Read 3 Malled to Death for Free Online

deserved a lot of respect. I wondered if whoever it was had trained by planning an army invasion. Come to think of it, orchestrating a military invasion was probably easier because there’d be fewer egos involved.
    I saw Ethan apparently discussing something in the script with Van, the director, and he waved. I gave him a cool nod meant to remind him that we didn’t freaking know each other. For a man who pretended for a living, he had a lot of trouble pretending we’d never met. He flashed his famous smile at me, totally unrepentant, and three extras behind me—women, of course—sighed in unison. I wondered if Mom was around. She frequently showed up on Ethan’s sets for lunch or to play a game of gin with him in his trailer between shots. She told me it never hurt to remind the starlets and extras and script girls that he was a married man.
    “There are drawbacks to being married to a sex symbol, EJ,” she’d told me once. She reflected for a moment. “Of course, there are undeniable benefits, too.” Her veiled smile left me in no doubt of her meaning and I put my hands over my ears.
    Now, I thought about how cozy Ethan had seemed with Zoë and wondered if she was one of the “drawbacks” Mom had referred to. The filming kicked off at five after seven, with Anya Vale the center of the action. Her character, a mobster’s mistress about to turn state’s evidence against her lover and his criminal associates, would be chased through the mall by a contract killer intent on shooting her. The scene included stuntmen and women pushed down escalators, bullets exploding plate glass windows, tumbling mannequins, and a body falling from a second-level bridge to the floor below. It was going to require several days’ filming and lots of special effects and stunt coordination. If I’d written the script, the attractive but underestimated mall cop would have saved Anya Vale’s character, running over the hit man with her Segway, or drowning him in the fountain, but the scriptwriters, in their clichéd way, had provided a police officer—Ethan’s character—to rescue her.
    Assistants in tee shirts emblazoned with the movie’s title started clearing the set, and I rode the elevator to the top level and joined Joel where he stood at the railing, watching the action below. Today’s filming was mostly taking place on and near the escalator. Someone yelled for quiet and a voice called, “Action!”
    The fake shoppers started “shopping” and a business-suited man in a fedora caught my eye. He was strolling almost directly beneath us and I leaned forward for a better look. A glimpse of white hair peeping beneath the hat convinced me. Grandpa Atherton! How had he wangled his way into the movie? I wondered uneasily if he was on an “op.”
    A moment’s consideration convinced me he couldn’t be. It probably tickled his fancy to worm his way into the movie. I doubted he was a paid extra; somehow, he’d slipped in without the casting people or other extras noticing. I bit back a grin as he pretended to window shop at the lingerie store, where a headless mannequin wore a particularly risqué red and black corset and panties. I wondered if the store’s owner had changed the display, hoping to get a little free advertising, or if the set designer had supplied the garments.
    “This is so exciting,” Joel whispered as Anya Vale ran into view from the far end of our level, sending hunted looks over her shoulder. She wore a designer suit that certainly hadn’t been purchased in this mall, and her hair streamed like a dark cloud behind her as she ran. “Did you know she went to Princeton?” Joel whispered. “I read about it in
FANtastic Movie Mag
. She studied geology and got discovered in a Bloomingdale’s in New York.
Random’s Redemption
year before last was her first big break.”
    I merely nodded, watching as the star started down the escalator, frantically pushing past the shoppers that clogged it. A shot rang