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show.”
    Then, she took off at a slow jog, mentally running down her pre-performance checklist. “Everybody ready?” she asked, joining the group assembled at the picnic table behind the Sentinel Pass Post Office. A quick head count told her someone was missing. “Where’s Zane?”
    “We don’t know,” Eerik answered. “He left on his bike before I finished passing out the Team Shockwave fliers and hasn’t come back.”
    Winding mountain roads, a Harley and a speed demon. What could possibly happen?
    She fished out her cell phone. No messages. “Crap,” she muttered. “If he found some bar and forgot about the show, I’m going to throttle him.” She replaced the phone in her knapsack and pulled out the gray-blue shirt she’d borrowed from wardrobe that morning. She quickly changed shirts. “What about J.T.? Anybody seen him?”
    “Yeah, he’s around here someplace. Probably too ashamed to show his face.”
    Jessie looked at Marsh—by far the most stable, easygoing member of the Shockwave team. “Why?”
    “He said he got drunk last night and forgot to charge his battery. He used the spare for the shoot this morning. Sorry, Jess, I know you were counting on the footage.”
    The producers of Kamikaze had asked her to submit a new audition tape. Apparently, they’d seen the YouTube video of her rollover and wanted proof that she was healthy enough to participate. With any luck, Remy would get sufficient footage to send with her formal application.
    “So, no Zane means one of you gets to be my hero. Drag J.T. into position and make this happen. No excuses,” she said, quickly buttoning the ugly shirt. She swept her hair into a loose ponytail and pulled on a regulation U.S. Postal Service employee cap.
    She did a couple of deep stretches while she ran over the story line in her mind: ordinary postal worker trudging back to work gets accosted by three—no, two—hoodlums. Movie-star hero-type comes to her rescue. After a brief skirmish, good guy realizes he can’t fight them all and urges the woman to run for it.
    The Freerunning that followed would pack its usual visual punch, employing existing structures, as well as a couple of well-placed obstacles—her car, for one. The tower at the end of the street was the ultimate challenge. Jessie and her hero would make it to the top; the bad guys would fail spectacularly.
    “Cue the music,” Jessie hollered. “Stay safe, everybody.”
    There came a point in any stunt where backing out was not an option. And for Jessie, forward momentum was her personal mantra. Keep moving. Keep doing. Keep going. And maybe, just maybe, the demons won’t catch up.
    Then she picked up her fake mailbag and marched to the yellow tape. “And go,” she called out.
    Once she rounded the corner, she let instinct take over.
    Fear—the thing every smart stunt person knows to expect and respect—made her senses sharpen. She and the others weren’t actors per se with marks to hit and set lines to say. This was mostly ad lib, although the five of them had worked together often enough to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
    Marsh and Eerik would play the bullies, she gathered, when the two entered Main Street near the corner coffee shop. Please let that mean Zane is back, she prayed.
    The crowd parted to let them through. Low-riding pants, sloppy sweatshirts, hats worn off to the side, they looked like gang members out for trouble.
    Jessie walked fast to reach the first mark they’d sketched out the day before. She ignored them completely, although she never completely lost sight of them in her peripheral vision.
    “Yo, postal beyotch,” Marsh called. “Whatcha got in your bag?”
    He did an impressive little hop, twirl and backflip to land directly in her path. The crowd let out a small cry of surprise. Eerik ran straight at the brick wall of the building to her right and continued up the side then dropped backward to land on his feet, eliciting applause.
    Not to be