Lenny Roth answered on the first ring. "Talk to me."
"The network's accelerating. I need the indie option to move faster."
"Adrian." A pause. Papers shuffling. "Even if I could mobilize tomorrow, we're looking at weeks. Legal clearances alone—"
"I don't have weeks. I might not have days."
"Then you need to slow them down. Buy time on their end." His voice sharpened. "You have the emails, right? The pressure tactics?"
"All of it."
"Then you have leverage. The question is whether you're willing to use it."
I thought about Pickle standing in that parking lot.
"I'm willing."
"Good. Call me when you know what kind of war you're fighting."
The line went dead.
I called Sarah Vance next. She listened for three minutes, then said, "The footage belongs to them. Legally, you're fucked. But if you can make releasing it more expensive than burying it—" A pause. "That's your only play. Make them scared of you."
Two more calls. One voicemail. One polite rejection.
By eleven, I'd exhausted my immediate options.
I crossed back to the loading dock and pressed my face to the window again.
The parking lot was nearly empty.
The pickup truck was still there, slowly rusting, but the space beside it where Pickle had been standing was vacant. No figure. No crossed arms. No one waiting.
He'd gone home.
I didn't know when. Didn't know if he'd waited an hour or three, and whether he'd finally given up or just gotten too cold.
That was what love looked like from the wrong side of the glass. Someone standing in the cold for you, while you're not there to see when they stop.
I pictured Pickle walking the twelve blocks to his apartment—shoulders hunched, hands shoved in his pockets, that game-day shirt freezing against his skin.
I should have brought him a jacket. That was the absurd thought that surfaced. I'd spent two weeks falling for him, and I'd let him walk home in the cold because I was too busy making phone calls to make sure he didn't freeze.
There was nothing I could do about the jacket now. Nothing I could do about any of it until I had something real to offer.
I pushed through the loading dock door and walked to my car.
My hotel room looked like a crime scene by 1 a.m.
Papers across every surface. Contract clauses highlighted in three colors. A legal pad covered in handwriting that had devolved from neat to frantic around the fourth cup of coffee. The mini-fridge hummed its irritating frequency, and I'd started to find it almost comforting. Stockholm syndrome for appliances.
I opened the email folder I'd been avoiding.
The subject lines told the story:Re: Thunder Bay footage - direction notes. Pickle clips - engagement potential. URGENT: More personality content needed.
I clicked through them. Read the words I'd been pretending I could outmaneuver.
The hockey player with the fixations—Pickle—he's gold. Focus groups responded strongly to the napkin clip. Can you get more like that? Moments where he's unaware of the camera.
