Hollywood Secrets (26 page)

Allie shook her head. “I doubt it. Her actions strike me as pure opportunist.”

“
Takes one to know one,” I mumbled.

“
What?”

“
Nothing. Go on.”

“
Hmm.” She eyed me, but continued anyway. “See, I don’t think she’d just walk away from a payday like this. Hundred thousand would be a lot to someone like Carla. But,” she said, turning to Trace, “maybe she realized it wasn’t that much to guy like you. Maybe she decided to up the price.”

“
Sonofa-” Trace clenched his jaw with a click.

“
I say we go talk to this Carla chick,” Mrs. Rosenblatt piped up.

“
Great plan,” I said. “If we knew where she was.”

Allie perked up in her seat. “I thought you might want to know that.” She pulled a Post-it note from her pocket and slammed it down on the table top with triumph.

I leaned forward. An address was handwritten on the paper.

“
You’re kidding me, right?”

Allie’s smirk covered her entire face. “Nope. Behold, the address that Carla called the
Informer
office from. I did a reverse number look-up after she hung up.”

I stared at the blonde.

She grinned back.

“
And you doubted my investigative skills.” Then she blew another watermelon scented bubble, sucking it in with a loud pop.

I hated to admit it, but New Girl was actually coming in handy.

Trace grabbed the Post-it, staring at the address. “Gotcha, you bastard,” he said to the piece of paper. “Man, when I get my hands on you…”

Only he didn’t get to finish that threat, as his pocket began trilling the sounds of ELO. He pulled the phone out and hit the talk button.

“
What?”

Immediately, I could tell who was on the other end by the way Trace’s face drained of color. His eyes darted around our assembled group and, as confirmation, he mouthed the words, “bad guys.”

I crowded in close to him to hear the conversation through the phone.

“
Your twenty-four hours is up, Trace,” the male voice on the other end said.

I looked down at my own cell readout. 2:33 on the dot. These guys were punctual, I’d give them that.

“
Look, we just need a little more time,” Trace shot back.

“
More time?” the guy asked. “Or more incentive?”

I froze, the menacing tone behind his voice sending shivers down my spine at what sort of incentive he had in mind.

“
What do you mean?” Trace asked, the wary line of his eyebrows mirroring my thoughts exactly.

“
You have something that belongs to us.”

“
I told you I don’t have-” he started.

But the guy on the other end didn’t let him finish, instead cutting in with, “And now we have something that belongs to you.”

Uh oh.

“
What sort of something?” Trace asked, his voice tight.

Dread curled up in a little ball in my stomach, my breath in my throat as I listed to shuffling on the other end. Then a different voice altogether came on the line. One that, instead of laced with malice, was clearly laced with fear.

“
Trace?” came the shaking voice. I could hear tears hovering behind the words. It was scared. Female. And recognizable by anyone who hadn’t been living under a rock for the past two years.

Jamie Lee.

“
Oh my God,” Trace whispered, almost to himself. “Babe, are you okay?”

“
Trace, they said they’re going to kill me. They won’t let me go unless you give them some flash drive. Ohmigod, Trace, they’re going to kill me. Help!” she screamed as the voice faded into the background with more shuffling.

Trace’s jaw clenched shut, his eyes going dark and unreadable, his skin a deathly pale now as the man came back on the phone.

“
Midnight,” he said. “The parking lot behind the New York New York. You show up there with the flash drive in hand and you get your girl back. Otherwise, America’s sweetheart gets a bullet between her big blue eyes.”

Chapter Eighteen

The line went dead, but Trace still stood there, holding the phone to his ear, staring straight ahead, his jaw tensed, his expression the exact same “tortured hero” one he’d worn at the end of
Die Tough
.

“
Trace?” I whispered, almost afraid to break into his silent rage.

Nothing.

I cleared my throat again. “Uh, Trace?” I put a hand on his arm.

He glanced down at my hand, then back up at my face, seemingly snapping back to reality. “Jesus, Cam, they have Jamie Lee.”

Allie sucked in a breath at the other end of the table.

I immediately shot her a look. I swear, if she tried to print any of this…

“
The bad guys?” Mrs. Rosenblatt interjected.

I nodded.

“
This is all my fault,” Trace said. “God, if anything happens to her…”

“
It won’t,” I said. With measurably more conviction than I felt. “We’re going to get that flash drive.” I grabbed Allie’s post it and shoved it into Trace’s hand. “Let’s go talk to Carla.”

* * *

By the time we all piled back into the clown car and traveled the four blocks to a street behind the Wynn casino that housed the address on the Post-it, Trace had almost regained a natural skin color.

Almost. I still worried that Carla might lose a limb or two when he found her.

The house was a small stucco-coated affair that had seen one too many Vegas summers to be a solid color. One side was a pale mauve, the other a sun-faded pink. An awning provided shade for the front porch, the green stripes threadbare and, I suspected, crusty to the touch, fried from the relentless sun.

I knocked once on the screen door. No answer. I hit it again, then waited. Nada.

“
Maybe he’s not home?”

“
Maybe,” Trace said. Then before I could stop him, he had the screen open, and his leg cocked back. Then he kicked in the door, the faded wood splintering around the lock, the door flying in.

I felt my jaw drop open. “You just kicked the door down! I thought they only did that in movies.”

He sent me a wry smile.

“
Wow.” Allie’s eyes were wide with a mix of emotions – surprise, awe, lust. Mostly lust. “That was awesome. Where did you learn to do that?”

“
I do my own stunts,” Trace said, stepping through the doorway.

I followed a step behind and found myself standing in a small living room, a sad avocado green sofa sagging in front of a TV with a fifteen-inch screen and a thirty-five-inch casing. It was showing a muted
Price Is Right
across the screen. The top half of Drew Carey’s head was a green color that said this TV had seen better days. The place was trashed, clothes, shoes, newspapers and books covering every surface.

Beyond the living room was a kitchen, the white tiles cracked, the brown refrigerator covered in magnets and photos of people in various happy poses. A pile of dishes sat in the sink, a trio of aloe vera succulents sitting in the back window, wilting in the sunshine. Cupboards were opened, food all over the counter. To the right of the kitchen was a hallway, leading, I assumed, to the bedrooms.

“
Carla?” I called out.

Nothing.

“
Hello?”

“
I don’t think she’s here,” Allie surmised, genius that she was.

Trace walked to the kitchen, rummaging through the mess on the counters. “Someone’s been here,” he mused.

He was right. No one lived in this kind of mess. The place had been searched. One guess what the guys were looking for.

“
What was that?” Mrs. Rosenblatt froze, looking off into space.

“
What?” I didn’t hear anything.

“
That!”

At first I thought maybe she was having a psychic episode. Then, as I strained against the silence, I heard it too. A sound, faint, muffled. Coming from the hallway.

I dashed down the short hall to a single bedroom in the back of the bungalow.

Here the mess was even worse. A dresser was turned over, shoes covered the floor, clothes strewn across a double bed by the window. Cosmetics, wigs, and a couple empty pizza boxes littered the floor. A chair was upended in the corner, a mirror broken near the doorway.

I paused, stepping over the broken glass. “Hello?” I called.

The muffle piped up again in response, louder now. I followed the sound past the bed, to a closet on the wall beside it. I slid open the doors, shoving a pile of clothes out of the way.

Sitting on the floor, hands duct taped behind her, legs bound, a length of pantyhose tied around her mouth, sat Carla.

She mumbled and wiggled, looking like an oversized cocooned butterfly, her mini-skirt riding high on her thigh.

“
Mmm, hmmmm, pmmm.”

“
What?” I asked, leaning closer.

“
Mmm! Hmmm! Pmmm!”

I leaned in and removed the pantyhose.

“
Untie me, you twit!” she shouted.

I was tempted to put the pantyhose back in.

But, considering she was our one lead to finding the drive and freeing Jamie Lee, I fought the instinct, instead tugging at the tape binding Carla’s ankles.

“
She’s in here,” I called over my shoulder to the rest of the gang.

“
My hands. For the love of God, cut the tape. I’ve got a cramp in my legs so bad I may never dance again.”

I complied, though I wasn’t sure that loss would be altogether such a tragedy for the entertainment world.

Behind me, I could feel Trace burst into the room. Okay, I felt someone come in, but it wasn’t until he opened his mouth that I knew unmistakably that it was Trace.

“
You sonofa-“ He lunged for Clara.

Clara made an “Eeep” sound, squealing as she ducked to the right behind a shoe rack. Trace tripped on a pair of heels, landing half on Carla and half on me.

“
Uhn.” I felt the air rush out of me.

“
I’m gonna kill you,” Trace said, undaunted. He wiggled off me (and I swear my body did not respond to the contact in any way shape or form. Not even a little. Nope. Not me.) and lunged again at the writhing form in the closet.

Carla scrambled onto her hands and knees (well, her knees anyway. Her hands were still taped behind her back.), crawling out of the closet just as Trace got hold of her right ankle.

“
Help! Help,” she pleaded, kicking wildly. “He’s going to kill me!”

From the look on Trace’s face, I’d say that was a proper assessment of the situation.

Trace scrambled to his feet, pouncing on Carla and pulling her up to a standing position by the scruff of the neck. He only had an inch or two on the woman (man? I wasn’t sure what the PC pronoun was.), but his presence towered over hers as Carla whimpered like a dog about to be smacked on the nose for piddling on the carpet.

“
You tried to blackmail me,” Trace ground out through clenched teeth.

“
Sorry?” she squeaked. Only it sounded more like a question.

“
You will be,” he threatened.

Clearly he was pulling out his “tough guy” face, the one he’d used in
The Deceased
, that gangster movie with Jack Nicholson. Eyes dark, jaw square, it was menacing, saying he’d had a hard life in a hard neighborhood and it would be easy for him to crack now. Violence oozed from his every pore, and I wondered just how much of this was an act and how much was genuine.

“
What’s going on?” Mrs. Rosenblatt asked, shoving her frame into the doorway. Allie’s blonde head was visible behind her, jumping up and down to get a glimpse around the older woman’s frame.

“
Who are they?” Carla asked, her drawn in brows knitting together. (Okay, only one knitted. The other had smudged in the struggle and was hanging halfway down her cheek.)

“
Hey, you, we’ll ask the questions around here,” I said. What can I say? I’d watched
The Deceased
five times. I could do tough guy, too.

Ten minutes later we had Carla extricated from her duct tape womb, and the five of us were sitting in the living room, Carla shoved between Mrs. Rosenblatt and Allie on the sofa, Trace and I perched on the chairs across from them.

“
You stood me up,” Trace said. I could tell it was taking all he had not to rip Carla limb from limb. Even though Carla was not the one holding Jamie Lee captive, she was the one in front of him, and was going to be the recipient of all of his frustration and anger.

And, in his defense, she had tried to blackmail him.

“
I didn’t mean to!” she protested. “I was just leaving to meet you when they attacked me.”

“
They?” I asked.

Carla swallowed hard. She looked from left to right. But, considering Trace was still growling at her through his tough-guy face, any thought of escape she might have been entertaining, she kept to herself. “These two guys. I was just leaving, locking the front door after myself, when these two guys came up and shoved a gun at me. They forced me back in the house.”