pounding exploded against her door and she leaped about a foot straight up in the air. “Girl, you in there? Open up, you scrawny little white-meat chicken!”
Tyrone.
Crap.
* * *
“Tell me again why you think this girl is your saboteur?” Archer asked Steve skeptically.
“Our security guys have gone over the footage from the security cameras. Every single time there’s an accident, she was seen immediately before the accident in the exact place the sabotage occurs. What are the odds that it’s a coincidence six—no, seven times now, if you count your helicopter today?”
Archer frowned. It just didn’t feel right. She was pleasant, struck him as a little naive, if anything, and didn’t seem to be the type to be hiding a thing. Either he was right, or she was one
hell
of an actress.
“What about someone high up in the movie’s production? If this film shuts down, the insurance company would have to make a hefty payout to the producers. Isn’t Adrian Turnow the executive producer on this project?”
Steve frowned. “He doesn’t strike me as the type.”
“What? And this girl strikes you as a vicious saboteur? Have you done a background check on Turnow? Or Marley for that matter? Found anything that would explain why either of them would do all this stuff?”
“She’s got a juvie record,” Steve replied.
“What did she do?”
“No idea. It’s sealed.”
Archer shrugged. “I’ve got a sealed juvie record. After Mom died, I had a pretty wild stretch there for a few months.”
Steve pulled a face. “Yeah, I remember, little brother. I did everything I could to straighten you out.”
“Is that what you called pounding on me like your own personal punching bag?”
“We all had anger issues to work out.”
“You just figured out yours faster than the rest of us.”
His brother snorted. “Nah. I was just told by a justice of the peace to join the Marines or go to jail sooner than the rest of you.”
“Yeah, well, Shyanne and Lyra turned out okay.” Not that his younger sisters didn’t still drive him crazy, of course.
“They were too little when Mom died to be messed up by her choosing drugs over her own kids.”
Archer didn’t want to talk about his mother. He’d put her in a mental drawer and slammed it shut a long, long time ago. Locked it and thrown away the key, too.
Had his grandmother not taken in the five young Prescott children, there was no telling how badly they all would have turned out. As it was, with the help of her fierce love, they’d all gotten their lives together. The oldest Prescott, Jackson, was a movie star and part owner of the studio producing this movie. Brother number two, Steve, was a retired Marine officer and stunt coordinator in the movie business now.
In an effort to get out from under Steve’s long shadow, Archer had joined the Army and become a search-and-rescue pilot. It satisfied his need for reckless living. Channeled his wilder impulses into a profession where they were an asset and not a problem. Hell, somewhere along the way, he’d grown up, too.
Archer took a pull from the cold beer Steve had served him. “Okay, so she’s got a past. That doesn’t necessarily make her our saboteur.”
Steve commented, “I’ve got a guy looking into peeking into that sealed record. I want to know if she has a violent past or not.”
Archer had a very hard time picturing sweet, innocent-seeming Marley Stringer hurting a fly, let alone another human being.
“Are you interested in this girl?” Steve demanded.
“No!” he lied.
“Then why are you defending her so damned hard?”
“Hey, bro. I’m not defending her. I’m just not declaring her guilty and convicting her in my mind before I hear her side of the story.”
Steve stared at him long and hard. “You willing to make a run at gaining her trust?”
Ha. Steve
did
want him to get close to her and see what he could learn about her. “You want me to sleep with her and get her to