Free Ryan Lock 04.5: Lock & Load by Sean Black

 
     
     
    One
     
    WITH HIS HANDS tightening around her neck, choking off her air supply and leaving black shapes clouding her vision, Summer Clements was too damn scared to think about the irony of being strangled to death by her boyfriend. After all, this was precisely how their relationship had started. The difference was that the first time they had been acting.
       She had met Jason Durham on the set of a movie called Killing Dawn . Their first scene had called for their characters to have a blazing row. At the end of it, he strangled her to death. Although the scene would appear at the end of the movie, for scheduling reasons it had been their first time together on the set. The indie movie's low-budget hadn't allowed for any rehearsal time and Jason had only become available when a studio film he was due to shoot had fallen through at the last second due to his drinking and substance abuse problems. Now, six months later, with no crew standing around, or cameras rolling to capture the moment for posterity and no director to call cut, it was happening for real.
       The fingernails of Jason's right hand dug deep into her neck. He squeezed harder, pinning her against the wall. She felt a breeze tumbling in through the sliding glass doors of the beach house's lower deck but she was no longer sure whether the roar she heard in her ears came from the Pacific Ocean or the surge of her own blood.
       Jason stared at her, his pupils pin prick black against the widescreen backdrop of the Queen's necklace, the curve of coast that ran from Point Dume in the north, through Malibu and all way down to Rancho Palos Verdes in the south. Through the glass she saw the blinking red dots of airplanes taking off from LAX. She wished that she had been smart enough to listen to her friends' advice and jump on one of them. Instead, she had taken his word that he'd never lay a finger on her again, a promise that he'd broken twice.
     
    This time had started like the others, with a dumb argument about nothing. They had been out at a nightclub on the Sunset Strip – Jason trying his best to convince the town that he could still roll with young Hollywood, even though he was pushing fifty up a hill. Her saying hello to a young producer she had worked with a few years back had led to Jason punching the guy. They had been asked to leave.
       On the ride back to Malibu, he had fallen into a sullen silence. As she took the ramp onto the 10 freeway, his temper flared.
       "You wanted to screw him, right?"
       "Will you get a grip? I said 'hello' to the guy."
       He lapsed back into silence, which should have been warning enough. Back at the house, she had gone to get a drink from the wet bar.
       "Do you want one?" she asked him.
       "I'm still waiting for you to answer my question, Summer. Did you want to screw him?"
       She knew what was coming next. Her hand shook as she pulled a long-stemmed wine glass from one of the frosted glass bar cabinets and poured herself some Pinot Noir. That was one of the other habits she had picked up since hooking up with Jason – a bottle of wine a night habit to chase down the Ambien she took to get herself to sleep.
       "I'm not answering it because it's stupid. Okay, Jason? It's stupid. Too stupid to give you an answer." She took a slug of wine, thinking this was it. She had finally had enough. No amount of bended-knee apologies or flowers or heartfelt love letters would change it. "How many times, Jason?" she went on. "I'm with you, but I'm not going to be if you keep behaving like a jealous asshole."
       She could see him in the reflection of the bar cabinets as his eyebrows furrowed. "If I behave like this? We're not talking about me here. We're talking about you ."
       He was off on a tear now, his voice bouncing off the walls with that Australian accent she had thought was so cute when they had met and that now had the same effect on her as someone drawing their nails down a chalk