Hot Target (23 page)

Who was sitting there with half of his sandwich still uneaten.

“Five minutes,” Cos told him. Damn it, he got mustard on page four. He wiped at it with his napkin, but it left a grease mark. Great. Way to make sure Jane knew that he was a total slob.

Phone to his ear, still listening to Beth, PJ went next door, to the 7-Eleven. Lindsey, the third member of the Troubleshooters Trash Removal Team, was sating her raspberry Slurpee jones. No doubt PJ’s intention was to hustle her along, too.

Shaking his head, Cosmo flipped to page five. The images in this scene skittered and changed, similar to the way a dream hopped randomly from one place to the next—and suddenly Jack was participating in a charge on a German pillbox. The fighting was violent, but the position was finally taken.

That was when Jack saw movement from the corner of his eye—a young German soldier. He fired before he realized the kid’s hands were up in surrender, and the man fell. And wasn’t that a total wartime nightmare—Jane got that right as well.

But for Jack, in his dream, it got even worse. He moved closer and to his horror saw that the German soldier was, in fact, Hal.

Jack dropped to his knees, trying to stanch the flow of Hal’s blood. But it was mortal—this wound he had inflicted upon the man that he loved. And it was too late. Blood flecked Hal’s lips and the light in his eyes faded as he reached up to touch Jack’s grimy face.

“You can’t save me,” he whispered as the battle once again raged around them.

At this point in the movie, Jack awakened with a gasp, in the dark, breathing hard, horrified—only to see Hal sleeping peacefully beside him.

The symbolism was nice. It was a good scene. And Janey had really managed to capture the nightmarish chaos of battle.

Janey. Damn. He was starting to think of her as Janey.

He was so totally screwed.

“Cos!” PJ was back, Lindsey on his heels. “Check this out! I’m in the
National Void.
In tomorrow’s paper, no less. The 7-Eleven must’ve gotten it early.”

He threw the tabloid—the
National Voice
—onto the table. Cos grabbed his can of Coke to keep it from getting knocked over and . . .

There was a picture, right on the front page, and indeed, PJ was in it, in the background, his sunglasses making him just another indistinguishable Man in Black. The focus, however, was on Jane, who was laughing, gazing into the eyes of an older man who was holding her close.

Very close. They might have been dancing. Or maybe they were just standing there. With his hands on her ass. With him nanoseconds from locking lips with her.

“This must’ve been taken last night,” PJ said.

Cosmo had to clear his throat, which didn’t quite erase the sensation of having been hit in the chest with a bowling ball. He somehow got his vocal cords working. “Yeah.” Jane was wearing that same little black dress.

“I mean, not that you can tell who it is, which is good, but I know it’s me.” PJ was just a little too thrilled by this. “Cool, huh?”

The caption read, “Party girl producer J. Mercedes Chadwick with old flame, director Victor Strauss.”

Old flame?
How old?

There was no article—except, wait. There was. It was just a paragraph in some kind of gossip column that ran along the side of the page.

From the horse’s mouth: Caught with his hands in the cookie jar on his first days back in town after a seven-month shoot in Spain, Victor Strauss was quoted as saying that his off-again, on-again relationship with hot property J. Mercedes Chadwick is “serious this time. I’d be a fool to let her get away again.” Might those be wedding bells we hear?

Lindsey was reading over Cosmo’s shoulder. “I didn’t realize Jane was dating Victor Strauss. I know she really wanted him to direct
American Hero,
but he wasn’t available. He’s cute—in kind of an older guy, nerdy, extremely rich and famous way.”

Cos had seen some pictures flying around the Net of himself and Jane at that press conference. In most of them, he’d looked pretty damn detached. There were a few that had been taken exactly when he’d grabbed her to keep her from falling, when he’d held her tightly against him and . . .

He knew there had been a moment when he’d reacted in a less than professional manner, because the cameras had caught it on film. There had been an expression of undisguised anger on his face.

Of course, in those photos it had read as desire. Which, come to think of it, may well have been in his eyes at that moment, too.

But only for a split second.

“He actually has an Oscar,” PJ told Lindsey. “That party we went to was at his house—it was on this little shelf right outside his bathroom, like it’s the first thing he wants to see after he takes a dump in the morning. It’s not as big as I thought, but it’s heavy.”

In this picture, however, Strauss’ undisguised hunger for Jane was not a fleeting, temporary emotion.

But okay. Even though a picture was said to be worth a thousand words, the message could well be misinterpreted or misunderstood. Maybe Jane and this famous director were discussing their next project.

PJ laughed. “I should know. I stood outside that door for about ten minutes while Jane and Strauss had a quickie.”

Lindsey laughed. “Are you kidding? In the bathroom, in the middle of a party? Go, Jane!”

Or maybe they weren’t talking business at all.

“They probably thought they were being discreet by not going into the bedroom, which would’ve raised some eyebrows,” PJ said. “His house wasn’t that big and there were people hanging out in there.”

“The alternative would’ve been him coming over to her place, which might be kind of weird for Jane, because there we all are, you know?” Lindsey said. “Day and night, nonstop.”

“I know it would make me self-conscious,” PJ said, “if I were her and I wanted to get it on with some rich guy who could probably further my career and give me a giant diamond—cha-ching!—as part of the deal.”

Cosmo couldn’t stand it any longer and he stood up. “Show a little respect.”

“What?” PJ said. “I’m not being disrespectful. I’m just saying. I’m sure Jane likes the man. It sure as hell seemed that way last night, if you know what I mean.”

His appetite was gone. Cos threw away the uneaten half of his sandwich as he started for his truck. He had to get out of here. Shit, he had to get out of L.A.

Lindsey poked PJ in the arm as they followed him into the parking lot. “Yeah, you’re just jealous. You thought you had a chance with her. What, did you really think that a woman who dates famous movie directors would be interested in dating a bodyguard? Dream on.”

“I’m not talking dating,” PJ said. “I’m talking doing the dance of looove, getting a little of that ten-minute bathroom action, although for sure I’d settle for five in the linen closet.” He paused. “I’m kidding—you know that, right? I don’t want some incriminating sound bite to work its way to Beth.”

“Because she knows you well enough to know that you’re kidding on the square,” Lindsey countered.

“What the hell does that mean?”

Cosmo was spared the rest of this freaking annoying discussion when his cell phone rang. The number was Tess Bailey’s—the Troubleshooters team’s XO. “Richter.”

She didn’t waste words. “Code red. There’s been an incident at the studio. Deck and Jane are hurt.”

The world went still around him. Except Lindsey was saying, “ . . . when you say you’re kidding, but you’re really not.”

“Code red—quiet!” he ordered them sharply, but Tess stopped talking, too. “No, Tess. Go.”

“We need you down here,” she told him. “Now. Wait— Wait, hold up . . .”

PJ and Lindsey were already scrambling into the truck. “They’ve had action at the studio,” Cos told them.

“No fucking way,” PJ said. “Casualties?”

“Deck and Jane. I don’t know details,” Cosmo reported as he slammed the truck in reverse and backed out of the parking space.

“Dear God,” Lindsey breathed.

Tess came back. “The ambulance is going to drive right inside through a garage bay—shit, why didn’t we know about that before? A freaking garage bay here on the soundstage, and we’ve been rushing her in through the door—”

“Where do you need us?” Cos interrupted her, his truck already in gear. First things first. But Christ, if they needed an ambulance over at the studio . . .

“The hospital,” Tess told him. “Cedars-Sinai. Meet us there. ER entrance. Keep that freaking door closed!” he heard her bellow as she cut the connection before giving him any further information.

“Which way to Cedars-Sinai hospital?” he asked, and PJ looked up from checking his sidearm and over at Lindsey, who’d lived in L.A. all of her life.

“Left, and then left again at the light,” she said, then hung on to the dashboard for dear life as Cos burned rubber leaving the parking lot.

As the ambulance pulled up to the hospital, Jane could see that Cosmo was already there. He looked grim—and grimy. Of course, he’d been cleaning out her garage.

The rest of the team was there, too. Well, except for Jules, whom they’d left back at the studio with his boss, Max Bhagat, and a crew of investigators from the local FBI office.

Amidst the chaos, Jane had exchanged somewhat absurd pleasantries with Max, the leader of one of the world’s most elite counterterrorist teams, while they waited for the ambulance. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Chadwick, I’m Max. No, don’t shake my hand, keep applying pressure. Hang on, don’t move—let me get this big chunk of glass out of your hair. . . .”

“Do they know I’m okay?” Jane asked Tess Bailey, the Troubleshooters’ answer to Wonder Woman, who was riding with her.

But Tess was on the phone again. She made a “hang on” gesture.

Of course, maybe Jane was getting ahead of herself. That worried look on Cosmo’s face could have been for Decker, who was right behind them, in the second ambulance.

Much to her relief, Deck had come to and was lucid. His teammates practically had to sit on him to keep him from leaping to his feet and running up into the catwalks to see if foul play was involved.

He had a zillion questions. Were the falling lights intentional? Was this a murder attempt by Mr. Insane-o, her crazy e-mailer?

Jane found it very hard to believe this had been anything but an accident.

A miraculously well-timed accident, too. Imagine if it had happened in the middle of filming the love scene—that would have been awful enough. But, God, if it had happened before they’d changed the schedule, with all those extras on the soundstage . . . As it was, with only a few people on set when the accident happened, they’d been unbelievably lucky.

Only two people injured, and both superficially.

Of course, head injuries were tricky. Jane would feel a whole lot better about Decker after he’d been examined by a doctor. Tess had thought he must’ve been hit by the end of an electrical cord as it whipped past. It had struck him hard enough to both temporarily shut out his lights and break the skin.

Which must’ve hurt like the devil.

Although, if the actual stage light had hit him, he would be beyond feeling pain. Jane still got wobbly-kneed when she thought about that.

“Sorry,” Tess said, closing her phone as the ambulance pulled to a stop.

“Make sure they get Deck inside first,” Jane told her.

“You know he would never agree to that,” Tess said. “You’ll be going in first. And quickly, too, as soon as the doors open.”

“But I’m not bleeding.” Jane lifted the makeshift bandage she was pressing against her arm and . . . Okay, not quite the truth. “I’m not the one with the possible acute subdural hematoma.”

Tess lifted her eyebrows. “I didn’t realize you had medical training.”

“I don’t. I used to write for a soap opera.”

Tess laughed. Then, “Here we go,” she said as the ambulance door opened. The entire security team surrounded Jane’s wheelchair as she was hustled toward the hospital.

Cosmo managed to look even more grim as he took in the blood on the front of her dress. “You all right?” he asked as he looked hard into her eyes, no doubt checking to see if she’d gone into shock or was harboring a secret head injury of her own.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m fine.”

He gave her that over-the-top-of-the-nonexistent-sunglasses look that she’d come to know so well, the one that said “Oh, really?” so clearly she could almost hear it, and she started to laugh. But, oh God, instead it came out sounding an awful lot like a sob.

She was not going to cry. J. Mercedes Chadwick did
not
cry in public.

“I was cut by flying glass,” she told him, told them all. It was easier to aim her words at Murphy or PJ than to face Cosmo’s concern. She somehow even managed to sound breezy. “I stopped applying pressure, but it was deeper than I thought. What a mess.”

But then they were inside, wheeling her into the hospital, past the admissions desk. The team fell back—Tess was the only one who stayed with her.

“Janey!” Robin appeared, out of breath. “I got a message on my cell saying you were here and— Holy crap, what happened?”

“We had an accident,” she said, looking back at Cosmo, who was standing there, by the desk, still watching her. “One of the bigger lights broke free from the pipes.”

“Oh, my God.”

Jane told her brother what had happened as the paramedics wheeled her around a corner into a small hospital room. As she left Cosmo behind. The paramedics made all these noises like they were going to lift her out of the chair and onto the hospital bed, and she interrupted her story to say, “My legs are fine. I can take it from here.”

“Glad to hear it, dear, but you look like you’ve lost some blood, so we’ll keep a hand on you while you get up there,” the cheerful ER nurse told her.

“Thank you,” Jane said as she scrambled onto the bed, pretending it had been easy. Jeez, this dress was totaled, she was light-headed, and her legs were still way too rubbery.

“Let’s take a look,” the nurse said, and as Jane pulled her bandage away, Robin turned green. Even when they were kids, a simple skinned knee could make him feel faint.

Tess, on the ball as always, pushed a chair behind him, and he practically fell into it.