“Excuse me.”
I flicked my nail against the glass and listened to the soft ping through the noise of the growing happy hour crowd. Maybe the bartender would let me borrow the phone to call Betsy, though I didn’t look forward to her gloating over picking me up. I felt like a little kid who ran away from home and only made it a block before the wheels came off my little red wagon.
“Excuse me. Are you Ada Montgomery?”
I blinked and looked up, the bar blurring around me as vertigo gripped my vision. A stranger stood next to my table, carrying a beer and a plate of fried mozzarella, and studied me in the neon light of the jukebox. I started to tell him to go jump in the lake, but rational thought evaporated the moment I caught sight of him.
He was handsome like I’d never seen in real life. Blue eyes with smile lines at the corners, light brown hair cut short all over, a strong jaw and nose and wicked scars along his throat and cheek. A hint of beard, like he’d forgotten to shave for a couple of days. And arms... I had to gulp for air at the sight of his muscled forearms and the broad, strong hands. They attached to equally muscular biceps and shoulders, and he filled out a thin black sweater like no one I’d ever seen. I didn’t dare look any lower than the worn leather belt to appreciate the well-loved jeans.
Well, bust my legs and call me Shorty. Even if I wasn’t, for him I’d be Ada. “Uh, yeah.”
“Serendipity,” he said. He tilted his head at the table. “Mind if I join you for a spell?”
His accent wasn’t exactly Southern, though he had the manners and mannerisms, but I couldn’t place it. Maybe Midwest. I tried to focus. “If you’d like.”
He dragged another chair over so I kept my leg propped up, and offered a hand once he’d wiped it with a napkin. “I’m Archer. Just visiting Chilhowee.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said. I couldn’t look away from his eyes and his long dark lashes. Betsy had lashes like that but they came out of an envelope from the dollar store. “How did you know who I am?”
“You’re all over the local news,” he said. His easy smile made my stomach flutter and my palms sweat – although that could have been the lack of food, the blood loss, the fading painkillers… “I’m surprised you’re out of the hospital already.”
Him knowing about me, especially for someone who wasn’t from Chilhowee, made me nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. At least we were in a public place and most of the bar patrons probably felt obligated to help another local if shit turned weird.
“What can I say, I’m persuasive.” I sipped my water and tried not to look too nervous. Dollars to donuts, I was way smarter than he was so it didn’t matter if he thought I was some backwoods idiot. He’d be moving on in a matter of days anyway and taking that handsome face and delicious forearms with him. “What brings you to Chilhowee?”
“Well...” He hesitated, then nodded to someone across the room. A spotlight beamed right at me and then a camera, boom mic, and three more people materialized around me. A shriek of fear and surprise and maybe fury choked me as I stared at them, my brain chugging to catch up. What the fuck?
Archer cleared his throat and tried another smile. “I’m a producer for a reality show looking for Bigfoot and similar creatures. We kept hearing your name come up as the person to work with out here, so we came to shoot a little footage and see if you’d consider being on camera. We heard about the... recent events, and decided to stick around to talk to you before we leave.”
Just wonderful. Betsy tried to hide a voicemail from the production company about choosing someone else for the show while I was in the hospital, though she hadn’t been able to erase it. I’d buried my disappointment by focusing on the opportunity Dragomir dropped in my lap, and then the competition showed up. Maybe Archer and his folks wanted to scoop the company that passed on me, but maybe… Maybe they were an opportunity to create a back-up plan, in case Dragomir failed or our deal crashed and burned. I could still use the original plan to get more cryptid hunters in the area, and string along the production company until I found Jamie or knew Dragomir wouldn’t. I gripped the edge of the table. I didn’t know whether I could have actually stood up and stormed out without embarrassing myself. There was something to be said for playing hard to get. “I’m not interested.”
“You don’t want to tell your side of the story?” A woman with frazzled blonde hair and a clipboard appeared from behind the cameraman and took a seat next to Archer. Her dark eyes reminded me of a shark, circling closer as it sensed chum in the water. “Come on, Ada. All kinds of stories are circulating — you were out hunting Bigfoot and slipped down a ravine, you were attacked by a sasquatch or cougar or something, you got lost and hurt yourself to cover for it... Everyone is asking how someone as experienced as you could have ended up in this predicament, attacked by a sasquatch but without any evidence. We just want to know what really happened out there.”
She reminded me immediately of the first producer, the one who talked down to me and told me to play up the family drama, and of every other person who’d mocked cryptozoology to my face. I hated the rising defensiveness that set me back on my heels and raised my hackles. Who the hell was she to challenge me in this area? She had the edge in eyebrow tweezing and showing too many teeth when she smiled, but when it came to understanding the mountains and cryptids, I played chess and she played ‘Go Fish.’
Some days I really hated people. If she’d started with some other statement or tone, we could have been friends or at least cordial. One could never anticipate how humans would react, even in identical situations. People lied. You couldn’t always assume the good intentions of everyone around you, and half the time you were better off assuming bad intentions from the start. At least science typically produced the same results; given the same system and input, one received the same output. Not so with people.
I really hated people.
I leaned back slowly and watched her, my jaw and back and side aching as I tensed. “You think I’m going to fall for that?”
Her eyebrows arched. “Fall for what?”
“That whole ‘tell your side of the story’ bullshit? Give me a break. I’ve said all I’m going to say about it, and there’s nothing new to add.”
Archer cleared his throat. “I think what Giselle meant was that our production studio would like to work with you, investigating the unique goings-on in these mountains — Sasquatch, Jersey Devil, anything else you’ve found out here.”
“The Jersey Devil is only in New Jersey,” I said. Definitely not smarter than me.
The corner of his mouth twitched and he inclined his head. “So it is. But you get my meaning — you’re by far the most well-known expert in these parts, particularly after your recent incident. You’re a serious scientist, and have the best academic pedigree of anyone in the field. You’re the complete opposite of the more colorful folks we’ve run across. When you’re up for it, we’d like to retrace some of your steps and pitch a series to the network.”
Maybe they weren’t a good back-up plan, even though I could have watched Archer read the phone book and loved every second of it. Me filming on my own for the pilot was a lot different from a crew following me around asking me intrusive questions. My skin crawled thinking about it, and the urge to run built between my shoulders. That assumed I could actually get my legs and balance to cooperate. I needed to get back to Betsy’s house or my cabin so I could work on Dragomir’s problem. The more time I wasted listening to finger-lickin’ handsome men in bars, the longer it would be before Dragomir searched for Jamie.
“Like I told you, I’m not interested. I already tried the reality show thing and look where it got me.” I gestured at myself. “And even if I were up for a second go at it, I’m not really able to run around in the mountains. Right now you’re wasting your time.”
“We’ll be here for a while,” Giselle said, her smile widening until I could see the silver fillings in some of her molars. “We’ve talked to quite a few people about you, so we’ve got some great b-roll to fill in the blanks. Just a couple of interviews on camera, maybe some shots of you walking through the trees, and we’ll be in good shape.”
My blood pressure kicked up a few notches. I would have talked to Archer all night, if only to admire those forearms for a couple of hours, but Giselle irked my tater, as Betsy would have said. Something about her… The producer, or whatever she was, looked like she would uncover the truth no matter the cost. No matter who got hurt. The story meant more to her than any individual or group. Just the story. Just the show.
Although... the opportunity to resurrect my initial plan and use a reality show — or documentary, whatever it was they proposed — to draw attention to the mountains and find Jamie remained a remote possibility. Despite Dragomir’s unsubstantiated claim that the cryptozoology community would eventually unleash trophy hunters and drive all cryptids into extinction, more eyes looking in that area could find more evidence. It wouldn’t be as fast as Dragomir’s search, but at least it wouldn’t come with the uncomfortable ethical conundrum of creating a day-walking vampire.
Not that it had to be one or the other. A rushing noise filled my ears as I watched Archer’s lips move but didn’t hear a word he said. Why not use the vampire and the producers at the same time? There were no rules, no reason I had to choose one or the other. Just because I helped Dragomir didn’t mean I couldn’t work with anyone else. I’d never committed to exclusivity.
Archer slid a business card across the table to rest under my fingertips. “I’m sure this is overwhelming. Why don’t you think about it and give me a call later on, maybe tomorrow? We can stay in town for a while. There’s plenty to film.”
“And plenty of people to talk to,” Giselle added.
From her, it sounded like a threat.
I had plenty of experience with that, though. Threats and bullying were par for the course working in what most of the scientific community deemed quackery. Giselle was bush league compared to teenage girls in high school when I was eight or post docs desperate for a chance at tenure.
I picked up the business card, regretting that I hadn’t brought any pain medication on my hitchhiking misadventure. “I recommend you start with the bartender. She’s known me since kindergarten and thinks I’m crazy. The library’s a block from here, where I order journals and books about monsters; the librarian, Miss Harbaugh, has some good stories. A blind man on a galloping horse could see that this entire town can spend all day talking about how crazy I am, so that ain’t much of a threat, sister. You need any more references, you let me know. I’ll point you at the chatty ones.”
The business card slid into my pocket as I shoved my chair back and gathered my strength to stand up and walk out. I nearly dropped my crutches with numb fingers but figured doing so would have given me an excuse to “accidentally” hit the annoying blonde woman.
Archer frowned at his colleague and half-stood, gesturing for me to sit back down. “Just wait a second, Ada. Giselle and I need to step outside for a second.”
I ignored him and the camera, and instead spoke to the shark with the silver fillings. “Because here’s the thing — I don’t give a shit what other people think of my work. I’ve dealt with this my whole life. And nothing you say to people here would surprise them. There’s literally nothing I could say that would surprise them either.”
I wobbled to my feet and braced against the table to keep my balance; Archer held out a hand to steady me as the crutches tilted. I tried to smile at Giselle, tried to match her threat with my own. “I could tell them with a straight face that the only reason I survived that incident in the woods was because a vampire found me and fixed the worst of it. Or that it wasn’t a crazy man with a beard but a werewolf that attacked me and tore me all to pieces. I could swear up and down that a Pegasus swooped down from the clouds and took me on a ride, and even if I had photographic evidence, they’d just smile and ask me when I’m getting a real job. It doesn’t matter what I say, it doesn’t matter what you assume. I’m the local lunatic. It’s really not that interesting.”
“On the contrary,” she said. Those flat shark eyes followed me as I retreated a step. “You just got so much more interesting.”
“Then you can kiss my grits, sugar,” I muttered. I limped out without flipping her off or clawing her eyes out. Betsy would have been so proud. “Y’all have a nice day now.”