My eyes shot open. The house looked exactly the same, standing like a silent sentinel upon the hill. In fact it looked so still and serene that I might have chalked it up to hearing things… might have. If the sound hadn’t rung out again. Clearly a gunshot. And clearly coming from Trace’s place.
My heart leapt into my throat, my hands fumbling in my bag for my cell phone. My fingers were shaking as they finally grasped around my cell and tried to dial 9-1-1. All the while my gaze pinging back and forth between my Motorola and Trace’s back door. Three tries into it, I finally managed to hit the right buttons.
Only I never got to press send.
Just as my index finger hovered over the button, the passenger side door to my Jeep flew open and Trace launched himself inside.
Chapter Eight
I stared, my mouth hanging open at what I’m sure was a very unattractive angle.
“Go!” Trace shouted, slamming the door shut behind him.
“Go…?” I looked from him to the house and back again, the word not quite computing.
But he didn’t wait for me to catch up, instead reaching over and turning the key in the ignition himself. The engine roared to life. “Go! We need to get out of here. Now!”
As if to illustrate the seriousness of his words, two more gunshots ripped through the night, the second accompanied by a metallic thunk on my rear bumper.
“Go!” Trace yelled, again.
Believe me, this time I went.
“Holy shit! I think someone just shot at my car!” I slammed my foot down on the accelerator, causing the Jeep to lurch forward onto the street with a screech of rubber on asphalt. Behind us I could hear more shots being fired. Louder. Closer.
I willed myself not to pee my pants.
I fishtailed down the street, narrowly avoiding an ornate iron lamppost on the corner, racing downhill at a breakneck speed.
“Left!” Trace yelled, as we reached the intersection.
I complied, making the turn so fast my tires squealed.
“Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod,” I chanted, my heart beating so hard I feared it would crack a rib.
Trace ignored my babbling, instead barking, “Right! Go right!” as we neared the next street.
My fingers gripped the wheel so hard I feared someone might have to pry it out of my hands as I turned right. I gunned the engine, then took another left at the next light. We crossed two more streets before hitting a red light, where I quickly merged into the right lane and turned down the side street instead of idling.
We were deep in Malibu’s residential area now, the streets lined on both sides with mature trees and two-story family homes set back from the street. Most were silent, a few lights upstairs lit, the occasional glow of a TV screen in the window. A sleepy community that seemed totally at odds with the frantic surge of adrenaline currently pumping through my veins.
I drove another three blocks in silence before daring to check the rearview mirror. Two Jags vied for space on the road behind me, but neither had a gun poking out the window. I made another right, scanning my rearview again before pulling over and idling at the curb under pair of palm trees.
Trace spun around, his gaze whipping out my back window. “Why are we stopping?”
“I… I think we lost them,” I managed, surprised at how calm my voice sounded when my inside were shaking worse than a Jell-O jiggler in the hands of a Ritalin addicted preschooler.
“How can you be sure?” Trace asked. His pupils were so wide that if I didn’t know Trace better, I’d swear he was on something. Only I did know him. And I had a sinking feeling what he was on was a cocktail of adrenaline and pure, unadulterated fear.
I turned off the car and took a deep, cleansing breath that served to ramp my insides down from NASCAR to L.A. freeway. “Okay, Trace. Game’s up. Tell me what’s really going on.”
His eyes pinged between me and the back of the car. “We have to go. They’re right behind us. They’ll be here any minute.”
I looked in the rearview again. The road was empty. Just us.
“I’ll go. But first I want some answers.”
He paused, focusing on me for the first time. “What kind of answers?”
“Who was shooting at you?”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
More bobbing. “Okay, I don’t know their names.”
“But you know who they are?”
He nodded. Slowly.
“The same guys from last night?”
A longer pause this time, but again he nodded.
I should have felt vindicated. Finally someone admitted that I’d actually seen what I knew I saw! But instead of doing the I-told-you-so dance, the fading adrenaline left a nauseous feeling in my belly too strong for any other emotion to creep in.
“What do they want?” I asked.
Trace sighed, licking his lips. Then he glanced behind us again. “Look, just drop me off in town, okay?”
“No, you look,” I said, my voice rising. “I’ve had about enough of this. I just got shot at. With a gun! I don’t like being kept in the dark, and I really don’t like people shooting at me. I think I deserve an explanation, don’t you?”
“You know what?” he said. “Never mind driving into town. I’ll just get out here.”
He made a move to open the passenger side door, but I was faster, my hand shooting out and grabbing his upper arm.
“Oh no you don’t!”
He winced as my fingers clamped down on his bicep.
And that’s when I noticed the bright red stain on the sleeve of his super chic hoodie.
“Whoa.” I let go of his arm. “You’re bleeding.”
Trace looked down at his arm. And winced again. “I’m fine,” he said. Though for a top-shelf actor, it wasn’t very convincing at all.
“You’ve been shot!”
I put the car in gear.
“Wait,” he said, his eyes going all wide and wild again. “Where are you going?”
“We need to get you to a hospital.”
“No! No way.”
“Trace, you’ve been shot,” I pointed out for the second time.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
And, I realized, he really was. The red stain was rapidly spreading down his arm. I was no Clara Barton, but this didn’t look good.
“I can’t got to the hospital,” Trace protested. “They have to report all gunshot wounds.”
“And?”
“And they said no cops or I’m a dead man.”
I cut the engine again.
“Okay, what the hell is going on here?” I asked.
Trace leaned his head back on the seat. Beneath the glow of the streetlights he really did look pale. And kind of like he was in pain, the line of his mouth pulled taught in a grimace. I was beginning to worry.
“Look, just…just drop me off somewhere. I’ll be fine.”
The last thing Trace looked right then was fine. I had visions of dropping him off on Sunset only to read about his body being found the next morning by a transvestite prostitute. He did not look well enough to be wandering the streets by himself. He looked like he needed a hospital. And a morphine drip. His eyes were closed, his face pale and pinched around the eyes. This was clearly his dramatic end-of-year Oscar film face, though I had a sinking feeling it was no act.
I leaned over the consol to get a better look at his injury. Growing up on a ranch, I’d seen my fair share of injured animals, and with the vet living a good twenty miles away, I’d learned at an early age how to administer basic first aid myself. I tried to imagine Trace as a wounded gelding instead of a movie star as I took stock of his injuries.
Okay, there was blood. A lot of it. I tried to ignore it – and the automatic rolling sensation in my stomach at the sight of it – as I examined the wound itself. I’d expected to find a nice round hole, but discovered a long cut instead.
It looked like the bullet had only grazed his arm. No doubt about it, there was a chunk of skin missing. But it didn’t look as though it had done any real structural damage. Kind of like a large scrape, I decided.
I looked from Trace’s face to the wound.
Clearly he was on some someone’s shit list. Clearly the mysterious “they” he was running from were serious. Crazed fans? Professional killers? I had no idea. And until I did, this was one story- I mean, actor - I wasn’t letting out of my sight.
I turned my keys in the ignition.
Trace’s eyes flickered to life. “We can’t go to the hospital!”
“I know.”
For the first time that night his features relaxed. Just a fraction. “Then where are we going?”’
“My place.”
He opened his mouth as if to protest, but changed his mind mid-thought, instead closing his eyes again and leaning his head back on the seat. “Fine.”
* * *
It was a long, dark drive down the PCH back to Venice from Malibu. At any other time the luminous moon casting white-golden streaks upon the ocean’s surface just to our right would have been a peaceful, calming sight. Tonight, I hardly saw it, my eyes flicking every few seconds to the rearview to make sure our unknown attackers hadn’t tracked us down.
Trace spent the entire ride with his eyes closed, resting his head on the seat beside me. By the time I pulled up to my building, it was closing in on midnight and I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open myself. Early risers did not make for good night owls.
I shut off the engine and silently led Trace up to my apartment, praying I hadn’t left anything embarrassing sitting out in my haste to get to work that morning.
I did a quick scan as I unlocked the front door. No dirty clothes on the floor. No half-eaten food in the kitchen. No boxes of tampons visible in the bathroom. So far so good.
I settled Trace down on the futon sofa that also doubled as my bed and went to grab the first-aid kit from the bathroom.
“Nice place,” Trace said, his gaze sweeping over the room. Which didn’t take very long. My entire studio probably could have fit in his butler’s pantry.
“You know, sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”
“I wasn’t being sarcastic,” he protested.
“Oh.” I glanced around myself, wondering exactly which part of the bland renter’s unit the interior-designer-hiring star found “nice.”
“Well, in that case, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He attempted a feeble smile my way.
I ducked my head, for some odd reason blushing again under his gaze. “Let’s check out that arm, shall we?” I sat down on the sofa beside him.
By this time the bleeding had stopped, but his cut had dried to a crusty dark crimson color that still had my stomach churning.
“You’ll need to take off your sweatshirt so I can clean it,” I said.
Trace complied, slowly lifting the hoodie over his head. He winced just slightly as he tugged at the fabric stuck to his skin with dried blood, but finally managed to not only extricate himself from the sweatshirt, but also a blood stained T-shirt he’d been wearing beneath it.
I blinked. And had a mild out of body experience as I stared at his bare torso. Good God the man had some abs. And pecs. And delts. And they were niiiiice. Better, I’d venture to say, than they played on camera, even. I swallowed. Hard. Hoping I wasn’t actually drooling.
“Is it that bad?” Trace asked, turning his arm over to look at his wound.
“What? Oh. Uh, no. No, it, um, looks okay.” I struggled to find my voice, mentally slapping myself back to reality and my nurse’s duties.
As I’d guessed in the car, the cut didn’t look too deep - just enough to hurt like hell and bleed like a stuck pig. I carefully wiped around the area with a damp cloth, then sprayed Bactine on the wound.
“Sonofa-” Trace sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Jesus, that hurt.”
“Big baby,” I teased him. Though I could tell the anti-bacterial had jolted him wide awake now.
Time to find out just what the hell was going on here.
“So just what the hell is going on here?” I asked.
Trace squared his jaw. I could see trust warring with common sense behind his eyes. Not that I blamed him. Despite the fact that I’d just cleaned his boo-boo I was still, after all, a member of the paparazzi.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Oh, don’t give me that crap. ‘Nothing’ doesn’t leave bullet wounds like this,” I said, gesturing to his arm.
Trace shrugged. “It was just a misunderstanding. Nothing important.”
“Right. Important enough to shoot you.”
“It’s nothing,” he repeated.
I narrowed my eyes at him. Then sprayed him with the Bactine again.
He jumped. “Jesus! Okay, fine. I’ll talk. Just…lay off, all right.”
I set the can down, trying not to smirk as I stuck a large Band-Aid on his cut. “So, what’s really going on?” I asked.
Trace took a deep breath. I could still see the trust not quite taking hold behind his eyes, but he’d either decided to ignore it or he’d had the fight Bactined out of him, as he began to talk anyway.
“A couple of nights ago I attended the MTV movie awards. I was up for best onscreen kiss or something like that.”
I remembered. It was a scene between him and Katie Briggs that had launched him onto the cover of People’s 50 Most Beautiful People issue. I’ll admit, it had been a hell of a scene. The kind of kiss that made me suddenly aware of how long it had been since anyone had kissed me. I think my nephew had given me a peck on the cheek last Christmas when he’d opened the Xbox game I’d bought him. Did that count?
“Go on,” I prodded.
“My agent always hires a limo to arrive at these events. So I get in the car with Bert, and halfway there we run into traffic.”
Typical L.A. Nothing noteworthy here yet. “And?”
“And I got antsy. I started fidgeting in my seat. I hate these award shows. They’re all rigged for max publicity, and the whole thing is just a big joke of a schmoozefest. Hollywood honoring Hollywood – aren’t we all great? And everyone’s always trying to get something out of you, ya know?”
No. I didn’t. Usually I was the schmoozer not the schmoozee. But I nodded anyway.
“Well, like I said, I started kinda fidgeting, and that’s when I felt something between the seats.”
“What kind of something?”
“A flash drive.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Like one of those memory sticks that you plug into your computer?”
“Exactly. I didn’t think much of it. Just figured it must have fallen out of the pocket of the person who’d used the car service before me.”
“Logical,” I agreed.
“Anyway, I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Then, a couple days later, I’m at the Boom Boom Room, and these two guys shove me into the back of a van.”
“I saw,” I said, pointedly.
“Right. Well, they said if I didn’t give them their flash drive back, they were gonna kill me.”
“So why not just give it back?”
“Trust me, I would have. I didn’t have it. Bert took it from me before we got out of the limo. He’d said he’d contact the car company and turn it in.”
“But he didn’t?”
“I guess not, because the two guys were still looking for it. After they shoved me in the van, I told them about giving it to my agent. They asked me a bunch of questions about him, and then they pulled over and shoved me out of the truck. They said if I told anyone about this they’d hunt me down and kill me.” He paused, doing a self deprecating grin. “Not that they’d have to hunt far. It’s not like I can keep a real low profile, ya know?”
I knew. “So what happened tonight?”
Trace shrugged again. “I’m sitting at home, minding my own business, watching Survivor, and these guys come
bursting through my living room door.”
“Past your security?”
Trace shot me a look. “In case you haven’t noticed, my bodyguards aren’t the brightest bulbs. They let you in.”
Good point. I made a mental note to give him Cal’s number later but motioned for him to go on. “Alright, so they slip past security, interrupt your reality show, then what?”
“They start yelling about the drive again. I told them I didn’t have it, but they didn’t believe me this time. Then they just started shooting. I dove for cover and luckily made it out the back door. But just barely,” he said, looking down at his arm.
“What was on this flash drive?” I could only imagine if there were people who were willing to kill for it.
He shrugged. “No idea. Like I said, I gave it to my agent and forgot about it.”
“Where is your agent now?”
“Vegas.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“First thing I did when those guys cut me loose last night was call my agent. He said he was in Vegas booking a gig for another client, which is why he hadn’t turned the damned thing into the car company yet. But he said he’d have a look at it, and we’d talk when he got back into town.”
“Which would be?”
“Tomorrow morning. His flight gets in at ten and we’re meeting at Nico’s at noon.”
I nodded. Nico’s was a popular lunch place among the privileged and determined-to-be-seen crowd. Needless to say, my camera lens was a regular there. “Listen, does the name Buckner Boogenheim mean anything to you?” I asked.
Trace shook his head. “That’s quite a mouthful. But, no, I don’t know him. Should I?”
I shrugged. In reality, it hadn’t been all that hard for me to break into Pacific Storage. Not hard to believe someone else might do the same thing to borrow a delivery van.
Trace leaned his head back on the cushions of my sofa, and I could tell the evening had taken its toll on him. I silently went to the linen closet (which also doubled as my clothes closet and the food pantry) and grabbed a couple spare pillows and blankets. By the time I got them back to the sofa, Trace was already asleep. I covered him lightly with a blanket, then hunkered down next to him, where, amazingly, I fell asleep sitting up as soon as I closed my eyes.
Hollywood Headlines 02 - The Perfect Shot Page 8
