“You mean the shooting?”
She nodded. “Lisa’s there. Lisa Perry, Maggie’s friend.”
He grabbed the railing to steady himself. Lisa was there.
“Maggie just called to tell me. Pepper was supposed to attend as well, but she’s sick, so Lisa went by herself. A last hurrah before her movie comes out next week. They can’t get hold of her over the phone. She’s frantic.”
“It’s probably chaos there. Doesn’t mean she isn’t safe.” He spoke calmly, even as a rising sense of panic twisted his insides. “The lines are probably flooded with callers.” He knew that sounded lame, but he couldn’t think of what else to say. Between ambulances and cops and firefighters trying to find and care for the injured, who knew how long it would be until loved ones were notified?
Kara’s phone buzzed. She reached into the pocket of her skirt. “It’s Maggie.” She brought it to her ear. “Yes. Okay. Thank God.” When she hung up, she looked back at Rafael. “She’s safe. Jackson and Maggie are going up to get her.”
His legs weakened as relief coursed through him. “She wasn’t hurt?”
“No. A man helped her. An ex-cop. The woman next to her was killed and Lisa didn’t want to leave her. The cop carried her to safety.”
“I’m glad he was there.” Lisa seemed like someone who would stay with a dying stranger at the risk of her own peril. A brave soldier was buried beneath that angel face.
Thank God she was safe.
4
Lisa
Lisa sat under the awning of Maggie’s back patio with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Pepper, her nose still red from the cold that had kept her home the day of the concert, sat in the chair next to her. She hadn’t left Lisa’s side for two days. The temperature in Cliffside Bay hovered in the low eighties. Afternoon sun beat down on the yard. Lisa tightened the cotton throw blanket tighter around her shoulders. Despite this, she could not get warm.
Only forty-eight hours ago, thirty-two people had been brutally gunned down by a lunatic with an automatic rifle. Three hundred and four had been injured. Some clung to life with the aid of a machine or the prayers of their loved ones. Others were home with physical wounds that would heal in time. But what of the internal wounds? The memories of eight minutes of terror? Would those go away? She doubted it. Not only for those hurt, but for those who managed to escape. They would all relive it every time they closed their eyes.
According to the news, authorities knew little about the man who had climbed to the roof of the livestock exhibit and aimed his automatic rifle into a crowd of innocent concert attendees. They’d learned he was former military, divorced, and unemployed.
The air smelled of honeysuckle. Fat, drunk bees hopped from the vibrant flowers in pots and along the edges of the white stone patio. Her eyes burned. Everything was too bright. She couldn’t get a decent breath. Her bones ached. She wanted to shrink into nothingness—to no longer feel or smell or think or remember.
Maggie came out with Lily and put her in the baby swing that hung from the beam that supported the awning. Lily burbled happily and clapped her hands when her mother gave the swing a gentle push.
Two days ago, Lisa would be up and shoving Maggie aside so she could push Lily. She would inhale the scent of her hair with each backward swing. The yard would seem like heaven, not an assault to her senses.
How dare the bees suck nectar as if the world were not imploding from evil?
Maggie continued to push Lily. “Your phone’s been buzzing all morning, sweetie. We need to talk about what you want to do.”
“Your mom called like a dozen times.” Pepper’s smooth white hands fluttered in her lap.
“I told her you were doing all right,” Maggie said. “But she’s worried about you.”
“I don’t want to talk to her.” She knew how that conversation would go.
“Also, Sasha called while you were asleep,” Pepper said. “I told her you’d caught a terrible cold and you were sleeping late.”
Sasha was Lisa’s manager. The premier of Raven was in four days. She had to leave the sanctuary of Maggie’s home for Los Angeles.
“You didn’t tell her what happened?” Lisa asked.
“No, I would never do that when you asked me not to,” Pepper said.
“But we think Sasha should be told,” Maggie said. “She needs to know what’s going on with you.”
“No. I don’t want her to know. She’ll exploit it. Use it for publicity. Those people who died—” Her voice broke. She swallowed a sob. “They deserve better than someone like me taking the attention from them and their families.”
The victims’ families. She couldn’t stop thinking of them. The panic they must have felt when they saw the news. No one could predict a gunman would rain bullets from the sky. That was the whole thing. She realized that now. Life was chaos. There was no such thing as safety or predictability. Those ideas were for idiots. Like the idiot she had been two days ago. She’d been lulled into the idea that it was her time to shine. Her moment in the sun. But now she knew the sun was as evil as everything else.
“You’ve worked so hard for this.” Pepper tucked her shiny black hair behind her ears. “Remember how we used to daydream about walking the red carpet? Back when we lived on beans and rice?”
“It all seems dumb to me now. Thirty-two families are grieving, and I’m supposed to flounce down the red carpet in my fancy dress?” She hurled the words out her mouth like swords.
“Honey, it’s not like that,” Pepper said. “This is your job.”
“I know. I’m contracted to go to all these events, as well as the press tour. I have to go.” Now her words were dull, lifeless, all the venom vanished. Was she dead? She wrapped the blanket so tightly around her that she heard a dozen pieces of thread break. There would be hundreds of people outside the premiere. Strangers. One of them could have a gun. In less time than it took to make a cup of coffee, dozens could be dead.
Her friends exchanged glances, as if she couldn’t see them, as if she couldn’t read every nuanced flicker of their eyes. They were worried. They wished they could do something. Maggie, especially, because she was the caretaker. The responsible one. The friend Pepper called when she ended up in trouble, which was often. The one who held Lisa as she cried about her latest poor choice in men.
“I wish we could go with you,” Maggie said.
“You know we would if we could,” Pepper said.
Whenever any of the girls had needed a date, one of them would offer to be their plus-one. They’d attended weddings, funerals, art openings, parties, even bad theater together. In New York their loyalty had been vital to survival. There were so many people everywhere that Lisa had felt sure she’d be swept into a sinkhole if Pepper or Maggie hadn’t held on to her.
Being alone terrified her.
She’d always been this way. Even before she witnessed a bloodbath on a summer afternoon. She was a twin. Even in the womb, she’d had company.
“I can’t go,” Lisa said. “I have to stay here where I’m safe.” Her voice trembled. Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. “I’ll have to break my contract.”
“That’s not a good idea,” Pepper said.
“You can’t let him take this from you. Not after how hard you’ve worked,” Maggie said.
“What if we got someone to go with you?” Pepper said. “Like your brother?”
“David might be able to come,” Lisa said, as a sliver of hope slipped into her chest. “I’d feel safe with him.”
“He could fly out and meet you there,” Pepper said. “Sasha told me she has a suite booked for you at the Four Seasons.”
“Let’s call him,” Maggie said.
Lily clapped her hands at the hopeful lilt in her mother’s voice. “Phone.”
“Good idea, Lily.” Pepper jumped to her feet and came back with Lisa’s phone.
Lisa chose David Perry from her favorites list. He answered after a few rings. “Da, it’s
me,” she said.
“Hey, Boo. You doing okay?”
“About the same.” They didn’t need to say much for the other to know exactly what the other felt. He’d known something was wrong the day of the shooting. When she called him, he’d said, “Something happened. I could feel it. I’ve been pacing the floor, trying to get hold of you.”
Now she didn’t waste any time asking the question. “I wondered if you could come out here and do the movie thing with me. I know it’s hard because of the kids and work.” His baby girl, Laine, was a toddler. Oliver was almost four. That said, his wife was a stay-at-home mother, and both sets of grandparents lived close. Every time Lisa talked to her mother lately, the kids had been with her.
“It’s not them or work,” he said. “But there’s something going on with Marigold that I have to deal with.”
Then she heard it. The hollow, tinny tone of his voice. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure what’s going on.” She heard him take in a deep breath. “She’s in something bad, something over her head.”
Lisa’s heart started to pound. Something bad. A foreboding sense of dread washed over her. “What’s she done?”
“I—I think she’s involved in a drug thing…like selling them.”
The meaning of his words took a moment to register. Drugs. Selling them. Princess Marigold with her French manicures and professionally blown-out hair? “No, that can’t be.”
“When I got home from work, the kids were here alone. There was pasta sauce simmering on the stove. Laine was in her high chair and Ollie was crying. He couldn’t tell me where Mommy was, only that she wasn’t here. Minutes later, agents from the DEA showed up at the house. They wanted to know if I knew where my wife was. They’ve been watching her for months, building a case against her. They claim she’s been dealing drugs to the ladies in her circles. Like prescription stuff.”
“Do you think it’s true?”
“I don’t know. All I know is she’s vanished.”
“Are the kids all right?”
“Yes, they’re with Mom. I told her Marigold was sick.”
The fog she’d been in for two days lifted in the wake of her brother’s distress. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“I know.” Her brother was crying. She hadn’t heard him cry since they were little.
“It’s going to be all right,” she said. “Just take it one moment at a time.”
“You too. I’ll call you later.”
She hung up and looked at Pepper, then Maggie. “My brother can’t come out. He’s dealing with something big. I’m being stupid. I’ll go alone. I can do it.” Her hands shook so badly, she dropped her phone. The glass shattered on the stone patio.
5
Rafael
Rafael had just finished his walk of the property when he noticed that Kara, Brody, and baby Simon were under the awning of their outdoor kitchen. The air smelled of grilled chicken from the barbecue.
“Rafael, can we talk to you for a moment?” Kara asked.
“Everything good?” Rafael asked. The flowers he’d brought Kara to thank her for the apartment were now in the middle of the outdoor table, looking kind of paltry. He should’ve gotten a bigger bunch.
Brody closed the lid of the grill and set aside a spatula the size of his quarterback hands. “Everything’s fine. Other than my wife is up to her usual tricks.” He gestured toward the outdoor beverage cooler. “You’re going to need a beer for this. What’s your poison?”
“IPA is fine.” Rafael shuffled his feet, unsure whether to stand or sit. Technically, he was off duty. Still, it was strange to drink a beer with his boss.
Kara patted the table. “Come sit. I have an idea I want to run by you.”
He sat across from her as he accepted the opened beer from Brody.
“I wanted to talk to you about Lisa,” Kara said. “She’s having a rough time. Anxious. Can’t sleep. Jumping at every small noise. Classic post-traumatic stress syndrome, right?”
He ran his hand over his closely cropped hair. “Sounds like it, yeah.”
“I know about always looking over my shoulder,” Kara said. “It’s an awful way to live.”
“We’re protecting you from a possible threat, not one that’s already happened.” Rafael took a swig from the bottle. He suspected Kara was part of witness protection even though Brody had never given any indication of why security had to be tight or why he wanted his wife guarded anytime she left Cliffside Bay.
Kara tilted her head, as if working through what he meant. “Does it matter, though? Isn’t fear the same, whether there’s a reason for it or not?”
“I suppose.” He still woke with nightmares of his time in Iraq. He still dreamed about the day he made the terrible mistake that cost him any hope for internal peace.
Brody sat next to his wife and took the baby from her, smothering Simon with kisses.
“Lisa has to go on this press junket,” Kara said. “She’s in no shape to do so. There’s a movie premiere red-carpet event with lots of crowds. Really, everything in the next few weeks will involve crowds. Normally, one of the girls would go with her, but Maggie is leaving for her tour, and Pepper’s filming a movie in Canada.” She paused. “The only thing that made it possible for me to go to Europe was you coming with us.”
“It’s my honor to serve you. I’d do anything for you and your family.”
Brody grimaced as he bounced Simon on his lap. “You shouldn’t have said that.”
Kara leaned forward in her chair. “I want you to accompany Lisa to LA and New York. Be there for her through the next few weeks, both as her bodyguard and her friend. You understand what it’s like to live with trauma, and you’ll make her feel safe.”
“You want me to go to LA with her?” Rafael asked. That couldn’t be what she meant.
“Quite simply, I want you by her side for the next few weeks. Michael and the others can cover for you while you’re gone. I’m fine.”
“Does she want a bodyguard?” Rafael asked.
Brody laughed. “You don’t understand how my wife operates. It doesn’t matter what Lisa wants, it’s what Kara thinks she should do that will happen.”
Kara poked him in the ribs. “My husband doesn’t understand the complexities of this situation. I know I’m right about this. Can I present her with the idea?”
“I’ll do whatever you want me to do. You know that,” Rafael said.
“Excellent,” Kara said. “I knew I could count on you.”
“Here we go,” Brody said.
Kara ignored her husband. “Maggie said Lisa’s fragile. Deeply sensitive. The level of attention from this movie will take her fame to a whole new level. She’ll need emotional support.”
Rafael nodded. “Sure.” Where was she going with this?
“Is that something you’re comfortable with?” Kara asked.
His mind whirled. Women often confused him. They didn’t seem to understand that subtlety was wasted on him. He needed things spelled out. “I’m not sure I get it.”
“This job might entail a little more than being a bodyguard,” Kara said. “She needs a friend. Someone who understands what it’s like to experience that kind of trauma.”
“I’m a guy, you know, so I’m not sure how to do that,” Rafael said. Not to mention that he’d turned down her dinner offer like an idiot. Now it would be awkward as hell between them. All because he was a prideful idiot.
Brody kissed the top of Simon’s head with his gaze directed at Rafael. “What my wife’s trying to say is that you’ll need to be both a protector and a girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend?” Rafael asked. Had he just said girlfriend?
“Yeah, like emotional support. Talking and stuff,” Brody said.
“That’s not really my best thing,” Rafael said. “But if I’m the only choice, I’ll do my best.”
“Good man,” Brody said.
Kara slapped both hands on the tabletop. “Great.
Lisa’s such a good person, and after years and years of struggle, she finally got a break. I don’t want this ruined for her.”
“May I ask why it’s so important to you?” Rafael asked.
“Because Maggie’s one of my best friends. Lisa and Pepper are like sisters to Maggie. Which means they’re family to me, too. We look after one another.”
“I understand.” Why did it have to be Lisa? Anyone but Lisa.
Kara beamed at him. “Thank you. This means a lot to me.”
“There’s a bonus in it for you,” Brody said.
“Not necessary.”
“Yes, it is,” Kara said.
“Speaking of bonuses,” Rafael said. “About the check.”
“What about it?” Kara asked.
“My initial reaction was to refuse. It’s a ridiculous amount of money and not part of our fee agreement,” Rafael said. When he’d seen the amount, he’d almost fallen over in shock. “But Stone and Trey presented me with a business opportunity.” He explained the concept of Wolf Enterprises. “And I thought investing it into our business might be the best use of the money. If we could make a go of it, I could pay off the building debt.”
“Fantastic idea,” Brody said. “Kyle didn’t have a dime when he started out. I lent him the money for his first real estate investment. Now he’s richer than me.”
“Why did you do that?” Rafael asked, before he could stop himself.
“He needed a way to start,” Brody said. “I believed in him, and I had the cash because I’ve been damn lucky my whole life.”
“You know, accepting help doesn’t make you weak,” Kara said.
He smiled. Kara nailed him on that one. “I’ll pay you back.”
“No. That was a bonus,” Kara said. “Not a loan.”
Brody shook his head, laughing. “Man, there’s no use arguing. The queen has spoken.”
Kara grinned. “What he said.”
Later that night, he met Stone and Trey at The Oar for dinner to talk about Wolf Enterprises. They spent the first half of dinner talking through the plan and possible pitfalls. He told them about the money from the Mullens. Stone said Kyle wanted to help as well. Trey said he had some stocks he could sell. Among the four of them, they had enough to start their first project.
Missed: Rafael and Lisa (Cliffside Bay Book 6) Page 5