“Hey!” the neighbor squeaked in alarm, moving to the other end of the kitchen.
“Shhh,” he ordered as Jane’s voice came through the set’s cheap speakers.
“. . . past few weeks have been frightening.” She was wearing the same jeans and T-shirt she’d had on when he’d left the house hours ago. “It’s still a little hard to believe it’s really over. I’m going to celebrate by going on location, where the cast and crew of American Hero are reenacting D-Day—the Normandy invasion. It seems only fitting that my first step out into the sunshine, into freedom, should be onto our version of Omaha Beach.”
Over? What the fuck was going on? Why did she think this was over? Unless . . . He turned to the woman as, on the TV, Jane continued to talk about freedom of speech. “You said they found him? Found who?”
“The man who was trying to kill Mercedes Chadwick,” she told him. “Someone named Mark Avery. He’s dead. That girl he kidnapped killed him with his own gun.”
“Mark Avery,” he repeated, forcing his voice past the fear that threatened to clog his throat. “Not Carl Linderman?” It could be an alias—the two could be one and the same. “Did they say that he was an extra in Jane’s—Mercedes’—movie?”
“Nope. They had lots of information about him, lots of evidence that proved he was the stalker, but I’ve haven’t heard anything about him being an actor.” Her eyes narrowed. “If you’re with the FBI, how come you don’t know all this?”
“I need to borrow your car,” he said as he dialed Jane’s phone number again. He’d seen an old station wagon out in the driveway as he’d come inside.
“If you think I’m just going to hand you my keys—”
She didn’t have to—they were right in front of him, hanging on that key rack. Cosmo pocketed them. “You’re welcome to come along, but I won’t be able to guarantee your safety when the shooting starts.”
She gasped, then said, “I’m calling the police!”
“Good. Tell them to send backup and a SWAT team to the American Hero set.” Again, Jane didn’t pick up, but this time, he left a message. “Jane. It’s Cos. Don’t go onto that beach. I’m pretty sure that the killer wasn’t working alone, that there’re at least two of them, and one’s still at large. You are not safe. I repeat, do not go onto that beach.”
“Too late,” the woman said, and he turned to see on the television—a little caption saying “Live” in the corner of the screen—Jane going through some kind of gate, and toward a crowd of applauding extras in what looked like bloodied uniforms.
She was there. On the beach. In the freakin’ open.
Dear, sweet Jesus . . .
“Do you have a cell phone?” he asked.
“Do I look like someone who has a cell phone?” she came back at him.
Cosmo dialed Jules’ number on the kitchen phone, then tossed it to the woman. “Hit redial until this number is answered,” he ordered her. “Tell the FBI agent who picks up that you have a message from Chief Richter—that Mercedes Chadwick is still in danger, that I have reason to believe that the shooter wasn’t working alone, that we need to get her off that beach now!”
As Janey made a speech for the news cameras, Robin stood with the elder Jack in a small patch of shade cast by the hillside, trying, unsuccessfully so far, to exorcise his headache.
He focused on the day’s good news. Patty was safe. Mr. Insane-o was dead, and the danger was over and done.
Because of that, Jane was able to be on set for this D-Day sequence. Robin knew how badly his sister had wanted to be here today. But he also knew she’d trade it all in a heartbeat to have Angelina back.
The helicopter had arrived early for this afternoon’s aerial shots. That was good news, too. Although, they still had two rather lengthy ground segments to get on film before the light got too harsh.
Out on the beach, the extras were starting to get restless.
But Jane was finally done. The news cameras were pulling back, packing up, most of them ready to move onto the next news story, despite her invitation to stay and watch some of the filming.
Some of the cameras had already taken footage of the extras waiting on the beach. It made for a good visual—Nazi storm troopers lounging alongside American Marines. And it was always a little freaky to see guys who’d been made up to look dead or dying, as they popped open cans of Pepsi, as they laughed and talked.
“Hey, Nazi, you’ve got the wrong kind of gun,” Jack suddenly called. “He didn’t hear me,” he told Robin. He pointed out an extra who had his back to them as he walked away. “He’s a German officer, but he’s carrying an American rifle—a Springfield. It’s completely inappropriate. Is there anyone in the prop tent who isn’t an idiot?”
“Most of the action’s going to be down at the other end of the beach,” Robin pointed out, because the last thing he wanted to do was chase after some extra who’d been given the wrong prop.
“Hey, Nazi!” Jack called again, but the extra, who was starting to climb up the hill, still didn’t hear.
Robin was saved by the assistant director’s call for places.
“He won’t be visible up there,” he reassured Jack, all but pushing the old man toward the spectators’ tent.
Jules was in Mark Avery’s kitchen when his cell phone rang.
He didn’t recognize the number, which meant that it could be Adam calling from a pay phone, so he let it get bumped to his voice mail.
The back door opened and Decker came in. “I just spoke to Tess. She, Nash, and PJ are still with Jane. They’re on the beach, on location with the movie crew.”
“She couldn’t wait?” Jules asked. “Even just a day or two, until we . . . ?”
Until they what?
Found even more evidence against Mark Avery? How much did they need?
Jules didn’t know why he was so on edge. But as he looked around the room again, at the broken glass on the floor, the knocked-over chair, the blood-sprayed wall, he realized what had been bugging him. “It’s like we’re on a movie set. Everything is so carefully laid out.”
Decker nodded. “Yeah, it’s very Crime Scene Detecting for Dummies isn’t it? Here’s the murder weapon, here’s the evidence. Except for the mystery of the kitchen garbage . . .”
Jules laughed. “Yeah.” Without a doubt, that was the biggest mystery in here. Something had made this room stink like this, yet the pails out back were as empty as the refrigerator. Neither the police detectives nor the FBI team had removed the trash as evidence. And he’d called and found out that garbage pickup was on Tuesdays. Those cans should have been full.
“I’m going over there,” Decker said, heading out the door. “To the beach. See if I can talk Jane into being more cautious.”
Good idea. He’d do the same. “Where’s Cosmo?” Jules asked, following him into the bright morning sunshine. It had been quite a while since the SEAL had called in. “He can talk her into just about anything.”
His phone rang again. Same number. Goddamn it. This had got to stop. He answered it. “Cassidy.”
“About time you answered,” a cranky old voice berated him. “I have a message from someone named Richter, who better not be lying because if he is, he just stole my car.”
Robin was supposed to run up the beach in a zigzag pattern, with Adam beside him, which just shouldn’t have been that hard to do. The camera shot started as a close-up, then did a slow zoom out to reveal the enormity of the battle that raged around them.
When he reached his mark—about a hundred feet away from where they started—he was to fall as if hit by German machine-gun fire.
He was rigged with squibs, and blood would spray as each “bullet” struck. It would look totally realistic, especially in such a wide shot.
“We ready?” the director asked over his megaphone, and Robin closed his eyes, letting Hal take control.
“And . . . action!” A starter pistol was fired—the cue for the extras to go to war.
Most o
f them were just pretending to fire their prop weapons, but the stuntmen all had guns that shot blanks. It was noisy as hell, and in order to signal a cut, a flare would be fired.
It wasn’t easy to run through the soft sand in his boots. His legs pumped, and he kept his head down, weapon cradled in his arms and—
Shit! His foot caught on something and he went down early—too early—and—
Mother of God! The stock of his gun smacked him right in the balls, and Robin let out a stream of very un-Hal-like curses.
“We’re still rolling,” the director said through the megaphone. “Keep going—Hal and Jack back it up.”
“He wants us to start over again,” Adam shouted over the din.
No shit, Sherlock. But Robin had all he could handle just to stay curled in a ball, trying not to puke.
Well, so much for the trying not to puke part. He managed, however, to turn his head so the few remaining TV news cameras Janey had brought onto the set didn’t get the full Technicolor yuckatation.
“Aw, Jesus,” Robin heard Adam say as the director shouted, “Cut,” and a flare was shot into the sky.
“Why aren’t you wearing a jock?” Jane asked her brother, who had been helped up into the shade of the tent. He lay there in the sand, still looking a little green.
Men were such delicate creatures, and Robin was particularly fragile. She’d learned that back when they were teenagers, and even used it to her advantage a time or two.
He shook his head. “I didn’t think I’d need one.”
“Do you want me to see if Charlene can dig one up?” she asked, then shrieked, because she was being lifted into the air. PJ had grabbed her by one arm and Nash by the other, and together they were carrying her backward, away from the edge of the production tent.
“Decker just called,” PJ informed her. “He wants you out of here.”
Jane was exasperated. She straightened her shirt as they put her down in the center of the tent. “What’s his deal? He didn’t strike me as being such a worrywart.”
“Yeah, well, Jules Cassidy and Cosmo are both worried, too,” PJ said. “And that’s enough to get me worried.”
“We now think that the shooter may not have been working alone.” Jane turned to see Tess, who was carrying what looked like an umpire’s vest and a heavy jacket, coming from the direction of the parking lot. She now spoke to PJ. “These are the ones you meant, right?”
He nodded. Took them from her. Held them out for Jane. “Put these on.”
“Okay, wait.” She looked at Tess. “All along it’s been, ‘The profilers say he’s an outcast, a misfit, a single male suspect, he’s working alone. . . .’ And suddenly he’s not? What’s the deal with that? And . . .” She looked from the vest and jacket to PJ. “News flash: It’s neither December nor the Antarctic.”
“Profilers occasionally are wrong,” Tess explained.
“This is a Kevlar vest, and this is a flak jacket,” PJ told her. “If someone shoots you while you’re wearing these, you might live.”
Damn it. “This was supposed to be over,” Jane said as PJ strapped the vest onto her and stuffed her arm into one of the jacket’s sleeves.
“Decker and Jules are both on their way,” he told her.
“Jane, they’re going to want you to leave,” Tess said. “Once we have backup, we’ll bring a car right into the tent for you.” She noticed Jane’s eye roll. “It’s possible they’re just being overly cautious, but . . .”
“If Deck told me he thought there might be two feet of snow on a sunny day in June,” PJ said, “I’d go out and buy rock salt and a snowblower.”
Damn it. “Where’s Cosmo?” Jane asked, the first flicker of real fear slipping out from beneath her annoyance. If Mr. Insane-o wasn’t working alone, then she wasn’t the only one who was still in danger.
Tess and PJ exchanged a look, then both shook their heads. “Maybe Deck’ll know,” Tess said.
It wasn’t as easy for PJ to force her other arm into the jacket, and Jane shook him off, stabbing it into the sleeve herself.
Robin was back on the beach. The director was getting ready to call action again.
“Can I at least watch the video monitor?” Jane asked.
PJ kept her from moving closer to the edge of the tent. “I’ll drag it over to you.”
Cosmo owed Carl’s elderly neighbor four new tires for her 1989 Taurus wagon.
He took off yet another patch of rubber as he cut across three lanes of oncoming traffic to pull into the beach parking lot.
The rent-a-cops at the gate, hired by HeartBeat as additional security for this on-location shoot, all leapt to their feet in alarm as the car bottomed out.
Make that four new tires and a muffler.
But Cosmo hit the brakes and threw the car into reverse because, oh my holy God, there it was.
The truck he’d spent the past week looking for. With a six in its plate number and that little dent on the back right of the bumper.
Parked in full view, right here in the lot with all of the other extras’ cars.
The bumper sticker that boasted of an honor student from Somewhereville had been scraped off, leaving telltale scratch marks behind.
Cos had no doubt. This was definitely the truck he’d seen all those nights ago, in front of Jane’s house. And he would bet every penny in his savings account that it belonged to Carl Linderman.
It was chilling that it was here like this—apparently Carl was confident that no one would be looking for him.
On the other hand, the fact that his truck was here was mildly reassuring. Surely Carl would have set up some kind of escape route if he was intending to target Jane here and now.
Either that, or this time he wasn’t intending to escape.
No way. This guy was not suicidal. He was a game player. He got off on outsmarting his opponents.
And it was hard to be smarter than the police and the FBI if you were dead.
Of course, searching the truck might provide a hint or two as to Carl’s intentions.
But first things first, and making sure Jane was safe was at the very top of Cos’ priority list.
He was just about to gun the station wagon and head for the gate, when a car pulled alongside him, the driver leaning on his horn.
It was Jules Cassidy.
Cosmo rolled down the passenger-side window.
“Got your message,” the FBI agent called to him. “Jane’s here. She’s safe. The rest of the team’s with her; Decker, too. He was a few minutes ahead of me—he’s probably already inside.”
“This is the truck I’ve been looking for.” Cos gestured with his thumb over his shoulder.
“You’re sure?” Jules asked.
“Positive.”
He nodded. “I’ll run the plates and call for a warrant.”
Yeah, like Cosmo was going to sit around and wait for that. “Do we need to wait for a warrant if the truck’s unlocked?” he asked. “What’s the rule? Unlocked and open? Or the evidence needs to be in full view, right?”
Jules had worked with Navy SEALs before, and he knew that they didn’t always follow the rules.
He should have been able to resist the temptation, but when Cosmo had said, “Why don’t you go down and tell those clowns to open the gate so we can drive right in, while I check to see if the truck’s open,” Jules had said, “Okay.”
The gate, however, was—as his Navy SEAL friends would say—a goatfuck of a different dimension. It was locked shut, with a chain and a big padlock. None of the guards seemed to know where someone named Steve was, and apparently Steve had the only key.
Jules was welcome to walk in, passing through the metal detector, but if he wanted to bring the car, he’d have to wait for Steve.
From the other end of the parking lot came the sound of shattering glass.
“Truck’s open,” Cosmo shouted.
Yeah, right.
“Find Steve,” Jules told the guards, a portly gent named Cl
arence and a clueless soul named Joe, “fast. Because in about thirty seconds, a Navy SEAL with an agenda is going to be in your face, ready to chew through this fence with his teeth.”
The difference between these guards and the personnel who worked for Troubleshooters Incorporated was like night and day. These boys didn’t have the training necessary to handle something big like this. The best of them probably only had experience catching shoplifters at the local Wal-Mart.
Troubleshooters 09 Hot Target Page 49