Finding Stefanie Read Free

he’d fought to hide it, crept out, and crawled over him. “Don’t you know I’ll find you?” Old, rancid fear prickled Lincoln’s skin; he was ten years old again, skinny and weak.
    He’d escaped that life. And never looked back.
    He grabbed a towel and brought it to his sticky forehead before he realized he’d be wiping off his makeup. His hand twitched again, and he dropped the towel, grabbing his wrist, holding it still. Pinpricks of a limb just emerging from sleep encased his hand and he tried to shake them away.
    Nothing.
    Something had to be wrong with him. Dreadfully wrong. To make matters worse, today he’d had to pause, blink, and fight to scrape up the words he’d memorized last night. His short-term memory had never been stellar, but recently it lobbied to expose him.
    “Lewis, I’m going to find you.”
    Banging at the door made him jump.
    He opened it, half expecting to see Elise in all her diva glory. She’d been feeding the press juicy nontruths about their so-called torrid backstage relationship and doing her best to make them come true over the past three months. And he would have to be an ice block not to notice her long, tanned legs and perfect curves. But ever since his body had begun to short-circuit on him, fear had driven from him any desire to let someone close enough to discover that he was . . . what?
    Lincoln hadn’t the faintest idea why he felt as if his body were walking through sludge, always a second or two behind his brain’s commands.
    Dex, bless him, stood at the door, his baseball hat backward, a slight sweat filming his forehead, to match the tenor of Lincoln’s pulse. “You okay?”
    “I’m fine,” Lincoln snapped.
    Thankfully, Dex didn’t take it personally. Round and rough around the edges, with hair that looked more like a string mop and enough padding around his waist to evidence his propensity to linger over dinner, usually brainstorming a scene, Dex personified a man who lived for films. He was always rethinking a scene, reshooting with new angles, always reviewing the dailies. He’d known Lincoln since he’d been a fresh-off-the-street extra, had plucked him out of the crowd, shined him up, and made him into a star. Lincoln would do just about anything for Dex—and did, most of the time. Including Dex’s crazy stunts that nearly got him killed.
    “You sure you’re okay?” Dex said, pushing his bulk into the trailer. “Were you out late last night?”
    Lincoln hadn’t been out late, with anyone, for months. No, last night he’d been locked in his trailer, trying to figure out how to rebuild his life should it all come crashing down around him. How to take care of Alyssa and how to not be a has-been at the age of thirty.
    No wonder he looked rough today, according to his makeup artist.
    “No,” Lincoln said, moving aside for Dex to sit on the leather sofa. “I was working on the script.”
    “I’d rather you get your rest. I have people to prompt you, you know. I don’t know why you push yourself so hard, Linc.”
    Because he wanted to be known as a professional in the industry? Because he needed this gig more than anyone really knew, and he had to have his game on each and every minute? Because he, better than anyone, knew that fate could turn on him?
    Lincoln stared out the window of his air-conditioned trailer atthe grips delivering messages and supplies to the various costumers and set designers. “You know why.”
    Dex was perhaps the only person who knew about his crimes and about the person Lincoln had left behind.
    “Listen, I don’t know what’s wrong, but you know you can tell me, huh?” Dex said.
    Tell Dex that sometimes, when Lincoln got up, the room spun and he found himself face-first on the carpet? Tell Dex that occasionally his vision cut out or got fuzzy around the edges? Tell Dex that the thought of doing his own stunt in the next scene—the one where he was supposed to bail out of a car before it launched off a pier into