by Josie Brown
All it would take to put this slime bucket out of his misery is a quick twist of his neck. But I back off.
Jack knows it, too, which is why he jerks Addison’s arm even harder, to the point the guy is whimpering. “Donna is not one of your starlets,” he mutters into Addison’s ear. “Deal’s off.”
“Hey, it was an honest mistake!” Addison yells after us, as Jack pulls me out the door with him. “Okay, I’ll make it three…three and a half—but that’s my final offer!”
“So, it’s come to this?” I rant over the honk of six lanes of Sunset Boulevard traffic, as we walk through the studio lot to our cars. “We’re down to proofing scripts for lascivious Hollywood producers?”
“This is Hollywood.” Jack pulls open my car door for me. “Here, dignity is just another four-letter word.”
Suddenly I’m hyperventilating. “We just turned down thirty-five hundred a day. Ryan isn’t going to be too pleased.”
“Not to worry. We’ll keep it our little secret from the boss man, until you choose to do otherwise,” Jack says, in a perfect imitation of Dominic, speaking the Queen’s English.
His damn accent is so good that I quit crying and start laughing. “Speaking of Dominic, why wasn’t he here?”
“He’s much too proud to take a meeting with Addison.”
“Are you kidding me? He was wetting his pants to apply for this gig.”
“Not after his face broke out.”
“But…how could that be? It’s always as smooth as an infant’s ass.”
“Apparently, the mush his facialist slathered on him contained poison oak spores. Go figure.” He ducks his head so that I can’t see his grin.
“Gee, that certainly was convenient—for you.”
“Yeah, I thought so, too. But now, I guess Dominic will get the job after all.”
“I don’t think so. Not after your ‘limp-wristed’ martini remark.”
“Then it’ll go to one of the many other black-op groups. We’ll just have to come up with some other scheme to pay the bills.”
He kisses me, then heads toward his own car.
I guess he can always teach dance lessons. And I’ve got my cupcake recipes…
Oh, who the hell am I kidding? We’re guns for hire.
Or for revenge.
Chapter 5
The Fugitive
“What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area…Go get him.”
—Tommy Lee Jones, as “Deputy Marshall Samuel Gerard”
In contradiction to the legendary actress Greta Garbo, not every star wants to be alone.
At least, that’s what you tell yourself as you stalk your celebrity du jour, isn’t it?
You fantasize some cute meet, perhaps at his favorite dry cleaners, or at his gym. But when you stake out both of these places day after day in the hope of running into him, you’re shooed away by your beloved’s bodyguards. Not fair!
You get a job at his favorite restaurant under the assumption that eventually he’ll notice how you honor his every whim—or better yet, that you’ll be what he requests for dessert. But when you poison his steady girlfriend’s Stevia, once again, fingers point in your direction. Not fair!
You’ve outdone yourself when you get hired as his housekeeper, but your very first day at work is ruined when his trusty watchdog recognizes your scent as his master’s stalker, and he has you running out the gate—
And into the arms of the man you were meant to share your life with.
No, he’s not a star. He’s just a sweet guy who’ll love you for being yourself.
The next time you see your celebrity du jour—in some tabloid magazine—you wonder what you ever saw in him in the first place—
And thank your lucky stars you shook that poisoned Stevia rap before you met your Mr. Right.
My beautiful home sits dead center on Hilldale’s last street of monster mansions, where the backyards’ velvety lawns end beside an eight-foot ivy-covered brick wall flanking the farthest side of our gated community. The community’s park is several streets over, at the end of Hilldale’s main boulevard, so for the most part we’re off the parade path of tricycles, scooters, skaters, running children, and mothers pushing strollers heading to the playground.
With the line of work we’re in, I don’t mind living on the quietest street in town.
To keep my mind off Acme’s travails, I’ve kept myself busy all morning with mundane housework. The kitchen is spotless. Laundry has been washed, dried, separated, and now folded, at the foot of my children’s beds. I’ve just started the task of putting Trisha’s toys back on the shelf beneath her window when I notice that a woman with a fairly large perambulator has stopped in front of our house. She bends over the stroller as if tucking a blanket around the baby inside of it.
There is no baby. Instead, she’s taking a picture of our house. From where I stand, the camera’s lens, which is tucked into the hood of the stroller, is reflecting a ray of sunlight.
I presume the words she murmurs into the carriage aren’t sweet endearments for her invisible child, but some sort of message, which can be heard in the ear buds of her fellow operatives, who are no doubt close by.
I step back from the window. After waiting for my heart to calm down, I take off toward the attic stairs, where so much more is revealed from the vantage point of one of the front gable windows. Down the block, a Southern California Edison utility van sits next to the curb. Its license plate proves it’s not owned by the company. The couple sitting in the Cramers’ gazebo wears dark glasses, so I can’t see which way their eyes are looking. From the angle of their heads—straight ahead—it’s obvious they aren’t reading the open books in their hands. The other telltale sign is that they don’t even faintly resemble the Cramers.
But it’s the caravan of black SUVs pulling up to Hilldale’s gated entrance that has me running downstairs, where Jack sits with his computer, sifting through the massive Quorum intelligence he’s collected over the years.
“Plan B,” I shout as I grab a couple of the cloth grocery bags by the front door and start stuffing them with the things most important to me: those things in my living room curio cabinet, which include my personal journals, my children’s very first stuffed animals, and the box holding the jewelry my mother left me.
Those two words tell him all he needs to know: we’re under attack.
He stares at me. “I take it this is not a drill.”
“Does this look like a drill to you?” I run past him into the kitchen, and open the back door. My high-pierced whistle sends our dogs, Lassie and Rin Tin Tin, scrambling into the house.
The sound of my snapping fingers sends them downstairs, into the basement and ready to await my next command.
If only Jack were half as obedient. I whistle at him, too, but he waves me off with one hand while he taps out a text on his cell.
If he blows our escape, he won’t get any treats from me for a very long time.
I leap over the coffee table, toward the fireplace, where a portrait of my children hangs over the mantle, and shove it aside so that I can get to the switch code that sets off our escape plan.
Jack lifts himself off the couch, and stretches, as if he’s got all the time in the world. “You know, once you arm the code, there’s no turning back.”
Yes, his warning gives me reason to pause. When I moved into the house with Carl, it was a very important milestone in our lives. I think of all the memories this home holds for me and my children—and Jack, too.
I remember the first time we made love here.
With the tap of a few buttons, our lives will never be the same.
Nothing in life is permanent. We adapt to survive.
And we never surrender.
We both know it. This resolve is reflected in his eyes.
My actions are validated by what we can now see on the screen of h
is cell: a line of tiny dots moving toward our house and congregating on the street just beyond the sidewalk.
I punch in the code, then run down the basement stairs.
Jack is at my heels with the bags of our most precious possessions slung over his shoulder.
Up against the brick wall on the far side of the basement is a built-in floor-to-ceiling storage unit that holds our children’s board games, Lego bins and sports paraphernalia. The wall has already slid to one side, exposing a secret passageway for an underground tunnel. As soon as we pass through the entry’s fireproof steel door, we’ll push buttons on another code pad. The door will close and lock behind us, and the brick wall will cover it once again.
The dogs are already inside the tunnel. They run ahead, curious to see where it leads. When they get to the end, they won’t recognize their whereabouts: the basement of a squalid little cottage—a safe house a half-mile beyond Hilldale’s stately walls.
Above us now, several blocks away, natural gas, leaking from an unlit hot water heater has already set off a series of explosions in my house, turning it into a roaring inferno that no SWAT member will dare enter, let alone the Hilldale Fire Department.
They will have to wait until things cool down to discover the cause of the explosion, and the fact that no one was killed or injured.
By then, the family Stone will be long gone.
But first things first: pick up the kids from school.
The garage of the safe house holds two SUVs. Jack tosses me the keys to one as he jumps into the other. But before he has time to put the key into the ignition, his cell beeps with a text message. He reads it and sighs. “Ryan’s attempt to clear Acme of Carl’s bogus charges has failed.” Jack shakes his head in disbelief. “The reason for the SWAT team is that we’re being sought for the murder of Jonah Breck. Carl has had the webcam footage from Misfit Quay doctored to show that you’re the one who killed Breck. Lee Chiffray is livid. Apparently Carl had the audacity to show it to him while Babette was in the room.”
“I can only imagine her reaction.” As much as Babette hated her deceased first husband, even she’d be horrified to think I killed him.
After all, our daughters do play together.
“At the same time,” Jack continues, “the footage also shows what looks like me putting a bullet into the woman Breck was raping—Antoinette.” The poor girl was the nanny of his daughter, Janie, whom he’d brought to his private island as a sex slave.
“But—Carl killed both of them!”
“Until we can prove it, we’re considered murderers. Listen, you grab Trisha and Mary. I’ll pick up Jeff. We’ll rendezvous at Hilldale Mall, in front of the Cineplex. We can hide out in the movies until we can figure out where we go from here.” He hesitates. “You know, Donna, it might mean leaving the country.”
“I…I know that.” I can barely think, I’m so upset. “But I’m not going without the children! I can’t leave them here with Carl!”
“That will never happen. At least, not while either of us is alive.”
The task at hand is to stay that way, despite what Carl has in store for us.
My first stop is Hilldale Elementary for my youngest daughter, Trisha. She loves her school, but movies are her passion. She’ll look forward to playing hooky.
She may have to get used to it, until I research which countries don’t have extradition clauses with the United States.
I turn my head, pretending to peruse the trophy case, just as two men in black suits and dark glasses march into the lobby. Identifying themselves to the receptionist as NSA agents, they then tersely request to speak to the principal, Miss Darling.
At first, the receptionist is flustered. But she quickly buzzes her boss.
Because the back of the trophy case is mirrored, I’m able to witness Miss Darling’s reaction to the news that Jack and I are persons-of-interest, and that should either of us come for Trisha, she should call them immediately. In fact, they’ll be in the parking lot, to see if they can intercept me prior to pick-up.
Miss Darling’s faint nod assures them that she understands the severity of their mission. But as she catches my eye in the mirror, she mouths, go.
I will forever be in her debt.
In fact, this has convinced me to volunteer as the chairwoman for the school’s live auction. I vow that it will be the most successful fundraiser in the history of the school. Of course, with what she’s just been told by the NSA, I wouldn’t blame her if she makes me swear on a stack of Bibles that none of the auction money raised was stolen from the US Treasury.
Miss Darling invites them into her office while she fills out a parking lot permit for them. “I’d hate for one of our volunteer parking monitors to have you towed. The parents here can be pretty aggressive. You know how it is when a little power goes to one’s head.”
With Carl in charge, I guess they’ve already found out. Now, I have, too.
After she shuts her office door, I move quickly toward Trisha’s classroom. Her teacher, Miss McGonagall, sees me, and motions for Trisha, who runs to me.
I can’t go out the front entrance because the NSA agents are, once again, in the front lobby. While a couple of fourth graders corner the NSA agents to ask if their guns have real bullets, Trisha and I slip out a side door.
No need to give them a reason to prove it.
I pray I don’t have the same reception waiting for me at Hilldale High School. Mary already considers her family just borderline presentable. A perp walk in front of her peers will be just the sort of embarrassment that will have her begging off school for the rest of her life.
She may just get her wish.
“I’ve never been so embarrassed in my whole life! Mom, why did you have the principal pull me out of my chemistry class—during the middle of a test, no less?” Mary jumps into the SUV, slamming the door behind her. She stares at Trisha, then turns to me. “What’s Trisha doing here?”
“We’re playing hooky!” her little sister declares.
Before I turn around to face her, I lift my lips into an innocent smile. “I thought you wouldn’t mind. Kids your age are under too much pressure.” I hate lying to her, but better that than having her learn that her parents are now on the lam.
“I’m glad you think so. I’ll give you a list of all my test days. Of course, then they’ll hold me back and I’ll never get into college.”
“See? You just proved my point. You worry too much! And besides, your father has a new project that will take us on the road—for quite some time, the way it looks now. He wants us to join him, which will give us the chance for some real family adventures—starting today, in fact.”
Mary’s eyes narrow. “In the middle of a school year?”
“Sure, why not? I’ll clear it with your principals. You can turn in your homework via email.”
“I don’t know. I mean…well, I guess it makes sense—since we didn’t have much of a vacation last summer.”
She’s got a point there. We may have been on a resort called Fantasy Island, but that tropical paradise was anything but fun and games. Jack and I were almost killed—he, by pygmies, and me, by a cannibal serial killer. Did I mention I was almost sold into slavery? Some vacation. No five-star Expedia review there.
Then we came home to a few intense weeks of guarding presidential candidates. Despite keeping them alive, we couldn’t keep their campaigns from imploding in one scandal after another. As it turns out, the top contender—my old high school frenemy, Catherine Martin—didn’t win after all. It may have had something to do with the hit she put out on her own husband. Go figure.
She is now in prison. Mary stays in touch with her teenage son, Evan, who is finishing his junior year back in DC. Having been there when his life was destroyed by the loss of both his parents has made Mary quite introspective these days.
All the more reason she can’t lose Jack or me right now.
So I put on my best Mary Poppins happy face. “First stop,
the mall,” I say brightly. “We’re meeting the boys there, to take in a family movie.”
Here’s hoping there’s not a SWAT team waiting for us when we get there.
We pull up to the rendezvous spot—in front of the Hilldale Mall Cineplex to discover that the boys are already there.
By boys, I mean Jack and Jeff—and surprise, surprise, Jeff’s two besties, Cheever Bing and Morton Smith.
Seeing them, I don’t know who groans the loudest—Mary, Trisha, or me.
“I thought you said this was going to be a family outing,” Mary grumbles.
“I’m just as surprised to see the Two Stooges as you are.” I slip Trisha out of her seat belt and booster seat. “Take your sister inside to the movie snack bar, while I see why we’re being made to suffer.”
Slapping Cheever on the back of the head, Morton shouts, “Last one in is a rotten egg.”
Cheever grabs Morton in a headlock and smacks him with a noogie. “What are you talking about? The only one who smells as if he crapped in his pants is you!”
Jack is quite adept at reading the look on my face. “Look, before you blame me for this, let’s just say that it was easier to dodge the NSA agents by having all three boys with me. The last place they were staking out was the carpool lane. Besides, had I left Cheever and Morton at the school without a ride, we’d have more to worry about from mommy dearest, Penelope Bing, than any NSA agents.”
Aw, heck, I forgot it was our afternoon to carpool. “Okay, so now what do we do with them? If we cross the border, it’s kidnapping!”
“After the movie, we’ll toss them out of the car in front of their homes. In the meantime, they’ll keep the others occupied while we figure out what’s happening.” He pulls out his cell. “I’ll try to reach Ryan while you go in there and try to keep the peace.”
If only the roles were reversed—for the kids’ sake, not mine. If Cheever and Morton start their shenanigans during the film, there won’t be any “happily ever after” ending.
