Easy Prey Read Free

God,” which was why everybody in town called him Reverend. Friar himself thought the nickname was based on his last name, as if the residents of Burnt River were universally fond of puns; nobody ever told him different.
    “You don’t think they’re getting too close to porno?” Lil now asked, under her breath to Lynn, as they watched Amnon Plain push their daughter around the set. “I don’t want any goddamned porno.” Lil had a thing about porno.
    “You know they’re not going to do any porno,” Lynn said placatingly. He was wearing black-on-black, with wraparound Blades.
    “They better not. That’ll kill you in a minute.” She refocused. “Look at Jax. I think he’s so good for her.”
    Jax—he had no last name—was peering around the set through the viewfinder of a Nikon F5. He thought of himself as a photographer, although he hadn’t yet taken many photographs. But how hard could it be? You look through the hole, you push the button. When Alie’e said, “You got anything?” Jax let the camera drop to his side, tipped his head, and they moved together against the hull of the barge. Jax took a plastic nose-drop bottle from his pocket and passed it to her. Alie’e unscrewed the top, slipped the end into a nostril, and squeezed the bottle once, twice. “Whoa, whoa,” Jax muttered. “Not too much, it’ll kill the eyes.” If you had eyes as green and large as Alie’e’s, you didn’t want them dilated.
    Amnon Plain was moving lights around as his assistants refilled the camera backs with Kodachrome. Alie’e would be wearing a torn pale-blue T-shirt that was meant to show just a hint of rouged nipple within the tear, and the film had to hold the subtlety of the pink-against-blue. With the Kodachrome, the flare of the torch behind her wouldn’t pop as it would on the Fuji, but that wasn’t so important in this shot.
    Plain was juggling the color equities in his mind when Alie’e said, past his head, “Hello, Jael.”
    Plain turned. His sister was standing in the gash in the barge’s hull, just inside the line of lights. “What do you want?” he snapped.
    Jael Corbeau—she’d changed her name with her mother, after their parents split up—was light where Plain was dark, blond against Plain’s deep brunette. Despite their coloring differences, they had faces that were astonishingly alike, wedge-shaped, edgy, big-eyed.
    Jael had once been a model herself; didn’t need the money, found the life boring, and moved on. Although the two of them looked alike, there was a singular difference in their faces. Three long pale lines slashed across Jael’s face: scars. She was a lovely woman to begin with, but the scars made her something else. Striking. Beautiful. Erotic. Exotic. Something.
    “I came to see Alie’e,” she said sullenly.
    “See her someplace else,” Plain said. “We’re trying to work here.”
    “Don’t give me a hard time, Plain.”
    “Get the fuck off my shoot,” Plain said, walking toward her. All other talk stopped, and Clark, the welder, stood up, uncertainly, and pushed his mask back. Plain’s voice vibrated with violence.
    From behind him, Alie’e said, “There’s a party at Silly’s tonight, nine o’clock.”
    Jael had taken a step back, away from her brother. There was no fear in her, but she didn’t doubt that Plain would physically throw her off the barge. He was bigger. “Silly’s at nine,” she said, and left.
     
 
PLAIN WATCHED HER go, watched until she was out of sight, turned back to Alie’e, took a breath, saw Clark hovering in the background like a sumo wrestler. He turned to the couture rep and said, “I’ve got your key shot.”
    The couture rep was a thin-faced German named Dieter Kopp. He had a stubble-cut skull, two-day beard, and gaunt, pale face; his cheeks were lightly pitted, as though he might once have suffered from smallpox. He was the only one not wearing jeans. Instead, he wore a pale gray Italian suit with an open-necked black