Chapter 14: The Grips

Jasper's POV

The loft was in a converted brush factory in Greenpoint, up four flights with a freight elevator that never worked.

I had carried a hundred lamp stands up those stairs.

Isla climbed them behind me with her bag over her shoulder and said nothing until the third landing.

"You've gone quiet," she said.

"I'm counting."

"Counting what?"

"Steps. I'm trying not to count the days."

It was Saturday, with six days to the finale.

I pushed the steel door, and the sound hit me first.

Thirty people were working in a room built for four.

A grip on a ladder was rigging a light over the kitchen counter.

Two electricians argued about a cable.

A woman with a clipboard I had hired myself was holding a tape measure against a wall.

For one second nobody looked up.

Then the grip on the ladder said, "Jas?"

He came down the rungs so fast that he missed the last two.

"It's Jas!"

The room stopped.

Someone dropped a coil of cable.

The next thing I knew a man with huge forearms had hold of me in a hug that took my feet off the floor, and I was laughing, and then I wasn't.

"Where did you go?" he said into my shoulder. "Where did you go, man? They told us you quit."

"I know."

"They said you took the money and left."

"What money?"

"Exactly," said the woman with the clipboard.

She had come up beside me, and she punched my arm hard enough to hurt.

"Dennis told the whole crew you sold your share to the sponsor. I said you'd never. I said you wouldn't sell a lens cap."

"I didn't sell anything."

"Then why did we get a boy in a headset?"

Everyone laughed, and I looked around the room.

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