As there was nothing to save, calling the police could wait. Oksana reached for the garbage and then her phone. She withdrew her cell and clicked on the camera app. She stepped back until what was left of director Nate Walker fit in the frame. Then she placed her finger squarely over the screen and tapped its big red dot.

CHAPTER TWO

MELISSA

“I’ll get out of here!”

Melissa shouted the words, though she knew no one was listening. It was too late. Too dead. The city that never sleeps had finally found its bedtime. COVID o’clock. Everyone was indoors, waiting for the cold weather and coronavirus to pass, venturing out only to take in packages. She’d been one of them. Cautious. Careful. Relegating friendships to phone calls, shrinking her social sphere to shared genes. Some good it had done. She’d never get sick in here. She’d die first.

“I’ll get out of here.” She repeated her intention, quieter this time. Saving her voice could be important. Still, she needed to hear the echo, to prove to herself that she was alive in this darkness. What surrounded her was an indescribable black, not so much color as void. There was nothing for her eyes to adjust to, no shades of gray with which to orient herself. She was trapped in a starless universe. Only the hard floor beneath her palms and feet assured her that there was an up and down, that she was still gravity-tethered to Earth, subject to the laws of space and time. And biology.

She wasn’t hungry or thirsty yet, but she would be. The last thing she’d consumed was a green juice intended to “cleanse” away the quarantine fifteen. Silly, the things she’d once considered crucial. Waist size. Boob size. Butt shape. Who the hell really cared?

Hollywood, she conceded. Her husband.

She pictured Nate as she’d last seen him, roguish face shredded by the bullet’s impact, brilliant brain splattered on the wall. He’d deserved it. She wondered whether the world would ever know that. Violent deaths had a tendency to turn men into martyrs. Even if the news ultimately leaked, the media might refrain from publishing it, afraid of slandering a sacred cow whose work had suddenly become “important” now that its auteur was incapable of producing more of it.

Nate didn’t deserve more accolades. But, as he was too dead to enjoy them, Melissa preferred praise to the alternative. Better for their daughter to think Nate a talent taken too soon than to live under his real legacy.