by Sharon Sala
Billie waited with her hands folded, her head down as if in prayer. Sahara sat beside her, waiting, and Brendan stood at the window, watching.
Time felt heavy. It wasn’t passing, it was dragging its feet.
Sahara watched him, taking her cue from his body language. Then all of a sudden it changed as he turned away from the window and pulled his gun.
“He just opened the gates.”
Billie’s head came up as Sahara slid to the edge of her seat, ready to play her part.
They jumped when the alarm suddenly went off in a shrill, siren-like scream that echoed what Sahara was feeling.
Brendan bolted out of the room as the intruder came over the threshold. With the alarm still shrieking, they began to trade shots.
Sahara ran into the foyer with Billie behind her, both screaming as they ran.
The intruder gave them both a thumbs-up, staggered backward against the doorjamb to pop the balloons on his back and then stumbled forward, bursting the ones taped over his heart, as he dropped to the floor.
Sahara hit the ones taped to Brendan’s shoulders with her fists as he broke the ones on his chest, and then he staggered toward the open doorway before sprawling awkwardly where he fell, the gun lying loosely in his palm. Blood was spreading across the center of his chest while the balloons on his shoulders began pooling more on the floor beneath his body.
“Scream, Mama,” Sahara said, and then let out an ear-shattering scream while Billie sidestepped the body in the doorway, screaming as she ran.
The continuing shriek of the alarm added to the panic as people on both sides of the streets came running out of their houses. Even traffic on the street outside the property was slowing down as the shriek of the security alarm blasted the area. Once people realized they could see bodies just inside the open door, the phones came out capturing video and sound, and the stories began to spread.
“I hear sirens,” Sahara said, as she dropped to her knees beside Brendan.
He gave her hand a quick squeeze but said nothing.
Billie was standing in the doorway, crying and wringing her hands, and then ran back inside. Soon the cops came flying through the open gates. When Billie ran back outside, Sahara ran with her, her hands and shirt covered in Brendan’s blood.
The drama of what went down was already on social media before the ambulance arrived.
Cops set up a perimeter to keep people away from the gates while others came out of cruisers with their guns drawn. They piled into the house and didn’t come out.
When the ambulances arrived, a couple of cops led them inside.
The undercover cop who’d portrayed the killer was photographed lying in the pool of blood, then photographed from every angle, while Brendan was loaded onto a gurney and taken out to a waiting ambulance. It took eight men to get him down the stairs. The moment they had him loaded, they drove away with lights flashing and sirens screaming. Only then did Billie shut off the security alarm.
*
The moment the ambulance began driving away, Brendan was off the gurney and getting ready to jump out.
“You okay, buddy?” one of the paramedics asked.
Brendan gave him a thumbs-up, bracing himself as the ambulance took a quick right turn.
“Almost there. Get ready,” the driver shouted.
As it began to slow down, Brendan moved to the back of the ambulance. Then he felt it braking.
“Now!” the driver cried.
Brendan opened a door and jumped down on the run. An EMT grabbed at the door as it swung back; Brendan was already in the alley. He reached the veil of vines in seconds, pushed them aside and hit the door with his shoulder. It swung inward on silent hinges. He began to breathe easier knowing he was back on Travis property and safely hidden inside the tunnel. He paused long enough to padlock the door, then ran back through the tunnel and into the house.
He replaced the last padlock, then stripped off his shirt and began pulling off the balloons from his body and rolling them up in the shirt before going upstairs.
He could hear voices from all of the cops still in the front of the house and hoped that they stayed there. He didn’t want anyone to know there was a secret passage in this house.
He found plastic bags in the butler’s pantry, dumped the bloody shirt and everything else inside it, slipped through the kitchen to the garbage can in the utility room and then went the back way up the servants’ stairs to the second floor. Sahara hadn’t been out of his sight since that day in the emergency room, and he didn’t like the distance between them now. He paused to send her a text.
Upstairs. Now.
Then he slipped into their bedroom and quietly closed the door.
Twenty
Sahara was sobbing, standing close enough to the open door so people could see her. It wasn’t hard to lock into that emotion because the thought of losing Brendan was enough to take her there.
Billie was beside her, holding her in her arms as if to console her as they waited for act three of this ruse to play out.
After the chaos of gunshots, the piercing blast of that security alarm, and the sirens of police and ambulances, the relative silence and the pools of blood left everyone with an eerie, unsettled feeling.
A short time later Warner Nelson, the medical examiner, showed up. By then the crowd across the street from the estate was large and spilling out into the streets.
Nelson was less than pleased to be participating in the charade and he made no bones about it, glaring at Sahara, muttering beneath his breath about overpaid actors and pseudodrama as he went through the motions on the so-called body.
It startled Sahara, then hurt her feelings, then it made her mad. She pushed out of her mother’s arms and went for him, stopping just short of where he was kneeling.
“Hey,” she said.
He looked up, startled that she was on his heels.
“We haven’t been introduced, so I have no idea what to call you except rude. It’s obvious my existence means shit to you, although I’ve been trying to stay alive for days now. Back in LA, someone poisoned my food on set, and someone else ate food meant for me and died. I narrowly escaped being blown up in an elevator, had to be rescued from the rooftop of my apartment because of the smoke and fire. My mother was murdered. A bomb was planted in my own plane. A man at the airport was murdered because of someone’s need to see me dead. A cottonmouth was delivered to my house in a vase of flowers and nearly bit me. My father’s body turned up dead in an abandoned building, and a hired gun got onto the grounds and tried to take me out. There are cops in two states trying to figure out who’s doing this, and none of you are coming up with shit. I am so sick of this I could scream. I challenged the bastard on air, and now this event is, for all intents and purposes, removing the last obstacles he might have to getting to me. I have set myself up as the sitting duck, and if things go wrong, you get to recover my body, so maybe that will make up for your current dissatisfaction. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but do not glare at me again. You’ve been working with dead people too long, you’ve clearly forgotten how to treat the living with a little respect.”
She turned on her heel and strode out of the foyer without looking back. She was almost to the stairs when she felt her phone vibrate, signaling a text. She glanced down and saw Upstairs. Now.
“On my way,” she muttered, and ran.
Brendan was already stripping and moving to the shower when she rushed into the room.
“Did everything go okay?” Sahara asked.
“Yes. Exactly as we planned, and just so you know, both doors are once more padlocked. I’m going to get in the shower.”
She cupped the back of his head and kissed him.
“I had to do that,” she said. “All of that stuff on you is scary. Just wanted to assure myself you’re still okay.”
“The fake stuff on you is scary, too,” he said. “Wash it off and change your shirt. It looks too real.” And then he he
aded for the shower.
Sahara followed him into the bathroom, took off her shirt and began washing her hands as he stepped into the shower.
Dear Lord, the chaos they had created, and this day was just beginning.
*
Back in the foyer, Billie moved into housekeeper mode.
“Are you gentlemen nearly through here?” she asked.
The ME was still reeling from his dressing-down. He felt small for behaving as he had, but he wasn’t a man used to apologizing to women for anything.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said shortly. He directed the body to be put on a gurney, then covered it with a sheet from head to toe so the gathering crowd would assume the person was deceased.
When the body was rolled out of the house and down the steps, a wave of voices moved through the crowd, all with the same message…someone was dead.
And then the cops began leaving. As soon as the last one passed through the gates, Billie reset the bypass and the gates swung shut. Now she was left with the aftermath of their mock attack. Fake blood was everywhere, and while she would love to call the cleaning crew to wash all this up, it wouldn’t take but seconds for them to know it wasn’t real. So she went for a mop and cleaning supplies and did it herself.
*
Bubba was in a motel room cutting tags off the new clothes he’d purchased and still waiting for a call back from his insurance company. He was reaching for another shirt when a news flash interrupted the show he was watching. As soon as he heard the name Travis, he grabbed the remote and turned up the sound, watching in disbelief.
“Wait! What just happened? That’s someone on a stretcher! Oh shit, that’s the bodyguard! What happened there? What the hell happened?”
He kept watching, seeing Sahara running out of the house and then back inside again.
“So she’s still alive and kicking. What’s going on?”
He got on his phone and checked Facebook and Twitter to see if this news had already broken on social media and if any fans had more information, which of course, they did. There were dozens of uploaded clips of what onlookers had witnessed at the estate.
He saw enough to know that the bodyguard was taken away in an ambulance, and that the cops were claiming the man who’d been stalking Sahara Travis was dead.
At first, he could only stare, and then the ramifications began to sink in. A copycat killer had just set the stage for Bubba’s final entrance. It was the first smile he’d managed today.
He lowered the volume again and began taking the underwear out of the packaging and tossing it into the suitcase he’d purchased. A few minutes later, his phone rang.
Finally. It was the insurance company returning his call. Once he learned they would pay for his lodging for up to a month until he could get a new place, he began to relax. They also informed him that an adjuster would be out at a later time to look at the property, assuring him that it was just procedure.
He didn’t care. He’d just bank the insurance check when it came, and for the time being find a furnished apartment for rent. When all of this was over, there would be a big empty house just waiting for occupancy.
On the plus side, his disguise and handgun had been with him in the car—two very important things he wouldn’t have to replace.
Tomorrow he was ending this war, and ending it his way.
*
Lucy was in the penthouse at The Magnolia, trying to figure out where to begin. The cleaning crew had obviously been here. Everything was gleaming. But beneath the clean scent of lemon that Sahara preferred, the scent of smoke was overpowering.
She opened the sliding doors off the kitchen to let in fresh air as she moved from room to room, mentally writing off all the furniture and draperies as ruined.
She went all the way back into Sahara’s bedroom suite and frowned as she opened the door. It smelled like an unemptied ashtray in here. Furnishings were a total loss. At least Sahara could afford to replace what she wanted. A quick glance into the closets and then Lucy backed out of there, as well. The clothing reeked of smoke.
Dishes, awards and trophies were salvageable. All they needed was a good cleaning. She took out her iPad and began making notes as she went. She’d been there about an hour when her cell phone rang. She saw the caller ID and promptly answered.
“Hello…What? Really? Yes, okay. I’ll try to get a flight out as soon as possible.”
She hit Save on the notes she was making, closed and locked the sliding doors again, and then began looking for flights back to New Orleans. To her relief, the last one for the day flew out at 4:00 p.m. She still had time to get home and pack. The thought of leaving Wiley behind again made her sad, so she booked two tickets to New Orleans instead of one.
He was going to love it there.
*
Marcus was at his flower shop when he began hearing stories from customers claiming that the man stalking Sahara Travis had broken into her home. At the time, all he kept hearing was that one person was dead and another one taken away in an ambulance. He dropped the flowers on which he’d been working and went to his office to make a quick call. The phone rang several times, and just as he feared it would go to voice mail, the call was answered.
“Hello.”
“Miss Billie! This is Marcus. I just heard some most troubling news. Is everything all right there?”
Billie frowned. “Just a minute, please.” She put her hand over the phone to whisper, “Sahara, it’s Marcus Beloit. He wants to know if everything is all right. What do I say?”
“Let me,” Sahara said, and reached for the phone.
“Careful what you say,” Brendan whispered.
She nodded, then took a deep breath and slid into character as easily as putting on shoes.
“Marcus, it’s me,” she said, her voice shaking.
“Sweetheart! What’s happened? I heard gossip. I didn’t want to believe it was true.”
“I don’t know what you heard, but the news here is bad and good. Brendan killed the stalker who’d been after me, which is such a relief, but he was shot in the process. He’s injured badly and in intensive care. They don’t know if he will make it or not.”
“Oh dear! I am so sorry,” he cried. “What can I do? Do you need anything? Can I drive you to the hospital? Just tell me.”
“You know what my life is like. I can’t show up just anywhere like a normal person. I would be mobbed. The police advised me it was best to stay here rather than cause a ruckus at the hospital and make trouble for so many others.”
“Yes, that makes sense. Still, I’m stunned. Did they identify the man who was stalking you?”
“No. I didn’t know who he was.” Then she choked on a sob. “I can’t talk about it anymore. Thank you for calling.”
“Of course. Remember, let me know if I can be of service.”
“I will,” she said, and disconnected.
The moment she turned around, the tears were gone and so was the dejected tone in her voice. She looked first at Brendan, and then at Billie.
“I am so tired of this. I’m either a damn good actress or a consummate liar. The only times I feel like I can be myself is with you two.”
Billie hugged her. “It will be over soon. You’ll see,” she said.
“Come sit with me,” Brendan said, and pulled her into his lap.
She tucked her head against his shoulder, loving the deep rumble of his voice as it reverberated against her ear.
“Don’t worry, love. We’ll all see Sutton coming a mile off, and if he’s hired someone else, then the simple fact of a stranger on the doorstep will be warning enough,” Brendan said.
“Okay. I called Harold a few minutes ago because I knew he would see the stuff all over the news. I felt I owed him the call, but all I said was that it was over. I’ll have to explain it again when it’s really over,” she said.
Quiet settled between them like a welcome friend, until she realized Billie was mopping tears.
“Mama
, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know what to do next. My life here…this job… It no longer exists.”
Sahara slid out of Brendan’s lap and into the chair beside her.
“I own this house now, but you know that I have no desire to live in it. If you want it, it’s yours and the money that comes with it.”
“Thank you, darling, but no, I don’t want it, either. This place…staying in it was my penance—my jail—for what I’d done to you. I don’t care if I never see it again.”
“Then what? Where do you want to live?” Sahara asked.
Billie’s voice was shaking. “Somewhere close to you, if you would be open to it. I lost fifteen years of your life already. I don’t want to lose you again.”
Sahara took her mother’s hands. “Will you come back to LA with me?”
Tears began rolling in earnest. “A thousand times yes, but only if there’s a small cottage on the property for me. I want to be close, but not in your business. You and Brendan need privacy, and I do, too.”
Brendan stood up. “Both of you, come here,” he said, and opened his arms and hugged them to him. “Where I come from, family sticks together. What’s hers is mine, and what’s mine is hers, and that includes people.”
Sahara had never felt so safe—so loved—as she did standing between these two people.
“Think you can handle this, Mama?”
Billie could only nod.
“Then we’re good,” she said. “You’re going to love California. The weather is beautiful.”
“But they have earthquakes,” Billie said nervously.
“And they have hurricanes here,” Sahara countered. “Safety isn’t a place, Mama. It’s just a state of mind, and you and Brendan are my safe place to fall.”
*
The next morning as they were cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast, Brendan walked up behind Billie, reached over her shoulder and took the dishcloth out of her hands.
She looked over her shoulder and grinned. “I’m not through with that,” she said.
“I need you to leave the house today,” Brendan said.