and he followed her eyes but couldn't see anything. "Hey," she said, looking up at Armstrong, reaching up to tug on her shirt.

"Military consultant," Nash said, a little too loudly. "We don't need one."

"Well, it's certainly something to talk about," Armstrong said cheerfully, with a note under her voice that made it clear that she'd be the one directing the conversation when it happened. She caught the little girl's hand and tried to hold it, but the kid pulled away.

"I want J.T.," Bryce said, getting that mule look that Wilder had learned to avoid in the two days they'd been together. "I'm paying for him, he's my hire, and I want him."

Armstrong nodded, still cheerful although her jaw was set now. "We will definitely discuss it. But now about your character…" She began to talk to Bryce about his role, which distracted him, and Wilder relaxed enough to let his eyes scan the set again. People standing or sitting, doing nothing, the lanky guy, Gloom, watching Connor with undisguised loathing, the little kid-

The little kid had climbed onto the bridge rail, wobbling as she tried to straddle it and hold the binoculars to her eyes, and it was a damn long way down to the Savannah River. Wilder was moving even before he realized it.