"I know that much."

"Well, you’re selling a lot of albums right now, but you only make a small percentage from each one. Every show you put on, every firework blast you set off, is coming out of that percentage."

He looked mildly annoyed. "So we wait for the money to come back to us through the tour receipts and merch table. No band really makes their money on album sales. That’s why we have accountants, to keep the cash flowing."

"But that’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you," I said. "You’re spending so much that your tour will be lucky to break even. Look at this page, here."

Jax squinted at the columns of numbers. "What am I supposed to be looking at?"

"This means that right now, given how much you’ve brought in and how much has gone out . . ." I thought for a moment about how to best express the band’s financial situation. "You can think of your concert budget for today’s show as coming out of your album sales from next week. But if you keep going at this rate, soon, all of next week’s money will be spent. You’ll be spending more and more in advance, a month, then two—"

"And then we’re playing low-budget shows in dive bars just to avoid bankruptcy."

"Exactly."

He stared at the wall, seeming lost in thought for a moment. "Fine," he said at last. "We’ll cut the huge pyro scenes from ‘Glass Brick’ and ‘Find Your Way.’ Those songs are probably off the set list once we’ve got new material, anyway."

I looked down at my detailed budgets. The cuts would reduce the pyro spending by forty percent, which put The Hitchcocks one step closer to solvency and me one step closer to a huge bonus. "Thanks," I said. "This is a step in the right direction."

He let out a low grunt that I assumed meant approval, or something close to it. I got the feeling from his reaction that I’d be better off not pushing him into cutting more—at least, not yet. I also knew that once I got the momentum moving in the right direction, the rest of the cuts would get easier.

"So we’re done?" he asked. "Because I have a movie I’d really like to get back to. I’ve held up my end of the bargain."

Well, that’s that. I was surprised at how smoothly it had gone, though now I’d have to watch the rest of the movie with him. I hoped there wasn’t much left. "Don’t bother starting it over again. I’ll figure it out."

He pressed the remote, and the movie started scrambling until he pressed it again and opening credits started playing. "I’m not having you start a Hitchcock movie halfway through. It wouldn’t make any sense."

I felt a sudden twinge from him ignoring what I’d said. But still, I felt oddly curious about watching his favorite movie. Since I’d gotten Jax to agree to cuts I thought I’d have to fight for, I was even a little bit ahead of schedule. It could be worse—at least the mattress is comfortable.

Within a few minutes, I could see why he wanted to start over. It wouldn’t have made any sense if I’d missed the first part. The two strangers on a train from the title each had someone they wanted dead. The problem was, the first suspects for any murder are the people closest to the victim—neither of them could get away with committing the murders they wanted.

But, one of them reasoned, what if two people who didn’t know each other at all traded murders? Then, the victim’s attacker would be totally unknown to them, and the person who actually arranged the murder could also arrange to be somewhere with witnesses at the time of the murder’s commission. The perfect alibi meant it was the perfect crime.

At least, that was the plan. Since it was a movie, everything started to go wrong right away: an alibi didn’t work, one of the men had a flashback and almost killed a second person, and the police were always hot on their heels. I was surprised to find such an old movie so entertaining.

"You’re pretty clever," Jax said. "Think you could pull it off?"

I blinked and looked at him curiously. "I’m sorry, what?"

"The murder plot."

I shrugged nonchalantly. "Yeah, sure, easy."

His scarred eyebrow shot up. "Easy?"

"They’d never even find a body."

"Okay . . ." he said with uncertainty.

I was amused by his reaction. I put my hands behind my neck and laid flat on the bed, getting comfortable. "It’s not that hard," I said coolly. "You start by destroying identity evidence for the victim. Use a hammer on the teeth and the face, torch the fingerprints. Crush as much skeleton as possible, cut the body up into small parts and put the parts in plastic bags full of bleach, bury them in the middle of the night in graves as deep as possible, and clean up with more bleach. Or just use sulfuric acid to dissolve them so you can trickle them down the drain a bit at a time."

His nose wrinkled. "Jesus. Where the hell did you learn all that?"

"Nowhere that crazy. TV shows and a little bored Googling . . ."

He shook his head. "I’ve got to be more careful about pissing you off. I didn’t realize the guy you maced got off easy."

"Yeah, I bet you didn’t know you dodged a bullet when you gave me my bikini top back," I said, an over-the-top gruff look on my face. "I already had a plan to make sure they’d never find you."

He smirked. "And you say that I lay the dark and dangerous act on thick."

I couldn’t help but smile back—television show knowledge aside, I didn’t make a very convincing tough guy, and I knew it. "So how about you? Think you could get away with murder?"

"Sure," he said, laying down next to me. I suddenly felt like we were on a picnic blanket, watching the stars—except that there was only the fabric-covered ceiling above us. "Know where I can find a willing stranger?"

"Well, my next couple of weeks are booked up, but I can probably squeeze in a quick kill after that," I deadpanned. "But too bad we’re not strangers anymore."

"Getting to know one another isn’t so bad. I’m learning that you’re not against watching horror films."

I chuckled. I thought about some of the worst horror movies I’d sat through with my exes. "Actually, I usually hate them."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, a lot of them are just about chopping people up. Plus, if you’re a woman who isn’t a virgin, good luck making it to the end of the movie. Gives me nightmares." I shuddered, imagining what would happen to me if I was put into one of those movies.

Jax put his arms behind his head. "You know, Hitchcock said he wrote his films so he could get rid of his nightmares."

"Then he’s kind of a jerk, right? He makes movies to get rid of his nightmares, but then he ends up giving them to everyone else."

He laughed. "Not quite. In nightmares, bad things happen for no reason. It’s the way we feel when we’re out of control in our lives, like we can’t do anything."

I looked toward the screen. "And like everything that could go wrong is about to."

"Right. But Hitchcock beats other horror directors by turning a nightmare into a fantasy, all by giving order to it. When you’re done watching, his characters make sense."