by Zoey Dean
Captain McGill finally closed the cockpit door. Five minutes later, they were airborne from Van Nuys and quickly reached their cruising altitude. It would be merely an hour's flight to the small Las Casitas airstrip--the Gulfstream could fly at nearly six hundred miles an hour.
Dee had brought a copy of the Tanya, the classic Chassidic Jewish text on Kabbalah, but found herself too anxious to read. It was like the farther the plane got from Los Angeles, the more she found herself reliving all the good times she'd had with Sam. What if Sam had' been kidnapped? That would be horrible.
So instead of reading, she just gazed around the cabin, which was more like an expensive living room. The leather seats and sleeper couch were custom-made,
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the entertainment center had a plasma high-definition television and state-of-the-art sound system; there was even a DVD library of the five hundred best movies of all time as selected by Peter Bart at Variety. Dee saw that Jackson was trying to distract himself with one of those DVDs-- It's a Wonderful Life. But he kept drumming his fingers on the leather arm of his chair and checking his watch every other minute.
Dee was thirsty. A pick-me-up wouldn't hurt. She unhooked her seat belt, went forward to the galley, and found a can of Red Bull. She was trying to wean stimulants from her diet, so she now rationed herself to two Red Bulls a day. As she drank, she studied the framed photographs mounted on the interior walls of the galley. Jackson and Poppy's wedding photo. Jackson with Tom Hanks. With Harrison Ford. With Robert Zemeckis. With Nicole Kidman. On the prize committee at Cannes. Holding his Golden Globe award.
"Is there a Diet Coke in there?"
Dee turned to Cammie, who'd joined her in the galley. "Yeah, lots. I have to say, Cammie, I'm surprised you actually came."
"Why? Sam's my best friend."
Dee always felt anxious when Cammie said that. Sam was her best friend.
"I thought you'd want to stay with Adam," she explained.
"I'm totally confident about Adam," Cammie
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insisted, taking a can of Diet Coke from the refrigerator and popping the top.
Dee found that comment interesting. Usually Cammie really was totally confident. But Dee didn't believe she was all that confident about her relationship with Adam. Yes, Dee had walked in on them about to do the deed, but everyone knew that Adam had been crazy about Anna in the not-so-distant past. And Anna Percy was the only girl who had ever given Cammie Sheppard true competition. It was one of the few things Dee really liked about Anna. She took a sip of her Red Bull. The temptation was certainly there, to rub salt into Cammie's wounds. The Kabbalah rabbi she'd heard with Poppy last Saturday had termed it in Hebrew the yetzer hara, the evil impulse. But she was trying to become a more evolved person, to listen to her yetzer tova, the good impulse. So she changed the subject.
"You remember the first time we were on this plane? Right after Jackson bought it?"
Cammie chuckled softly. "Oh yeah. When we were--"
"Thirteen," Dee filled in.
"All the kids at school were having their bar and bat mitzvahs," Cammie recalled. "When Sam found out you had to be Jewish to get one, she was ready to convert. So Jackson flew about a dozen of us to the Bahamas instead."
"After he left, we stayed with those boring Jamaican nannies. Remember?" Dee asked, picking up the story.
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"And one of them kept praying for us and telling us to repent our evil ways--"
"Right!" Cammie exclaimed, laughing. "The others didn't seem to care what we did. But that older woman kept saying, 'If you do dat, you'll go to hell, children.' Which didn't stop us from scoring some killer island ganja." She smiled at Dee. "I swear, they get the best reefer there."
Dee grinned. Maybe the yetzer tova was working. She hadn't felt so close to Cammie in quite a while. And to think it was all because Sam had gone missing and they were on a rescue mission.
"You know, Cammie, if anything happened to Sam ..."
"We'll find her." Cammie gave Dee a little hug. "I know we will."
Wow. Dee was impressed. Maybe Cammie's yetzer tova was at work, too. Or else Adam was improving Cammie's personality. Still, she didn't doubt for a moment that Cammie really was worried that Anna was competition for her with Adam, that if Anna wanted Adam back, she could get him quicker than Dee could whip out her MasterCard at Trashy Lingerie on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood. Which meant that deep in Cammie's heart of hearts it was yetzer hara all the way. Cammie probably hoped that Sam would be found and Anna wouldn't.
Dee couldn't decide how she felt about finding Anna. Anna had stolen her place on Sam's A-list, that was for sure. Anna had also stolen the boy they all wanted, Ben Birnbaum. And then she'd dropped him, too.
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A girl that fickle deserved whatever the gods dished out to her.
Well, if Anna wasn't found, there would probably be a memorial service. Dee could wear her black Pamella Roland wrap dress and her new Alberto Ferretti sling-back pumps with the leopard-print lining. She'd keep her makeup really pale, with maybe a touch of MAC Prrr lip gloss. Or maybe she'd buy all new stuff to honor Anna's memory.
Not that Dee wanted anything really bad to happen to Anna. That would be truly bad karma. But she figured she should cover all the fashion bases, just in case.
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¡ Ay, Caramba!
B en was kissing Anna everywhere; pure bliss. Back in New York, she'd dreamt of finding a boy who would make her feel like she felt this very moment. These kisses proved that dreams really could come true. They were lying on a gentle hillside, the lush grass underneath was so soft, so luxurious, almost like mink--
Anna's eyes snapped open. Her mind went into instant overdrive.
Mink. She was sleeping under mink.
Where was she?
She looked around the dimly lit room as she heard Sam snore next to her. That's right. They were in the lavish master bedroom of the estate they'd discovered the night before during the storm. Ornate hand-painted tiles bordering the room, hand-knotted rugs resting on burnished wood. She glanced straight up and saw herself in the mirror, Sam curled up to her left. Right. Mirrored ceiling.
Ouch. Her hand went to her head; she had the worst
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headache, and she saw now that she looked as bad as she felt. Well, first things first. Get up and check the telephones, see if they were working and--
Wait.
Had she just heard something?
Voices. In the house. She froze, listening carefully. Two of them. Male. Gruff. Spanish. Coming closer to the bedroom.
Anna jostled Sam. "Sam, wake up!"
Sam snored and rolled over. The voices got louder.
Anna shook Sam again. "Wake up now! Someone's here! And we're naked!"
Anna scrambled for something to wear. The clothes and the robes from the night before were in the room with the hot tub. No time to get them. She grabbed the Mexican shawl off the back of a white rocking chair and threw it at Sam. "Put this on! Hurry!" Then, as the male voices got still louder, she dove back onto the bed and pulled the mink throw around herself.
Suddenly the door burst open and the lights snapped on. Two armed men in khaki uniforms pointed Uzis at the girls.
"Quien est án ustedes? ¡Sus manos al cielo!" the taller of the two men yelled.
Anna flung her hands toward the ceiling, following the man's instructions. "Do what I'm doing, Sam. Dammit!" Anna told Sam, her voice cracking with fear. She tried to hold onto the mink comforter with her chin to cover her nakedness and racked her brain for
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the Spanish to say, "We're naked under these blankets." But she drew a blank. She did manage, "Somos norteam ericanas. Somos turistas a Las Casitas."
Neither of the men seemed interested or impressed.
"Rich Americans! From Beverly Hills, California," Sam shouted in English. "My father is Jackson Sharpe. The famous actor!"
"Nosot
ros no hablamos i ngles. ¡Español solamente!"
"They don't speak English," Anna reported. "Let me try to find out who they are. Ustedes son con el gobierno?"
"No!" the tall man bellowed. "¡ Securidad!"
Anna's heart sank. "They're security guards, Sam. Not official."
But Sam wasn't deterred as she pleaded with the men. "¡ Por favor! Mi papi Jacksono Sharpo. Mee papi Jacksono Sharpo, from los movies!"
"Ella se llama Samantha Sharpe," Anna translated. "Su pap á se llama Jackson Sharpe. ¡El grand hombre norteamericano de los peliculas! ¡Eljefe!"
But the guards didn't seem to care. "¡Ustedes! ¡ Vienen con nosotros!" the taller one insisted, pointing toward the door with his rifle butt.
" Sí, sí," Anna said, trying to placate them. "We'll come with you. Uno momento, uno momento."
She caught a glimpse of a clock in the nightstand. Six-thirty A.M. The storm was over. Surely people from Las Casitas had to be looking for them. Probably even the Mexican police. But if these men took them away,
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they were ruined. Who knew what they wanted or where they wanted to go?
There was absolutely nothing in the This Is How We Do Things Big Book, East or West Coast edition, that covered being confronted at gunpoint by uniformed men who didn't speak English when you were completely nude in a mansion that you had broken into. Anna glanced at Sam and saw she was at a total loss now that the usual "I'm Jackson Sharpe's daughter" thing hadn't worked. In fact, Sam looked petrified.
Shit.
Anna took a deep breath. She knew that panic would be disastrous. The best thing she could do, she realized, was stall until help came, thin a hope as that might be.
"Por favor," Anna asked. "Useme nuestra ropas. Estos son en el cuarto de ba ño."
"What'd you say?" Sam demanded.
"I asked if we could get dressed."
The guards discussed this. After much consultation, they told Anna that they would follow her and the other girl to the bathroom. If the girls were not dressed in thirty seconds, the guards would shoot their way in. Anna told Sam the plan, skipping over the shooting part. Sam was freaked out enough already.
Rifles at their backs, blankets and shawls wrapped around them, the girls edged out of bed. They shuffled to the bathroom and changed as quickly as they could. Fortunately, their clothing had dried overnight.
"We are so fucked," Sam muttered darkly as she
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pulled on her Mexican skirt. "Tell them in Spanish who I am, Anna."
"I did. They didn't give a shit." Then Anna had an idea. "Look. Maybe they have a radio in their car. They can check with their boss, who can check with Las Casitas."
The guards were waiting when the girls came out. Thankfully they didn't have the rifles pointed at their chests anymore. That was progress. Anna turned to the shorter, marginally less threatening of the guards.
"Yo tengo una idea," she said. "Vete al carajo, y --"
She never got the rest of sentence out. He slung the gun up to his shoulder and aimed it directly at her chest, suddenly infuriated.
"¡ Vamanos, vamanos!" the taller one shouted, glowering. "Le estamos llevando a nuest ra jefe. ¡Ustedes están en apuro importante!"
"What the hell happened?" Sam whispered desperately as the guards marched them out of the house, hands in the air. "I thought you were telling them something good. "
"I was trying!"
"Then why are they using our hearts for target practice?"
"I don't know," Anna admitted, hoping that Sam didn't notice her voice cracking. Parked directly in front of the white mansion was a single black Hummer with tinted windows. That the grounds surrounding the mansion were utterly magnificent barely registered on Anna when she saw the sinister-looking vehicle.
"¡ Salen la puertay en nuestra Hummer!"
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"He wants us to get in the Hummer," Anna translated. "They're taking us to his boss."
"Dead or alive?" Sam asked, her voice choked with tears. "How do we know they aren't kidnapping us or something? We have to do something! Maybe we should run."
"And get shot?" Anna hissed. She willed herself not to cry. "What do you think they'll do when they see us ... ?"
Her words were drowned out by a whup-whup from above. A helicopter. It was circling above the estate at about a thousand feet.
"Shit," Sam cried. "They've called in reinforcements!"
The guards looked up, too. Then they started chattering in Spanish, pointing to the chopper and arguing vehemently. Anna couldn't understand a thing over the noise of the chopper.
"We've got to run!" Sam yelled.
"No! That's crazy, Sam!"
Anna's heart hammered as the helicopter descended and landed a hundred yards from them in the middle of the estate's front lawn. Were they going to be taken away in the helicopter to God knew where?
The helicopter shut down its engines, and a door popped open. Two men leaped out, ducking their heads so they wouldn't be decapitated by the still-whirring blades. One of the men was Latino and wore a Mexican military uniform; the other one was light-skinned, in jeans and a blue shirt. The man in civilian clothes strode toward the girls, tall and purposeful. The guards' rifles fell to their sides as they stared in awe.
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Anna could not believe what she was seeing. It couldn't be.
"Dad?" Sam asked.
"Sam!"
It was like a scene from a movie. Jackson stopped and held out his arms. Sam ran toward her father and flung himself into his embrace as the two security guards looked on, gape-mouthed.
"Sam," Jackson exclaimed. "Thank God!"
"How did you--?"
"It doesn't matter. You scared the hell out of me."
Now that they were apparently safe, Anna realized how frightened she'd been--her hands were still shaking, and she felt weak in the knees. She didn't think she'd ever been so happy to see anyone as she was to see Jackson Sharpe at that moment.
"Oye, Jackson Sharpe!" one of the security guards cried. "¡Ay, caramba! ¡ Usted es mi estrella de las peliculas preferida! Que hace usted aquí en México, Señor Sharpe?"
The helicopter pilot, who wore the uniform of the Mexican army, had joined Sam and Jackson. "He says you're his favorite movie star," the pilot reported to Jackson.
"Gracias," Jackson told the men, keeping an arm around his daughter. "Now if we could--"
"¡ Uno momento!" One of the guards scurried to the Hummer and came back with a disposable camera, which he handed to his partner. Then he parked himself next to Jackson. "Una fotografía para nuestras esposas, por favor, Don Jackson?"
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"He wants some pictures for their wives," translated the pilot.
"And just like that, we're their new best friends," Sam chortled ecstatically, throwing her hands in the air in an expression of both joy and frustration. "What was the last half hour all about?"
But she stepped away from her father; the taller guard put his arm around Jackson's shoulder and beamed, and his partner snapped a quick photo. Then they switched. They were starting to hunt for paper for autographs, but the Mexican pilot called them off. So the men got into their Hummer and drove away, seemingly the two happiest private security guards south of the border.
The girls boarded the helicopter with Jackson and the pilot. As the helicopter took off, Jackson craned around and reached for his daughter's hand.
"You're lucky that I'm too frightened to be angry at you, Sam."
"What do you mean?" Sam asked.
"You really scared me," her father told her reflectively. "I know the new baby has been hard on you, but you can't just pick up and leave town without telling me. If you need a time-out, just let me know. I'll understand. And if I'm not acting like I understand, remind me. Deal?"
"Deal," Sam responded.
Watching Sam and her dad, Anna got a lump in her throat. Silly as it was, she wished it were her father, tall and strong and sure, who had mar
ched off that helicopter to save her.
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"Hey, Anna." Sam nudged her.
"What?"
Sam was beaming. "How cool is this?"
Anna had to smile back. "Very."
"I just can't figure out why the guards didn't leave us alone once we told them who my dad was. At first I thought maybe they were the two people in the world who weren't fans," Sam started. Then she leaned over toward Jackson. "Sorry, Dad."
"That's all right, sweetie," he replied with a wink.
"I don't get it, either," Anna added.
"Do you think it had something to do with what you said to them in Spanish?" Sam asked.
"No way," Anna answered. "I just told them to call Las Casitas."
"Uh, excuse me, sir," Sam said to the pilot.
"Yes?" the pilot responded.
"Can you translate something for my friend here?" she asked. Clearly she had grown suspicious of the accuracy of Anna's Spanish. "Anna, tell them what you said."
"What?" Anna asked.
"Tell them what you said, Anna," Sam repeated with mock impatience.
"Fine," Anna said. She wasn't used to being challenged, nor was she sure if she liked it. Vete al carajo --"
The pilot burst out laughing.
"Why are you laughing?" Anna asked, utterly bewildered.
"Go out to the car is 'vete al carro.' 'Vete al carajo'
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is ... how do you say it in English? Go fuck yourself."
Sam roared with laughter, as did her father, and the pilot. Anna joined in. It was pretty funny, and probably they were both laughing from relief. "You know, I don't know which is more surprising," Sam declared. "That Anna Percy used the F word, or that Anna Percy made a mistake."
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Next Time We'll Surf
F reaky. An hour later, Sam was reunited with Dee and Cammie at the Las Casitas pool while Anna was packing her stuff in her room. Everything at the resort was normal--or as normal as life got at a two-thousand-dollar-a-night resort. People were sunning, crowding the swim-up bar for their first cocktails of the day, and having breakfast at one of the many poolside tables. It was so normal that Sam found it difficult to believe that her adventure with Anna in the desert had actually happened.