Sparks began glancing off the Hummer’s hood and windshield.
Gunfire.
Devlin finally heard the roar of the big Black Hawk over the roar of the Chevy’s V8.
That sniper, Kee, was up with Anton and Jesse.
But the Hummer wasn’t slowing down. Even the civilian versions were tough.
Another turn and they were on Mercer Street, the city street headed straight to the Opera House.
Isobel tromped the throttle one last time.
Thankfully, the street was mostly empty at ten at night.
“Where do we go?”
Devlin had been thinking about that. Running hadn’t worked all that well.
“What if we stopped running?”
Isobel glanced at him, then offered him a tight smile. “Worth a try.”
“Take your next left. Then a hard right at the end of the road through a chicken wire gate onto the Opera’s loading dock.”
He reached out to pat his poor car’s dashboard and hoped to God this worked.
Chapter 28
Isobel took the sharp left just before the Opera House, then raced down the back alley with Vermette’s Hummer close on her tail.
She did her best to remember how far it was to the gate because she couldn’t afford to slow down. With a sharp twist of the wheel and a brief yank on the emergency brake, she got fully sideways in a four-wheel drift. She dumped the brake and gunned it again.
The Chevy smashed through the gate and raced up the loading dock ramp. Three of the four big loading doors were blocked with delivery trucks, but the fourth was open and she gunned ahead. Hitting it at over sixty.
The door blew inward as they were slammed painfully against the seatbelts. Blown off its tracks, the door flapped up and they drove beneath it, through the Stage Left area, and plowed onto the set at the tail end of four long skid marks.
Silence. Except for the hollow creaking as the broken trunk lid continued to rock up and down.
She was suddenly in a massive forest of towering fifty-foot trees rising out of the rocky ground.
A dragon with a head bigger than her car was glaring at them through the windshield.
“Okay, that’s different.” Michelle must still be alive.
“What the hell?” Devlin was staring up as well.
Isobel had looked forward to seeing this production. “Wagner’s Ring Cycle. That’s Fafner. He builds castles for gods and guards magic gold.”
“Uh, hi. Don’t mind us,” Devlin waved at him. Then he turned to Isobel, “I prefer my dragon, personally.”
“Me, too.”
A loud crash sounded off to the right and the trees shivered and swayed. The Hummer must have hit the back.
They dove out of the car and circled around Fafner.
“Shouldn’t we be running the other way?” Michelle asked softly.
“He might still have Hannah in there from when he snatched the Hummer,” Devlin led the way. He’d even freed a crowbar from his poor wreck of a car. No matter how disaffected he claimed to be, his loyalty and concern for others just shone out of him. He wanted to know what was sexy? It wasn’t sailing a boat or driving a car. It was that he was willing to stalk a trained killer to help one of her friends.
The Hummer was lodged into the back of the set’s towering latticework of aluminum frames that supported the massive fake trees.
Numerous holes had been punched through the Hummer’s hood, roof, and windshield, but the door was open and the driver was gone—except for a trail of bloodstains.
“Check the back,” Devlin ordered as he scanned the area.
Isobel began to panic when there was no one in the back seat.
Inside the back hatch, Hannah lay on the floor. Duct tape over her mouth and bound with rope both hand and foot. But she was wide awake and looking absolutely furious.
Isobel flicked out Rosamarie’s Bali-Song blade and cut her bonds.
The first words she croaked out were, “Where is that bastard?”
Devlin kept circling, but couldn’t spot the blood trail anywhere. Then he looked up from the floor and there it was on the framework, just at eye level.
He followed it upward. More blood.
Vermette had climbed the latticework of the set to the very top of the artificial forest. From there, large chains led farther up to a fly loft another five stories higher than the forest set piece.
At the top of the trees, there was a human shape lost in the shadows.
Vermette hadn’t been able to climb the chains. Too exhausted? Too injured?
The four of them gathered at the base and looked up at him.
“Come down, Claude. We can help you,” Isobel called aloft.
“He’s set on killing you, you know?” Devlin felt that really needed to be kept in mind.
“It doesn’t matter. If we can help him, we sho—”
“They’re coming for you!” Claude shouted down.
“Who?”
“Them! They’ll come and scrape the life and soul out of you!”
“No, Claude,” Devlin remembered what Colonel Gibson had said about the lab. “You got them all. When you destroyed the Nevada lab, you got them all.”
“Someone knows!” His voice rose to a howl.
“No. We checked. Everyone who knows was there that day. You got them all. You completed your mission.”
There was a long silence from above.
Isobel slipped her hand into his and held on.
“No!” The shout was sudden and abrupt. “They’ll find you! They’ll hurt you in ways you never can understand. The pain lives. The only safety is in death.”
Then Devlin saw Claude stand high atop those artificial trees—and leap!
Yanking on their clasped hands, Devlin jerked Isobel aside.
Claude landed facedown and didn’t move again.
A knife was still clenched in his fist, its point driven deep into the stage floor mere inches from Isobel’s feet.
Chapter 29
Everyone agreed with Devlin’s suggestion that they could use all the film of the chase and the crash on the Opera House stage, but nothing of Claude himself.
Once the police were gone and the rest of the team had assembled on the opera stage, they re-staged a different final scene.
Devlin called in the opera’s technical crew, but he knew that once they removed the vehicles and started repairs, the rest of the footage would become unusable. The final scene needed to be shot amid the wreckage.
With the opera crew’s help, they planned a final chase within the Opera House and filmed it straight through the night.
Anton, with his massive six-foot-five football player frame filled in for the mad killer. His final death wasn’t from a fall—which had been the original plan as well as Claude’s demise—but rather from the crew teaching Rosamarie how to make the dragon spit twenty-foot propane-driven flames.
The last five days of shooting had become one.
Now, there was only one more scene to film.
He found Isobel on her knees scrubbing at Claude’s bloodstain. Actually, scrubbing at where it had been, because she’d long since cleaned it up.
Devlin pulled her away, leading her by both her hands.
“It’s almost dawn, Isobel,” he wiped away her silent tears. “I think we need to be done with this film. Want to go for a drive?”
He led her out to the loading dock as the opera crew began fixing their damaged set. The shot-up Hummer was gone. A couple of the crew had battered his car back into drivable shape—kind of. The Jeep was parked safely to the side. The sky was just turning the softest pink.
She nodded a little robotically.
He waved a hand at Michelle and Katie, who shouldered their cameras and began filming.
“You ready to go home, Rosamarie?”
At her nod, he tucked her into the passenger seat and started the Chevy. The body metal rattled and banged as he drove, but the car still ran.
�
�Hey, Rosamarie?”
Isobel turned to look down at Roscoe from halfway up the apartment steps at the top of Queen Anne Hill where she’d started the filming less than two weeks earlier.
Downtown Seattle was a sun-washed backdrop behind him. Below lay Lake Union. A few sailboats were out on the quiet blue waters. God but Devlin made a picture leaning against the hood of his battered old Chevy with his arms crossed over his chest and that brilliant dragon’s wing just showing on his biceps.
She’d always have to remember him like this. The man, the lake, and his beloved boat. It was a memory she’d cherish wherever the future led her.
“You make sure you fix my car up good or I’ll come after you.” She stopped halfway up the steps, angled to the camera so that the dawn light just caught her hair.
“Ever been sailing?”
“Rosamarie” could only shake her head. That wasn’t the next line. Roscoe was supposed to make the question just as casual but ask, “See you tomorrow?”
She was supposed to think about it, then say, “We’ll see.” before walking into the apartment building that had opened the movie.
Maybe end the film on her walking away. Maybe on his knowing smile, trusting that she’d be back. She and Jennie had both liked the power of the slightly enigmatic ending.
Instead he’d asked…
There, between those crossed arms, he still wore that bloody and tattered t-shirt. The evolution of man from chimp to sailboat. And it still fit him like he was a work of art.
Despite his mirrored shades and her inability to read his emotions, she could read his smile.
He might be asking “Rosamarie” one question, but he was asking Isobel Manella an entirely different one.
Devlin Jones. A future with Devlin Jones? Somehow in the last ten days she’d gotten to where she couldn’t imagine one without him.
“Sailing?” He repeated the question, then tipped his head as if calling her back to the car.
She hated the endings of movies. Not the story, but being the actress in the last shot. Then it was over. The excitement, the people, the challenge would be done and gone, and she’d feel adrift.
Maybe there was a chance to finally continue the story past the last clapper.
Isobel cocked a hip as Rosamarie thought about it, but she didn’t think too long. Together, she and Rosamarie strolled back down the steps.
She stopped a toe’s breadth from Roscoe/Devlin.
Too damn self assured, he was just waiting for the ending kiss.
Instead she held out a hand, palm up.
He looked down at it, then smiled a question.
“Keys. I’m driving.”
He dug them out and dropped them into her palm. “Just try not to ding it up any worse.”
She scoffed at him.
Then, together, they climbed into the twisted and mangled car, and both cameras followed them as they headed down the hill to go sailing.
Epilogue
Devlin had thought it was corny, but coming out of the premier at Seattle’s Cinerama theater, he knew that Michelle had been right.
“You’re a crazy romantic, aren’t you, Red?”
Her cowboy boot clipped his ankle, but not too hard. Probably because her baby bump was six months out and it threw her a little off balance. Hannah was just starting to show. Devlin imagined himself with a baby of Isobel’s riding on his shoulders and couldn’t wait.
He grabbed Michelle and gave her a kiss on her temple. “That ending was great. The Belle just sailing away across the water with the two of us on board. Then the pull back and up with the helo. Real sweet, sister-in-law.”
“Eww! So not!” She shoved him away and wiped at her arms as if trying to dust off his cooties. “I’m not related to you until tomorrow’s wedding. I still get another twenty-seven hours of freedom.”
“You’re a hell of a maid of honor, Red.” Twenty-seven hours to heaven.
“The threat still stands, sailboy. You hurt her and I’ll—” She squawked in surprise as Ricardo swept her aside.
They’d be flying out in the morning to the Montana ranch where Gibson lived. Isobel had shot a film there and swore by it. They’d invited Gibson’s impromptu film crew, and no one else. The Oregon vineyard was providing the wine, the ranch was catering, and Kee-the-sniper’s teenage daughter had cooked them up a “so retro but whatever” soundtrack for dancing that was just perfect.
There was a big round of applause as Isobel and Jennie came out of the theater arm-in-arm. Co-directors and co-writers, he wanted it to be about them rather than the “Big Screen Couple” that the rags were already chattering on about.
But once they’d done their photos and bows, Isobel had beckoned him over for a threesome photo. He’d caved on the gray suit. But not the shirt.
Just as he stepped in between them to slip his hands around both of their waists, he unbuttoned his jacket and brushed it open to expose it for the cameras.
What had looked like a printed tie with the jacket closed was revealed to be the top of a sailboat’s sail. The revealed words made a simple declaration.
Yes, we have a plan. Sailing.
The laughter rolled through the crowd.
After Jennie drifted away, already deep in writing their next film, Isobel placed a palm directly over the photo of the Belle at the center of the shirt before leaning in to kiss him.
The press went wild, but with the beating of Devlin’s heart against her palm, Isobel didn’t care.
She’d spent a whole career being careful about who she was seen with and doing what. Kissing Devlin Jones after the premier of her first movie as producer was too perfect to pass up. Even if the wedding wouldn’t be announced until it was over and done.
Granted the audience had been heavily Seattle-based, but they’d given the film hoots and cheers, so she had hopes that it would play well.
Now there was only one place she wanted to be.
On their houseboat.
She’d purchased the big one, which had a big enough slip alongside it for the Belle. Isobel had also bought three other houseboats along nearby docks so that her team of friends would always be close.
“But not too close,” as Devlin often said.
The downstairs of their houseboat was perfect for parties and to use as the primary meeting room for B&B Films. Someday their children would play together there. The upstairs was all hers and Devlin’s.
People could ask all they wanted, but she and Devlin hadn’t explained the meaning of the new company’s name to anyone.
Everyone, even Michelle, incorrectly assumed that at least part of the name was for Belle the boat.
“Take me home, Beast.” Isobel clasped Devlin’s hand in both of hers and slipped the golden duck First Place sticker from their first race together into his palm.
He stared at it in their cupped palms for a long moment, then closed his grip over it so that they were both holding it.
“Can’t wait, Belle.”
Be sure to keep reading to see an excerpt from the exciting White House Protection Force series.
If you enjoyed that,
you’ll love the White House Protection Force series!
Off the Leash (excerpt)
“You’re joking.”
“Nope. That’s his name. And he’s yours now.”
Sergeant Linda Hamlin wondered quite what it would take to wipe that smile off Lieutenant Jurgen’s face. A 120mm round from an M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank came to mind.
The kennel master of the US Secret Service’s Canine Team was clearly a misogynistic jerk from the top of his polished head to the bottoms of his equally polished boots. She wondered if the shoelaces were polished as well.
Then she looked over at the poor dog sitting hopefully on the concrete kennel floor. His stall had a dog bed three times his size and a water bowl deep enough for him to bathe in. No toys, because toys always came from the handler as a reward. He offered her a sad sigh and a liquid doggy gaze. Th
e kennel even smelled wrong, more of sanitizer than dog. The walls seemed to echo with each bark down the long line of kennels housing the candidate hopefuls for the next addition to the Secret Service’s team.
Thor—really?—was a brindle-colored mutt, part who-knew and part no-one-cared. He looked like a cross between an oversized, long-haired schnauzer and a dust mop that someone had spilled dark gray paint on. After mixing in streaks of tawny brown, they’d left one white paw just to make him all the more laughable.
And of course Lieutenant Jerk Jurgen would assign Thor to the first woman on the USSS K-9 team.
Unable to resist, she leaned over far enough to scruff the dog’s ears. He was the physical opposite of the sleek and powerful Malinois MWDs—military war dogs—that she’d been handling for the 75th Rangers for the last five years. They twitched with eagerness and nerves. A good MWD was seventy pounds of pure drive—every damn second of the day. If the mild-mannered Thor weighed thirty pounds, she’d be surprised. And he looked like a little girl’s best friend who should have a pink bow on his collar.
Jurgen was clearly ex-Marine and would have no respect for the Army. Of course, having been in the Army’s Special Operations Forces, she knew better than to respect a Marine.
“We won’t let any old swabbie bother us, will we?”
Jurgen snarled—definitely Marine Corps. Swabbie was slang for a Navy sailor and a Marine always took offense at being lumped in with them no matter how much they belonged. Of course the swabbies took offense at having the Marines lumped with them. Too bad there weren’t any Navy around so that she could get two for the price of one. Jurgen wouldn’t be her boss, so appeasing him wasn’t high on her to-do list.
At least she wouldn’t need any of the protective bite gear working with Thor. With his stature, he was an explosives detection dog without also being an attack one.
“Where was he trained?” She stood back up to face the beast.
At the Clearest Sensation Page 14
