Troubleshooters 09 Hot Target

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Again, Cosmo laughed, and as she smiled up into his eyes, something fluttered deep in her stomach. Ah, jeez, she was in trouble. She liked this man a little too much. As he tucked his shirt in, she called, “Adam, will you see if Charlene has a belt?”

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  She had to keep this all business. She knelt in front of Cos, checking the length of the pants, adjusting the lightweight wool, pretending that she wasn’t hyperaware of the solidness of his legs beneath the thin fabric. “I think the length is perfect, although it would help if you were wearing shoes. Do you have dress shoes?”

  “I did, but I lost them last time I went to New York City.” He glanced over at his work boots. They lay where he’d kicked them off, clunky and enormous, like two empty cardboard boxes. “I could just—”

  “Don’t finish that sentence. Don’t even think it. Jack, are there any dress shoes in mega huge out there?” she called.

  “Charlene says no, but you know how she lies,” he called back. “I’ll find some.”

  “My feet aren’t that big,” Cosmo said mildly.

  She tipped her head back and gazed up at him. “How does one lose one’s shoes?” From this perspective, he looked gigantic. And gorgeously elegant, the crisp white of the shirt a nice contrast to his tanned skin.

  He smiled down at her. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not that exciting.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Jane said. “What am I thinking?”

  “One-night stand gone bad, right? Livid femme fatale throwing my shoes out of a twentieth-story window?”

  “How else do you lose your shoes?” she countered. “A weird paddling mishap in Central Park? Yeah, like I’m going to believe that.”

  “Airline lost my luggage,” Cosmo told her. “I never got it back.”

  “Oh,” she said, making a face. “That’s very disappointing.”

  “Sorry.”

  “If you want, you could bring that skull-and-flames shirt over to my place sometime,” Jane told him. “I could throw it out my window, while shrieking, ‘You cad!’ Although, I’m only on the second floor, so the dramatic impact might not be the same. As well as any potential damage to the shirt. I suppose I could always cut it to shreds with my scissors first.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” he said, laughing.

  Damn, he looked good, even without a belt and shoes, even with his jacket off.

  It was funny—extremely muscular men often looked bulky when they wore a suit, and there were all kinds of costuming tricks and illusions to make them look more triangular rather than like a refrigerator wearing clothes. But Cosmo didn’t need any help. His waist and hips were trim. Almost too trim for these pants.

  “Are these too loose?” she asked.

  “Nothing a belt won’t take care of.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t want to do an accordion—you know, get all bunchy up here.” She rose up on her knees, reaching to see for herself how oversized the pants were, her fingers inside the waistband. Holy God, the man had zero body fat. He didn’t have a tummy—he had a wall of solid muscle. There was a good two inches of extra room, and she chewed on her lip as she considered their options. The zipper pull was sticking up, and she pushed it down, then adjusted the fabric of the fly. “I think we’ll need to see what it looks like with the belt. When trousers aren’t pleated like this, the front is supposed to lie flat—”

  “Which it’s not going to do if you keep that up,” Adam said, startling them both. She’d forgotten he was standing there.

  Jane yanked back her hand which, yes, had been lingering on the front of Cosmo’s pants. “Sorry.” She got to her feet. Now she was the one who was blushing. God, what an idiot.

  She took the belt from Adam, handed it to Cosmo, pretending she wasn’t flustered. “I’ve helped tailor more than my share of costumes,” she said. “My specialty is hemming—I think probably because you can’t really screw it up too badly. I used to do hair and makeup, too. See, if a movie is low budget enough, a producer has to learn to do just about everything.”

  Great, now she was babbling.

  “Stunts?” Cos asked, fastening the buckle.

  “Okay, maybe not everything,” Jane conceded.

  Jack appeared with a pair of shoes. They were less like cardboard boxes and more like elegant leather canoes. “These should work.” He looked at Cosmo. “Oh, my.”

  Oh, my, indeed. Perfect timing, too. “Let’s talk for a minute about Sophia,” she said for Jack’s benefit as Cosmo slipped his feet into the canoes.

  “Sophia, eh?” Jack said, turning to look at Jane. “All this effort is for a Sophia? Not for—”

  “Yes, Jack, it most certainly is.” She kept him from saying “a Jane.” “Brilliant, beautiful, brave Sophia. Right, Cos?”

  She took the suit jacket from the wooden hanger and held it out for him, shaking it slightly when he didn’t move right away.

  Cosmo shrugged into it, glancing back over his shoulder at her. “I don’t really know her,” he finally said.

  “Isn’t that the point of having dinner with her? To get to know her?” Jane smoothed the fabric of the jacket over his amazing shoulders. “This fits like it was made for you.” She handed him the tie that Jack had picked out—blue with a jazzy pattern.

  “I don’t know who Sophia is, but frankly, I hate her,” Adam said.

  Jane could relate. Up to this moment, she’d been nursing this foolish fantasy that after Hero was in the can, after the death threats became yesterday’s news, after her life returned to relatively normal and her encounters with paparazzi dwindled back down to once or twice every six months or so, she’d call up Cosmo and say something like, “Hey, remember that lucky shirt you told me about a few months ago? With the skull and flames? What do you say you put it on and come on over and see what happens? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.”

  But now she knew that wasn’t going to happen. Perfect Sophia was going to take one look at Cosmo, and . . .

  Jane would call in a few months, sure—to congratulate him on his upcoming wedding to the woman of his dreams.

  Damn it.

  Jack was watching her, one eyebrow askance, so she smiled brightly. “From what I’ve heard, Sophia sounds lovely. She and Cos both work for Troubleshooters Inc., so they must have a lot in common.”

  “Too much in common makes life boring,” Jack intoned. “The relationships that I’ve seen work—the ones that seem to last the longest—are opposites. There’s more to talk about. The sex is better, too.”

  “In that case,” Adam said, batting his eyelashes, “Cosmo should forget about Sophia and hook up with me. I’m his exact opposite.” He pulled back the clothing racks so that Jack could sit down again and not be left out of the conversation.

  Adam was not only a wonderful actor, but also considerate, charming, and quite funny. Jane didn’t understand why Robin had such a huge problem with him. It was particularly weird, since it was so unlike her brother to hold a grudge for more than five seconds.

  “I was thinking more in terms of our Jane,” Jack said to Adam.

  She made herself laugh at that, as if it was as absurd a thought as Cosmo paired with Adam. “Yeah, thanks but no thanks, Jack. Cos and I are friends. Period. Don’t start believing what you read in the tabloids. Cos and I are hot and heavy, a two-headed baby was born speaking ancient Latin and Greek, and a doctor in Latvia has cloned Elvis.”

  “What’s going on? You going to be in this movie, Cos?”

  Jane looked up to see Lawrence Decker standing in the door.

  “Just a lunch break, Chief,” Cosmo said as Deck came in. Patty, Robin, and Jules were right behind him. “I’d mentioned to Jane that I didn’t own a suit so—”

  “He needs a suit so he can take Ms. Sophia Wonderful to dinner,” Adam said. It was so obvious to Jane that he was pretending that Jules’ presence didn’t affect him in the slightest.

  “Really?” Decker said. He looked at Cos. “You and Sophia ar
e, um . . . ?” He shook his head, looked at Jane, pointed over his shoulder with his thumb toward the stairs he’d just come down. “Is this the main access to this area?” He pointed across the room. “Where does that door lead?”

  “Hallway to a costume storage area. This basement’s huge,” Cosmo answered for her. “There are a number of other exits: six different stairways going up, and four going down to a sublevel.”

  Decker motioned to Jules. “Would you . . . ?”

  The FBI agent went to the other door, opened it, and checked outside of it.

  “What’s up?” Cosmo asked before Jane could.

  “There’s been another e-mail,” Robin said. “Janey, the FBI were able to track this one. It was sent from a Kinko’s, here in Hollywood. The one right down the street.”

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  S o this was how a movie love scene was filmed.

  It was remarkably unromantic, with bright lights and instructions to the actors called out by the director.

  “Keep your right shoulder down, Virginia, or we’re going to get another nipple in the frame.”

  “Legs closer together, Milt. We want only your butt in this shot, no hairy surprises.”

  Jesus.

  Good thing Decker had his back to the action. Of course, that was the only way Mercedes would let him into the studio.

  She’d cleared most of her cast and crew from the set. The multitude of extras had all been sent home, much to Deck’s relief.

  Although she probably wouldn’t have done that if the actor and actress who were playing Milt and Virginia hadn’t agreed to shoot their big love scene several days earlier than scheduled. But they had, so here they were, with a skeleton crew filming two naked forty-year-olds pretending to get their groove on.

  Deck, of course, would have been much happier if everybody had gone home. Everyone except Mercedes and the Troubleshooters team. Mercedes had to stick around—at least until Cosmo called to say that they were finally ready for her. He’d taken a team back to the producer’s house to clear out fifty years of clutter from the garage so they could drive the producer directly inside upon arrival at her home. No more hustling her out of the car and up the front steps in clear view of anyone with a hundred-fifty-dollar rifle scope.

  Not with their man’s latest e-mail saying, “I’m closer than you think.”

  Sadistic bastard.

  The FBI had swarmed over that Kinko’s, dusting for prints, hoping to find footage from a surveillance camera.

  No such luck. The Kinko’s camera had stopped working early that same morning—no mere coincidence, of that Decker was sure.

  They’d located the computer the e-mailer had used to send the message. They also got his name and credit card number, which was, of course, fake and stolen.

  The stolen card had been taken sometime in the past three days, somewhere here in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area.

  It wasn’t much to go on.

  Both the Troubleshooters and the FBI had interviewed the Kinko’s counter help. There had been three people working at 0725 this morning, but none of them could put a face on the e-mailer. Youngish—maybe. Average height—maybe. Brown hair—maybe.

  “We get a lot of students early in the morning, this time of year,” the most senior of the staff, a woman all of twenty-two years old, had said apologetically when Deck had talked to her.

  Apparently, their man was white and male.

  And surely clever enough to know not to go back to that Kinko’s, where the FBI were installing their own surveillance device—one that couldn’t be tampered with.

  After Cosmo’s team finished clearing Mercedes’ garage, they would drive to the studio, checking out any locations along the route that might be used as a hiding place by a shooter with a sniper rifle.

  Church towers, office building roofs, hillsides . . .

  Unless they could convince Mercedes to lie low for a few days, they were going to have to map out other routes to the studio, and never take the same one twice.

  But what they really had to do, first and foremost, was catch this son of a bitch.

  Then Deck could return to the world he knew best—a world where the words we’re going to get another nipple in the frame weren’t used very often.

  If at all.

  Cosmo Richter, too, could go back to Coronado, to SEAL Team Sixteen, where he belonged.

  He was a good man, a good addition to the Troubleshooters team. Decker didn’t dispute that. He was just so . . . tall. So striking looking in that goddamn classy suit and tie.

  He was such a perfect physical match for Sophia, whom he obviously had the hots for. Why wouldn’t he? She was beautiful and intelligent and . . .

  She was actually having dinner with him. Cosmo must’ve asked her out, and she must’ve said yes.

  Which was a good thing. Cosmo was a good man. He’d be good for her.

  Decker looked like shit when he wore a suit. He could never find one that fit right. Not at a price he was willing to pay.

  “Okay, cut, cut!” the director called. “I’m not getting enough here. This restraint is not what I want, people. You’re holding back. Where’s that passion I saw yesterday?”

  “How about trying something a little different?” Deck heard Mercedes suggest. “How about we get the audio back up and running, have quiet on the set, and let our actors do this scene the way they want to do it.”

  The director wasn’t happy. “That’s not the way I—”

  “Here’s the thing, Len.” Mercedes put a hint of steel into her voice. “We’ve done it your way for nearly three hours. My actors are getting tired. This time, we’re going to do it their way.”

  “This isn’t—” the director started to say, but Mercedes stepped close and spoke quietly into his ear. Deck couldn’t make out the words, but whatever she said shut him up. Patty then intercepted, pulling him down near Decker, to show him what looked like a mock-up of the movie poster.

  “Grab a PowerBar, get dressed, get restyled,” Mercedes ordered the two actors. “Everyone else take five, then get this shot set up again. Deck, are you still here?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he called.

  “Come on over here, will you?” she called back. “Forgive me for not getting up, but my feet are killing me. New shoes. Want some coffee?”

  “No thanks, I’m good.”

  Mercedes was sitting in a director’s chair with her name stenciled on the back, part of a cluster of similar chairs positioned near a video monitor, slightly behind the camera. In front of the camera, the soundstage was set up to look like the shabby elegance of a Paris hotel room, circa 1945. Stage lights, attached to bars way up high, as well as enormous metal frames—trees, Mercedes had called them—holding huge spotlightlike fixtures, provided atmospheric lighting.

  “Sorry to make you sit out there with your back to the action,” Mercedes said, tipping her head back to look at him. “It’s just . . . Can you imagine being an actor filming a love scene with people watching?”

  “No,” he admitted. “I can’t. Not under any circumstances.”

  She nodded, gesturing for him to sit. “What I’m trying to do is make my actors feel as safe as possible, so—”

  “Excuse me, Jane. I’m sorry . . .” It was Patty of the clipboard. “Victor Strauss left a message—I know you were waiting for his call. He can do lunch either tomorrow or the next day.”

  “Tomorrow,” Mercedes decided. “Call him back, make sure he knows to meet me here at the studio. Oh, and tell him to bring flowers—something wildly romantic.”

  Patty nodded, making herself a note. “Also . . . the FBI is here. Jules and another man. I’m not sure, I think it might be his boss. Max Something . . . ?”

  Decker sat up. Max Bhagat was here?

  “Let them in but make sure they know we’ve only got about ten more minutes of break,�
� Mercedes told Patty, who nodded and trotted away, already making that phone call.

  Mercedes turned to Deck. “What are the chances they’re here to tell me they found a clue at the Kinko’s and have already taken Mr. Insane-o into custody?”

  “It’d be nice it if were that easy,” Decker agreed.

  Bang! Crash! Thump!