Sweet Muse

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Sweet Muse Page 22

by Ava Cummings


  “What’s the deal, Anna?”

  My mind is reeling. I won’t call Damien for help. I can’t. I have to clean up this mess myself. If this story runs and he loses Mandy Malone, one of his biggest collectors and supporters, he’ll never forgive me.

  “Anna, tell me what’s going on.”

  “I have something on Chelsea. A tip that will bring me the proof I need. I know she’s working with Goodall now, and I have to find the evidence. It all has to do with my Malone story.”

  “You can use my car. It’s in a garage at 38th and Eighth. The keys are with the attendant. Tell Carlos I said it was okay.”

  It’s rush hour in New York, when regular people turn into turf-fighting animals on four wheels, scrapping for every precious inch of pavement they gain. Keeping within millimeters of the car in front of them, city drivers ensure no one cuts in. I can’t help but get swept up in the evil game. I white-knuckle it and dance my foot from gas to brake, not giving up any ground.

  After an hour of edging forward, foot by victorious foot, I get through the Lincoln Tunnel and fly onto the Pulaski Skyway in Newark. Driving in New Jersey is no better; in fact, it may be worse. In New York, there’s some adherence, however minimal, to basic rules of the road. In New Jersey, all bets are off. No one uses signals or appears to have ever seen a speed-limit sign. The Skyway, an old steel-girder overpass that goes on for miles, has skinny lanes barely wide enough for a subcompact, let alone the gangs of SUVs that come bombing into my rear view.

  Between my hideous sense of direction and the industrial maze that defines this part of Jersey, I make wrong turn after wrong turn, trying to navigate my way through the scary sprawl. Tears threaten to spill out, but I hold them back. I must stay strong. I take another deep breath and finally spot a familiar landmark. It’s the massive Lockheed Martin warehouse. I think I can feel my way from here.

  Three easy turns later, I pull up to Goodall’s. Mission one accomplished. I spot a few cars in the sprawling lot, but they’re covered in a thin sheen of brown dirt, looking like they’ve been parked there for a while.

  Jacked up on adrenaline and generalized panic, I jump out of Jesse’s car and head straight for the building. Next to some lifeless bushes, I spot a window that’s cracked open. If I squeeze through and quickly find some decent evidence, I could jump out, get back into the car, and be home free.

  As stealthily as a klutzy reporter can, I scoot through the bushes, crouch down, and peer inside the warehouse. I see a huge room filled with scores of computers, monitors, and other equipment. There’s no one in sight.

  Using all my strength, I push up the battered screen. It emits a small screech. I panic, crouching down again into the bushes. After a few moments, nothing happens, so I slowly and carefully push the window open a few more feet—just enough to roll my body through.

  My heart pounding in my ears like a gong, I manage to gather my wits and look around. I walk over to one of the computers. In addition to the laptops, there are voice recorders and stacks of printouts beside each workstation. Picking up one set of printouts, I start to flip through it. It’s pages and pages of celebrity names and addresses and publicist’s offices and cell phone numbers. There are even hair stylists, dermatologists, makeup artists. Practically every name in the industry is in here.

  My eyes go wide as saucers, and my hand flies up to my heart. I tap one of the laptops awake and see files with corresponding celebrity names on the desktop. I quickly grab some of the pages and a laptop and call Jesse to tell him the news.

  “Meet me in my apartment as soon as you get back,” I tell him. “You’ll never guess what I found. This place is crazy. There’s more here than we ever thought.”

  “Are you actually in there right now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Dude, grab whatever you can and get the hell out! I’ve told you a million times, Goodall is serious business.”

  “No one’s here. You would’ve been so impressed with my stealthy break-in. I jumped through a window.” I just had to get that in. “Goodall has the names and phone numbers of every big celebrity and has some system where he’s recordi…”

  Then the line goes dead.

  I turn around. An imposing man—over six feet tall and jacked, biceps the size of cantaloupes—stands at the door. He scans the room, taking in the scene.

  A small whimper escapes my mouth.

  “I thought I heard something in here,” says Goodall, with a quiet menace. “And what do I find? A pretty young thing rifling through my stuff…and trying to make off with some of it, too.”

  He pauses and strides up to me, practically snarling.

  “And we can add trespassing to the list that already includes attempted burglary and snooping through private property.”

  With a death grip on the laptop and printouts, I jump back and make a run for the window.

  Goodall takes one huge step, grabs the back of my shirt, and swings me around.

  “Where you going so fast? We’re just getting started, hon. We still haven’t met proper,” he says with a creepy grin, like he’s going to fry me up and eat me for lunch.

  “I’m Glenn,” he says, holding out the hand that’s not gripping my shirt. “And you are?”

  “None of your business,” I say, doing my best to come off as fearless.

  “Oh, so we’re gonna do it that way, are we?”

  Goodall spins me around. He takes both of my hands in one of his. I struggle to get free, but I can’t compete with his strength.

  He walks me over to one of the desk chairs and sits me down with my arms pinned behind me. I hear him open a drawer and rifle through it, close it quickly and then open another. He does this a few times. He spins me around, and I see a cord in his hand.

  “It’s all I could find, but it’ll do.” He gives me that creepy smile again and spins me around, tying my wrists together and then tying them to the chair. He then eyes me up and down.

  “You look like one of those magazine chicks.”

  He finds a roll of duct tape in another drawer, peels off a strip, and puts it over my mouth.

  “Until you’re ready to talk,” he says, sneering.

  My mind reels with scenarios on how this will end. I’ve seen enough action flicks to get ideas, but this is reality, not a movie. Things don’t work out so neatly in the real world. Tears start welling in my eyes.

  Goodall goes into a side room, shuts the door, and makes a phone call. I strain to hear his end of the conversation through the thin walls.

  “Yeah, we got a visitor. She looks like one of yours. Cute and dresses like all you fancy editors.”

  There’s a pause before he starts to speak again.

  “You gotta clean this up, Chelsea. This is a federal crime. We’ll go to jail. I’m not goin’ back. I told you that from the beginning. I did my time already.”

  Daddy’s connections may have gotten her into Celeb and bought her a seat at the editorial table, but they weren’t enough to make her into a top reporter. She had to be better than anyone else, faster than anyone else—the wunderkind, the one in a million. I wonder if she learned her tactics from Daddy. Or did she just feel entitled to do as she pleased to get what she wanted? There have never been any consequences for Chelsea Peters. There rarely are for the privileged set.

  “Just make it go away? Nice,” I hear Goodall say. “You’re all the same, you fancy New York people who think this is so easy. I’ll make it go away. Don’t worry. But I’m doin’ it my way. I’m not goin’ down for this one.”

  28

  Those Three Words

  Goodall’s viciously pacing the room, probably figuring out how to off me in some horrifying way and dump my body in the Meadowlands—the 8,400 acres of polluted, desolate marsh that border his warehouse space. It’s where the Jersey mafia infamously used to make people disappear, and when I researched him, I found that Goodall used to run with that crew.

  The veins pop on his forehead, and his face is a de
ep shade of crimson. I get a nauseating sense that I only have a few more minutes before he does something…extreme.

  I always think I can take care of everything, do everything on my own—that I don’t need anyone else. And if I’ve learned anything through this whole ordeal, not to mention from the ups and downs with Damien, it’s that I can’t go it alone. Not in any part of my life. Not at work, not in love.

  You need partners, you need support, you need people who have your back and look out for you. I only wish I had come to this realization before getting myself bound and gagged in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere with a thug who is desperate to make me disappear.

  Seconds later, Goodall’s body flinches. He turns toward me, charges up, and slaps me hard across the face. And then he hits me again on the other side.

  “You’re going to tell me who you are and what you’re doing here, if I have to beat it out of you,” he says as he towers over me, glaring with unbridled rage in his eyes.

  Stinging from the hit and sunk deep in a state of terror, my mind goes blank. Goodall leans close one more time, grabs the duct tape on my mouth, and rips it off in one swift move.

  “Ooooooow!” I howl, tears streaming down.

  Lightheaded and dizzy, with my mouth searing in white-hot pain, I hear the faint, crisp sound of a motor, and it momentarily stalls my descent into panic. I look up at Goodall, and he shakes his head with a mirthless smile.

  The door bursts open. Agitated, Goodall runs over, blocking my line of sight, but I manage to wriggle my head around and see a tall figure filling the doorway. Goodall swings his arm in a furious punch, but the man at the door somehow manages to block the force of his powerful arm and delivers a massive, jaw-cracking kick to Goodall’s face.

  As Goodall bends over, the figure comes into focus.

  A breath gets caught in my throat, and my voice comes out in barely more than a harsh whisper.

  “Damien!”

  Goodall gets up again and starts raining punches in Damien’s direction, but Damien blocks almost every massive throw Goodall sends out. Within moments, using karate-type moves, Damien has Goodall on the floor in a sleeper hold, with his left arm around his neck. He keeps squeezing his arm around his neck as Goodall’s veins pop out and his legs attempt to swivel around and drop Damien to the floor. But Damien is too skilled. A moment later, Goodall goes limp.

  He rushes over to me and starts to undo my binds.

  “How did you know? I can’t believe…” I start.

  “We don’t have long,” he says, as he releases my wrists.

  We quickly take a computer and some of the loose files. Damien grabs my hand and leads me out of the room, through a maze of hallways, and out into the parking lot.

  He leads me over to a Ducati, grabs the second helmet, and puts it on my head.

  “How did you know?”

  “I’ll explain later. Right now, we need to get on this bike and get you to safety as soon as possible. And you, my dear, have some explaining to do.”

  “But,” I start, and Damien gently lays his finger to my mouth and then swiftly lifts me onto his bike.

  He throws the confiscated material in the saddlebags on either side of the bike, puts on his helmet, and jumps on. We fly out of the warehouse parking lot.

  As we head out, we pass two police cars racing into the warehouse lot with sirens blaring and lights flashing. I lean in, lay my chin on Damien’s shoulder, and squeeze my arms tightly around him, around my safety, my oasis, my man, my…love.

  “Here, have this.” It’s an hour later, and we’re safely holed up at the studio. Damien hands me a glass of red wine in a beautiful oversized stem. “It’ll soothe your nerves. You need it.”

  “How did you know I was there, at Goodall’s?”

  “Jesse called me,” says Damien. “When he knew he couldn’t get there, he tracked down my studio number and told me what was going on, or what he knew of it. He described as best as he could the location of the warehouse. My friend who builds huge metal art installations has a space out there, so I know my way around. I jumped on my bike and headed out as fast as I could.”

  “Oh, thank God for you. Goodall was seconds away from doing something awful. I could feel it, feel his rage that his scheme was crumbling. He knew we were on to him.”

  “You should never have gone out there by yourself.”

  “I had to. There was no time. There’s still no time.”

  “It’s time to explain to me what the hell is going on.”

  Cocooned in the safety of his studio, I begin to pull myself together. I tell him everything as quickly as I can—about how Bernie is planning on running a plastic surgery story on Mandy instead of my comeback story, and how it came from Chelsea, another apparent scoop from her. How my instincts were right: Chelsea is running some kind of eavesdropping or phone tapping operation, and people are on to it. Sandy Stein knows. And Tessa overheard Sandy on set talking about how she planted the boob-job story in order to expose Celeb and bring down the magazine.

  “Chelsea doesn’t know it’s a plant,” I tell Damien. “She thinks she has another in a long string of scoops. I have to stop the story; it will ruin you and Mandy if it runs. And that’s why I went out to Goodall’s—to find the evidence of the connection between Chelsea and Goodall and stop the story from appearing.

  “We need to go through all that stuff now and get the proof lined up. And then I need to try to go to Ty Oldenhouse and get the story killed before it goes to print. We don’t have much time.”

  “Anna, are you sure you’ve got this right? You can’t just come out with these accusations unless they’re rock-solid. We’re talking about illegal activity at the highest levels of the publication. This will have huge repercussions.”

  “I’ve been following it for months. What started out as Chelsea’s little scheme to get ahead by scooping the primo stories has blown up. And now Hollywood’s power players know, and they are getting their revenge. And the bait is Mandy. We can’t let her get played and we—no, I—cannot let the dark side of this industry hurt you. If you lost your most important celebrity supporter just as you’re going into the biggest show of your life…”

  Damien pulls me in front of him, lays both arms gently on my shoulders, and looks intensely into my eyes.

  “Nothing will be the same once you come forward. This life, your job, under-the-radar Anna, all that will be gone. This will be all over the news. Ba-bam—you’re the whistle-blower.”

  I place my hands atop his and give them a gentle squeeze. “I had some time to think about it when I was tied up at Goodall’s.” I take a sip of the wine and draw in a deep breath, working up the courage to tell him the truth about how I feel.

  “That night with you at the gallery was amazing, and it opened my eyes. Things started to click. The life of a celebrity-magazine writer was an experience that has run its course. Trying to keep up with the jet set was a game at first. There was a thrill in seeing if I could do it. Could I get into the best clubs, the hottest parties, hang with the hippest crowd?

  “But once I was in, the thrill was gone, and I was left to contemplate the reality of that scene, which is populated by people who care only about themselves and who are looking for any way to up their status. People only wanted to talk to me after they found out where I work, thinking they could get into the magazine.

  “I want to be…significant. I want to make a difference. To use my voice—my writing—to make the world a better place, to open people’s eyes to injustices and to bring forward the good.

  “I think that’s part of the reason I became so obsessed with uncovering Chelsea and exposing what she was doing. I’ve always been that person who couldn’t understand why anyone would do what wasn’t right. I may be ethical to a fault, but if I can use it, channel it in the right way, I know I’m on the right path.

  “And besides, if I’m still writing ‘The Top 10 Hottest Bods in Hollywood’ in three years’ time, I will off mysel
f. So…I’m ready. Ready to take a leap, to do what needs to be done and see where I land next. It’s scary, but this is part of my journey, finding where I fit in the world.

  “And there’s one more thing I realized out in that warehouse,” I say, gripping the wine glass harder to steady my shaking hand.

  “You got a lot of thinking done out there,” he says, leaning his head toward me, touching his leg to mine, lining our bodies up together. I tip the glass to my mouth and take a sip, gathering my wits.

  “I know what I didn’t say back to you at Stracciato’s…and it wasn’t because I don’t feel it. I do. I do so much. I’m just scared, too,” I say, shaking my head, on the verge of tears, wrung out from today and yesterday and this overwhelming New York life. “So scared.”

  Damien cradles my hands in his and turns to face me. “You don’t have to say it until you’re ready. I don’t need to hear it. I needed to tell you how I feel.”

  “But I am ready. I’m sure. I’ve been sure since the day you caught me at the Bubble Lounge and felt the lightning that struck between us.”

  I take a deep breath and lean into his strong, muscled arms. So safe, my refuge. I look up into his intense hazel eyes, holding his gaze and trying not to let the tears pooling behind my eyes spill over.

  “Damien, I love you, too.”

  A weight that I’ve been carrying around since I was a child suddenly lifts. I can feel again. I’m feeling love. I opened myself to love. I could almost float.

  Damien takes hold of my shoulders and tenderly brings his lips to mine. I feel him sharing this well of emotions through the urgent gentleness of his lips as they make contact with mine. My body shudders in response, and I fall deeper into him, close my eyes, and send my flood of feelings back. We’re sharing each other and giving of one another: lips, arms, hands, mind, heart. It’s not rough or thrilling or forbidden, I realize as I try to put my finger on what I’m feeling. And then it hits me: intimacy. The feeling that’s left when everything unnecessary gets stripped away. Two souls have touched, bonded, become intertwined.

 

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