Infamous by Suzanne Brockmann Page B

the tent. Which he won’t do until he’s ready.”
    Once she gave her approval, she could leave the painstaking and endless responsibility of checking the actor before each take in the very capable hands of the team from continuity.
    “Can’t you go in there?” A.J. asked.
    “I can,” Alison said, “but I don’t want to. Fewer mistakes happen when the actor comes onto the set. I don’t want to give approval and then have him walk out here with his iPod earphones hanging out of his pocket, or a pack of Tic Tacs in his hand.”
    “Does that happen often?” he asked.
    “More often than it should,” she said, and then realized that he was standing there in just a snug-fitting T-shirt and jeans, having changed out of his costume. She started to unbutton the shirt he’d lent her, unfastening the tails she’d tied together in front. “I should give this back to you.”
    “Oh,” he said. “No, I’m fine. I don’t need it—besides, it … looks good on you.”
    “Then you should go ahead without me,” Alison told him. “I don’t want to be responsible for putting the extra from Alaska into the hospital with sunstroke.”
    “When I was in the army, I spent nearly a year in the Middle East,” he told her. “Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq. First Gulf War,” he added, no doubt when he saw her trying to do the math. “Not this one.”
    “I saw your military ID,” she said. “But I had no idea. You’re lucky you didn’t get called back up.”
    “Yeah,” A.J. said. “I didn’t get called for … well, for a lot of different reasons. Bottom line, though, I know what real heat is, and I’m well aware of my limits and … I’m fine.”
    “Still,” she said, glancing over to the tent from which Trace Marcus still hadn’t emerged. Skip Smith had come outside for a cigarette, and he nodded as she met his gaze. She nodded, too, before pulling her attention back to A.J. “You’re probably dying for a shower.”
    “I’m happy to wait,” he said, and then deftly changed the subject so they didn’t have to stand here arguing about it, smart man that he was. “It must be a kick for you—to be here in Arizona, where it all happened. Jubilation and the Red Rock Saloon … It’s amazing that it’s all still standing.”
    “Yeah,” Alison said. “You know, Jubilation was abandoned for years, shortly after Silas Quinn died. The silver was played out, and it was a total ghost town.”
    “I didn’t know that,” he said.
    “Quinn’s family, the Sylvesters, still owned it,” she told him. “But they weren’t living here. There were a few squatters—hermits and madmen—who were trying to get the last of the silver from all the abandoned mines, and I think they kept the tourists and looters at bay. So when Neil Sylvester’s father came back in the 1950s, it was all just here, waiting for him. He checked to make sure the buildings weren’t going to fall down on him, did a few repairs, hired a manager to run the saloon, hired a couple of tour guides, built that motel, and boom, he was in business.”
    A.J. nodded, looking over at the old mine entrance. “Really?” he said.
    “Well, it wasn’t
much
of a business,” Alison conceded.
    And he looked slightly perturbed as he said, “No, I didn’t mean—” He cut himself off and started again. “I’m sure he did fine. I just, um … Did you know that this is the actual mine? The one that belonged to my great-grandfather.”
    “Gallagher’s Claim,” Alison said, nodding. “At least, that’s what we believe, with the inexact information and maps that we have.”
    “It’s the one,” A.J. said, definite. “But it didn’t happen this way. I mean, not the way that it’s written in this script. Jamie didn’t incite the confrontation with the miner. He didn’t force a drunk to draw, and he certainly didn’t throw any women and children out of their home.”
    “This scene,” Alison pointed out, “is from Silas Quinn’s