But Rhonda didn’t have to know that.
Knowing the shit storm that was about to come, Lily took a deep breath and asked, “Do you really want everyone looking at you and wondering why a woman your age is wearing a white mini-dress to the wedding of the year?”
Rhonda’s eyes flew wide. “My age?” she seethed. “How dare you!”
Giving a deliberate shrug and settling back in her chair, Lily said, “I’m just sayin’.”
The barbs between them continued for thirty more minutes until Rhonda finally got changed back into her clothes. By the time they were done, Lily’s head was pounding. She was beginning to wish she hadn’t scheduled this meeting when The Void had an appearance on a popular daytime talk show so that Dane could have been there too.
“Excuse me, ma’am. We’re closed,” one of the shop’s co-owners said to the customer who had just tried to open the boutique’s glass door. It wasn’t the first time someone had opted to do so despite there being a big blue closed sign hanging on the door.
Lily happened to turn to ask Ryan something at the same time. She saw his expression change when he looked at the door. She shifted and realized that it was Nikki standing there. Nikki gave her a hesitant smile from the other side of the door and lifted a hand in greeting.
“It’s okay,” Lily told the owner. “I know her. You can let her in.”
“Of course.”
The woman turned the lock and opened the door. Nikki walked in and politely thanked the woman. She looked rather subdued in a pair of black capris and a collared floral-print shirt with canvas flats. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail, a style Lily didn’t ever remember seeing on her.
“I’m so sorry to barge in on you like this, Lily,” Nikki said. “I’ve been meaning to try to get you alone for a while now, but you’re so busy. So, well, when I saw your mother’s posts about meeting you here today, I kind of hoped you might be able to fit me in.”
Lily sighed. Of course Rhonda had posted about their meeting on her social media pages. She had probably tagged Lily and the band, which would make the posts visible to more than just Rhonda’s own friends. Lily hadn’t seen the posts yet because she’d been trying to concentrate on the filming for the show.
“It’s fine, Nikki,” she said, waving at the other chair. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Sorry, Ms. Calvey,” Ryan said, stepping forward to intercept her. “For security reasons, I’d like to conduct a search of your purse and your person.”
Nikki’s eyes widened. “You mean you want to frisk me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Lily smiled when she saw Nikki grin. “Sure thing,” Nikki said, handing her purse over and lifting her hands so he could give her a brisk pat-down.
After scanning the contents of Nikki’s purse, Ryan handed it back to her. “Thank you.”
“No, thank you,” Nikki replied, patting her hair as she made her way to the chair near Lily.
Lily laughed.
“Who knew that I’d get such a thrill when I decided to come and apologize to you?” Nikki said as she dropped into her seat.
“Apologize for what?”
Nikki took a deep breath and released it. “For being out of my mind with jealousy about you and Archer.”
All Lily could manage was, “Oh.”
“I arranged the whole fake pregnancy thing,” Nikki blurted. “My friend lied in the interrogation and said she came up with the idea herself, but I put her up to it. I’m sorry.”
Before Lily could think of a reply to that, Nikki rambled on, “I really just kind of lost control, especially with the way things went with Keith. Now Regina is saying she doesn’t want me involved with Suddenly Something and, well, I realized I’d hit rock bottom.”
Nikki looked nervous. Her eyes couldn’t seem to stay focused on any one thing and she was twisting the strap of her purse in her fingers until her fingertips turned white. She kept glancing at Spence, who was still filming, and the shop’s co-owners who were standing behind the sales counter watching them.
“Look, do you think there’s somewhere in the back a little more private?” Nikki asked in a near-whisper. “I’ve got some pretty personal things to say and I would prefer that they’re just between the two of us. This is kind of humiliating for me.”
Lily hesitated.
“Please?” Nikki pleaded.
“Okay.” Lily got to her feet and turned to the shop owners. “Do you have someplace we could speak in private for a few minutes?”
“Sure,” said the woman who had opened the door for Nikki. “Come on back and use our office.”
Ryan walked with them to the office and did a search of the room. Lily saw him palm a knife-like letter opener and realized he was clearing the room of potential weapons. Her anxiety about having to talk with Nikki one-on-one was instantly heightened.
“I’m not going to stab her,” Nikki mumbled, her face red as Ryan stepped aside to let them enter. She looked miserable.
Lily felt sorry for her. Turning to Ryan, she said, “Please wait right outside the door. I’ll be able to call out if I need anything. And please let Rhonda know what happened when she gets out of the dressing room. If she happens to leave before I’m done here, that wouldn’t be the worst thing.”
Ryan looked between Lily and Nikki, did one more scan of the small office with its single desk, two filing cabinets, and one skinny window two stories up, and nodded before stepping outside and closing the door behind him.
The moment they were alone, Nikki’s demeanor changed. She turned to Lily with a stony expression, the look in her eyes chilling.
“It’s helpful that I’ve had so much practice acting lately,” she said. She pulled out her cell phone and held the screen so Lily could see it. “If you raise your voice above a whisper, Sydney will die.”
Lily’s heart careened into her stomach. Her skin started tingling like hot needles were racing over her skin.
On Nikki’s phone was an image of Sydney lying bound with tape covering her mouth. Her eyes were closed and there was blood smeared on her forehead.
“Wh-what have you done?” Lily croaked.
“Nothing...yet. As long as you come with me right now, nothing will.”
Lily looked at the door. “Ryan won’t let me go anywhere without him.”
Nikki walked over to the small window and twisted the latch on it, shoving it open. “That’s why we’ll be going this way. I thought you might appreciate the poetry behind it since I got the idea from when you ran out on the premiere of the first House of Archer trailer.”
Fear had Lily’s legs feeling like rubber. The image of Sydney bound and gagged was frozen in her brain. Was her friend even still alive?
She unsteadily made her way over to the window and looked down over the ledge running along the bottom of the window. It was a straight drop down.
“There’s no way,” Lily said. Her voice shook. “There was a truck beneath the window when I left the studio that day.”
“I hope you don’t think I won’t kill Sydney,” Nikki warned. Though her voice was whisper-quiet, the steel in it was undeniable. “I’m actually hoping you don’t do this just so I can. Oh...and if I’m arrested, I’ll die before I tell a soul where she is.”
The sting of tears struck Lily behind the eyes. Denial evaporated. Nikki had well and truly lost her mind. If Lily didn’t do what she said, Sydney would die.
“What do you want me to do?”
Nikki smiled, slow and fierce. She carefully moved the desk chair over to the window so it didn’t make any noise. “Climb out onto the ledge and crawl over to the window to our left. I opened it earlier. There aren’t any tenants in that space. I’ll be right behind you. If you try anything funny, you’ll never see Sydney again.”
Lily’s mind had gone numb. It was a blessing. It allowed her to shove aside her colossal fear and focus on doing what Nikki said.
She st
epped onto the chair and lifted herself onto the window ledge. The window was so narrow that she had to twist sideways to get her hips and thighs through. When she got a look at the drop less than an inch from where she hovered on all fours, a whimper escaped her.
“Shut the fuck up,” Nikki whispered loudly from the window. “Get moving.”
It took a full minute for Lily to gather the courage to move forward on the ledge. She hated heights, and the ledge was so narrow she was afraid if her shoulder hit the bricks on her left that it would propel her over the ledge.
Would it be better to fall? Maybe she’d survive. But then what would come of Sydney?
She kept crawling. The rough surface of the ledge bit into her palms and bare knees. The stench of fermenting garbage wafted up from the alley below. She fought back a gag.
It felt like an hour of sliding gingerly along until she reached the window that Nikki had left open. As she all but dove through the open window to the unfinished wood floor beneath it, the full impact of the situation struck her. She was about to go off with a mentally unstable woman, leaving no trace of where they went or what happened to her. She wished she hadn’t left her purse outside the office. It had her cell phone in it. Ryan could have traced it.
Nikki was right behind her. No sooner did Lily get herself up from the ground than Nikki pulled herself through the window.
“We’re going downstairs.”
Lily allowed Nikki to grab her upper arm and guide her from the empty storefront to a back door that led to a service hallway. From there they walked down a flight of stairs and out into an alleyway with tall buildings on either side. Lily spotted Nikki’s car parked at one end near the dumpster.
How had she planned all this? Nikki wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, yet she had managed to implement a plan that got Lily away from her highly-trained security detail.
“We’re going for a little drive,” Nikki said as she pulled out her keys and unlocked the doors. “You’re driving.”
“Are we going to where Sydney is?” Lily asked as Nikki opened the passenger door.
“Get in the damn car.”
Lily got into the car and buckled the seat belt. Her hands shook as she accepted the keys from Nikki, who got into the passenger seat and closed the door.
The sound of a loud thump made Lily jump. It took two more thumps for her to realize what she was hearing.
“Oh my God,” Lily cried. “Sydney’s in the trunk!”
Nikki opened the glove compartment and pulled out a gun. Lily whimpered again.
“Shut up and drive,” Nikki ordered.
Lily drove, following Nikki’s directions. When they were safely away from the shopping plaza, Nikki seemed to relax. Lily, however, was battling tears and a growing certainty that she was going to die. Her breath came in sharp, uneven draws. She felt sweat pooling under her arms and at the base of her spine.
Nikki unbuckled her seat belt and turned to reach for something in the backseat. Lily briefly considered trying to wrestle the gun from her but decided she’d likely end up blowing her own face off. When Nikki turned back around, she had a small bag that she put in her lap and unzipped. Lily watched from the corner of her eye as Nikki shook an unknown number of pills into her hand and chased it with several audible glugs of something that smelled sharply of alcohol.
Would the drugs and alcohol help Lily by making Nikki drowsy or incapacitated? Or would they make Nikki even more maniacal and out of control?
Deciding she had to try and get a better grip on Nikki’s mental state, Lily drew upon everything Dane had taught her about acting. Her voice was calm and level when she said, “I’m impressed you managed to get both me and Sydney away from our security detail, Nikki.”
Nikki snorted. “Little Miss Perfect doesn’t have security when she’s at work. The Ordinem guy sticks to Keith unless they’re together. Who gives a shit about her safety?”
So Nikki had somehow managed to get to Sydney at the school. Lily hadn’t ever thought Sydney might be at risk. None of them had or she would have had her own detail.
Of course, that hadn’t done Lily much good.
Since that thought almost had her in hysterics, she said, “You still deserve props for working around my security. You must have been stalking social media to look for an opening.”
Even as she said it, Lily realized that the timing didn’t seem right for Nikki to have seen the post about her meeting with Rhonda, gone to kidnap Sydney, and end up arriving before the appointment with Rhonda ended.
“Your mother kept me in the loop,” Nikki revealed, taking another couple of long sips from the bottle she held in her non-gun hand. “Take this right.”
Lily obeyed. “Why would my mother be in touch with you?”
“Money talks,” Nikki said on a laugh that told Lily the narcotics were beginning to hit her bloodstream. “I paid her for information. She wanted the money. Then I figured she might be willing to take money for scheduling a one-on-one meeting with you in a location I thought would work for what I had planned. I was right.”
The level of her mother’s betrayal hit Lily in the solar plexus. Rhonda had aided and abetted a kidnapper...the would-be murderer of her own daughter.
Nausea seized her. She fought it back thanks to years of practice.
“This looks like the way to Sydney and Keith’s apartment,” she said after a moment.
“Sydney and Keith’s apartment,” Nikki mimicked darkly. “It should have been me and Keith hunting for an apartment after the tour ended.” The words were beginning to sound clumsy on her tongue. “Scratch that. I should have been moving in with Archer.”
When Nikki swiveled the gun and held it to Lily’s head, Lily let out a terrified sob. The tears that had been threatening her came forth in a rush.
“I didn’t know,” she said, blinking rapidly to try and see where she was going.
“‘Course you didn’t,” Nikki growled. “You were too busy working yourself into his bed, making yourself the star of the damn show. Didn’t care who you stepped on or stepped over along the way.”
Lily’s palms were so slick with perspiration she could barely grip the wheel. “You’re just as much a star as I am, Nikki,” she said, struggling to keep her voice from trembling.
Nikki snorted again. “Bullshit. The show plans to get rid of me now that the first season has wrapped. But I’ve got a plan that’ll keep me on. Take this left.”
Lily turned. The thought occurred to her that maybe all Nikki wanted was for Lily to go to bat for her with the show’s producers.
“I’m sure we can come up with a great way to keep you on the show,” she said.
“I don’t need your fucking help!” Nikki shrieked.
Lily let out a short scream when Nikki shoved the muzzle of the gun against her temple. Nikki found that absolutely hilarious. She fell back against her seat in laughter.
“God, why didn’t I think to film this?” she hooted. “Look at you, mascara running down your cheeks and snot pouring from your nose. Did you piss yourself?”
Lily was ashamed to say she was awfully close to doing just that. She was barely holding it together.
“I’ve gotten myself into the limelight before and I’ll do it again,” Nikki bragged. Her eyes had gone glassy. “Turn right.”
Lily turned. They were making their way up into the hills. Traffic was moving better than usual, probably thanks to the time of day.
Go figure. When she didn’t want to get somewhere in a hurry, L.A. traffic finally cooperated.
“Back then,” Nikki went on, “all it took was hiding Noelle’s lucky drumsticks and being the one to find them, or sabotaging the bus’s power steering and fixing it. Shit like that got me plenty of media exposure. Imagine what my life will be like when I’m the one who stumbles across the bodies of you and Sydney in her apartment complex’s garage while I’m there to return some of Keith’s things that I forgot I had.”
Lily knew there must
be all kinds of potential holes in Nikki’s plan, but she was so terror-stricken after hearing Nikki’s plans to kill her and Sydney that her mind went blank. The only instinctive thought she could grasp was she and Sydney somehow had to escape the situation.
Sydney was bound and gagged in the trunk.
Lily was all they had left.
The next few beats of her heart brought the glimmer of a plan into Lily’s mind. She knew it was dangerous.
It was insane.
It was potentially suicidal.
She knew she had to do it anyway.
At the first gap in traffic on the road in front of her, she hit the gas pedal. The car sped up so fast that Lily and Nikki flew back in their seats. Nikki screamed at her to slow down.
She went faster.
On the next break in oncoming traffic, she wrenched the wheel hard to the left, directly at the guardrail separating the highway from the steep drop-off beside it.
The last thing she heard was the horrific screeching of tearing metal as the car broke through the guardrail and plummeted into open air.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Two uniformed police officers were waiting off-stage as The Void wrapped up their talk show appearance. Archer immediately spotted them as he led the rest of the band from the set. He didn’t think anything of it at first. Security wasn’t unusual in high-traffic areas like this one. For all he knew, the cops were there to possibly go on the show themselves.
It wasn’t until he noticed Trey and Keith’s security specialist, Iván Velasquez, standing on either side of the officers wearing grim expressions that Archer knew something was wrong.
Archer didn’t have to ask. The officers spoke the moment the band got within hearing distance.
“Mr. Archer, Mr. Connors, I’m Officer Ziehl and this is my partner Officer Lowry,” said the tall, lanky male officer standing next to Trey.
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