Born To Be Wild

by Catherine Coulter

  “Moseying up Coral Canyon Road. It’s nice and quiet up here. I picked it because of the great views and the interesting houses. They’ll be background. Hey, nice wheels. I’m glad I got some shots of you behind the wheel.” He tossed her a Kleenex from a packet she kept in the glove compartment. “You’re a pain in the ass, you know that? That stunt you pulled-you could have killed both of us. You knocked yourself out. Wipe off your face. I want you perfect.”

  Why hadn’t he been hurt when she’d slammed on the brakes?

  She wiped the blood off her face. Her head throbbed right over her left ear, but it didn’t matter. What to do next?

  “Okay, we’re going to stop here. Isn’t this a panorama? A lovely windswept hill with the ocean in the background, or we could use some of those houses higher up the slope. I’m getting out with the keys now, Mary Lisa. I want you to slide over here into the driver’s seat and smile at me, your hands on the steering wheel. We’re going to take more shots of you.” He paused a moment, and she was terrified at the look in his eyes. “If you try anything again I will shoot you dead right here and leave you for the coyotes, you understand me?”

  “I understand you. When did you go from annoying paparazzo to nutso psychopath?”

  “I’m not a psychopath! You’ve pushed me and pushed me and now I’ve got to go further than I’d planned. Move, Mary Lisa, get behind that wheel. Now!”

  He waved his gun at her. She wondered how good a shot he was, not that it mattered since he wasn’t more than a foot away. She grabbed up her purse, dropped it on her lap, and moved over to sit in the driver’s seat of her Mustang. Her heart was beating so loud it sounded like drums in her head. She turned to smile at him, praying he wouldn’t notice her purse and wonder.

  Now he was standing maybe three feet away from her, too far to hit him with the Mustang door if she pushed it open hard. “How’s this, Puker?”

  “That’s good. Move around, turn your head this way and that, look happy, Mary Lisa. That’s right, you’ve done this before. Give me big smiles, lots of teeth. Keep both your hands on the steering wheel.” He snapped over a dozen photos of her.

  While he did it, she slowly eased one hand off the steering wheel and dipped it into her purse. She felt the cold smoothness of her SIG.

  “What are you doing with your hand? Dammit, bring your hand back up on the steering wheel!”

  “Sure, Puker,” she said, pulled up her gun and fired. His camera flew out of his hand, shattered by the bullet, and landed hard against an outcropping of jagged rocks by the roadside.

  “You bitch!”

  He was dancing he was so furious, looking from her to his smashed camera and waving his gun around. She fired again, and missed, unaccustomed to a moving target. Puker pulled his trigger as she flattened herself against the car seat; she heard the metallic clang of the bullet going through the car door and slamming into the leather seat.

  Good, he hadn’t been to the firing range. She lurched up and again aimed for his arm, but he was flailing backward, trying to find some cover and shoot at her at the same time. She missed again.

  He fired back but she was down and slithering across to the passenger side door. She managed to get the door open and fell headfirst to the ground. Another bullet pinged into the car over her head. How many bullets did he have in his clip?

  She scrambled on her hands and knees toward the cliff about three feet away. It was her only hope, no other cover anywhere near. How far a drop was it? It didn’t matter. He could be coming around the car to put a bullet in her head.

  She’d lived with terror for so long, but at that moment, she wasn’t afraid, she was angry, and getting angrier by the second.

  She looked back over her shoulder to see him running around the back of her car, panting hard, the gun shaking in his hand. Soon, he’d be so close, he couldn’t miss. A bullet struck the ground beside her elbow, sending up a spray of dirt.

  “I missed you on purpose, Mary Lisa! You stop now and don’t move, or I’ll put the next bullet into your head, you got me?”

  “Sure, Puker, I got you.”

  She fired over her shoulder toward the sound of his voice, barely looking back, and heard a blessed yelp as she rolled off the edge of the cliff.

  JACK heard the gunfire and thought he’d croak right there. He revved the Suzuki dual sport he’d commandeered in the Tia’s Tacos parking lot and hauled ass up the narrow road. He saw the red Mustang at an angle off the road, the passenger door open, not many feet from a cliff edge. He saw Puker Hodges in the hazy sunlight standing at the edge of the cliff, a gun in his hand, looking down. Blood was streaking down his left arm.

  Jack saw him raise the gun.

  He roared forward, them slammed on the front and rear brakes, sending the bike into a controlled slide. When it stopped, he threw it down and started running, his gun drawn, ready to fire as soon as he was close enough.

  All Mary Lisa could think about as she tumbled down the hillside was that Bernie was going to freak when he saw all these cuts and bruises no makeup would camouflage. She smashed hard against a scrub bush, felt pain roar through her, felt every bone rattle in her body. But hurt didn’t matter, nothing seemed broken. Good.

  “Mary Lisa!”

  The twiggy branches of the scrub dug hard into her flesh but it was better than tumbling over rocky ground. She slithered farther down, putting the bush between her and Puker atop the cliff. Would he try to come down?

  She was ready, but she had to see him. This time she had to do it right. He appeared at the cliff edge, staring down at her, his gun in his right hand, fanning it all around.

  “Hey, you dead down there, Mary Lisa? You all broken up?”

  He crouched on his knees and peered over the edge of the cliff.

  Her eyes met his. Mary Lisa aimed exactly as Elizabeth had taught her and very gently caressed the trigger. He wasn’t dancing around now, he was perfectly still, their eyes locked. The bullet struck him in the chest. He didn’t make a sound, simply disappeared from her sight. Mary Lisa felt a punch of shock in her gut, and pulled backward for a moment. But then she jumped to her feet, ignoring the pain broadcasting from every uncovered inch of her body, and began crawling back up the cliff. She saw Jack, who nearly knocked her backward, he was trying to get down to her so quickly.

  “Oh God, Jack, you came! Puker, I shot Puker.”

  “I know. I’ve got his gun. He’s up there. Come on, let’s get back up.”

  Once they heaved themselves onto level ground, Mary Lisa scrambled over to Puker. He was lying on his back, his breathing shallow. He was still alive.

  She came down beside him. He opened his eyes, looked up at her. “You broke my camera. It was my best one, a Nikon, top of the line.”

  “Why’d you want to kill me?”

  Remarkably, he laughed, not much of a laugh because of all the liquid rattling in his throat. “I wasn’t trying to kill you before, just get a little revenge and make a whole lot of money at the same time. Frightened starlet, purple prose, close-up photos of you so panicked you looked ready to freak out. Like I said, it was business. That restraining order, Mary Lisa, that wasn’t fair. A guy’s got to make a living, you know?”

  “So there never was a Jamie Ramos?”

  It looked to her like he grinned as blood dribbled out of his mouth.

  From the corner of her eye, Mary Lisa saw Jack on his cell phone. She ripped off the bottom of her T-shirt and pressed it into a knot against the bullet wound. “I really can’t stand you, Puker, but I don’t want you to die. I don’t want to be the one who killed you.”

  He was crying now. “I don’t have my camera-a picture of this would make me a fortune.”

  “Yeah, right, that’s the way to think. Hang in there, Puker. Help’s on the way.”

  His eyes closed and a second later his head simply fell to the side. She pressed her palm hard against the wound. “Don’t you die on me, you jerk!”

  Jack shoved her away. He f
elt for the pulse in his throat for a very long time, raised his face to her, and shook his head. “You did what you had to, Mary Lisa. You saved yourself. I didn’t get here in time. I’m proud of you. As for your gun, I’m going to bronze it and put in on the mantelpiece.”

  EPILOGUE

  The Guiding Light has been heard or seen since 1937-how many generations?

  BORN TO BE WILD

  Sunday is sitting at a table at Dino’s Italian Kitchen, one of her favorite restaurants, waiting for her father.

  She takes a sip of her wine. She taps her fingers on the white tablecloth. Finally, she sees him striding toward her, dressed immaculately and quite expensively, looking elegant and handsome and smiling toward her. People do double takes as they recognize him, speak to each other in low voices.

  When he reaches her, he leans down and kisses her cheek, lightly touches his fingertips to her hair. “You look beautiful.”

  She grins up at him. “So do you, and everyone in this restaurant thinks so too.”

  He allows the owner, Dino, to seat him himself, then accepts the wine list. “What are you drinking?”

  “A lovely merlot Dino recommended.”

  He nodded to the flamboyant Dino. “I’ll have what my daughter is having, thank you.”

  She doesn’t pause. “What did you and my mother have to say to each other last night?”

  “The fact is, I’m trying to make peace with her. No, not with your grandfather too, that would be impossible, but at least with your mother. She looks grand, doesn’t she? I don’t think she’ll ever age.”

  “What does making peace mean?”

  He chuckles. “So you’re pinning me down, are you?”

  She picks up a piece of bread, crumbles it between her fingers, sets it on her plate. “I have to,” she says at last. “I’ve learned over the years that people slip and slide around, never coughing up the truth unless they have to, and even then they try not to.”

  “Is this what you do?”

  “Naturally. So, what peace?”

  “I asked her flat-out if she would forgive me for leaving you and her.”

  “But you told me you had no choice in the matter.”

  “There are always choices, Sunday. The fact is, I wanted out. I wanted to accept my calling. I wanted to find the meaning and purpose of my life.”

  “And by leaving us you found it?”

  He accepts the wineglass a waiter brings him and clicks his glass to Sunday’s. In his powerful deep voice, his eyes on her face, he says, “To possibilities.”

  She smiles at him. “Yes, to possibilities.” She says again, “So, you’re saying that by leaving us you found the meaning of life?”

  He looks troubled, then slowly nods. “I suppose I have. Grief and loss, they help you focus on what’s really important. They make you more aware of all the anguish and the sorrow in the world, make you face up to it, because otherwise they lurk inside you your whole life.”

  “So you suffered as you pursued your goal. But all of us suffer. Sorrow and anguish are knit into the fabric of life itself. No one has the market on it. Did you find your goal, Father?”

  His eyes light up. She’s called him Father. He shrugs. “Does any man ever attain his goal? Don’t goals always shift and change, become more difficult to pin down as you mature and gain wisdom?”

  “You’re very good,” Sunday says. “I think I’d like to order. I hope you like the food.”

  There is silence for a moment while they peruse the menu. He says, without looking up at her, “Do you have a goal, Sunday?”

  “Why yes, I believe I’ll have the spaghetti Bolognese,” she says and gives him a false smile.

  He sits forward, places his palm up on the table between them, clearly inviting her to take his hand, but she doesn’t. “I’m your father. No matter what, that fact will never change. Don’t shut me out. Don’t make a mockery of what I am and what I do and what I strive so very hard to accomplish. I’m only a man, Sunday, but I’m here now and I want you to come to accept me. As your father.”

  She’s moved, she can’t help it. She reaches out her hand to his. Then she looks up. A beautiful young woman is walking toward them, a woman who’s very pregnant.

  Sunday turns away from her, gives her father her hand. She whispers, “Father-”

  “Hey, here you are!”

  He freezes, then slowly turns to face the young woman, who says as she tosses her hair, “I got tired of waiting. I didn’t think it would take this long.”

  Sunday slowly pulls her hand back. She stares up at the woman, at the long blond hair, smooth and straight, the big breasts now bigger with her pregnancy, incredible pale blue eyes, sexy despite the big belly. Sunday arches a brow. “And you are…?”

  The young woman laughs, pats her belly. “May I sit down?”

  “No, you may not. Tell me who you are.”

  The young woman frowns down at her. “That isn’t very polite.”

  “What isn’t polite is interrupting two perfect strangers.”

  “Oh, we’re not all strangers. Phillip is my husband.” She caresses his cheek with her fingers. “I suppose I’m here to meet you.” She laughs. “Isn’t this delicious? You’re older than I am and you’re my stepdaughter and soon you’re going to have a little brother.”

  Sunday stares at her father, devastated. Then her expression changes to one of cynical, weary amusement. She gives an elegant shrug of her shoulders. She holds it, holds it-

  “Clear!”

  There were some cheers.

  Bernie yelled out, “Wow! What a way to end the week. You can bet every single viewer will tune in for sure on Monday. Well done, Norman, Mary Lisa, Stacy. Okay, kids, have a great weekend!”

  “Let me get this damned pillow out,” Stacy said, laughing.

  Mary Lisa patted the pillow. “I think it looks kind of cute,” she said.

  Stacy Freeman glanced over to where Jack was standing, arms crossed over his chest, watching the action. “He’s yours?”

  “Yep, all mine.”

  Jack looked up, smiled at her. “Yes,” she said again, “he’s all mine.”

  Catherine Coulter

  Catherine Coulter is the bestselling author of numerous historical romances as well as several highly acclaimed contemporary novels. She lives in Northern California with her husband, Anton, and her cat, Gilley.

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