by Celia Mulder
Lucille was stunned. He’d known? More?
Matt sat on the edge of the bed and reached out his hand to her. She stared at it. He set the hand back down in his lap and gazed at the suddenly fascinating hardwood floor. “I want to cook you dinner. I want to make love to you. Lucy—I’ve never stopped loving you.”
The rage was back, swift and boiling. She ground her teeth and resisted the urge to growl. “Why did you have to say that? Why did you have to go and ruin everything?”
Matt’s head snapped up. “Ruin everything? What was there to ruin besides your plan to control me?”
“I wasn’t planning to control you.”
“No? You didn’t show up here with the intention of fucking me so hard I’d agree to stay away from your case?” Matt had to be angry now too. He didn’t shout, though. He was too well trained for that. Instead, he spoke in a low, hurt voice that cut through all of Lucille’s self-protective barriers.
“Does that even work?” Not a great comeback, but it was the first thing that had popped into her head.
“I don’t know, Lucille, but that’s never stopped you before, has it?”
“Uh uh, no you don’t. Don’t make this my fault. I’m not the one who broke us up. I’m the one whose family was torn apart, who had to stand trial against her own uncle because her boyfriend decided to get involved where he wasn’t welcome.”
“You have trust issues.”
“No shit.”
They stood in silence, both seething. Lucille knew she should storm out, but there were so many more things she wanted to scream at him. More about how he’d betrayed her, and some stuff about how he’d wanted them to be married and have kids and to put her in this neat little box while he went around shooting guns and living his dream.
Matt spoke first. “Did you ever love me?”
There was that tortured voice. The one that made her ache even as she wanted to strangle him. And the urge to strangle was winning over. “Goddammit, Matt, grow up.”
She strolled out of the bedroom, picked her purse up off the floor, and was about to slam the door behind her when Matt spoke.
“Our deal’s off. If you want to keep doing your little spin doctor thing, that’s up to you. Just know you’ll have the whole police force as your opponent.”
Chapter Ten
Brett heard someone call his name through the darkness. Why was everything so dark? It was the middle of the day. Or maybe it was night. Maybe he was sleeping one off. So why was someone shouting his name?
Cold water hit him square on the nose, dousing his whole face in frigid pain. He spluttered, got water in his mouth, and spent a few moments choking on that. He opened his eyes as he coughed and got water in them too. Finally, after several minutes of rapid blinking and strangled, hacking yelps, he cleared his face enough to look around him. He was lying on the floor of Michel’s entryway, surrounded by a puddle of water. It was night, and Lucille Anton was standing over him with an empty glass and a stony expression.
“What the hell did you do that for?” he demanded.
She shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“I nearly drowned! Didn’t you see me choking?”
She rolled her eyes. “You are so goddamn dramatic. Where’s Michel?”
Brett started, then clutched the back of his head, cringing when he felt the giant lump. “Isn’t he on the couch in the living room?”
“I haven’t checked there yet. I just walked in and found you unconscious.”
“And you decided to throw cold water on me?”
“Uh, no. First I dragged you down the rest of the stairs. I figured it’d hurt less if you were still out.”
“What happened?” Brett asked as his body, aching and throbbing, joined him in the conscious world. His right arm, in particular, was on fire and he couldn’t move it.
Lucille eyed him. “I was hoping you would tell me that.”
Brett rubbed his temple with the hand he could move. “I don’t know. I was going through Sylvia’s closet when I heard a noise. I walked down the stairs but slipped somehow...there was something wrong with the stairs...anyway, I think there’s something wrong with my arm.”
“I’d say so.”
Brett turned his head. His right arm was stuck out to the side like a child’s stick figure drawing where the shoulder isn’t connected correctly to the torso. He turned away. “That can’t be good.”
“No. Especially since we can’t exactly take you to a hospital right now.” Lucille reached down, took his left arm, and pulled him to standing.
Her hands were strong and oddly comforting. Odd because Brett didn’t think anything about the woman in front of him was comforting. “Why the hell not?”
“Super-secret, time-sensitive mission ring a bell?”
“Oh right, that. We haven’t gotten very far on that.”
“You’ve had the whole afternoon and evening! Michel said he some ideas about where she went. What do you mean you haven’t gotten very far?”
Brett flinched. “Stop shouting. I probably have an untreated concussion.”
Lucille made him follow her manicured forefinger with his eyes. No concussion.
“I tried to look for clues, you know, before being possibly murdered. But after I knocked Michel out, I didn’t know where to look.”
“You knocked Michel out.”
“Yes.”
“Michel. You knocked Michel...out.”
“Right.”
“Michel. As in the only person who knows what the next step is in this whole fucking mess? As in the person who’s in danger of getting murdered at any moment? That Michel? You knocked him out and then went and got yourself nearly killed on the stairs?” Lucille’s voice was quiet and scary and hot.
So not the time to be turned on. Still, it did distract from the pain. And the shame spiral brought on by her oh-so-sensible words. “He wouldn’t shut up about Sylvia. It was that or kill him myself.”
Lucille mumbled something and stalked down the hall, leaving Brett to get himself to his feet, one arm dangling worthless by his side. She was wearing different clothing. Instead of a skirt and blouse, she was in dark jeans and a white, lacy top over a black tank. Brett’s brain wasn’t up to going from observation to conclusion just yet, though. All it told him was she looked nice in the outfit; not necessarily approachable, but at least less like a stiletto-wearing ninja. Idea for his next movie, should he survive this: ninjas who fight in skirts and four-inch heels.
Lucille returned. “You are so lucky he’s still there and hasn’t been kidnapped by the murderers.”
Brett poked his right shoulder. It hurt like hell. “Has he come to?”
“Not yet. Did you guys at least come up with a plan?”
“Um...no.”
She sighed and looked around the room. Crossing to the side table, she sank into the ornate wooden chair beside it, her whole body collapsing into the wood. She rubbed her face, smearing some of her makeup. Brett bit his lip. For the pain, he told himself. Only for the pain.
“What?” she asked when she caught him watching.
“Nothing.” He looked down at his bum arm. “I thought you were taking a backseat role in this whole recovering-the-kidnapped-fiancée business.”
Was it his concussion or did Lucille look guilty?
“I was. But...we have a problem. Remember how I said Detective Adams was going to leave us alone for forty-eight hours?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s not.”
Brett sat back down on the floor. There wasn’t much point standing when all the blood was rushing around his body in a panic dance, charging from his throbbing arm to his head to other places.
“Well, that sucks.” He wondered what had happened. Had one of her carefully laid plans blown up in her face? He didn’t know her well enough to know if she had carefully laid plans. She just seemed like the type of person who would.
He lay down on the ground. It was cold and gritty and v
ery, very hard. Like my penis, a thought told him. What? No. That doesn’t even make sense.
The pain must be killing him.
“Hey. Are you okay?” The click of her heels reverberated around his head.
He grunted and opened his eyes to find Lucille standing over him, watching him with one raised eyebrow. Her expression landed somewhere between concern and disgust. He didn’t need that right now. He closed his eyes again.
The heels clicked away across the floor. “There’s gotta be some Vicodin somewhere in this place.”
He heard her climb the stairs, each footfall growing farther away. The cold floor was comforting on his aching head. The silence of the night, unbroken by the sounds of traffic, ambulances, or gunshots, was soothing. He could imagine he wasn’t lying on his old friend’s foyer floor with a dislocated shoulder after someone who had been trying to murder said friend got him instead. Rather, he could imagine he was on a beach somewhere, the sand cool and soothing in the evening air. He’d walk the edge of the water, the white-tipped waves greeting him with each swell. He’d look for stones in the shallows the way he used to when he was a kid. His family would have left already, forgetting him behind like they always did, coming back hours later when they remembered about their son. In this time before they returned he could listen to the waves, feel the sand, and find the rocks. For once he could be at peace.
He heard his mother’s voice, calling to him. He ran away, kicking up sand behind him, his footprints lost in the waves, but still her voice was there, always right behind him. He whirled to face her.
“Leave me alone, Mom!”
“I don’t know what kind of delusion you’re under, but I’m not your mother.”
Brett opened his eyes. Lucille was standing over him again, this time looking angry. He opened his mouth to apologize but didn’t get to say a word before she shoved two pills down his throat and poured water in after them. He choked and sputtered but was forced to swallow.
“What did you give me?”
“Vicodin.”
“Oh.” He was lying on the leather sofa where he’d left Michel. How had he gotten here? Michel’s face came into view.
“I found a sling. I’m going to pop your shoulder back into place and then wrap it in that. This may hurt,” Michel said in a lilting voice.
That woke Brett up. He tried to scramble away but put weight on his right arm by mistake and howled.
Michel was making soothing noises. “Shh, shh, it’s going to be all right. Just lie back and relax.”
“Relax? Relax? How can you tell me to relax?”
“Because if you don’t, I can’t set your shoulder properly.”
“Exactly. Have you ever even set a shoulder, Michel?” Brett’s voice was rising. He felt hysterical. From the look on Lucille’s face, he must have sounded hysterical.
“Not in practice. But when I was doing research for Yesterday’s Child I shadowed a doctor for a week and saw him set a number of dislocated bones.”
“And I’m supposed to trust you? Because you saw somebody do something while researching a role?”
Michel looked him straight in the eye. For a man who’d himself been hysterical and then drugged not hours earlier, he was surprisingly calm. “Yes.”
Brett looked at Lucille, pleading with her.
“Oh no, you do not want me setting your arm,” she said.
That wasn’t what he’d meant. He didn’t want anyone but a real doctor touching his injury, but there was no real doctor, only Michel. With all the trepidation of a seasoned veteran going into battle, he held out his injured arm. Michel felt around Brett’s shoulder, his hands warm and soothing. He placed one hand on either side of the joint, counted to three, and pushed the bone back into place.
The pain was excruciating. As he blacked out again, Brett wondered why they couldn’t have waited until the Vicodin kicked in to do that and why he hadn’t thought to ask.
***
“Now,” Lucille said as Brett slumped into the couch, “back to business.”
“Just a moment. I have to put the arm in the sling.”
Lucille sat down in a nearby chair and watched as Michel lifted Brett’s arm and slid it into the white cotton sling. Brett’s head was thrown back on the couch, his hair falling over his closed eyes, his lips parted.
Brett was everything she avoided—a sloppy, funny drunk with major self-esteem issues. Michel was the type of man she went for—beautiful, well-dressed, rich, and famous, with an ego the size of his bank account. Or men like Matt—successful, distinguished, serious men who cared more about their career than her. Those were her type, not the adorable sleeping man on the couch who she’d seen pass out three times in the span of an hour. Yet here she was, attracted to him. An attraction that’d been brewing for longer than she’d like to admit.
She felt a strange pang of guilt about having said she hated his film. It was the only movie she’d watched all the way through in years. It had made her laugh. It had made her cry. The DVD sat beside her bed and had sparked a baby crush on its creator. A crush that had grown when she met the man in person. She’d never tell him any of that, of course. They’d find Sylvia—soon, given the recent evidence—and go their separate ways. That would be that.
Michel straightened and crossed to the opposite loveseat. “I thought you weren’t going to get involved?”
Lucille had surprised Michel when he’d woken to find her dragging an unconscious Brett into the sitting room. He’d recovered and helped her heave his friend onto the vacant couch. The drugged sleep must have helped him immensely, because he was a powerhouse of energy in a way Lucille hadn’t seen him since...ever. Although she’d only just met him the day before.
Lucille told him about the fuck up with Matt, heavily edited. Client boundaries and all that.
Michel frowned. “If the detective is on the case too, that means...”
“Michel,” Lucille called him back. “It doesn’t matter. When I was searching your medicine cabinets for Vicodin, I found this note on the counter.” She picked up a piece of lavender stationary from the coffee table. It read,
If you want to see her again, bring 20 million dollars to the symbol of Stanton extravagance.
“It’s from the kidnappers,” Michel breathed. “But the symbol of Stanton extravagance?”
Lucille shrugged. “I was hoping you’d know.”
Michel stood, pulled a list from his pocket, and began to read from it, pacing the room as he did. “Could it be...? Not the mansion. That’s Sylvia’s childhood home and the first place Lou Stanton would have checked. The Stanton office building is ostentatious but not extravagant. It’s possible they mean one of the beach houses, but which one?”
Lucille turned the note over. “Oh wait, there’s more. ‘I’m on Mino Island, dummy,’” she read aloud. Lovely girl, Sylvia.
“Of course! The Stantons’ private island! Why didn’t I think of that before? If they were going to ransom her, of course they’d take her to the island.” Michel went charging out of the room.
“Uh, Michel, what about the twenty million?” Lucille called after him.
“I’ll have my accountant meet us at the jet with the money in half an hour.”
“Right.” Celebrities, Lucille thought. Always running around in their private jets, handing out twenty million dollars like it’s spare change. Getting kidnapped and owning islands. What a beautiful, fucked-up world this is.
***
It was nearing four in the morning by the time they’d roused the accountant and tracked down the pilot, and Lucille had lost the argument about bringing Brett.
“Finally,” Lucille grumbled as Michel boarded the plane, briefcase in hand. Staying up late was not her strong suit, and now she was up for a second night in a row with the longest, most draining day of her life in the middle.
Michel gave her a pained look but didn’t respond.
No wonder people loved him so much. He had the tormented artist act d
own pat. That single look had held the anguish of his soul in it, mirrored in his gorgeous blue eyes.
It was a good thing he was paying her so much or she’d be at home, in bed, asleep.
You wanted adventure, didn’t you? her mind pointed out. A few days ago she’d been going through the same old routine, all the while wanting to throw her phone out the window and take off. Well, here she was, on an adventure. But why did it have to be this adventure? Why did it have to involve saving one of the bitchiest women in the world, only to tell her to stop trying to kill her fiancé? That is not the plot line of some terrible soap opera. That is my life.
If Mino Island turned out to be one of those rustic camping-only places, she was turning around and going home. She felt a rising panic. She could still get off the plane.
“Please prepare for take-off.” The pilot’s voice crackled over the speakers.
Dammit.
Brett shifted in his seat behind her but didn’t wake up.
Lucille had been resolutely against bringing Brett. He’d been unconscious for hours and had an injured arm. The kindest thing they could do for him was let him stay home and rest. But Michel insisted, saying that Brett would never forgive him if he were left behind. Lucille wondered whether Brett would say the same.
They needed to discuss the plan of action, if there was one, for when they landed. Lucille looked over at Michel, sitting across the aisle, wearing earplugs and snoring softly. They had time.
Chapter Eleven
Brett jerked awake, jostling his arm and hissing through his teeth. It was dark wherever he was. Armrests. A chair in front of him. A little window with the shade pulled down. He was on a motherfucking plane. Of all the places he’d woken up after a bender, this one took the cake.
He looked down at his arm. Someone had put it in a sling. Maybe they’d taken him to the hospital after all. In his dream, though, he remembered Michel grabbing said arm while going on about research and then snapping the bone into place. No one had even offered him a drink for the pain. It must have been reality—in a dream, he would have at least gotten a morphine drip or a bottle of scotch.
