Troubleshooters 09 Hot Target

by Suzanne Brockmann

  That wasn’t good news, but it wasn’t bad news, either.

  Other rather ambiguous news—or lack of news really—was the fact that the incessant phone calls from HeartBeat had stopped. Just like that. No more demands that Jane delete Jack from American Hero. She wasn’t sure why, but she wasn’t about to call to find out. Hey, how come you’ve stopped bugging the crap out of me?

  “This is more of a question than news,” Cosmo said. “At least I hope it is. Do you happen to know where your brother is?”

  Jane flashed hot and then cold. Please, God, not Robin . . .

  “Whoa,” Cosmo said as the world tipped. “Whoa, Jane.” He materialized on her side of the desk, pushing her head between her knees. “Breathe. Just breathe. And listen to me, all right?”

  This was it. Her worst nightmare. One by one, her family and friends were going to get picked off by this lunatic. Everyone she knew was in danger. Including—especially—Cosmo.

  He was talking to her. “Robin didn’t come home last night, and he’s not answering his cell. It doesn’t— Jane. Listen to me.”

  She was. She was listening. Please God, please God . . .

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” he told her. “You know your brother. You know he drinks. Way too much. He probably got tanked, lost his cell phone, crashed at a friend’s. He’s probably sleeping it off—you know this. Are you breathing? Keep breathing.”

  Jane lifted her head a little to see Cosmo kneeling in front of her, worry for her in his eyes. God, had she really almost fainted? Her stomach was rolling and she still felt light-headed and she didn’t want him to leave her.

  Not ever again.

  Not until they caught the man who shot Murphy and Angelina. Or until the son of a bitch went back into whatever dank, disgusting cave he’d crawled out of.

  She could not allow this madman to hurt anyone else. If they found Robin, she wanted him guarded 24/7, too. As well as Jack and Adam and the other principles in the movie.

  If they found Robin? When they found him.

  Cos was right. There were a lot of nights Robin didn’t come home. It was his MO, and even if Mr. Insane-o weren’t on the loose, Robin’s drinking was getting out of hand. She had to talk to him about it, express her concern. See if he needed to talk about this “I might be gay” thing, as ridiculous as it seemed.

  But right now she just wanted to hear her little brother’s voice.

  “You okay?” Cosmo asked.

  “If Robbie’s not dead,” Jane said, “I’m going to kill him.”

  Cos laughed. “Well, all right. But he’s not dead. And we will find him. Let’s start by calling people he parties with. You got any sense who he might—”

  “Gary, Harve, Guillermo,” Jane listed as she pulled her personnel file up on her computer screen. “They’re all crew. I have their numbers here.” She dug her cell phone out from the papers on her desk. “I’ll call Gary.”

  Cosmo looked over her shoulder at the monitor, his cell phone already out and open. “I’ve got Harve.”

  Jules stood outside of Adam’s apartment door.

  This was it. The moment of truth.

  Show us, Carol Merrill, what’s behind door number one!

  Twenty minutes ago, Cosmo Richter had called to say that Robin was AWOL. No one had seen him since last night. “Do you know, by any chance,” he asked, oh so delicately, “where he might be?”

  Jules cut the crap. “If you’re asking if he was with me last night, the answer’s no.”

  Cosmo had reported that Robin was last seen at a dance club, a gay establishment—he’d actually used that word, establishment—in West Hollywood. He’d gone there with a member of the movie crew, who’d seen him leave shortly after midnight.

  And oh, yeah. He’d left with Adam Wyndham.

  Jules had had to pull off the road at that point. He’d sat in the parking lot of a Krispy Kreme, stared at the lit sign, and just didn’t drive for a while.

  Cosmo went on to say that he’d made a number of calls to Adam, but the actor wasn’t answering his phone.

  Jane was really worried about her brother and just wanted to touch base with him to be sure he was okay. This wasn’t about judgment or recrimination. Nobody was mad or even upset with Robin—Jules had to laugh when Cosmo said that. Nobody on that end of the phone was mad or upset. But the SEAL couldn’t know what Jules was feeling. Why should he?

  Cosmo couldn’t run over to Adam’s himself—he needed to stay with Jane. “I’d rather not send PJ,” he told Jules, with the kind of sensitivity that no longer surprised him in his interactions with Navy SEALs. “But no one else is available.”

  “I’m available,” Jules had said. It was a stupid, stupid, stupid thing to have said.

  “Thanks. I was hoping you’d volunteer.” Cosmo gave him the address, then continued to be tactful. “The other night, Robin mentioned an . . . attachment to you.”

  “He sure has a fucking funny way of showing it.” Whoops. A little of that upset had inadvertently surfaced.

  Cosmo was quiet for several long moments. “I hope I’m not asking too much.”

  Nah. Go to an ex-lover’s to see if the first man he’d fallen for in years was there with the bastard, tangled together in bed, in a room that smelled like sex . . .

  No problem.

  “We don’t even know if Robin’s really there, right?” Jules said.

  “Call when you arrive, please,” Cosmo requested, which was his super-polite way of saying Oh, yes, we do. “Either way.”

  It had taken Jules twenty minutes to drive here. Twenty minutes of hanging on to the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles had stood out in sharp relief.

  Twenty minutes of should-haves and maybes.

  He should have called Robin yesterday evening. To find out how that scene had gone, to make sure he was okay.

  He’d meant to go out, to find him, to talk to him, but after way more than twenty-four hours on his feet, he’d fallen onto his bed in his hotel room and slept.

  He should have set his alarm.

  He should have called Robin anyway when he woke up at three a.m. and discovered it was too late to go out.

  Maybe he could have stopped this.

  God damn it, it should have been him.

  And it should have happened weeks—months—from now, after Robin had time to think, after he was sure of who he was and what he wanted.

  Jules locked his sidearm in the trunk of his car before he went up the steps to Adam’s apartment.

  It was upscale—one of those older buildings with Spanish architecture and a lovely center courtyard. No doubt Adam had moved in here just a few days ago after scoring the role of Jack. It was a big improvement from the hand-to-mouth squalor that Jules had imagined.

  He took a deep breath and rang the bell.

  “My mother hated both Robin and his mother.”

  Cosmo sat with Jane on his lap, waiting for Jules to call them back with the news that Robin was safe.

  “Viciously,” Jane continued. “So I hated them, too. It wasn’t until I was older that I did the math—Robin was conceived back when my parents were still allegedly happily married. My mom must’ve been devastated, but still, it was hardly Robin’s fault. But my mother never managed to get past that. And I . . .”

  She paused and Cosmo just waited, running his fingers through the softness of her hair.

  “I was awful to him, too,” she finally admitted. “For years and years.”

  “You were just a kid.” Both of their cell phones were out on Jane’s desk, and Cosmo willed them to ring. Somewhere out there Robin was probably waking up. Surely he’d realize how worried his sister must be and then he’d call. “You can’t beat yourself up for wanting to be loyal to your mother.”

  “But I knew it was wrong,” Jane whispered. “God, the things I did to him. He had this set of ceramic kangaroos that Daddy brought back from Australia. When was that? It was right at the end of the southern belle’s reign. Wi
fe number three from Mississippi. She was a piece of work—she wanted us to call her Miss Ashley. I called her Miss Assface—which actually made her stomp her foot. I guess I was ten, so Robin was eight. Anyway, he loved these kangaroos, and I took them and put them on the floor, right where they’d get stepped on, and sure enough, Dad came home and the little one’s head snapped right off. The bigger one lost its front paws. And Robin got into trouble for scratching Miss Assface’s precious hardwood floor.”

  She laughed. “Not that that meant anything besides a foot stomp and a four-second reprimand. We didn’t have a whole lot of supervision at my father’s house, even though we were there every other weekend, like clockwork. Most of the time it was just me and Robbie and the housekeeper, Mrs. E. She used to lecture us about how child care wasn’t in her job description then lock herself into her rooms and let us run wild. So I’d torment Robin, and no one would stop me. And Robin, he’d just, you know, let me—like the attention I gave him was better than no attention at all. He was this fragile-looking, stinky little nerd of a kid.” Janey shook her head. “I used to tell him that Daddy wasn’t really his father. That he was the mutant spawn of some alien from outer space, and that was why he smelled so bad and didn’t have any friends.”

  She was silent for a while, so Cosmo said, “He seems to have forgiven you.”

  “Yeah,” Jane said. “I’m the one who can’t forget. When he talks about our childhood, it’s like all the bad stuff was erased. He only remembers the good.”

  “Like what?” Cos prompted.

  “Like the way I glued his kangaroos back together.” She laughed. “I did an awful job of it, too. It was really pathetic, all crooked, but he just looked at me with those big blue eyes like I was his hero.” She sighed. “I don’t know when it all turned around. There wasn’t, like, one single incident. I just . . . I don’t know. I started looking forward to those weekends. Maybe it was because Robin would do anything I asked. He was a perfect cohort. Like the day I wanted to see if syrup of ipecac really worked.”

  Cosmo smiled. Uh-oh.

  She turned her head to look up at him. “Yeah, he was the guinea pig for that project—he actually volunteered. Of course, he’d volunteer for anything, and I took advantage of that. God, you must think I’m awful. And you’re right. I’m a terrible person.”

  “I think you were a kid who didn’t have the easiest childhood,” he told her.

  “Oh, and yours was all perfect and rosy?” she countered. “The kid with the funny-colored eyes, weird name, and gay father? You must’ve had barrels of fun growing up.”

  “Moving to California helped,” he admitted as she settled back, her head against his shoulder again. “I went into a new school, just kind of kept to myself. Focused on my grades.”

  “Weren’t you lonely?” she asked.

  “Weren’t you?” he countered.

  “I had tons of friends,” she told him.

  “But Robin was probably the only one who really knew how you felt.”

  She sat up again. Looked at him. “I never thought of it that way, but . . . Yeah. Maybe.”

  Her gaze was scrutinizing, as if she wanted access inside his head, to see what else he was thinking. Which was that they had at least ten more minutes before Jules got to Adam’s apartment. Cos was wondering if he had enough time to gently move the topic of their conversation away from Robin and over to Jane. How she was feeling today. How devastating and frightening it must be to know that someone wanted to kill her, how worried she was about Murphy and Angelina . . .

  Of course, maybe he should just be happy that she was talking at all.

  “So you and your brother became friends,” he prompted her after the silence stretched on a little too long, even for him.

  Jane nodded. “I realized he was seriously neglected. Like, he really did smell bad. No one was taking care of him, doing his laundry, making him take a bath. His mother was drinking—she was pretty much useless. Then one time, when his clothes were in the washer, I noticed he had all these bruises. And he admitted that these kids at school would drag him into the bathroom and call him names and pretty much stomp the shit out of him.

  “I had this plan to go to his school and kick ass—I was thirteen and big for my age—only his mother went and died. DWI—she drove into a telephone pole. It was awful, Cos. Robin was so matter-of-fact about it, like he’d been expecting it. He had to move in with Dad, who’d just gotten divorced from the Australian bitch from hell, thank goodness for small favors. But new wife number five was the one we called the Space Cadet, and she didn’t help at all. A year after they’d been living in the same house, she still called him Robert, and I was the one who made sure he brushed his teeth. I used to call him every night, and we’d run a checklist. I figured if he didn’t smell so bad, maybe he wouldn’t get picked on at school.

  “We all kind of staggered through the next few years, and then, when I was fifteen, my mother got engaged to this guy from Vermont and announced we were moving east. But no way could I leave Robin, so I asked if he could come, too.” She laughed. “Well. She let me know in no uncertain terms that that wasn’t an option. I believe the phrase over my dead body was used at least twenty times. So I gave her an ultimatum. Either Robin came with us, or I’d stay in California with my father. Two days later, she packed up my things and drove me to Dad’s.”

  Cosmo winced. “That must’ve hurt.”

  “No,” Jane said. “It was good, actually. Dad ended up buying a house in my old neighborhood so I could stay at my high school, and that meant Robin transferred into my old middle school. I gave him a makeover, and he walked into the school as Jane Chadwick’s cute little brother. It didn’t hurt, either, that he was getting taller every day. It really turned things around for him.”

  “Except your mother was a continent away from you.”

  Jane tried to make a joke. “That was just as good. I mean, can you picture me in Vermont?” She stood up. “Why won’t Jules call?”

  “You gave up a lot for Robin,” Cosmo pointed out. “No wonder he’s forgotten the bad stuff.”

  Jane’s intercom buzzed. “Excuse me, guys,” PJ’s voice came through the speaker. “Patty’s here, says she needs to see Jane. I wasn’t sure—is this an okay time?”

  Jane went around her desk, pushed the button. “Send her up.” She shot Cos a look. “They think we’re getting naked up here. Gee, we had twenty minutes. Why didn’t we think of that?”

  Patty knocked on the door, and Cosmo opened it. “Hang on a sec,” he told the intern, closed it in her face, and turned back to Jane. “I think your mother was wrong to give you up without a fight.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Cos, I really don’t blame her. I was impossible. And she’d just found out that she was pregnant with the twins. . . .”

  “She was wrong, Jane.” He kissed her. “Some things are worth a little kicking and screaming.” He went back to the door. Opened it. “I’ll be downstairs. I’ll let you know as soon as Jules calls.”

  “I have good news and bad news,” Patty announced as she came into Jane’s office.

  “Bad first,” Jane told her, bracing herself, wiping her eyes. These days she couldn’t have so much as a conversation with Cosmo without misting up.

  “You haven’t been watching the dailies, have you?” Patty was brandishing a videotape.

  “I haven’t,” Jane admitted. She’d been a little distracted. Murphy and Angelina in the hospital, Robin dropping off the map, Cosmo turning her life upside down . . .

  “You may want to get Robin in here to explain this.” Patty marched over to the VCR.

  “Um,” Jane said.

  “Don’t tell me,” Patty was scornful. “He hasn’t come home yet. I hate to break it to you, Jane, but your brother’s a snake.”

  Okay. Jane had been expecting this particular meltdown for days now, ever since Robin went into avoid mode. But Patty’s timing was a little off. Jane would be far more in the mood fo
r some solid Robin-bashing after Jules found him, safe and sound.

  “Actually,” Jane said, “he didn’t come home and I’m very worried about him.”

  Patty snorted. “Did you try calling Charlene, from Costume?”

  “We think we might’ve found him,” Jane said, not wanting to make it worse by telling her exactly where. “I know you must be very upset, but please remember that I’m the one who told you, months ago, that he was a turd.”