Jules could almost hear one of those satanic types laughing as he gazed at his current number one reason why he hated L.A.
A kid, barely out of his teens, was pointing a handgun at Jules’ chest. “Give me your wallet!”
There had been a sign saying, “Park at your own risk” posted at the entrance to this parking garage that was cut into the hillside beneath his West Hollywood hotel. But Jules had foolishly assumed any risk would occur at night, not during broad daylight. Of course, in here it was shadowy and dank. The small lot was only half-filled, and no other people were in sight.
The garage walls were concrete block, and the ceiling looked solid, too. A bullet would ricochet off rather than penetrate and injure someone on the other side. The open bay doors on his right, however, led directly to the street. It wasn’t a major thoroughfare, but there was occasional traffic.
“You don’t want to do this,” Jules said, carefully keeping his hands where the kid could see them, even while he inched his way closer. He was glad his sidearm was in a locked suitcase in the trunk of the car, so he could hold his jacket open and take his wallet out of his pocket with two fingers without flashing his shoulder holster. “Just turn around and walk away—and do yourself another favor while you’re at it. Wipe the gun so your prints aren’t on it and—”
“Shut up,” the kid ordered him. He had primitive tattoos on his knuckles—despite his tender age he’d already done prison time. His hands were also shaking, another bad sign. He was obviously in dire need of a fix—the most desperate of all the desperate Los Angelenos.
He was in such bad shape, he’d forgotten to pull his ski mask down over his face. He was wearing it on top of his head, which didn’t do much to conceal his identity.
Clear thinking wasn’t part of the heroin withdrawal process, so Jules tried to eliminate any confusion on his end.
“I’m putting this on the ground”—Jules did just that—“and here’s my watch and my ring, too.” The ring—nothing fancy, just a simple silver band—was going to do the trick. The kid’s hands were shaking too much to be able to pick it up without his looking down, and when he did . . . “I’m going to back away—”
“I said shut the fuck up, faggot!”
Well, all-righty then. Jules could just imagine the conversation shared over a needle. Hey, if you ever need some fast cash, go on over to West Hollywood and rob a homo. They’re all rich, and if you do it right, you can probably make ’em cry, which is good for a laugh. . . .
“So this is a hate crime?” Jules asked in an attempt to distract because he just couldn’t bring himself to cry. But it was too late. The time for conversation was definitely over.
The kid realized that his mask was up.
Jules wasn’t sure what changed, but he got a heavy whiff of I can’t go back to prison, which wasn’t a good emotion to combine with I need a fix. Now.
He couldn’t wait for the kid to fumble with the ring.
Instead, Jules rushed him, taking care to knock his gun hand up and to the left, away from the open bay door, which proved to be unnecessary as the weapon went flying, unfired.
It skittered on the concrete as Jules sent the kid in the opposite direction.
He used the basic principles of Newton’s second law to launch himself after that weapon, scooping it off the floor and holding it in a stance that was far less theatrical than the kid’s had been, but also far more effective.
The kid rolled onto his ass, his face scraped and bleeding, and he looked at Jules with a mixture of disbelief and horror. “Who the fuck are you?”
“You didn’t think a fag would fight back, huh?” Jules asked. Holding the gun steady with one hand, he took his cell phone from his pocket with his other and speed-dialed the LAPD number he’d programmed in—standard procedure for an out-of-town visit—on his flight from D.C. “Yeah,” he said into the phone as the line was picked up. “This is Agent Jules Cassidy, with the FBI.”
“Ah, shit,” the kid said, too stupid to realize his mistake hadn’t been that he’d mugged the wrong man, but rather that he’d left his home this morning intending to commit felony armed robbery instead of checking himself into a rehab program.
“I need immediate police assistance in the underground garage for the Stonewall Hotel in West Hollywood,” Jules told the police dispatcher. He looked at the kid. “You, sweetiecakes, have the right to remain silent. . . .”
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CHAPTER
TWO
P roducer J. Mercedes Chadwick’s house in the Hollywood Hills was an elegant old monster built back in the silent film era. But when Lawrence Decker followed Cosmo Richter and Tom Paoletti into the front hall, he’d realized that old was the defining word. The building probably hadn’t been renovated since the late 1940s.
From the gate, it had looked impressive. From inside, with a collection of buckets strategically positioned under obvious signs of water damage on the ceiling, it was clear that the place was a major fixer-upper.
“Someone else is paying the bill, right?” Cosmo had murmured to Tom as they stood in the foyer, waiting for the girl clutching the clipboard to fetch Ms. Chadwick from the back.
“HeartBeat Studios,” Tom murmured back.
Decker was well aware that securing HeartBeat as a regular client would be quite an accomplishment for Troubleshooters Incorporated. The work would be easy—silver-bullet assignments—compared to most of the operations Deck had been on overseas. While providing security for a Hollywood studio wouldn’t quite be paid R & R, it would be close.
Easy assignments, good money. That’s why Tom himself was here today with Deck, and why he’d dragged Cosmo Richter along, too.
The SEAL chief was tall and muscular, with a lean face and pale blue eyes he usually kept hidden behind sunglasses. Yeah, he was impressively dangerous-looking—something no one had ever been able to say about Decker, even during his own years with the Navy.
Cosmo was here as a human exclamation mark, strategically in place for the client to gaze upon after Tom and Decker assured her that they would, indeed, be able to keep her safe.
Of course, the first thing they needed to do was install a security system. Currently, there was nothing here—aside from a fading sign on the creaky automated gate at the end of the driveway: “Beware of Dogs.”
This place dated from the time when state-of-the-art security meant a stone wall with bits of glass in the concrete on top, a front gate, and a matched set of big, loud, and ugly, with lots of sharp teeth.
“We have a list of improvements a mile long that we’re planning to make,” Ms. Chadwick had told them breezily as she’d led the way to the suite of rooms she and her brother were using for their production company’s main offices. Her impossibly high heels had clicked on the marble tile floor. “But we’re wait-listed with the contractor. You know how hard it is to get work done these days. . . .”
According to the file Tom had given Deck, she’d produced her first movie—a low-budget horror flick called Hell or High Water—back when she was in film school. She sold her little student film to a distributor for a ton of money and put herself on the map as a mover and shaker.
Apparently, in Hollywood, youth was in. And J. Mercedes Chadwick was still young, barely twenty-six. She dressed younger, looking like Britney Spears’ brunette twin, with long, dark hair cascading down her back and a significant gap between the below-the-hips waistband of her microskirt and the bottom edge of her shirt.
Which was . . . quite a shirt. It had one hell of a neckline.
J. Mercedes Chadwick was a very healthy young woman, no doubt about that.
Her long legs were bare and as golden tanned as her stomach, her toenails painted an exotic shade of dark pink.
She had what Decker thought of as Greek goddess eyes—bluish green and an unusual contrast with her dark hair and rich Mediterranean complexion. She was gorgeous—although not by
Hollywood’s standards, because she hadn’t managed to starve herself boyishly thin.
And that was a choice that was quite intentional—calculated, in fact. He’d realized it when they were introduced, as she’d held his hand just a little too long and gazed into his eyes just a little too meaningfully.
She knew what most of Hollywood had forgotten. That as fashionable as it was to be whip thin, most men still liked women with substantial curves.
But if his libido had kicked on from that soulfully probing look, it kicked off just as quickly when she gazed at Cosmo the exact same way.
Cos, bless him, didn’t crack a smile. He just looked back at the woman with a total lack of expression, as if all that cleavage meant absolutely nothing to him.
Of course, maybe it didn’t. Decker didn’t know the younger man very well.
One thing he did know was that J. Mercedes Chadwick liked standing out. Hence the three-inch heels that pushed her well over six feet tall and made her tower over mere mortals such as Deck.
There was, he also realized, probably nothing that this woman ever did that was unintentional.
She couldn’t have been more different in height and coloring, but she made him think of Sophia Ghaffari—whom he hadn’t seen since that drink they’d shared in a bar in Kaiserslautern, Germany, over six months ago.
Sophia was working for Tom Paoletti now—as a matter of fact, for the past four months both she and Deck had worked out of the same office in San Diego. But Decker had spent most of that time OUTCONUS, on various assignments. The few occasions he’d been back in the States, she’d been out of town.
Which was probably a very good thing, considering.
They all sat now—Cosmo, Tom, Decker, Mercedes, and her brother Robin who was as fair as she was dark—on a series of sofas and easy chairs in a huge room with windows looking out over the wilderness that was the back garden.
“Isn’t a high-tech security system going to be enough?” Mercedes was arguing with Tom. “I mean, great, if HeartBeat wants to pay to install a system, I’m not going to say no. But really, with the kind of technology that’s available these days, isn’t the idea of two guards—one inside and one outside the house, around the clock—just a little extravagant?”
Decker answered for Tom. “Considering the size of this house, Ms. Chadwick, no.”
She was obviously not happy with the idea, but as she turned to look at him, he knew what it was about her that reminded him of Sophia. It was that smile and the eye contact as she asked, “But does it have to be day and night? I have . . . friends who can keep me safe at night.”
Across the room, her brother covered a laugh with a cough.
Mercedes Chadwick didn’t bring the question “Do you want to make it with me?” to the table. No, her attitude was “When do you want to make it with me?”
It was an approach to being a woman in the business world that was a direct 180 from the dress-and-act-like-a-man school. Instead of trying to de-sex, Mercedes Chadwick used her sexuality to try to gain control.
Just like blond and beautiful Sophia Ghaffari had done back in Kazbekistan, when she and Deck had first met.
As Mercedes smiled at him, Decker wondered if she would go as far as Sophia had to gain the upper hand.
Jesus, was he ever going to stop thinking about that?
“Your privacy won’t be compromised,” Tom told Mercedes, trying to reassure her.
She laughed. “Yes, it will. Look, can’t we just pretend that you’ve got guards posted here around the clock? I don’t mind having one of your men tag along when I go out. That actually might be kind of fun. And it’s okay with me if someone hangs here, guarding the place while I’m gone, but . . .”
Deck exchanged a look with Tom. Fun?
“I know this may seem inconvenient—” Tom started.
“And I know you really want this gig,” she cut him off. “So let’s compromise.”
“There is no compromise.” Tom was absolute. “We’re talking about your personal safety.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’m so sure some of those scary e-mailers are going to come out here and try to hit me with their computer keyboards. Or maybe they’ll chain-mail me to death. ‘If you don’t forward this to ten people in the next two minutes, great misfortune will befall you . . .’ ”
Cosmo Richter, who’d seemed all this time to have his full attention focused on the garden, finally looked over at Mercedes and spoke. “Is there a reason, miss, why you feel the threats that have been made against your life are a joke?”
“Joke,” she said, looking from Cosmo to Decker to Tom. “Yes, joke. That’s a good word for this, thank you. It’s a giant joke, gentlemen. It’s probably a stunt that the studio’s come up with to get publicity for this movie. You don’t really think someone wants to kill me, do you?”
Her intercom buzzed, breaking in before Tom could respond.
“I’m sorry to interrupt.” The voice of Mercedes’ personal assistant came through a speaker. “But an FBI agent named Jules Cassidy is down by the gate, and”—she cleared her throat—“the opener’s stuck again.”
The brother—Robin—stood. “I’ll go.”
The FBI agent drove a rented Mercury Sable.
Robin wasn’t sure exactly what he’d expected, but it sure as hell wasn’t a four-door family sedan.
The FBI agent was also shorter and younger than he’d imagined, getting out of the car as Robin approached the gate. Compact, with a trim build, he had dark hair that he wore cut short and a face that could have appeared next to Robin’s on the cover of Tiger Beat magazine.
He could just imagine this guy’s meeting with his high school guidance counselor. “You could be a model or a TV star—you don’t really need any acting skills for that—or . . . Oh, here’s something just perfect! *NSYNC is looking for new blood—” “Well, you see, Mrs. Smersh, I hate to disappoint you, but I really have my heart set on becoming an FBI agent. . . .”
“Sorry,” Robin called as he came the last few feet down the drive. “It sticks sometimes.”
The gate actually stuck most of the time, and they’d gotten into the habit of leaving it open. But Jane had wanted it closed today—probably to fool the private security team into thinking she was taking precautions with her safety.
It took him four tries to get the damn thing to work. His smile definitely felt strained around the edges by the time it finally opened.
Now that they were both on the same side of the fence, the agent flashed his badge as he held out his hand. “Jules Cassidy, FBI.”
“Robin Chadwick, SAG.” They shook hands. “I’m the brother.”
“Nice to meet you. SAG?”
“Screen Actors Guild,” Robin explained. “Sorry, I have this inability to not be an asshole, especially when I’m not provoked.”
The double negatives didn’t stop Jules for even a second, and he laughed, taking off his sunglasses and . . .
Hello. Big eye contact. The FBI guy not only was shorter and younger, but he was also gayer than Robin had expected.
Ever since he’d gone blond to play Hal Lord in American Hero, he’d been hit on by gay men more times than he could count. It had been a little nerve-racking at first, but he’d learned to remove any potential mystery as quickly as possible.
“Not gay,” Robin said now. He thought of sweet little Patty up in Jane’s office, who’d given him that shy smile when he’d emerged from the meeting. He knew without a doubt that he’d be welcome should he come a-calling at her apartment later this evening. Yes, he knew he’d promised his sister that he’d be good, but Patty was so cute. . . . “Don’t waste your energy.”
Jules laughed again. He appeared to be genuinely amused. “You’re making some pretty large assumptions, aren’t you?”
“Assume everything,” Robin told him cheerfully. “That’s my motto. It keeps me out of trouble.”
“I would think it might get you into it,” Jules countered.
“And still you flirt with me, you devil. What part of ‘Not gay,’ did you not understand? Drive through, will you, so I can try to close this behind you.”
Jules Cassidy, FBI, was still laughing—and he was pretty damn adorable when he laughed. Harve and Guillermo and Gary the Grip and even Ricco, who was in a long-term relationship, were going to swoon when they met him. He got back into the Sable and drove through the gate. He stopped just on the other side, though.
Robin gave up on the idea of closing the gate after his fifth try.
“I hate that motherfucking thing,” he said, adding as he realized Jules had rolled his window down, “There, does that convince you? A very heterosexual use of the manly verb to motherfuck, positioned in my sentence as a salty adverb.”
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