After half an hour he had accumulated an ever-growing stack of marked-up Post-its, and that’s when he realized there was a fundamental flaw in his plan. He should have numbered the damn things or stuck them on the corresponding pages of the script. What you really need to do is learn how to type. Then you wouldn’t be dependent on other people. He reached for the phone to call his assistant and then remembered it was Rachel. Crap. I can’t call her. Mick exhaled, plucked a couple of Post-its from his desk. He flipped through the screenplay to find the scenes he’d made the notes about. He would transcribe them in the margins. If he ran out of space, he could use the backs of the pages. He was able to figure out what scene the top Post-it was about and stick it on the appropriate page. The next two Post-its were a lost cause. His handwriting was messy on the best of days. In the dead of night it was damn near indecipherable. Didn’t make fucking sense. “Dammit.” He balled the offending Post-it notes in his fist and attempted to chuck them against the wall, but they had no weight, no heft, and the scraps of yellow paper floated ineffectually through the air for all of a foot and then descended as delicately as rose petals to rest on the top of his desk. “If the damn agency had sent me a male assistant as I requested, I would have already dictated the notes and gone back to bed,” he muttered, glaring at the mess on his desk. The very fact he was sitting up in the middle of the night, attempting to work without success, avoiding calling Rachel because he didn’t want to disturb her rest irritated him. Mick exhaled. He plucked another fistful of Post-its off his desk and attempted to read the scribbled notes. “A final—what the hell is this word? A final . . . blankity-blank . . . before the elevator. Make sure to . . . something . . . red haze through window.” He slapped the Post-its down. “That’s it. I’m calling her.”

*   *   *

A shrill noise jerked Sarah to a seated position, the taste of panic in her mouth. “What the—” Ring . . . ring . . . Wrestling her way out from under the covers, she freed an arm and grabbed for her burner phone from the bedside table. “Yes?” she croaked, swiping the screen, her brain groggy from being wrenched out of a deep sleep. “Hello?”