The silence stretched and his lips grew thinner with each passing second.
“So, here’s the thing.” I ran out of words and rubbed my temples. How would a normal person explain blood in their fridge? I couldn’t come up with any explanation I would accept if I were in his shoes. I probably would have run screaming into the night after finding any blood bags in a guy’s fridge. But I had to say something. “They’re samples. To test.”
“Test for what?”
“Origin,” I said. He didn’t react. I cleared my throat a couple more times. “The samples came from – different animals I found. I couldn’t account for what they were, so I took... samples.”
“You took blood from dead animals?”
Which would have been stupid, since the cells would have already begun to decay. And he knew that. Just like I knew that. “Of course not.”
“So you took blood from living animals? Wild animals. How?”
My blood pressure inched skyward. “They were injured. The animals. Looked like hunters had gotten to them but didn’t finish them off. And I thought they were cryptids, some kind of hominid. So I took some blood and left — left them where they were.”
“Blood samples,” he repeated. “Not hair or skin or bone or anything else? Just blood?”
“I got some hair samples, they just don’t need to be refrigerated.” I wanted to crawl into a hole in the ground. So much for being a genius. “Photographs can be doctored and footprints can be faked. So can other physical samples. But blood cells and genetics can’t be faked. I had to take enough to reproduce the results of multiple tests. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
His eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “A good idea. At the time. To fill three bags with blood and... whatever else is in there.”
“Probably heparin,” I said under my breath.
“Probably?” His voice went up in disbelief and his frown deepened. “What do you mean, probably heparin? Did you put anticoagulants in it? You had that with you but didn’t get hair samples? And you got close enough to a wounded animal to get living blood?”
“I was kind of in a hurry, okay, and there was a cryptid dying in front of me. I don’t always handle pressure well.” I turned away and focused on cleaning off the table. So much for a simple plan to film and get paid. Shit got complicated real fast. “I’ve been looking for something like that forever. I panicked. That was the only way I could carry off enough to do multiple tests. I couldn’t just — just whack off an arm and bring it back with me.”
I wanted to hide in the sink so I didn’t have to face his intense expression and the sharp edges of his words. I wanted the easy-going, friendly Archer back. There was no telling which was his real personality, or maybe he split the difference. The uneasiness that he was too good to be true started winning the battle against the lovey-dovey hope that the cute boy liked me.
“Did you log the coordinates so you could go back?” He sounded remarkably calm, even with the hint of disapproval radiating from his stance. The muscles in his arms tensed and relaxed, visible even through two shirts. “Or film it, maybe? Are the bodies still there and could you get back there?”
As I struggled to expand on a plausible story, his reaction sidetracked me. Why wasn’t he more excited? Why did he care whether I’d gotten close to wound cryptids, when I’d found a fucking cryptid? Any other researcher would have already got their boots on and a flashlight ready to go find what was left. He wasn’t surprised that I’d found something. My heart beat loud and slow in my ears. Did that mean… Did he possibly already have all the evidence he needed? What if he was only doing the documentary to get rid of competition? It felt absurd to even think it, but the man’s expression and posture did not fit the profile of someone who’d just found out something they’d been searching for was found.
“I don’t know if anything was left,” I said. I sure as fuck wouldn’t take them back to Dragomir’s lair, even if I knew how to find it again. “It was dark, I’d gotten turned around. I managed to find my way back but couldn’t find the spot again later. It’s a long way out and I don’t know if I have the stamina to try and find it again. Not right now.”
Or ever. I needed to keep Archer and his team as far from Dragomir as possible. The vampire wouldn’t appreciate them taking my time away from solving his daylight problem.
“Give me the general direction and I can find it.” He was definitely too calm. “I can half two dozen search teams here in a day.”
My heart jumped to my throat. That didn’t sound like he meant film crews. I held my breath as I struggled for a response, then shook my head. “I’ll think about it.”
“Two dozen search teams cover a lot of ground. Searching for cryptid bones also means searching for your brother, right?”
The words hung in the air, loaded and dangerous.
Archer watched me wipe down the table for a long time without saying anything, so I kept wiping to avoid going back to the sink nearer to where he stood. I should have thought about the fridge before he came over. Stupid. So stupid. I’d need a checklist of things to cover before anyone else entered the cabin, particularly once the experiments were really underway. The extra fridge for storing samples moved to the top of the ‘gotta have it’ list. I didn’t have beer or fruit or anything halfway edible in my regular fridge, but I had blood. Insanity.
Archer took a deep breath after the silence stretched, and ran his hand through his hair, then shook a finger at me. “We’ll get back to that; don’t think we won’t. There’s a story there, and weird stories always make better TV. I’ve learned that the hard way.”
Gaping at him took too much energy as I leaned against the table, the dishrag forgotten in my hand. He just let it go? Just like that? That felt like something other than just good luck. “I’ll try to remember where those bodies were.”
“We can do some map recce,” he said. “Maybe on camera. Finding the carcasses could be the main storyline for your episodes.”
“Episodes?” I gave up on cleaning the table and instead shuffled over to the couch when it looked like Archer was done fussing in the kitchen. “How long do you expect this to go on?”
He crouched in front of the fireplace to poke around in the cold ashes and stack wood on the grate. “A lot depends on audience testing and what the execs want to see. We’ll probably do enough tape for three, if we can, and leave things open-ended in case they want more.”
“Sounds like a lot of work. Especially with your super fun friend Giselle.”
Archer glanced back, his easy grin in place once more. “She’s not that bad.”
“She might be my least favorite person right now.”
“That’s a little harsh,” he said, but he laughed as he did. “She’s just — very focused on her job. She likes to succeed and she doesn’t like things that get in her way. When she’s on your side, it’s great, because she’s a total bulldog. But when we disagree...” He shook his head.
“When you disagree, she’s still a bulldog but she’s got your balls in a vise?”
“Something like that,” Archer said. “She’ll lighten up once we start work. Giselle didn’t want to make the trip all the way out here and leave empty-handed. We didn’t expect to find out that you were in the hospital after being attacked.”
An acrid scent filled the living room as he struck a few matches and began lighting the kindling. I refused to let his handiness and the way his butt looked when he crouched down distract me from the business at hand. “This is all still assuming that I like the rates you’re going to offer. And how much you expect me to be on camera. And how much talking I have to do, and any mad scientist shit you want to see.”
“We’ll want you on camera for a couple of hours, mostly talking although some of the time can just be you wandering around in a forest looking thoughtful. Mad scientist shit would be great. Looking into a microscope, holding up smoking beakers, maybe taking blood samples from hapless creatures...” He eyed me sideways and I bit my lip to keep from smiling.
“Then start talking money, hotshot.”
“We can start at ten thousand an episode,” he said. He checked his phone and went on absentmindedly, distracted by whatever he saw there. “For the first three episodes, that is. If the network approves and wants to see more, we can probably negotiate an increase that makes sense. Fifteen thousand for the next six episodes, to finish the season. A second season could be negotiated from there. Assuming, of course, that viewership supports a second season.”
I choked on air, normal breathing almost too much, and gripped the arm of the battered sofa. “Did you just say ten grand? Each? Thirty grand total to walk in the woods and talk on camera?”
Archer glanced up, though part of his attention remained on the phone. I was too startled by the money to care about his manners. “Yeah. We can probably knock things out in a week or so, depending on how much energy you have and whether we can uncover something in the woods that would interest viewers. Does that sound good?”
Thirty grand for three weeks’ work or less? Where had this been all my life? Why hadn’t I done it sooner? With that kind of money I could buy an armada of drones and send those to search for me. I could renovate the cabin and hire those dozen search teams myself. I pinched the bridge of my nose and debated negotiating for more. He’d already beaten the first network by a country mile and a banker’s pocketbook. “If I’m going to talk about my family looking as beat up as I do, you’ll need to pay more.”
The scars buckled as his smile spread. “Lay it on me.”
God help me, I would have followed him anywhere and agreed to almost anything just to see those eyes smiling and that one dimple, taunting me each time it reappeared. “Fifteen an episode. More if you want me to go back to the family home or our old haunts. A little more if you want me to take you to where Jamie disappeared or talk about the Ozark Howler.”
“You’re a savvy businesswoman,” he said. The smile never slipped. “I’ll talk to the execs and see what I can do. We can film a pilot with the base of ten thousand and go up from there after that episode. How does that sound?”
I almost blacked out from excitement and a little from pain as the meds faded and my leg started aching more insistently. I managed to nod without howling with glee. “That will probably work, but I’ll need to see it in writing.”
Archer laughed, pushing to his feet as the fire crackled and caught, and he flopped onto the other end of the couch — close enough to touch if I stretched but not so close that it might have freaked me out. So respectful but not cold. Not unreachable. “Giselle’s already working on the contract.”
I’d almost forgotten about her, but at least I managed not to make a face. “Great.”
“You’ll be best friends by the end of this, I can tell already. You’re more alike than you know, I think.” Which was exactly the sort of comparison I wanted to avoid. Archer stretched and lay his arm across the back of the couch, studying me as the firelight strengthened and cast deeper shadows throughout the cabin. “So where do you want to start?”
It took a second to realize he meant with filming and not general hanky-panky. I would have been game for some serious making out and maybe getting naked if I knew my ribs could take the cardio. When I’d wrestled the hormones and the wilder side of my imagination back under control, I rested my head on the cushion behind me and watched his face in the flickering light. “I have some business to take care of tomorrow, but we could probably start in the late afternoon evening with some of the talking.”
“Any family photos handy?”
My stomach turned over with a lingering sense of guilt. I didn’t want to trade on tragedy, but it was all in the name of finding Jamie. He wouldn’t mind, and neither would Dad, if I showed some of the happy snaps from our childhood in Oak Ridge. Maybe some of the funny ones of me covered in mud and scream-crying or Jamie running away from the fish he’d just caught. Sometimes the ends justified the means. The faster I got it all filmed, the faster I’d get paid, and the faster we’d get to air so that more cryptid hunters would comb through the mountains and maybe stumble over Jamie. Or Dragomir would find him. The more people looking, the better, and it almost didn’t matter how or why they looked. The knot in my throat still made swallowing difficult. “I can dig some up.”
“Great.” Archer’s head tilted as he checked his phone again, then tucked it away. “Let’s talk about the story arc for the first three episodes. Are you okay to stay up?”
I winced as I adjusted how I sat. I should have done more research for Dragomir or asked for an advance on my pay, but the cabin was soft and warm near him and I’d been cold for a long time. “I might need something for pain. I keep forgetting I’m hurt and end up aggravating my ribs.”
“I’m on it.” He pushed to his feet and retrieved a handful of different pill bottles and a glass of water from the kitchen. He waited as I sorted out which one to take. “Too bad I don’t have the camera with me. Interviewing you all doped up would be interesting as hell, I’d wager.”
“Which is why that will never happen.” But I smiled as I said it. He could probably convince me if he tried, which made him almost as dangerous as Dragomir.