Troubleshooters 09 Hot Target

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Deck leapt to his feet, scanning the soundstage, not all of which was lit. Screeee! What the hell?

  Mercedes stood up, too. “What—?”

  Whump! Crrrrrsh! That sounded like smashing glass and it seemed to be coming from overhead, as if the giant at the top of the beanstalk had dropped her serving tray and—

  Shards of broken glass and pieces of metal were falling onto the set, raining down on them from above. Decker grabbed Mercedes even as he looked up into the lights, trying to see what—or, Jesus, who—the fuck was up there.

  Whump! Crrrrrrsh!

  “Look out!” someone shouted. “Oh, fuck!”

  “Ow!” Mercedes exclaimed, but Deck didn’t know if that was in response to the spraying glass or his grip on her wrist as he instinctively dragged her back toward the door, because—oh, fuck indeed—there was a piece of lighting equipment that had somehow broken free from the overhead pipes. He could see it swinging up there like a wrecking ball, knocking into other lights and held in place by God only knew what—possibly only its electrical cord.

  “Look out!” This voice was completely panicked, and Deck turned to see—oh, big fuck!—that one of those lighting trees—this one a towering steel pipe with seven or eight large lights attached like branches at the top—was falling, gathering momentum.

  He and Mercedes weren’t quite in danger of being crushed—they’d have two or three feet of breathing room even if they stood still. Except that thing wasn’t just going to lie there quietly when it hit the stage. Deck tried to move her faster, farther away from the point of impact, dodging sound equipment and set pieces.

  She was shouting something—his name was part of it, but he had no clue exactly what she wanted. He just yanked her in front of him, shielding her with his body as that thing hit the stage with a thundering, screeching, floor-shaking crash.

  The stage lights exploded and some broke free from the tree, bouncing wildly across the set.

  Deck pushed Mercedes toward shelter behind a parked forklift as a flying piece of metal whizzed past his ear.

  Man, that was too close for—Crunch. The force of something solid connecting with the back of his head pushed him forward and down to the floor. He took Mercedes with him, still trying to shield her, as the world went to black.

  As far as nightmares went, Jane had written a doozy.

  Cosmo leafed through the pages of script that she’d given him to read as he ate dinner at the picnic table outside the sandwich shop.

  This was the big favor Jane had asked the other night—asked and then forgotten about. She’d wanted him to read this nightmare D-Day battle sequence that she’d written. It was, quite literally, a bad dream that the character of Jack had after meeting and falling in love with Hal Lord.

  Jack, who was in the Twenty-third, had never been in direct combat. Hal, however, was an officer with the legendary 101st Airborne—the Screaming Eagles. He’d parachuted into France on D-Day. Hal had been in the thick of it, and Jack had persuaded him to talk a little about that hellish battle.

  Much in the way Jane had gotten Cos to talk about his wartime experiences.

  “You’re the first person to read this,” she’d said as she’d thrust the pages of script at him, right after Decker had put the soundstage into lockdown mode. She wanted to know if Cosmo thought it “worked.”

  As if he knew anything about screenplays.

  He did, however, know quite a bit about war.

  In the scene Jane had written, Jack dreamed he was part of the Normandy invasion. He ran up the beach, under enemy fire, fighting fiercely for every step he took. There were notes in the margin: “Check with Harve—can we get enough blood packs and other special effects makeup to make this look realistic?”

  It was a nice way to fight a battle—with fake blood.

  The scene had a dreamy quality to it. Some of the battle sequences would be in slow motion, some in silence with a voice-over from Hal, obviously from that heartfelt conversation he’d had with Jack.

  Everett was standing inches away from me. Cosmo read Hal’s words. The Germans must’ve zeroed their 88 right in on us. The blast knocked me down, took away my hearing for a few hours, but that was it. I was all right. A few bruises. But ol’ Ev . . . We found his legs. His boots. That was all we sent home.

  Heavenly Father.

  You pray because you don’t know why he died when you didn’t. And you pray because the guilt brings you to your knees. Because the grief of losing a friend becomes a brief flash of sorrow that you push away—to focus on keeping your other men alive. After a while, you start pretending that you don’t know their names, that they aren’t your friends, that you don’t give a crap if they live or die. But you do. And you remember every single name, every single face, for the rest of your life. . . .

  Well, she got that part right.

  There was another voice-over in this scene, too. A journal entry from Virginia, the American costume designer who’d been called in to help create the Nazi uniforms needed for that dangerous mission into Germany. In Janey’s screenplay, Gin had surprised herself by falling in love with the group’s team leader, Major Milt Monroe.

  Seeing Milt take command yesterday, when those boys were killed by that sniper, made me realize—I will now be able to visualize his death.

  I will be able to picture a blue sky sparkling behind him as he is hit by bullets, his blood spraying as he falls but then gets up again, falls and gets up again, refusing to quit fighting even as he breathes his last.

  God!

  Damn You! Where are You? End this war now!

  Why do You hide when thousands of men, thousands of Jacks and Hals and Miltons, die in every battle?

  They are not government issue, off some assembly line, as much as we pretend they are—these American men and boys who sacrifice so much so that others may be free.

  They’re called replacements, the new boys who come to fight. But they, like those who fell before them, were born to mothers and fathers who treasure them—not as one of many, but as someone unique, someone irreplaceable.

  Someone loves them, even if You don’t! Someone, somewhere, will bleed for them forever.

  As I have already begun to bleed for Milt.

  “I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

  Cosmo looked up from the script to see that PJ was on the phone again. Like Cos, his clothes were grimy from clearing out Jane’s garage. He was no doubt talking to his girlfriend, who seemed determined to drive him completely crazy before she left for Iraq. “I know.” He rolled his eyes at Cos. “I know, Beth. Look, honey—” He sighed. And moved the phone away from his mouth, covering the receiver with his thumb. “You just about done?” he asked Cosmo.

  Who was sitting there with half of his sandwich still uneaten.

  “Five minutes,” Cos told him. Damn it, he got mustard on page four. He wiped at it with his napkin, but it left a grease mark. Great. Way to make sure Jane knew that he was a total slob.

  Phone to his ear, still listening to Beth, PJ went next door, to the 7-Eleven. Lindsey, the third member of the Troubleshooters Trash Removal Team, was sating her raspberry Slurpee jones. No doubt PJ’s intention was to hustle her along, too.

  Shaking his head, Cosmo flipped to page five. The images in this scene skittered and changed, similar to the way a dream hopped randomly from one place to the next—and suddenly Jack was participating in a charge on a German pillbox. The fighting was violent, but the position was finally taken.

  That was when Jack saw movement from the corner of his eye—a young German soldier. He fired before he realized the kid’s hands were up in surrender, and the man fell. And wasn’t that a total wartime nightmare—Jane got that right as well.

  But for Jack, in his dream, it got even worse. He moved closer and to his horror saw that the German soldier was, in fact, Hal.

  Jack dropped to his knees, trying to stanch the flow of Hal’s blood. But it was mortal—this wound he had inflicted upon the man tha
t he loved. And it was too late. Blood flecked Hal’s lips and the light in his eyes faded as he reached up to touch Jack’s grimy face.

  “You can’t save me,” he whispered as the battle once again raged around them.

  At this point in the movie, Jack awakened with a gasp, in the dark, breathing hard, horrified—only to see Hal sleeping peacefully beside him.

  The symbolism was nice. It was a good scene. And Janey had really managed to capture the nightmarish chaos of battle.

  Janey. Damn. He was starting to think of her as Janey.

  He was so totally screwed.

  “Cos!” PJ was back, Lindsey on his heels. “Check this out! I’m in the National Void. In tomorrow’s paper, no less. The 7-Eleven must’ve gotten it early.”

  He threw the tabloid—the National Voice—onto the table. Cos grabbed his can of Coke to keep it from getting knocked over and . . .

  There was a picture, right on the front page, and indeed, PJ was in it, in the background, his sunglasses making him just another indistinguishable Man in Black. The focus, however, was on Jane, who was laughing, gazing into the eyes of an older man who was holding her close.

  Very close. They might have been dancing. Or maybe they were just standing there. With his hands on her ass. With him nanoseconds from locking lips with her.

  “This must’ve been taken last night,” PJ said.

  Cosmo had to clear his throat, which didn’t quite erase the sensation of having been hit in the chest with a bowling ball. He somehow got his vocal cords working. “Yeah.” Jane was wearing that same little black dress.

  “I mean, not that you can tell who it is, which is good, but I know it’s me.” PJ was just a little too thrilled by this. “Cool, huh?”

  The caption read, “Party girl producer J. Mercedes Chadwick with old flame, director Victor Strauss.”

  Old flame? How old?

  There was no article—except, wait. There was. It was just a paragraph in some kind of gossip column that ran along the side of the page.

  From the horse’s mouth: Caught with his hands in the cookie jar on his first days back in town after a seven-month shoot in Spain, Victor Strauss was quoted as saying that his off-again, on-again relationship with hot property J. Mercedes Chadwick is “serious this time. I’d be a fool to let her get away again.” Might those be wedding bells we hear?

  Lindsey was reading over Cosmo’s shoulder. “I didn’t realize Jane was dating Victor Strauss. I know she really wanted him to direct American Hero, but he wasn’t available. He’s cute—in kind of an older guy, nerdy, extremely rich and famous way.”

  Cos had seen some pictures flying around the Net of himself and Jane at that press conference. In most of them, he’d looked pretty damn detached. There were a few that had been taken exactly when he’d grabbed her to keep her from falling, when he’d held her tightly against him and . . .

  He knew there had been a moment when he’d reacted in a less than professional manner, because the cameras had caught it on film. There had been an expression of undisguised anger on his face.

  Of course, in those photos it had read as desire. Which, come to think of it, may well have been in his eyes at that moment, too.

  But only for a split second.

  “He actually has an Oscar,” PJ told Lindsey. “That party we went to was at his house—it was on this little shelf right outside his bathroom, like it’s the first thing he wants to see after he takes a dump in the morning. It’s not as big as I thought, but it’s heavy.”

  In this picture, however, Strauss’ undisguised hunger for Jane was not a fleeting, temporary emotion.

  But okay. Even though a picture was said to be worth a thousand words, the message could well be misinterpreted or misunderstood. Maybe Jane and this famous director were discussing their next project.

  PJ laughed. “I should know. I stood outside that door for about ten minutes while Jane and Strauss had a quickie.”

  Lindsey laughed. “Are you kidding? In the bathroom, in the middle of a party? Go, Jane!”

  Or maybe they weren’t talking business at all.

  “They probably thought they were being discreet by not going into the bedroom, which would’ve raised some eyebrows,” PJ said. “His house wasn’t that big and there were people hanging out in there.”

  “The alternative would’ve been him coming over to her place, which might be kind of weird for Jane, because there we all are, you know?” Lindsey said. “Day and night, nonstop.”

  “I know it would make me self-conscious,” PJ said, “if I were her and I wanted to get it on with some rich guy who could probably further my career and give me a giant diamond—cha-ching!—as part of the deal.”

  Cosmo couldn’t stand it any longer and he stood up. “Show a little respect.”

  “What?” PJ said. “I’m not being disrespectful. I’m just saying. I’m sure Jane likes the man. It sure as hell seemed that way last night, if you know what I mean.”

  His appetite was gone. Cos threw away the uneaten half of his sandwich as he started for his truck. He had to get out of here. Shit, he had to get out of L.A.

  Lindsey poked PJ in the arm as they followed him into the parking lot. “Yeah, you’re just jealous. You thought you had a chance with her. What, did you really think that a woman who dates famous movie directors would be interested in dating a bodyguard? Dream on.”

  “I’m not talking dating,” PJ said. “I’m talking doing the dance of looove, getting a little of that ten-minute bathroom action, although for sure I’d settle for five in the linen closet.” He paused. “I’m kidding—you know that, right? I don’t want some incriminating sound bite to work its way to Beth.”

  “Because she knows you well enough to know that you’re kidding on the square,” Lindsey countered.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Cosmo was spared the rest of this freaking annoying discussion when his cell phone rang. The number was Tess Bailey’s—the Troubleshooters team’s XO. “Richter.”

  She didn’t waste words. “Code red. There’s been an incident at the studio. Deck and Jane are hurt.”

  The world went still around him. Except Lindsey was saying, “ . . . when you say you’re kidding, but you’re really not.”

  “Code red—quiet!” he ordered them sharply, but Tess stopped talking, too. “No, Tess. Go.”

  “We need you down here,” she told him. “Now. Wait— Wait, hold up . . .”

  PJ and Lindsey were already scrambling into the truck. “They’ve had action at the studio,” Cos told them.

  “No fucking way,” PJ said. “Casualties?”

  “Deck and Jane. I don’t know details,” Cosmo reported as he slammed the truck in reverse and backed out of the parking space.

  “Dear God,” Lindsey breathed.

  Tess came back. “The ambulance is going to drive right inside through a garage bay—shit, why didn’t we know about that before? A freaking garage bay here on the soundstage, and we’ve been rushing her in through the door—”

  “Where do you need us?” Cos interrupted her, his truck already in gear. First things first. But Christ, if they needed an ambulance over at the studio . . .

  “The hospital,” Tess told him. “Cedars-Sinai. Meet us there. ER entrance. Keep that freaking door closed!” he heard her bellow as she cut the connection before giving him any further information.

  “Which way to Cedars-Sinai hospital?” he asked, and PJ looked up from checking his sidearm and over at Lindsey, who’d lived in L.A. all of her life.

  “Left, and then left again at the light,” she said, then hung on to the dashboard for dear life as Cos burned rubber leaving the parking lot.

  As the ambulance pulled up to the hospital, Jane could see that Cosmo was already there. He looked grim—and grimy. Of course, he’d been cleaning out her garage.

  The rest of the team was there, too. Well, except for Jules, whom they’d left back at the studio with his boss, Max Bhagat, and
a crew of investigators from the local FBI office.

  Amidst the chaos, Jane had exchanged somewhat absurd pleasantries with Max, the leader of one of the world’s most elite counterterrorist teams, while they waited for the ambulance. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Chadwick, I’m Max. No, don’t shake my hand, keep applying pressure. Hang on, don’t move—let me get this big chunk of glass out of your hair. . . .”

  “Do they know I’m okay?” Jane asked Tess Bailey, the Troubleshooters’ answer to Wonder Woman, who was riding with her.

  But Tess was on the phone again. She made a “hang on” gesture.

  Of course, maybe Jane was getting ahead of herself. That worried look on Cosmo’s face could have been for Decker, who was right behind them, in the second ambulance.