by Celia Mulder
She stalked over and slapped him, nearly dislocating his jaw.
“No, dumbass. Marry Michel and me so I can get on to the killing-you bit.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Lucille ditched her car a few blocks from Michel’s mansion. She hoped to God they were there. In the two days she’d known Michel, they for some reason hadn’t discussed his favorite haunts. If she had to search the city or fly commercial back to Mino, they’d be dead before she arrived.
Her stomach lurched at the thought. In all her cases over the years, all the mayhem and fucked-up situations, she’d never been close to losing a client. Not to death, anyway. Now she stood to lose not only the first client she’d ever walked away from, but also the man she had weird and confusing feelings for.
She crept along the hedge toward the house. Thank God for rich socialites and their fascination with tall hedges.
At his gate, she peered down the long driveway, straining to see any sign of movement at the end. Here, however, the whims of the rich and famous foiled her. The street lamps, neon signs, and other various lights that kept the rest of the city at a bright, hazy glow even at one o’clock in the morning were entirely absent from Michel’s street. There was a light on in the upper part of the house and another in the area she thought was the summer kitchen, where she’d agreed to have sex with Matt in exchange for his silence not three days earlier. How much had changed in so short a time. As it was, she would give anything for Matt’s presence right now. Sure, the police would make a lot of noise and Matt would give her part four of his speech about how they were meant to be together, but at least the lights from the squad cars would cut through all this black nothingness.
Lucille debated the validity of her previous thoughts when she saw movement. A shape crossed in front of the weak light from the back of the house. In the near silence, she heard a car door open, and in the light from inside the car, she saw the outline of a massive figure. A voice from a second someone called to the person in the car in a loud hiss. It was a deep voice, even whispering. No doubt belonging to another huge, muscular guy. Sylvia didn’t travel light, that was certain. Even though she’d felt like Lara Croft at the hospital, Lucille wasn’t about to take on Sylvia’s goons.
Her phone buzzed and she jumped, coming down awkwardly on her foot. Shit, fucking shitty shit shit! She pulled the phone out and silenced it, her fingers shaking and her foot smarting from the landing. Some secret agent she was.
Speak of the devil and he shall call, she thought when she saw Matt’s name flash across the screen. If he’d blown her cover with that call, she’d kill him. It would be the far less graceful way of getting out of the celebrity spin doctor business, but in a pinch, it’d work.
Lucille listened for signs that the men had heard the vibrating phone. The car door closed and their voices moved away from her, toward the back of the house. She let out her held breath and changed Matt’s name in her phone to “fucking asshole.” Childish, perhaps, but it gave her a small comfort as she set about scaling the ten-foot-high hedge in a rustling, graceless manner.
If any guards were still out front, they would have heard the commotion. By the time she dropped into the tree-lined drive leading to the mansion, her hands smarting from the poky branches, her clothes covered in leaves and dirt, she was convinced they’d all retreated indoors. Luck, it seemed, was temporarily on her side.
Lucille hadn’t noticed on her previous visits, given she’d been driving and in kind of a hurry both times, but Michel’s front lawn was annoyingly devoid of cover. Across the lush green expanse of grass there were a few ornamental shrubs, a couple of twisting, tiny trees, a few flower beds that helped no one with anything, and not much else. Just picturesque, well-kept grass that stretched on along the grand driveway. She had never been so frustrated by a well-manicured lawn in her life. True, she’d also never been trying to break into a house in her life and, therefore, hadn’t yet dealt with the challenges presented by landscaping. There may not have been a guard out front, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She crept from tiny shrub to tiny tree, feeling like an idiot. All she needed was to start singing her own theme music and she’d be an ideal candidate for the mental ward, if she wasn’t already.
After an eternity of sneaking across the lawn, Lucille reached the house. She saw why the front was unguarded—there were security cameras everywhere. She should have known Michel would have the place under constant surveillance. There was but a slim chance they hadn’t seen her dance across the yard. Though if someone was watching, she kind of hoped they’d kill her now and save her the shame.
She stood against the side of the house, her black boots soaked in the dew from the grass, her scrubs smeared brown and green, feeling way out of her league, waiting to die. If it were only Michel inside, she’d say screw it. He’d gotten himself into this shit show and he could damn well get himself out of it. She’d already quit and stormed off. But the fact that Brett was there, too—that changed things. Brett, who she liked but couldn’t stand. If he were killed before she told him that, she’d never forgive herself. That, despite the potential for public mockery and death, was why she was still there.
No one came.
Lucille sighed and pushed away from the adobe wall of the house. There were only two places the hostages could be: the summer kitchen or the third-floor room with the light. She’d try the kitchen first; it was closer.
She crept around the side of the house, scraping her hands more than a few times on the rough walls. Damn Michel and his expensive adobe villa. If we all come out of this alive, I’ll kill him myself.
As she neared the summer kitchen, she crouched down to avoid being seen through the screen walls of the porch. There was, of course, a hedge row below the windows, and she crawled along this, hoping the shadows of the bushes were enough to cover her. From inside the kitchen she heard voices.
“Someone has to go deal with it,” said a low man’s voice.
“I think it’s a she,” replied another male voice, higher pitched but gravely.
“Who cares if it’s a she? It’s a potential threat,” the first replied.
Lucille froze. They were talking about her. Which meant they’d seen her on the cameras. Her blood rushed in her ears as her heart threatened to burst through her chest in wild panic.
A door opened. “Still nothing on the cameras. I don’t know what she wants us looking for, because whatever it is, it isn’t there.” A new voice said this, another man.
“She’s paranoid.”
The first man spoke again. “I really think we should do something about the tiger.”
The new guy answered. “Is that some kind of a code word?”
“No. It’s a real, fucking tiger. This rich bastard has a goddamn fucking tiger.”
“Jesus. Where?”
“It has a habitat at the back of the property. I’d hate to be here if the power ever went out. Could have a real fucking Jurassic Park situation on our hands.” It was the first man again, his voice rising as he began to panic.
Lucille couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Of course Michel had a tiger. Because why wouldn’t he? When you have millions of dollars and no boundaries, why not get a tiger and build an illegal habitat for it on your property? This explained why the guards had missed her less-than-stealthy entrance, and for that she was grateful to Michel. Maybe she wouldn’t kill him, just cut him out of her life like a frost-bitten limb.
“That explains the tranq gun.”
“I’m not taking chances.”
“Okay, Rambo. Roy, get back to your perimeter sweep. Lark and I will stay on the cameras until we get an update from the boss. I’d hoped to have this over and done by now. I don’t know what she’s waiting for. Every minute we’re here we run the risk that one of those nut jobs will get free and call the cops.”
“I’ll guard that tiger.”
“Sure, you do that.”
That guy has some weird fascination with the
tiger. Whatever. One less to deal with.
The door opened and closed again. Then a door much closer to her opened. The outside door. The two men were coming her way. Lucille scrambled around the side of the house, out of sight.
As soon as she couldn’t hear the men anymore, she crept back to the summer kitchen. They’d left the inside door open and the screen door unlocked. It took less than two seconds to slip into the room. The room that was blazing with light. Still, it was safer than being caught outside by the tiger-obsessed guy with the tranquilizer gun or the other guy who, although he seemed more rational, was no doubt toting a real gun.
Lucille slipped into the dark living room and crashed right into a wall of man. The third man, the one who was supposed to be back in the surveillance room, had not listened to his own orders and was standing in the pitch-black sitting room.
Lucille’s first thought was that she had the element of surprise on her side. Her second was a realization that he had also surprised her and she wasn’t carrying a weapon. The third was that he was at least a head taller than her and far more muscular, the kind of muscular that could break her arm with his bare hands. The fourth thought was an observation that he was holding a glass of whiskey in one hand and a decanter in the other.
She acted on an instinct not her own. Before the guy could so much as say, “Who the fuck are you?” she kneed him in the groin. It was a long way up to his groin, given his height, and she felt a strain in her muscles that she’d pay for tomorrow, but she got a good smack in.
“What the fuck?” the man said as he doubled over.
Lucille grabbed his shoulders and kneed him again because she didn’t know what else to do. The man fell to the floor, dropping the glass and decanter as he fell in order to grasp his throbbing nether regions.
“Who the fuck are you?” he gasped as he struggled to stand back up.
Lucille wanted to have a quippy line ready. Something about her being his worst nightmare or a message for his boss or some other bad-ass nonsense. She had nothing. So she shrugged, picked up the decanter, and smashed it over the man’s head.
Glass and whiskey went everywhere. She cut her finger on a piece. But the man went unconscious, his hands still resting on his crotch. She looked down at him, sucking on her bleeding finger. He was covered in something wet, and she didn’t think it was all whiskey. If a piece of glass had gotten lodged in his brain and he died, she’d feel really bad. She hadn’t thought the decanter fragile enough to shatter like that, so this could all be seen as one giant, horrible accident.
“Um, sorry,” she said to him. “I had no idea that was going to be so bloody.”
Maybe I should write him an apology note for when he wakes up. What? No. I’m Lucille fucking Anton. I don’t write apology notes. Besides, paper trail.
She did check to see if he was breathing. He was. She left.
The rest of her trip to the third floor was unimpeded by lurking men. She had no idea where Michel’s surveillance room was, but it didn’t seem to be between her and the target, so she put it out of her mind. There were other things to think about, such as what she was going to do when she walked in on Sylvia and the hostages. She didn’t have a gun or a plan. She was wearing dirty, smelly clothes, her hair was a mess, and her thighs burned from the unaccustomed crouching. She had no idea what she’d find. Well, except Sylvia, Brett, Michel, and more guards with guns.
As Lucille crossed the second-floor landing and made her way to the spiral staircase that led to the third floor, an idea struck her.
Two minutes later, hair brushed, face washed, wearing one of Sylvia’s bombshell dresses and heels, Lucille knocked on the third-floor door.
“Michel? Are you in here?” she asked as she opened the door and walked into the mayhem within.
Chapter Twenty-Three
From his vantage point, tied to the chair behind Michel’s enormous mahogany desk, Brett gaped as Lucille waltzed into the room, wearing a body-hugging, low-cut navy dress with a side slit up to the thigh. His mouth went dry from being open for so long. She was walking into what he knew she knew was a hostage situation led by a mad woman with a gun, without cops or her uncle or a weapon of any kind other than that dress. But wow, that dress.
This is no time to get an erection, he told himself sternly.
No one moved for a long minute. Lucille started to back out of the room, with a sheepish expression. “Oh. It looks like you’re in the middle of something. I won’t interrupt your kinky sex thing.”
Sylvia recovered first. “Who the fuck are you?”
Her voice screeched. Even lovesick Michel couldn’t still be smitten with her after listening to that for the past two hours. Then again, Michel had been listening to that voice for years and was still head over heels. They were toast.
“Sorry, I just came to see Michel about a business thing. I’ll come back at a better time.”
Sylvia, when startled by the sudden arrival, had whipped her gun around to Lucille instead of Michel. Her face was orange-red under her tan. She sputtered with anger and motioned wildly with the gun. “Grab her,” she squeaked at her guards.
Two of the henchmen took hold of Lucille and pulled her into the room, her arms behind her back.
“Put her over there.” Sylvia motioned to the armchair next to Michel.
The guards plunked Lucille into the armchair, almost causing her boobs to pop out of the dress. A pity. Anger replaced chagrin. There was no way in hell these douchebags—he included Michel in that—were going to see the woman he definitely—probably liked’s boobs.
They tied her arms behind the chair as Lucille asked, in her best innocent voice, “Michel, what’s going on here?”
Michel, who this whole time had been looking varying degrees of contrite, amped it up a level as he turned to his spin doctor. “I’m sorry to drag you into all this, Lucille. I didn’t know we had a meeting scheduled or I would have canceled it. Of course, I also didn’t know Sylvia would be here tonight. It seems I’m out of the loop on a lot of things.”
“It’s okay, I understand, Michel.” Lucille leaned over as best she could to bump shoulders with him.
Brett glared at both of them. From his periphery, he saw Sylvia advancing on Lucille.
“Shut up,” she said, her voice a growl. “I want to know who you are, how the fuck you got past my guards, what the fuck you think you’re doing with my fiancé, and why the fuck you’re wearing my dress!”
There was silence as Lucille held Sylvia’s blazing gaze but said nothing.
Brett smirked. Lucille was wearing Sylvia’s dress. Ingenious. Of course his fashion-crazed cousin would recognize her own clothes. And of course nothing would make her angrier than seeing them on someone she assumed was her rival for Michel’s love. If Lucille’s plan also included a way of getting them out of this mess, they’d be all set.
“Can I speak?” Lucille asked politely.
“You’d better before I shoot your brains out.” Sylvia’s own black tank and pants were wrinkled, her black makeup heavy, and her tan patchy. Beside the radiant, well-rested Lucille, Sylvia was a mess, the strain of the past few days glaring in contrast with her composed captive. It had to be driving Sylvia insane. Her hand shook and her jaw clenched with barely suppressed rage.
“Oh, because you told me to shut up. Just wanted to clarify that you actually do want me to talk.” Lucille’s face was calm as she spoke, not giving away any indication she was scared of the starlet before her.
If Brett thought that dress was going to give him a boner, the sight of her playing it cool was enough to send him over the edge. He could picture this as a sex game they played, tying each other up, acting calm in the face of danger, but really getting hot and bothered and throwing around dirty phrases and slow strip teases.
Right when Brett started feeling like he needed a cold shower, Sylvia went and ruined it. She let out a growl and pointed the gun right at Lucille’s head. Lucille didn’t flinch, but the action wa
s enough to snap Brett back to the real and present danger. After the last few hours, he had no doubt that Sylvia would never be able to kill Michel in cold blood. Lucille, though, meant nothing to her. Sylvia might be far enough gone to go through with it.
“You don’t want to do that,” Lucille said, her eyes on Sylvia’s. “There are way too many witnesses.”
“Witnesses who will be dead,” Sylvia hissed back.
Lucille frowned a little, a confused frown like she was trying to work it all out. “Okay, right. You want to kill Michel. And Brett for some reason. Actually, what is that reason? Why are you doing this?”
Sylvia’s lips were pressed in a thin line. She looked like she was considering spitting on Lucille. Instead she said, “You first. Why the fuck are you at my fiancé’s house in the middle of the night, wearing my fucking dress, and how the fuck did you get in here?”
“Fine, I’ll start. I got a booty call from Brett a bit ago—we’re hooking up, you see—but he didn’t say where he was. I came over to see if Michel knew. But no one was answering the gate so I had to climb over the hedge, ripping my own dress in the process. I didn’t think it’d be appropriate to show up to talk to my lover’s best friend wearing a dress ripped up to my vagina, so I borrowed one of yours. I had no idea you were holding these guys hostage in here or I’d never have presumed—”
Sylvia cut her off with another growl. “Shut up. That is the dumbest story I’ve ever heard in my life.” She cocked the gun.
Lucille gave Sylvia a look like she wanted to say something but didn’t want to at the same time.
“What? It’d better be good, because it’s the last thing you’ll ever say.”
Lucille sighed dramatically. “It’s just that I was going to dry clean this dress before I gave it back to you, but blood stains are really hard to get out, and also I’d have a hard time footing the bill, since I’d be dead and all.”
Brett looked from one woman to the other. He saw the guards doing the same, both of them ready to spring the moment their boss gave the word. Michel wasn’t paying attention, though. His face was twisted like he was in pain, his brow frowned in concentration. In fact, he didn’t seem to be aware there was anything else happening in the room, let alone a life-or-death standoff.
