"Lucy," Connor said quietly, and she looked up to see him on the other side of the monitors. "Wilder has to go."

"Lucy," 'Bryce said from behind him. "J.T. has to stay."

Lucy looked back at the rail where Wilder was standing, staring up at the bridge cables with all the expression of a G.I. Joe action figure. Not charming. Barely human. The Army couldn't possibly have recruited him. They must have carved him out of granite.

Wilder caught her staring at him and nodded and then looked away.

Really attractive granite that obviously wasn't impressed with her. You have no idea what you're missing, buddy.

But he was the one who'd pulled Pepper off the rail. And Gloom approved of him and Gloom was no dummy. And Bryce wanted him and Bryce was the star. And she was tired of Connor doing the Dick Thing. It was her shoot, damn it.

"He stays," she said and put her headphones back on.

"I have to go down to makeup," Bryce had told Wilder once Armstrong had okayed him. He'd winked as he said it, as if that were code for something else, and there had been a good half hour while he was gone to the base camp down under the bridge that Wilder had used to scope the place.

The bridge itself was beautifully engineered, high in the middle to allow for the container ships that sailed slowly along the Savannah to the port just on the upriver side. It was the people on the bridge that made him shake his head. As far as he could see, the movie crew consisted of people milling around doing nothing in front of other people sitting in chairs doing nothing. One grenade and they'd all be goners. Bryce had tried to explain the chain of command to him before he'd gone, saying, "Well, the first AD runs the shoot while the director directs the filming through the monitors. The second AD does all the paperwork, while the director's assistant assists the director who directs the filming while the first assistant director… uh, the first AD is the one who really runs things." That hadn't helped. What was clear was that Armstrong and Gloom were the ones in charge, sitting in chairs in front of a rolling cart with two TV sets on it-"That's video village," Bryce had said before he'd gone-talking with their heads close together in the middle of lots of lights and poles and booms and cameras on hand trucks, and several cars and a black van, all of them unattended. The sulky-looking brunette Nash had been shrugging off was arguing with him again, the kid was still watching the swamp with her binoculars, and in general the place looked like, well, a clusterfuck.

And then there was the swamp. People had ignored the kid when she'd said there was somebody out there, but he'd been watching her and she was pretty serious about what she was doing. Just because she was five didn't mean she didn't have good eyes.

Wilder would have bet there was something out there. Someone out there. She'd said a ghost, and she wouldn't have said that if she'd seen an animal. Could be just a hunter, some good old boy wading through the swamp, but then why hadn't she seen him again?

Probably nothing to worry about, he told himself, and looked out into the swamp again.

Then Bryce came back in tiger-stripe camouflage fatigues with a combat vest whose most prominent feature was a massive upside-down knife on his left shoulder, so big it covered half his chest. Wilder refrained from shaking his head because he'd learned the weekend before at Fort Bragg that Bryce was quick to pick up any negative cues and wrap his mind around them so tight, it took an hour to unwrap it, and with his hangover still throbbing, Wilder didn't feel like unwrapping anything other than some aspirin.

Behind Bryce was a little woman with a pouty face that had too much makeup on it. Bryce pretty much ignored her as he said, "So what do you think?" squaring his shoulders to show off his knife.

"I think people here talk a lot." Wilder watched Armstrong lean closer to Gloom at the monitors. Not her lover after all, he thought. Wrong body language. He thought, Good, and then shook his head. Not good. This was the kind of job you did and got out fast. No staying behind to hit on the boss.

Bryce followed his eyes. "What? Lucy and Gloom? They're just trying to get up to speed, coming in at the end of everything like this, last four days of shooting. It's tough. The old director had a heart attack, really bad, right on the set at the end of shooting Friday." Bryce shook his head at the brevity of life and the unpredictability of death and then looked down the bridge and brightened. "Look, there's Althea. Come on. You have to meet Althea."

Wilder nodded and followed Bryce down the bridge, while the actor babbled on, saying, "If you're hungry, we can stop by Crafty, that's craft services, the table over there with all kinds of food. I like the Ding Dongs…"

Behind them, the little woman with the makeup pouted harder and then took out her cell phone.

"Who's that?" Wilder said, jerking his head back toward her.

"Huh? Oh, Mary Vanity,' Bryce said. "Makeup girl." He winked at Wilder. "Hot." Then he leered. "Sorry it took me so long."

Wilder's head throbbed harder. Good to know that while he was on a bridge with an armed stunt coordinator and a hostile Amazon, Bryce was having a quickie in the makeup frailer.

"That coin thing, is it some kind of secret thing?" Bryce asked.

"What?"

"The coin check thing. With LaFavre."

If it were a secret, why would I tell you? "Every Special Forces unit has a coin," Wilder said. "Your name gets inscribed on yours when you arrive at the unit, you carry it everywhere, and if challenged, and you don't have it, you have to buy the challenger a drink."

"Can I get one?" Bryce said. "One or those coins? For the movie?"

"Your character's a SEAL," Wilder said. "I don't have any SEAL challenge coins handy and they might not take too kindly to someone outside the unit carrying one."

Bryce looked hurt and Wilder tried to think of something to say to make him feel better but then Bryce said, "Althea!" and Wilder looked up to see the blonde Bryce was leading him toward and forgot his hangover.

It was a damn good thing he'd gotten rid of LaFavre.

She was sitting on the hood of the red convertible they were going to use in the stunts, and she was a little thing, but she had impossible breasts that stretched her tight red T-shirt to the breaking point, and her short white shorts were just as tight.

"Althea," Bryce said when they reached her. "You have to meet J. T. Wilder. J.T. is a real Green Beret."

Althea looked at J.T. and smiled.

Wilder hated to admit it, but he liked Bryce sometimes.

"So you're like Rambo?" Althea ran her hand through her blond curls.

Not exactly, Wilder thought as he tried to focus on her eyes.

Althea smiled even more warmly at Wilder and made him swallow as she held out her hand. "I'm very pleased to meet you, J.T."

Wilder took her hand-slender and cool in his-and nodded, at a loss for words, which was not Bryce's problem. The actor prattled on about how they'd trained together at Bragg-that was a joke right there-while Althea looked at Wilder from under her lashes, biting her lip.

Bryce kept talking as Nash came up behind Althea and checked the harness hidden under her skimpy top, which looked even skimpier under the strain her breasts were putting on it. Wilder shifted his gaze as Nash tugged on Althea's harness and made everything jiggle. Then he looked up to catch Nash shooting more looks his way, looks he ignored this time. There were more important things than pissing contests, such as the amount of Althea-skin being shown as Nash pulled up the back of her T-shirt and checked the harness.

Bryce was still talking, but Wilder's eyes stayed on Althea. He'd seen her in some movie, but he couldn't remember what, something to do with the Navy, he thought. LaFavre would remember; he never forgot a great pair of breasts. And now here she was, flesh and blood. If Wilder remembered the movie rightly, she had shown quite a bit of flesh, more than was currently being displayed. She smiled at him again, dimples this time, and he was pretty sure it was an invitation. He dropped his eyes to her long, thin legs and decided that as soon as he remembered the title of whatever she'd been in, he'd go to Savannah and get the DVD.