Caught on Camera (6 page)

Eventually Kate broke the long lapse in conversation. “This really doesn't look good.” She stared at the ominous pewter sky swirling above them.

Ty shook his head in agreement. “We're not going to make it to the safety crew.”

“No, we haven't even reached the fork.” She thought for a moment. “Tent's on the sled.”

“Yeah. We may need to build something.”

Kate sighed, accepting her fate. At least this was their area of expertise, plus working kept her calm. She turned the camera back on. “Rolling.”

“Jesus, Kate. Now?”

“Yeah, we've still got to bring home forty-two minutes' worth of airable footage. We're not giving up just because we lost the fishing spot. This is better, even—you're always complaining about authenticity.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Fine. But don't think I don't suspect you're doing this to get out of helping.” His
attempt at reestablishing their old levity didn't stand a chance against Kate's current mood.

“What are you going to do, Ty? Fire me?” She hid the true bitterness of her words behind the lens, making them sound light and pithy, though she was still fuming. He may as well have fired her. That's exactly what it felt like. Still… Her track record for talking Ty into things was impressive, and if she could just be patient and let the shock of the accident fade, she might be able to change his mind about his ridiculous decision.

“Okay,” Ty said to the camera. “I've decided that reaching the safety crew's not going to happen fast enough in this storm, so I've got to reprioritize and get a shelter assembled, in case I can't get out of here before tomorrow. The things I'm most concerned with are the cold and dampness. I need to get something built up off the ground—” he mimed a shape with his hands “—with a buffer against the wind, even if I don't have time to get four walls in place. We're working with a few more hours of so-called daylight, I'd guess. I'm also worried about a fire, since the film crew and I got pretty wet when the sled pitched us.

“Now, looking around—” he waved his arms around at the snowy, slushy scene, and Kate scanned it with the camera “—you wouldn't reckon we'd have much luck trying to get a fire going. But if you've watched this show enough times I hope I've taught you that you can almost always get a fire started even if the tinder's looking grim. Anyhow, I'm going to search for some wood for the shelter.”

Kate and the camera followed as he surveyed the area for materials. The chances of finding anything looked very grim, indeed.

Ty paused his search after a few fruitless minutes to address the audience. “Now the axe that any adventurer worth his salt would bring with him on this kind of trip is, I'm
sad to say, making its way back to the dogs' base camp at this very moment. And I can tell you, getting a shelter put up without an axe is going to be about ten thousand times harder.” Ty sighed heavily, contemplating this. “The other option,” he said, still walking, “is to build a snow den. It might seem contradictory, building a shelter out of snow when you're trying to stay warm and dry. But actually it's an ancient building technique, and the insulation the snow can—”

He paused, seeing that Kate was pointing over his shoulder. He turned.

“Oh,” he said, spotting the neon orange sign posted at the edge of the trail. Kate zoomed in on its words and instructive arrow. Emergency Shelter, 1 km.

She aimed the camera back at Ty.

“My crew has a better idea, apparently,” he said, and offered a glimmer of his trademark smile.

He set a quick pace and Kate followed him the half mile to their salvation, a shed-style building erected just a short way off the trail. It looked to be in decent shape, with the exception of a broken windowpane and a carpet of moss creeping up one side.

“Emergency shelter,” Ty said, turning back to his future audience. “This just goes to show you that, in this day and age at least, getting stranded doesn't always mean slapping a lean-to together. If you find yourself lost on a trail or in a popular hunting or trapping area, you might be able to find a man-made place just like this one. Let's see what we're working with, here. I can see a chimney, at any rate, so let's hope that means we've got a woodstove.”

He tested the knob of the mildly moldy front door and pushed.

“Eureka,” he began, then ducked and stumbled backward, covering his head as a dozen black birds rocketed
out of the door and past their shoulders. “Right.” He took the camera from Kate and scanned the space with it before they ventured inside.

It was as big as a couple of toolsheds, eight feet by fifteen, Kate estimated. Ty's prayer had been answered—a squat wood-burning stove sat at the far end next to a small pile of gnarled lumber left by whoever had been sequestered here last. Someone had taken the time to build a shelf above the stove, and on it sat a banged-up tin pot and a chipped mug, as well as a pair of rusty double-A batteries and an ancient, mildewy hunting magazine.

“Oh, glorious!” Ty jogged to the stove, bending over then straightening up again, holding an abandoned axe in front of the camera lens. “It's dull, but I can't tell you how excited I am to see this.” Kate watched Ty record more of their discovery and his commentary for a few minutes.

“Damn, this is lucky,” she said when she could speak again. A wobbly-looking card table stood by the door, kept company by an aluminum folding chair. There was even a small single bed against the wall near the woodstove. It looked exceedingly utilitarian, a metal army-style cot with a slatted headboard. Kate didn't trust the moldy mattress on it one bit, but they had a sleeping bag with them, which could make it workable. A heck of a lot more workable than a frigging snow den.

“Welcome home, darling.” Ty set the camera down and scanned the shelter with his hands on his hips. “This is a bloody blessing, eh?”

“Better check for rats,” Kate said. They poked around but found only the evidence of the squatting birds. She pulled a roll of electrical tape out of her pack and secured an empty pretzel bag over the missing window pane.

“Smells a bit,” she said, flaring her nostrils at the musk of rotting wood.

“Yeah, sorry.” Ty walked to the bed, sat down with a groan of rusty springs. “I wanted to get you the honeymoon suite, but it was booked.”

“Get us a fire going,” Kate ordered, not wanting to think about such things as honeymoon suites right now. This man had, after all, just demoted her. And what it felt like, more than anything else, was a breakup. When he'd told Kate he wanted her off filming, what she'd really heard was, “I'm dumping you.” And she'd never imagined a breakup could hurt this badly. If she started thinking about it now the pain would be too great to bear. She'd never cried in front of Ty and she'd be damned if she was going to start now.

“Actually, you get the fire going,” Ty said, and he fished in Kate's pack for a moment then tossed her her lighter. “I'll go look for some decent wood for when that stuff runs out.” He nodded at the selection of old firewood they'd inherited.

“Fine. Bag us a three-course meal, while you're at it,” she said.

“As you wish.” He disappeared with the axe, leaving Kate alone with not nearly enough distractions. She unstrapped the sleeping bag from her pack, tossed it across the bed and took a seat. Spinning her lighter's thumbwheel around and around, she got lost in the sparks.

God. This couldn't happen. This was her entire life, this show. Not being here, being a part of the real process, would be worse than getting fired outright…saying goodbye to Ty as he left for weeks at a time, off to do the things they'd always done together, as a pair. Now she'd be left in his dust, or worse, in the dust of some hateful replacement. Kate looked down, dropped the lighter and fisted her hands, letting her nails bite into her palms, letting the pain push away her urge to cry. She'd moved to L.A. expecting something a lot different from this—something a lot safer and cleaner
and more glamorous. But damn if it hadn't grown on her. Damn if Ty hadn't grown on her.

Damn if she wasn't half in love with the bastard.

T
Y TRUDGED THROUGH
the ever-deepening snow, looking forward to pulling his slush-filled boots off as soon as he'd gathered enough wood to get them through the night. The flakes seemed to be getting bigger by the minute. He tendered a mental prayer to his ambiguous and unreliable higher power that the storm wouldn't get so bad that they couldn't travel the next day. Hunger had long since left him weak and dispirited and he didn't think he could take much more of this godforsaken wilderness…. Of course he'd finally decided to lose his nerve on the one shoot where quitting wasn't an option.

Kate's temper had him more nervous than the weather, though—he'd half expected lightning to shoot out of her eyes at him during that fight. He couldn't blame her for being angry. This
was
her show. She'd never failed to rise to any challenge since he'd taken her on as his assistant. Sometimes he felt he'd known her forever. Yet he could remember the first time they met as if it had been last week.

Ty hadn't yet found an office or apartment when the network had unexpectedly optioned his pilot, so Kate met him at his hotel on a typical sunny L.A. afternoon. She turned up at precisely the appointed hour, clad in a blazer and a
pink, collared shirt, shiny pointy-toed shoes and pressed slacks. She looked as if she'd just stepped off the set of a soap opera in which she played a ballsy, no-nonsense, sexkitten lawyer.

Ty shook her hand and watched her slip a glossy lock of her hair, complete with salon-fresh highlights, behind her ear. This was so not going to work.

He'd posted the job the previous afternoon in the online trade papers, and all he'd said was, “PA needed on location for new reality / survival program. Crap pay, great travel opportunities.” He'd been hoping for maybe a beach bum kid, some twenty-something wannabe pro surfer with a taste for adventure and an up-for-it attitude. A hard worker, but relaxed and adaptable, competent with a camera and mics. Someone like himself, whose only dream was to get paid to travel and have fun. The woman who arrived that morning wasn't any of those things, as best Ty could tell.

“Tell me about your experience, Miss…Somersby,” he said, squinting at the take-out menu he'd scribbled her name on the previous evening when she'd phoned. He tried to sound professional, but he really had no idea what he was doing. He'd never expected the channel to pick up the pilot he'd taped on a climbing acquaintance's beer-fueled dare. But a rival network had recently begun production on a similar series, and they'd been eager to try to beat the competition out of the gate. That Ty demanded little in the way of budget, schedule or staff had clinched the deal.

“I can do anything, Mr. Tyler,” Kate said, her smile all unnaturally white even teeth framed in lip gloss. She took a seat on the hotel room's desk chair and Ty sat on the edge of the bed. “I'm highly organized and have no personal obligations, so I'm at your complete disposal, twenty-four hours a day.”

“Well, that's certainly…accommodating. How old are you?” he asked.

“Twenty-six.”

“Did you recently graduate from college?”

“No,” she said, and Ty noticed her bubbling energy diminish by a degree. “I didn't go to college.”

“Well, that's not a problem. Just making small talk. Do you like the woods?”

“I grew up in Massachusetts,” she said, which meant nothing to Ty, literally hours off a plane from Sydney. “I've been camping and hiking before,” she offered.

“You like camping?”

“Sure, it's fine. Like I said, I'll do anything.”

Ty took a deep breath, knowing he needed to scare this girl straight, get her to back off and spare them both the embarrassment of an outright rejection. “Are you strong? Could you, say, carry a fifteen-pound camera on your shoulder for an hour at a time?”

“I'm sure I could,” she said brightly, unruffled. “I go to the gym every morning.”

“How about asthma? Allergies? Food requirements? This job demands a lot of exotic travel. You okay with centipedes and snakes and things?”

“I can handle anything you need me to.”

Ty tried another angle. “What about family? Friends? You'd have to be away for months at a time.”

Her smile was tight. “I'm not particularly attached to anyone, Mr. Tyler.”

“‘Ty' is fine.”

“So is ‘Kate.'”

“Right, I'll be honest with you, I don't think this is going to work out.”

Her brows pinched together. “Why not?”

“Well, this job is really demanding, physically, for one.”

“I'm sure you're not implying that I can't do this because I'm a woman.”

Damn, was he? He didn't think so, but perhaps subconsciously, Ty'd pictured his PA as a man, that was true. “No, of course not.”

“I'm glad to hear that.”

“Yes, well… I'm just saying, this job's going to be very taxing, and the filming's going to be on location for days at a time. Maybe weeks. There could be wild animals and rough weather, even simulated shipwrecks or arctic conditions…”

“That sounds just fine.” Kate offered another million-dollar smile, as if he'd just broken it to her that her company car wouldn't be the color she'd hoped.

Ty laughed tightly, growing exasperated. “I'm afraid I just don't see this working out, Miss…Somersby.”

“Kate. And I do,” she added, assertive. Hungry. “Why don't you give me a shot? A free trial?”

“I don't know.”

“No one else could possibly do a better job for you than me,” she said with an almost contemptuous confidence. “I can offer you round-the-clock assistance.”

“It's not your availability I'm concerned about. This could be quite a dangerous job.”

Kate leaned in, an intriguing gleam underscoring her stare. “Sounds thrilling.”

Ty swallowed. “I must admit, you're very keen.”

“I am.”

He sighed, not sure what to do. She wasn't letting him turn her down gracefully, and he had no legitimate reason to deny her. Not yet, at least. And to be honest, the other candidates he'd met or talked to on the phone had seemed far less…
passionate
than this one.

He blew out a breath and rolled his shoulders. “Listen… Okay. What are you doing this weekend?”

“You tell me,” she said, a glimmer of triumph already sparkling in her dark blue eyes.

“Right, then. Meet me here on Friday at two, and I'll give you a trial run through Sunday, okay? Then we'll see if this is a good fit.”

“Excellent. Should I bring anything in particular?”

Ty thought for a moment and decided on a bit of strategic cruelty. “No, Kate, just come as you are… Maybe change your shoes. Something a bit more practical.”

“Right.” She drew a folio from an expensive-looking briefcase and made a note. “Two o'clock on Friday, then. I'm very much looking forward to it.”

“So am I,” Ty lied.

Two days later Kate had arrived at his door at one fiftynine, knocking briskly. He answered it with his shirt still unbuttoned—he wasn't half as punctual as she was. She gave his bare chest a quick and businesslike once-over and launched into the matter at hand.

“Good afternoon, Dominic.”

“‘Ty,' please,” he corrected, doing up the last of his buttons. “So I take it you haven't been snapped up by some young starlet, then?”

“Of course not. I'm very excited to get to work. What may I do for you?” she asked, glowing from her perfectly styled hair down past her argyle cardigan, right to the tiny buckles of her shiny black flats. Ty frowned. Those were a step closer to comfort than the gougers she'd had on the other day, but he'd assumed she'd turn up in sneakers…no matter. That was the evidence he'd been waiting for. Those would make it that much easier to get rid of her. Ty had planned this trip to last three days if need be, but he was sure now that they'd be done by sundown. Hell, once
he outlined the particulars she'd probably be sprinting to her car, racing back downtown in ten seconds flat.

“We're going camping, actually, Miss Somersby.” He grinned, waiting for her horror.

“Kate,” she said, and he watched her steely face falter. “Camping?” She paused just a moment and said, “Okay then. Let's go.”

While Ty drove, Kate sat half turned in the passenger seat, facing him. He found it unnerving. He glanced over and saw that her eyes were trained on the road.

“Doesn't that hurt your neck?” he asked.

“Pardon?” The windows were open, hot air rushing by. Kate had requested the AC at the start of the trip, but Ty had lied and said he preferred the heat. In reality he just wanted to make her as miserable as possible.

“Your neck,” he said. “That looks uncomfortable, the way you're sitting.”

He caught Kate squirm. “It's fine.”

“You aren't carsick, are you?”

“No…I don't hear very well on my left side.” She paused. “It won't affect my ability to do this job,” she added, sounding either aggressive or defensive, Ty couldn't pinpoint which.

“No, I'm sure it won't.” He smiled to himself. The video camera was designed to rest on the user's right shoulder, and it would render her effectively deaf. Bingo. She was as good as gone.

Three hours later they stepped out of the rental car at the edge of a state park. It was August and Ty wasn't surprised in the least to find so few other vehicles in the parking lot, most of them out-of-staters. An acquaintance he'd consulted had promised that only morons went camping up here during mosquito season. When they'd climbed into the car he'd been pleased to note Kate was wearing a subtle perfume.
She may as well have slathered herself in steak sauce and offered herself up to the bears.

“Here we are,” he announced, and the bugs were already finding them.

Kate slapped a fat mosquito from her arm. “Shall I set the tent up?” she asked, fixing him with her eager, go-getter smile.

“I'd like to venture a bit farther into the woods, if you don't mind.”

“It's your show, Mr. Tyler.”

“Ty. And speaking of shows, I'll need you to carry this,” he said, and hoisted a heavy, professional camcorder from the trunk.

“Right,” she said with the tiniest pause. He passed it to her and watched her petite frame slump a bit from its heft. “Is it charged?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Do you have the manual? I'd like to familiarize myself with it.”

Ty frowned with surprise, but he complied and dug the instruction booklet from the car. She made him wait for ten minutes as she slapped the mosquitoes from her face and arms and hair, scanning the pages and toying with the buttons. The bugs were clearly frazzling her, but she looked determined to pretend otherwise. Ty mentally gave her what he imagined was a generous half hour before she cracked.

“All right, I'm ready,” Kate announced, standing and shouldering the camera, now down to one swatting hand. “Please speak as loudly as you can if you're addressing me,” she added. Her voice had a strange tone in it. Slightly haughty and overly polite. This little hint of vulnerable pride gave Ty pause.

“No worries,” he said. “Let's get tramping.”

Ty suppressed any feelings of sympathy he was tempted
to entertain during the experiment. He ordered Kate to move here and there, behind him, in front of him, crouching down low, then up high atop a boulder. She tripped over roots and rocks, half-blind behind the eyepiece, at the complete and utter mercy of the bugs. She thrashed occasionally and the bites must have been maddening, but Kate didn't complain. Ty had to hand it to her, she was one stubborn specimen. Strong, too, though he had no doubt she was struggling.

“Okay, that's enough filming for now,” he announced after two hours' torture.

“You sure? There's a nice scenic bend just up there,” she said, and Ty wondered which one of them was going to surrender first and call the other's bluff. He hadn't counted on her having such a good hand. She knew how to make him sweat. He looked down and saw that the backs of her heels were chafed and bloody.

“Oh, Kate,” he groaned, finally using her first name. “Let's just stop, okay?”

She lowered the camera and followed his eyes to her savaged feet. “That's fine—don't worry about that.”

“No, that's not fine. Come on, we need to give this up.”

“Give what up?” She cocked her head and gave him a calculating look, eyes narrowing.

“You know what. You've proved yourself, okay?”

“So I get the job?”

“No,” Ty said with a sigh. He was taken aback when Kate slapped him on the forehead.

“Sorry, mosquito there.” She held her blood-streaked fingers up to show him, smirking in a wholly evil way. “Big one.”

And that had been it, the first of Kate's many coups. As soon as Ty had acquiesced, Kate had let herself relax into his company. Ty had forced a pair of wool socks on her and promised her the remainder of the three-day trial, one
hell of a crash course. The swarms had kept them huddled in the tent for long stretches, and if sharing that tiny space didn't make enemies out of strangers double-quick, they could only have become friends by the time they dragged themselves to his car and drove back to L.A. late that Sunday night. The footage hadn't been half-bad, either.

Ty started back toward the emergency cabin, feeling as though he were carrying a far heftier burden than just the armful of firewood he'd managed to scrounge. He'd just made a decision to gut all of this, these two-plus years of fantastic partnership. But it had been a good run, hadn't it? Of course it had. Kate would calm down. She'd forgive him. Underneath the tough little soldier's body she'd honed these past three seasons, the old Kate was still in there. Behind the practical, mud-caked thermals and jeans, the woman in the tailored blazer was there, her lips still shining with gloss, hair combed and sleek. Kate would remember that woman once they landed back in California, and be glad of a chance to ditch the nastier aspects of production.