Embraced by Love (22 page)

“I’m sorry,”—Patty looked as if she were going to cry—”but the studio apparently called the FBI—”

“What?”

“And the authorities are taking the threats seriously. They’re involved now—”

“The FBI?” Jane was on her feet.

Patty nodded. “Some important agent from DC is going to be here at four, too. He’s already on his way.”

“Shit!”

“I’m sorry.”

For the first time in her career, Jane was making a movie based on fact—and it was proving to be a total pain in her butt.

Producer J. Mercedes Chadwick’s house in the Hollywood hills was an elegant old monster, built back in the silent-film era. But when Lawrence Decker followed Cosmo Richter and Tom Paoletti into the front hall, he realized that old was the defining word. The building probably hadn’t been renovated since the late 1940s.

From the gate, it had looked impressive. From inside, with a collection of buckets strategically positioned under obvious signs of water damage on the ceiling, it was clear that the place was a major fixer-upper.

“Someone else is paying the bill, right?” Cosmo had murmured to Tom as they stood in the foyer, waiting for the girl clutching the clipboard to fetch Ms. Chadwick from the back.

“HeartSong Studios,” Tom murmured back.

Decker was well aware that securing HeartSong as a regular client would be quite an accomplishment for Troubleshooters Incorporated. The work would be easy—silver bullet assignments—compared to most of the operations Deck had been on overseas. While providing security for a Hollywood studio wouldn’t quite be paid R & R, it would be close.

Easy assignments, good money. That’s why Tom himself was here today with Deck, and why he’d dragged Cosmo Richter along, too.

The SEAL chief was tall and muscular, with a lean face and pale blue eyes he usually kept hidden behind sunglasses. Yeah, he was undeniably, impressively dangerous looking—something no one had ever been able to say about Decker, even during his years with the Navy.

Cosmo was here as a human exclamation mark, placed strategically for the client to gaze upon after Tom and Decker assured her that they would, indeed, be able to keep her safe.

Of course, the first thing they needed to do was install a security system. Currently, there was nothing here. Not even a badly out-of-date hardwired system on the windows and doors. There was only a faded sign on the creaky automated gate at the end of the driveway—
BEWARE OF DOGS
.

This place dated from the time when state-of-the-art security meant a stone wall with bits of glass in the concrete at the top, a front gate, and a matched set of big, loud, and ugly dogs with lots of sharp teeth.

“We have a list of improvements a mile long that we’re planning to make,” Ms. Chadwick had told them breezily as she’d led the way to the suite of rooms she and her brother were using for their production company’s main offices. Her impossibly high heels clicked on the marble-tiled floor. “But we’re wait-listed with the contractor. You know how hard it is to get work done these days. . . .”

She was young, barely twenty-six, according to the file Tom had given Deck. She dressed younger, like Britney Spears’s brunette twin, with long dark hair cascading down her back, and a significant gap between the below-the-hips waistband of her micro-skirt and the bottom edge of her shirt.

Which was . . . quite a shirt. It had one hell of a neckline.

J. Mercedes Chadwick was a very healthy young woman, no doubt about that.

Her long legs were bare and as golden tanned as her stomach, her toenails were painted an exotic shade of dark pink.

She had what Decker thought of as Greek-goddess eyes—bluish green and in unusual contrast with her dark hair and rich Mediterranean complexion. She was gorgeous—although not by Hollywood standards, because she hadn’t managed to starve herself boyishly thin.

And that was a choice that was quite intentional—calculated, in fact. Decker realized it when they were introduced, as she’d held his hand just a little too long, and gazed into his eyes just a little too meaningfully.

She knew what most of Hollywood had forgotten. That, as fashionable as it was to be whip thin, most men still liked women with substantial curves.

But if his libido had kicked on from that soulfully probing look, it kicked off just as quickly when she gazed at Cosmo the exact same way.

Cos, bless him, didn’t crack a smile. He just looked back at the woman with a total lack of expression, as if all that cleavage meant absolutely nothing to him.

They all sat now—Cosmo, Tom, Decker, Mercedes, and her brother, Robin, who was as fair as she was dark—on a series of sofas and easy chairs in a huge room with windows looking out over the wilderness that was the back garden.

“Isn’t a high-tech security system going to be enough?” Mercedes was arguing with Tom. “I mean, great, if HeartSong wants to pay to install a system, I’m not going to say no. But really, with the kind of technology that’s available these days, isn’t the idea of two guards—one inside and one outside the house, around the clock—just a little extravagant?”

Decker answered for Tom. “Considering the size of this house, Ms. Chadwick, no.”

“But does it have to be day and night? I have . . . friends who can keep me very safe at night.”

Across the room, her brother covered a laugh with a cough.

Mercedes Chadwick didn’t bring the question Do you want to make it with me? to the table. No, her attitude was,
When
do you want to make it with me?

“Your privacy won’t be compromised,” Tom told Mercedes, trying to reassure her.

She laughed. “Yes, it will. I mean, we can pretend that your people are discreet, and maybe they are, but they’re also human. Look, can’t we just pretend that you’ve got guards posted here around the clock? I don’t mind having one of your men tag along when I go out. That actually might be kind of fun. And it’s okay with me if someone hangs here, guarding the place while I’m gone, but . . .”

Deck exchanged a look with Tom.
Fun?

“I know this may seem inconvenient—” Tom started.

“And I know you really want this gig,” she cut him off. “So let’s compromise.”

“There is no compromise.” Tom was absolute. “We’re talking about your personal safety.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’m so sure some of those scary e-mailers are going to come out here and try to hit me with their computer keyboards. Or maybe they’ll chain-mail me to death. ‘If you don’t forward this to ten people in the next two minutes, great misfortune will befall you. . . .’ ”

Cosmo Richter, who’d seemed all this time to fully focus his attention out on the garden, finally looked over at Mercedes and spoke. “Is there a reason, miss, why you feel the threats that have been made against your life are a joke?”

“Joke,” she said, looking from Cosmo to Decker to Tom. “Yes, joke. That’s a good word for this, thank you. It’s a giant joke, gentlemen. It’s probably a stunt that the studio’s come up with to get publicity for this movie. You don’t
really
think someone wants to kill me, do you?”

Her intercom buzzed, breaking in before Tom could respond.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” the voice of Mercedes’s personal assistant came through a speaker. “But an FBI agent named Jules Cassidy is down by the gate, and,”—she cleared her throat—”the opener’s stuck again.”

The brother—Robin—stood. “I’ll go.”

The FBI agent drove a rented Mercury Sable.

Robin wasn’t sure exactly what he’d expected, but it sure as hell wasn’t a four-door family sedan.

The FBI agent was also shorter and younger than Robin had imagined, getting out of the car as Rob approached the gate. Compact, with a trim build, he had short dark hair and a face that could have appeared next to Rob’s on the cover of
Tiger Beat
magazine.

Rob could just imagine this guy’s meeting with his high school guidance counselor.
“You could be a model, or a TV star—you don’t really need any acting skills for that—or . . . Oh, here’s something just perfect! N’SYNC is looking for new blood.”

“Well, you see, Mrs. Smersh, I hate to disappoint you, but I really have my heart set on becoming an FBI agent.”

“Sorry,” Robin called as he came the last few feet down the drive. “It sticks sometimes.”

The gate actually stuck most of the time, and they’d gotten into the habit of leaving it open. But Jane had wanted it closed today—probably to fool the private security team into thinking she was taking precautions with her safety.

It took four tries to get the damn thing to work. Rob’s smile definitely felt strained around the edges by the time the gate finally opened.

Now that they were both on the same side of the fence, the agent flashed his badge as he held out his hand. “Jules Cassidy, FBI.”

“Robin Chadwick, SAG.” They shook hands. “I’m the brother.”

“Nice to meet you. SAG?”

“Screen Actors Guild,” Rob explained. “Sorry, I have this inability to not be an asshole, especially when I’m not provoked.”

The double negatives didn’t stop Jules for even a second, and he laughed, taking off his sunglasses and . . .

Hello.
Big eye contact. The FBI guy not only was shorter and younger, but he was also gayer than Robin had expected.

Ever since he’d gone blond to play Hal Lord in
American Hero,
he’d been hit on by gay men more times than he could count. It had been a little nerve-racking at
first, but he’d learned to remove any potential mystery as quickly as possible.

“Not gay,” Rob said now. He thought of sweet little Patty, up in Jane’s office, who’d given him that shy smile when he’d emerged from the meeting. He knew without a doubt that he’d be welcome should he come a-calling at her apartment later this evening. Yes, he knew he’d promised his sister that he’d be good, but Patty was
so
cute. “Don’t waste your energy.”

Jules laughed again. He appeared to be genuinely amused. “You’re making some pretty large assumptions, aren’t you?”

“Assume everything,” Rob told him cheerfully. “That’s my motto. It keeps me out of trouble.”

“I would think it might get you into it,” Jules countered.

“And still you flirt with me, you devil. What part of ‘Not gay,’ did you not understand? Drive through, will you, so I can try to close this behind you.”

Jules Cassidy, FBI, was still laughing—and he was pretty damn adorable when he laughed. Harve and Guillermo and Gary the Grip and even Ricco, who was in a long-term relationship, were going to swoon when they’d meet him. Jules got back into the Sable and drove through the gate. He stopped just on the other side, though.

Rob gave up on the idea of closing the gate after his fifth try.

“I hate that motherfucking thing,” he said, adding as he realized Jules had rolled his window down, “There, does that convince you? A very heterosexual use of the manly verb
to motherfuck,
positioned in my sentence as a salty adverb.”

“Salty adjective,” Jules corrected him. “If it were an adverb it would be motherfuckingly.”

“Adjective, adverb—my sister’s the writer in the family,” Rob said. “Which is why she’s the one getting the death threats—which she’s not taking at all seriously. Tell me the truth, Jules Cassidy, FBI, do we really have something to worry about here?”

The FBI agent got real serious, real fast, morphing from happy, flirty gay boy into completely grownup hardass with a nearly palpable sense of purpose and a determination that matched his set of giant steel balls.
Holy macaroni, Mrs. Smersh, wherever did you get the idea that Jules Cassidy couldn’t act?

“Yes,” Jules told him. “You do. Have you ever heard of the Freedom Network?”

It was very clear to Cosmo that J. Mercedes Chadwick couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“You’re telling me,” she repeated, making sure that she got it right, “that there are thousands of people—tens of thousands—who consider a little-known Alabama state judge who’s been dead since 1959 to be their personal hero?”

FBI Agent Jules Cassidy nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

She was incredulous, her lip-glossed mouth hanging open. “People who don’t even live in Alabama.”

“That’s right. The majority are in Idaho.”

“This is a man who was über-conservative even for his time,” she commented. “There are rumors that he looked the other way and allowed lynchings—”

“I believe they refer to him as
honest,
” Cassidy told her. “And his son was a highly decorated war hero—you surely know more about that part of it than I do. But I can tell you one thing. Apparently these people are very protective of the memories of both father and son, and they’re not at all happy at the idea of you outing Hal in your movie.”

“Hal’s own granddaughter has given our movie her blessing,” Mercedes pointed out.

“They’re not too happy with her right now either,” Cassidy reported. “She’s gone overseas—she’s going to keep a low profile for a while. I would recommend—”

“No,” Mercedes cut him off. “Not an option. I’m not going to hide. I have a movie to make, a schedule to meet.”

“Jane,” her brother started to say, but she hushed him.

“Can we back up a bit? You said earlier that these people—all megathousands of them—have these weekend get-togethers up in, in . . . Monkey-Fuck, Idaho, where they sit around a campfire, doing what? Reciting eighty-seven-verse epic poems lauding the glory that was Chester ‘Baby-Lyncher’ Lord?”

“Well, we’re not exactly sure what they do during their retreats,” Jules told her. He was trying to keep this serious, but Cosmo could tell that Monkey-Fuck had him biting the insides of his cheeks. “They’re pretty adamant about not letting outsiders into their inner circle. Still, whatever they do up there, we think it’s probably more likely that it has to do with firearms rather than poetry.”

“But whatever they’re doing, they’re doing it in Idaho, right?” she asked. “So I should be okay as long as I stay in California.” She looked over at her assistant. “Patty, call Steve Spielberg with my regrets. I won’t be able to attend his potato-picking party in Boise next week, gosh darn it.”