She stomped on my foot with one of her boots, crushing my toes. I yelped, then knocked her cap off her head and grabbed a handful of blonde locks.
Yes, I admit it, we were in an all-out catfight. If this had been MTV, we’d be in the money. Only the winner of this catfight didn’t get her own reality special and label of Celebrity Bitch Queen. The winner got to walk away alive. The loser…well, I didn’t even want to think about the loser. Mostly because as Mia shifted and I felt that gun barrel poking my ribs, I had a bad feeling it might be me.
I grabbed her wrist and focused everything I had on pointing that gun anywhere but at my person. I danced her backward toward the metal detector. She resisted, pulling the other way. We tugged and pulled back and forth, moving closer and closer. One more little inch and…
Beep, beep, beep!
The thing went off, echoing through the air and, I hoped, making little red lights dance on Bug-eyed Billy’s monitor at the security office.
Mia dropped her hands, momentarily stunned before she realized what had happened.
“You stupid bitch! Look what you did!”
I let go of her and took another step back, setting off the machine again.
“Stop it! Stop walking back and forth!”
She straight-armed the gun in front of her, and I froze.
“You ruined everything! This was the perfect episode, ” she screamed. If she’d sounded crazy before, she looked it now, her hair sticking out on one side, red scratches down the side of her face, and her eyes big and wide, burning with an emotion only Freud could identify.
“That’s it, ” she said, taking one giant stride closer. “I’ll have to go with the alternate ending.”
My breath stopped as she cocked the gun, the sickening click echoing through the air. Suddenly time stood still, each beat of my heart thumping in my chest like a drum, blood rushing in my ears, the scenery going fuzzy until all I could see was the barrel of Mia’s gun. Big chicken that I was, I closed my eyes and felt hot tears build as I braced myself for the sound of a bullet thundering through the chamber.
And then it happened. The gun went off.
I sucked in a breath…
Then slowly let it out. What do you know—I wasn’t dead. One more breath in and out. Yep, still living.
I flipped my eyes open.
And saw Mia lying on the pavement in front of me, her eyes wide and unseeing, a big red stain pooling around her blonde curls.
Bile rose in my throat, and I would have screamed if I’d been able to find my voice.
“I told you I’d catch up to you!”
I looked up.
Oh hell.
It hadn’t been Mia’s gun going off.
It was Isabel’s.
Black hair flapped behind her like a cape, long, fishnet-clad legs pumping toward me, gun pointed out in front of her as two more cracks filled the air, bullets pinging off the side of the metal detector that started beeping like a car alarm again.
Was I the only person in L.A. not packing?
“You shot her!” I yelled, ducking behind the metal detector.
“You’re next, bitch!”
I held my hands out in front of me to ward her off. “Look, Isabel, I didn’t have anything to do with your boyfriend…”
“Snake hates me, and it’s all your fault!” Two more shots rang out.
“I’m sure you’re better off without him.”
“What do you know, Blondie?” Another bullet ricocheted off the side of the metal detector.
“Have you thought about couples therapy? I saw this Dr. Phil episode the other day about rage in relationships…”
But, luckily, I didn’t have to go any further.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a blue streak race across the lot and go flying at Isabel like a linebacker, tackling her to the ground with a thud.
I watched, relief thudding through me, as Queen Latifah pinned Isabel beneath her considerable bulk, one hand on her walkie-talkie as she yelled, “I’ve got a two-fifteen here! Requesting backup! I repeat, a two-fifteen!”
Chapter 20
Five security golf carts surrounded the scene, dozens of uniformed officers and security personnel wrapping bright yellow crime-scene tape around the dark red puddle staining the asphalt. Three huge spotlights, courtesy of the lighting department, shone enough wattage down on the scene to make it feel like noon instead of midnight. And me, sitting on the edge of the medic’s van, wrapped in an ugly green blanket, serious amounts of mascara streaked down my cheeks as I watched the medical examiner wheel Mia’s lifeless body away.
After the studio security guards had swarmed from every direction toward Isabel’s kicking and screaming body, the rest of the evening had kind of blurred together. Isabel had been handcuffed and dragged away by three security guards, shouting obscenities the whole way. A medic had arrived on scene and scooped my crumpled, crying self off the ground and into a van, where he’d examined me head to toe and pronounced a slight case of shock. (Understatement alert.) Then the LAPD had arrived in full force, followed closely by the media.
I searched the flashbulbs and camera crews for a glimpse of Felix. True to my word, he’d been the first call I’d made once security had arrived on the scene. He’d been so excited about the story, he hadn’t even cursed at me (much) for taking his car. Instead, he’d yelled something about evening editions and calling a cab. But if he were here now, he was lost in the crowd of paparazzi.
I did, however, spy Detective Prune Face making his way onto the scene, along with two other plainclothes detectives wearing gun bulges and grim expressions on their faces. No sign of Ramirez.
I wasn’t quite sure whether that made me glad or not. On the one hand, the thought of his big arms around me was comforting enough to downgrade my shivers from a 7.2 to mild aftershocks. On the other, I could only imagine the lecture I’d be getting once he saw the outcome of harebrained scheme number three thousand gone awry. If, that is, he was still even speaking to me.
“Maddie!” I looked up to see Dana rushing toward me, her fake blonde locks flapping behind her. A uniform stopped her at the crime-scene tape, but after a couple of nods from Prune Face, he let her through.
“Ohmigoooooood! Are you okaaaaaay?” Dana grabbed me in a rib-crusher hug.
“Ouch.”
“Oh, sorry.” She stepped back. “What happened to your hair?”
I cringed, gingerly lifting a hand to my head. “Mia ripped out a chunk. It’s bad, isn’t it?”
Dana was such a good friend, she didn’t even answer that. “God, I’m so glad you’re okay!” she said instead, diving in for another hug. “I was so worried about you. I waited and waited in the trailer, but no one showed up. And I got totally bored, so I, like, booted up Mia’s computer to surf YouTube some more. And guess what I found? Letters, Maddie. Just like the ones she said she’d been getting. Know what I think? I think maybe Mia’s been writing them all along.”
Does my friend have good timing or what?
“Anyway, ” she continued, “I peeked my head out the door to tell you, but you were, like, totally gone. I was so totally worried about you!”
She gave me another rib crusher. But, honestly, this time I didn’t even mind.
“Uh-oh.” Dana stepped back.
“Uh-oh?”
“Trouble at three o’clock.”
I turned my head to the left.
“No, three o’clock.” Dana grabbed my chin and tilted my head right.
Detective Prune Face was talking with the latest plainclothes to appear on the set. He was dressed in worn-in-the-right-places jeans, a muscle-hugging T-shirt, and wore a day-old growth of stubble on his dimpled chin, along with a tired expression that said he’d been out chasing down one errant blonde all night.
Ramirez looked up and caught my eye, his jaw going tense.
I gulped. Uh-oh.
“Um, I’ll just be over here if you need me…”Dana trailed off, wisely giving Bad
Cop a wide berth as he made a beeline toward the medic van. If my legs weren’t still in a jelly state, I might have joined her. As it was, I just hugged my green blanket a little tighter as his imposing form stopped in front of me.
“I’m so, so sorry, ” I squeaked out, my voice doing the caught-coloring-on-the-walls thing. “I so didn’t mean for this to happen; I was just going to call security, that’s all. And I’m so, so sorry about ditching Officer Mustache, but Dana was here all alone and she’s my best friend and she looked so much like Mia, and then there was another letter, and I was sure he was going after her again, only the he turned out to be the she that he was going after and—”
But I didn’t get any further. Ramirez leaned in and covered my lips with his. Roughly. Possessively. His hands grabbing my shoulders, pulling me to him with a fierceness I’d seen only in Cary Grant movies.
By the time he came up for air, my legs weren’t the only part of me turning to jelly.
“Oh.” I sighed.
Ramirez looked down at me, his eyes dark, a frown hovering over his brows. “You’re going to be the death of me, you know that, right?” he rasped out.
“I’m so amazingly sorry. For everything. But, get this—Mia was the one writing the letters all along!”
“I know.”
I cocked my head to the side. “You know?”
Ramirez nodded. “I just came from the crime lab, where SID has been analyzing the envelopes Mia’s letters arrived in. The only DNA found in the saliva on the seal was a match of the sample we took from Mia’s lipstick.”
“So you already knew that Mia was the killer?”
“We had enough to question her as a suspect.” He glanced at the red stain on the asphalt. “At least, that would have been our next step.”
“I’m so, so sorry, ” I apologized again. “If it’s any consolation, she totally confessed to me before Isabel shot her.” I paused. “Hey, how did Isabel get on the lot, anyway?”
Ramirez scrubbed a hand over his face, as if the evening had taken more out of him than he was willing to admit. “Apparently she stole a stunt car they were going to use for a chase scene in that new police drama. She hijacked the driver outside the studio, and security let her drive the damn thing right onto the lot.” He paused, narrowing his eyes at me. “Apparently security doesn’t check credentials as closely as they should, Fe-lay.”
I bit my lip. “Sorry about that. Seriously, mega sorry. And you have every right to be angry.”
He shook his head at me. “Angry? Jesus, Maddie, I’ve been worried sick. I’ve been all over L.A. County looking for you. Do you have any idea how scared I was that something had happened to you? That Isabel had tracked you down?”
My heart clenched in my chest. “You were worried?”
“Of course I was worried. Dammit, Maddie, I don’t know how you do it, but you’re a walking time bomb. You get taken hostage, receive death threats, get your place ransacked, your car rammed into, appear in Internet porn…”
“Oh, you heard about that, huh?” I felt myself go red.
Ramirez raised an eyebrow at me, but continued. “…impersonate a member of the press, sneak onto studio property, and manage to get yourself attacked by not one, but two killers in one night.”
“You forgot the grand theft auto, ” I mumbled, remembering Felix’s multiple messages.
Ramirez raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“Uh…”
But luckily I didn’t have to answer as he raised two hands in front of him. “Wait. Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
Thank God. Because I so didn’t want to tell him.
“All I want to know right now, ” Ramirez continued as he took a step closer, “is that you’re all right.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he put an index finger over my lips. “Don’t talk. Just nod.”
I shut my mouth. And nodded.
“And that you’re done chasing killers and pissing off junkies?”
I nodded again.
“And that I won’t be getting any more calls on my police scanner that my girlfriend has just suffered an attempted murder.”
I paused. Then nodded slowly.
“And, ” he said, leaning in so close that his body pressed against mine, “that you’re coming home with me.”
Heat pooled south of my belly button and I did a long, low shiver.
And nodded.
“Nurse Nan, please tell me it isn’t true!”
“I’m afraid so, Chad. We did everything we could to save her, but Ashley…she died on the table.”
“No!”
“I’m so sorry. But after losing the baby, well, she just wasn’t strong enough. She knew this radical new womb transplant surgery was risky. I’m sorry, Chad; there was nothing we could do.”
“I…I can’t believe it. I don’t know how I’ll ever go on without her. She was my entire life.”
“I know it’s hard, Chad, but we have to be strong.”
“Hold me, Nurse Nan!”
Dana and I watched as Nurse Nan and Chad fell into an embrace that even the casual watcher could see was leading to a June-December romance for sweeps week.
“He is so freaking hot.” Dana popped a pretzel (fatfree, salt-free, and made with organic rice flour, of course) in her mouth and crunched down hard.
“I can’t believe how easily they wrote Ashley out of the story. You think they’ll bring in a new actress?”
Neither of us had gone back to the set after my late-night encounter with Mia. Dana had been let go because with Mia gone, they obviously didn’t need a lookalike for her anymore. Steinman had asked me to return as wardrobe assistant, but the moment I’d gotten home I’d had about a hundred messages on my machine. In between the usual newspapers calling for a story there had been Tot Trots saying I had, in fact, gotten the My Little Pony contract. But what had really put me over the edge was the call from a trendy Beverly Hills boutique saying customers had come in looking for the “High Heels Seduction” shoe, and where could they order a few dozen? Okay, so infamy may just have an upside after all. I was still a far cry from Milan, but, thanks to Jasmine, having a fall line of my own wasn’t completely outside of reality.
Dana shrugged. “I dunno. But if they are, my agent had so better get me an audition. I kinda miss that set.”
“Seriously?” I asked around a mouthful of pretzel (full fat, extra salt, and chocolate dipped—what can I say, old habits die hard).
Dana nodded and sighed, her eyes doing a wistful, faraway thing. “Anyway, what are you up to tonight?”
I grinned. “Ramirez is coming over.”
She raised an eyebrow. “More makeup sex? What are you two, rabbits?”
“I wish. Actually, I promised Mom that I’d come over for dinner. Ramirez agreed to be a buffer.”
“Oh. Bummer.”
“But…if I’m lucky, he might sleep over after.”
Dana grinned. “Niiiiice.”
“And I promise I’ll give you all the juicy details tomorrow. I know how you sexually sober gals live vicariously.”
Dana’s grin faded. “Oh. Right. Um, about that…”
“Yes?”
She chewed at her lower lip. “I, uh, well, I kinda have a confession to make.”
I smirked. “I thought so. Spill it, sister. Who’s the new guy?”
Dana glanced at the TV screen, where Chad and Nurse Nan were still grabbing each other like teenagers. “Um, well, you remember how nice Ricky was about letting me borrow his car, and how sweet that whole monogamy thing was…?”
“No. Way. You’re dating Chad?”
Dana nodded. “I’m so sorry, Maddie. It just kind of happened. I was helping him with his lines, and next thing I know we’re in his bedroom and my panties are across the room. I wanted to tell you, but you seemed so proud of me over the whole SA thing. I just felt like I was letting you down. Honestly, I haven’t seen Therapist Max in over a week. And I gave my chip back. I guess I�
�m just not a celibacy kind of girl. Think you can forgive me?”
“Are you kidding? You’re dating one of People magazine’s sexiest men alive! You go, girl.”
“Aw, thanks, Mads.”
“Just promise me one thing.”
“Anything.”
“If he asks you to go to the Emmys with him, you have to sneak me into the after-parties.”
Dana grinned. “Done.”
“Nurse Nan, come quickly.”
Dana and I turned our attention back to the screen, where a man in a white coat was hailing Nurse Nan from down the hospital corridor.
“What is it, Doctor?”
“It’s Mr. Culver.”
“Ashley’s husband? What’s happened to him?”
“He…he’s waking up from his coma!”
Two hours later I was popping one last chocolate-covered pretzel in my mouth as I took a final turn in front of the mirror. The short, black DKNY dress I’d picked out at the mall earlier was a perfect complement to my three-inch-high, strappy emerald slingbacks. It was cut low in the front, high on the thigh, and draped like silk with half the wrinkles. As a concession to the faint purple marks still gracing my neck, I slipped a loosely knotted emerald scarf around my throat and topped it all off with a pair of dangling silver earrings.
I was just adding a swipe of Raspberry Perfection when I heard a knock at the door.
“Coming, ” I called, capping my lip gloss and crossing my studio in three quick strides.
I peeked through the hole and got that familiar rush in my belly as two chocolate brown eyes peered back at me above a growth of sexy day-old stubble.
Grinning like an idiot I undid the security chain and opened the door to let him in.
Ramirez hovered in the doorway, leaning his broad shoulders against the frame. He crossed his arms over his chest, that black panther peeking out beneath the sleeve of his shirt as it strained against his larger-than-life biceps. His tongue darted out to lick his lower lip as he gave me a slow up-and-down and did that low growl thing in the back of his throat.
“You like?” I asked, doing a slow turn for him.
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