The Siren by KATHERINE JOHN (general ebook reader .txt) 📕

Jackson and Cole my side of the Rory scenario when they hired me, though I withheld exactly what dirty work my father had asked me to do. “My dad wanted me to release all the info on Madison to preempt any attempt by her to accuse him of anything, and I refused. I didn’t really know what had happened between them, and it just didn’t seem right.”

“So that’s why you threw her into the mix for this,” Jackson surmised.

“I knew he would hear about it and it would get under his skin,” I admitted. “I didn’t do the things my father accused me of,” I explained to Stella and Felicity. “But that’s a story for another day. Anyway, I’m sorry I ever brought Madison in for an audition.”

“Wait, she auditioned?” Felicity asked.

Jackson nodded. “And she was actually good. Not first-choice good, but fifth on the list when the first four were unavailable.”

“She must’ve been coached to within an inch of her life,” Stella scoffed.

“By someone who’s a better director than me,” Jackson added.

Felicity rolled her eyes. “You don’t have the time to spend hours a day coaxing a performance out of one of your actresses. You have an entire cast and crew to worry about.”

“And a tight schedule,” I added.

“Great.” Stella beamed. “So we all agree we can get rid of her.”

Jackson held up a hand. “Let’s put a pin in this right now. We’ll take the night off from filming.” Off my look, he continued. “It’s the scene where Marguerite tries to drown herself and the nanny saves her.” He indicated Stella. “She’s in no shape to be out in the ocean doing a physical scene tonight.”

“We’ll have to make it up,” I pointed out.

“Fine. But I’m not putting anyone in danger again.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “Beyond that, we have two problems to solve to keep the film running.” I held up two fingers. “How to keep our insurance in light of those pictures, and how to contain Cole. Anyone have any bright ideas?”

“Well, yeah,” Felicity chimed in. “On the insurance thing, they need to know she wasn’t drunk to keep her insured, right? So she releases a statement. Says she was roofied. Does a post about roofie awareness—how it can happen to anyone. Says she wants to share to prevent it from happening to other people.”

Jackson nodded, thinking. “Great idea.”

“What about Cole?” I asked.

For a moment no one spoke. Finally, Felicity shrugged. “We could kill him,” she said lightly.

I involuntarily emitted a short bark of a laugh.

“Jackson would inherit his estate,” she went on, “we’d recast his role, and violà!”

Jackson smirked. “Anyone have any ideas that don’t end with us all in jail?”

“Oh, come on.” Felicity laughed. “If I were going to murder someone, I think we all know I wouldn’t get caught.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. Obviously she was joking, but it didn’t feel right to be talking this way, no matter how much I detested Cole. Actually, it felt so wrong precisely because of how much I detested him: the idea of murdering him, if I were really honest, sounded for just a moment, like a good one. And that, I knew, was not good. Even if the world would totally be better off without him. “Nobody’s murdering anyone.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Jackson said.

“Way less exciting,” Felicity drolled.

“I’m coming with you to talk to him,” Stella asserted.

“No,” Jackson said. “I need to do this alone.”

Felicity

Four Months Ago

I’m curled up on the soft white couch in my apartment with a mug of chamomile on a rainy afternoon when my phone dings with a notification that an article mentioning Cole Power has been posted. I have alerts set for both Stella and Cole, though they rarely turn up anything useful. The only time Stella’s name has come up at all in the past few months was in connection with an interview she gave to a horror fan site regarding a low-budget film she starred in that no one saw. Most of it was bullshit about her craft and rambling stories about bigger movies she’d shot a decade ago. But there was one memorable moment where she likened her “past mistakes” to the mistakes her character in the film makes that lead to her death—namely, attempting and failing to murder her husband’s mistress, who later stalks and kills her. An odd admission for sure.

When the interviewer pressed her on it, she walked the comment back with a meandering statement about the importance of “coming clean” and living honestly and alluded to a memoir she wanted to write. The video only got 453 hits, so whatever she said didn’t matter much. But it did get my attention.

Cole, on the other hand, comes up at least once a week, though usually it’s a picture of him shopping with his latest model girlfriend or a promotion for a movie he has coming out. There were some juicy stories when one girlfriend broke up with him claiming he threw a cell phone at her head, but they went away when “sources close to the couple” revealed that she’d been on acid at the time and had threatened him with a knife. No report about why she felt the need to threaten him with a knife, and she of course denied the claims, but it was enough to throw doubt into the mix, and the rumors about Cole died down after a few weeks.

This latest alert, however, is a Hollywood Gazette report concerning his production company, Power Pictures—and to my shock, Stella:

Stella Rivers joins cast of The Siren.

My mouth falls open when I read the title. I immediately click on the alert, the seconds it takes to load stretching out like hours.

Stella Rivers, best known as Mary Elizabeth in Under the Blue Moon, will join the cast of The Siren, an indie thriller currently in preproduction at Cole Power’s Power Pictures. Rivers will play Marguerite, a woman struggling with postpartum depression, who becomes paranoid when her husband (played by real-life ex-husband Power) hires a beautiful young