“Imagine having five people on staff,” Annie mused. She looked up at Robin. “You probably do, huh?”
“Not when I’m at home,” he said. “I like my privacy. Although now with Riptide doing so well, my manager thinks I need to find a bodyguard. You know, pay someone a christload of money to hang with me when I’m home at night, so I’m never alone. Tag along when I go on location to Thailand or Paris or New Zealand. It’d be a tough job—spending all that time in exotic locations. We’ve had a lot of applicants, but…I’m looking for the right person, someone I really click with.”
“Do you mind if we do this?” Jules pointed to the map, clearly exasperated.
“I take it that’s a no?” Robin countered.
Jules didn’t deign to answer him. “Tonight’s focus is finding Peggy Ryan.” He put her photo next to the blueprints. “We’re looking for any sign of her at all.”
“Which room is hers?” Annie asked.
“This one.” He pointed to the room farthest from the kitchen, closest to that deck. “We know she had a private bath and a single window, facing roughly west. In her last two communications, she’d mentioned being able to see the sunset through that window. She also mentioned how cold it was in her room with the air-conditioning always running. She was definitely trying to tell us something—she repeated that information almost word for word. I suspect we’re going to find some kind of message inside the air-conditioning vent nearest to the window.”
“I’ve got a B-and-E kit made of plastic,” Ric reported. “It won’t get picked up by a metal detector.”
Annie looked at him. “B and E?”
“Breaking and entering,” he explained. “You know, lock pick, screwdriver to remove the a/c vent cover…?”
How did Burns explain the metal detectors to his party guests? Did he just make it part of the festivities, or did he try to disguise it? Here, walk through this Spanish-moss-covered archway so we can take your photo with Mandy the Manatee.
And what about the guests who set off the alarm? Step over here for a cavity search, madam. Joelle will take your drink order while you wait for Mr. Foley to change his latex gloves…
“A plastic screwdriver?” Annie was skeptical.
“Less like a plastic fork,” Martell told her, “and more like a plastic gun.”
“It will get noticed if you’re given a body search,” Jules warned. “So be careful.”
“Always am,” Ric said.
Yeah, right.
Had Martell actually said that aloud? Annie was looking at him as if he had.
But she had more questions for Jules. “Is the plan to go around the side of the house”—she used her finger to point out the route, landing on the servants’ deck—“and access the servants’ wing through here?”
Jules shook his head. “There’re no stairs up or down from that deck.”
She looked at the blueprint more closely. “Isn’t it ground level?”
“Not that part of the house. It’s built on an incline.” He pointed. “The garages are beneath the kitchen and servants’ wing.”
“We’re not exactly dressed for climbing,” Ric chimed in.
“What, no plastic grappling hook and rope that shoots out of the soles of your shoes?” Annie asked.
Ric shot her a look. “Best plan is to keep it simple,” he continued. “Wander down the hall to the kitchen, looking for a men’s room.”
“I agree,” Jules said.
“Where’s Burns’s office?” Ric asked.
“Second floor.” Jules flipped to a second page, and pointed to a room on the opposite side of the house. “Do not go there. He doesn’t keep paperwork. There’ll be nothing up there—except trouble if you’re found poking around.” He looked at Robin and Annie, too. “Are we clear on that?”
They all nodded.
“Don’t go anywhere alone,” Ric reminded Annie.
“You know, I can get us into the kitchen,” Robin volunteered. “I always sign autographs for the staff at the end of every party.”
“You do?” Jules said.
“Yes. Is that really so hard for you to believe?”
“It’s not. It’s…great,” Jules said. “But it’s hard to imagine that you’ll be allowed down there by yourself. Burns’ll go with you, right?”
“Not necessarily,” Robin said. “Sometimes the host comes with, sometimes I just go off exploring, with one of my handlers.” He gazed at Jules. “Tonight, that can be you.”
Chadwick’s assistants were actually called handlers? Like he was some kind of dancing bear? Martell glanced at Ric, checking in with his boy to see if he thought that was kind of weird, too, but Ric had on his I-wish-I-were-invisible face, which was doubly odd.
Jules, meanwhile, was clearing his throat. “Right. Or Annie. But…if Burns ends up going into the kitchen with us…That’s not going to work unless we can somehow create enough of a distraction to allow me to slip away while you’re signing the staff’s autographs.”
“You think I can’t create a major distraction?” Robin laughed. “You don’t have much faith in me. I’m an actor. I’ve got, like, a degree in creating distractions.”
“This isn’t a game,” Jules said, his voice hard. “You seem to think it is, but it’s not. I’ve got an agent missing and presumed dead. She went into Burns Point and never came back out. She’s either being held there, still, against her will, or her dead body was taken out in the trunk of a car.”
Those weren’t the only options. She could have been chopped into pieces and fed to the fishies. Or buried beneath the basement floor. Or…
“It’s dangerous,” Robin said, getting as much in Jules’s face as Jules was in his. The party boy was gone, replaced by someone with Teflon cojones, someone who put his head down, revved it into high gear, and just blasted through whatever obstacles were thrown in his path. “I get it. And I’m well aware it’s not a game, thanks, since yes, as you’re fond of reminding me, last time I was involved in one of your ‘games,’ I got shot.” He turned to Annie. “By the way, Ric wanted me to describe to you what that feels like. It burns like hell—and that’s before it really starts to fucking hurt. Apparently he doesn’t think very highly of you, because he thinks you’re going to hear that and decide to run back to Buttmonkey, New Hampshire, or wherever you’re from, like you don’t give a damn about what we’re doing here.”
The look Annie gave Ric was a real shriveler, but Robin was far from done.
He got back in Jules’s face. “And by the way, I’m also here because I give a damn—and no, not just about the safety and security of our country, although I care plenty about that—enough, yeah, to volunteer to help when it’s obvious that you can actually use my help, like tonight. But I also care—very much—about you. You know what I’m afraid of most of all? I’m afraid that you’ll disappear from my life again without giving me the chance to say all the things I want to say to you. Jesus, if I’ve got to knife-fight Gordon Burns just to spend time with you, someone find me a fucking K-Bar and bring him on.”
In the silence that followed that outburst, a two-thousand-watt lightbulb went on over Martell’s head, and suddenly it all made sense to him. Suddenly, Ric sending Annie to stay with Robin Chadwick in his hotel suite didn’t seem like such a stupid idea after all.
But now it was Annie’s turn to clear her throat. “Ric and I’ll wait in the limo,” she said brightly. She caught sight of Martell—no doubt he was standing there with his mouth hanging open. “Time to go.”
Martell shouldered his laptop, but managed to linger, waiting for Annie as she hurriedly made sure Pierre had enough food and water to last the evening.
Jules didn’t wait for the room to clear before asking Robin, “Are you completely insane?” He’d lowered his voice—not that there was any chance that they wouldn’t hear him.
Robin didn’t even bother trying not to be overheard. “You won’t talk to me in private, fine. I’ll have this conversation with you in
front of your friends. Seeing you again has…Jules, it takes my breath away—how much I just want to be with you.”
Martell felt Annie tug on his arm. Damn, this may have been the weirdest conversation between two men that he’d ever heard, but it was oddly compelling. She finally gave up, retreating out to the limo with Ric as Martell dragged his feet, hanging there on the stoop, needing to hear what on earth Jules was going to say in response to that bomb.
“I can’t do this,” FBI said. “I won’t. Not twenty minutes before we’re due at Burns Point.”
“Yeah, sorry about my timing.” Hollywood was sincere in his apology. “It sucks, as usual. I didn’t mean to make things harder for you. I just…-couldn’t not say anything, okay? So now you know. Either we talk privately after this party, or we talk in front of everyone. Obviously, I don’t give a shit which you pick.”
Robin brushed by Martell in his haste to get into the limo, murmuring, “Sorry to disappoint,” as he passed.
Jules, too, had a host of apologies for Martell as he closed the office door. “I’m sorry, I don’t have a key,” was the first.
“I got it,” Martell said, fishing in his pocket for his overburdened key ring.
“I’m also sorry for the inappropriate—”
“Like any of that was your fault?” Martell locked the deadbolt. “Actors. Always with the high drama. What are you gonna do?”
Jules managed a smile, but he was still standing there, like he had something more to add. And he did. “Robin’s career depends on—”
“I know,” Martell again cut him off. “It’s okay. Your secret’s safe with me, man.”
“It’s not my secret,” Jules said, “but thank you.”
“I’m going to have to do this,” Ric breathed in Annie’s ear as she stood near the outside bar on the patio of Burns Point.
She nodded, understanding. He was going to have to slip away and search for Peggy Ryan’s room, because Jules wasn’t going to be able to do it.
It was obvious that Gordon Burns considered Jules—producer Julian Young—to be as much of a celebrity as was Robin Chadwick. From the moment they’d walked in, Burns had commandeered both the actor and the undercover FBI agent, taking them around his crowded living room, introducing them to all of his friends and business associates.
“I think you should wait until Robin, you know, hits on me,” Annie now told Ric. “Make it look like you’re going off somewhere to pout.”
Through the open French doors that led into the house, she heard Jules laugh at something Burns had said. It was possible Jules was an even better actor than Robin—in the limo he’d been beyond tense and terse, but now he seemed believably lighthearted and cheerful.
It was almost as if he’d partaken of the very large drinks Robin had mixed right there in the car. But Robin himself had been the only taker—the movie star’s good spirits could, no doubt, be traced to his still rising blood/alcohol levels.
Or maybe, as he’d announced in front of them all back at the office, his happiness came purely from the fact that he was standing beside Jules.
Beside her, Ric nodded. “You smell really good.”
Annie turned to look at him. He was scanning both the patio and the living room, no doubt memorizing faces of the attendees for identification purposes later on.
He glanced at her. “What? You do. I’m just saying.”
“Do you know how long it took me to put on this fucking makeup?” she asked him.
Her use of the F-word brought wariness to his eyes. He knew he was in trouble. He just didn’t know why. “No,” he said. “Should I?”
“Over an hour,” she declared. “I had to teach myself how to do it—talk about a pain in the butt. Check out my eyes—the liner? Do you know how hard it is to take some little pointy pencil and make a straight line like that? Right near your own eye? Will you at least look at it, please?”
He looked. It was a little disconcerting to have him paying her such close attention, but at least now he didn’t look as much like a former cop working with the FBI, scoping out a suspect’s party.
“Note the mascara,” she said, looking up into Ric’s eyes, with their naturally thick, dark lashes. Bastard. “It clumps, so I had to use my fingers to unclump it, and then of course, I got it all over my face, so I had to wash it off and start over again. And then the lipstick? God forbid it be easy. No, first you have to use this special outliner crap, and the lip goo itself is applied with this impossible little brush.
“So I do all this, and you say…” She paused for emphasis. “You smell good. What you’re smelling is the same hair gel that I use every day,” she told him. “But thanks for noticing.”
“I said you smell really good,” Ric corrected her, “which is actually the accepted way of telling your high school best friend’s little sister—who spent years being way too young for you—that you think she looks unbelievably hot.”
“Nice try.” Annie wasn’t buying. “Right now, though? I’m looking for Wow, your eyeliner is really straight. Way to go.”
“What I really like are your lips,” he told her, his gaze on her mouth. “You did an amazing job. You look incredible, and you know it.”
“Oh, man,” she said, her insides butterflying despite herself. “You were so close, but you had to blow it. You know it? What is this? Eighth grade? No wonder I’m dumping you for a gay movie star.”
He should have smiled, but he didn’t. He just kept on staring at her mouth. “You scare me to death,” he told her, finally looking into her eyes. “You always have—it started the day we met. Remember?”
Annie nodded. Did he actually think she’d ever forget?
She and her mother and Bruce had just moved to Sarasota. They’d rented a crappy house in a not-very-nice neighborhood—it was the best her mother could do at the time. She’d gotten a job at a store that sold appliances, and eleven-year-old Annie had built a fort in their sandy backyard with cast-off refrigerator boxes.
It had rained the night before, which wasn’t very good for the cardboard, and Annie had gotten right to work after school, shoring up the insides. It was a task that wasn’t particularly easy to do with her arm still in a sling.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” Ric continued, “because of your elbow.”
That day, it had been Ric whose elbow was all torn up. Not just his elbow, but his whole lower arm, and his knee, as well. She’d always suspected that his full body slide through the gravel in the school yard had given him one hell of a rug burn on his hip, too, right through his jeans. But if it had, he’d never let on.
He was being chased by a gang of older boys. Skinheads.
Their attack on Ric was random. It could have happened to any one of the Hispanic kids attending Sarasota High. For no apparent reason, on that particular day, they’d targeted him.
He should have gone back into the school and called his mother for a ride home. But as he’d told Annie years later, he simply hadn’t believed he was in danger. Sure, they were harassing him—calling him names and throwing wads of paper at him.
But he’d never expected them to follow him. Or for those wads of paper to turn into rocks.
By then, it was too late to turn back. He’d run. They’d chased. He’d skidded in the gravel as they cut him off, when he’d tried to get to the elementary school, hoping to find protection in the front office.
He’d gotten away from them, leaving the road then, cutting through backyards.
Until he’d gotten to Annie’s and spotted her fort.
He was fast, despite his injuries, and was well ahead of the pack by then, and he’d kept his trail going, out of the yard. He’d circled back, crawling in to hide in the biggest of her boxes.
Which was right where she was using a baseball bat to brace the drooping roof.
They were face-to-face, two total strangers, but he put his finger on his lips, so she swallowed her surprise. It was then that she’d heard it. The sound of all those fee
t giving chase. All those voices shouting words she’d never heard before coming to Florida. Ese. Spic. Greaser. Cholo.
She’d peered out through one of the windows Bruce had helped her cut in the side of her fortress, holding her breath until they were gone.
“Thanks,” Ric had said.
“Do you need to use our phone?” Annie asked, and it was then they came back. They could hear the voices, cajoling now, as if calling a missing cat. Here ese, ese, ese…
Ric looked out through a peephole. “Go inside your house,” he ordered her. “Go. Now. They know I’m in here. Run.”
But she hadn’t run. She’d climbed out from her fort and stood out there, at the edge of her yard, with her eyes narrowed and her good hand on her hip. “My uncle’s home and he’s sleeping,” she informed them. “You better not wake him up. He’s a cop and he gets mad when people wake him up.”
The skinhead’s leader was not convinced. “You hiding a friend of ours in your boxes, little girl?”
Annie may not have known what ese meant, or who these mean-looking kids were. All she knew was the boy with the dark brown eyes was in trouble because these kids were definitely not his friends. She glanced at her fort. “Only thing in there is my dog. His name’s Beast. He bites.”
“Bullshit.” The skinhead called her bluff, stomping toward the boxes, so there was nothing to do but scream.
Loud and long and piercing, it made her brother, Bruce, jump up from his video game and come to the kitchen door to see WTF, as he was fond of saying.
“Hey,” he’d shouted in his puberty-lowered voice, which spooked the skinheads into thinking it was her cop uncle coming outside to arrest them.
They turned and ran away, startled, too, by Ric, who’d launched himself at them, brandishing that baseball bat as soon as she’d started to scream. Even back then, he’d been willing to sacrifice his own safety for hers.
“You’ve always taken crazy risks,” Ric told her now.
“I helped save your butt,” Annie pointed out.
“More than once,” he agreed. “But you don’t really think things through. And when I’m with you, sometimes it feels like I start doing the same, like it’s contagious.”
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