Hollywood Secrets (30 page)

I blinked back pain and disorientation, trying to get a handle on my surroundings. It was dark, but I could tell I was inside the warehouse now. Cavernous metal walls surrounded me, small windows near the ceiling affording minimal light to filter into the large room. Squinting through the dark, I saw crates piled to the left and right of me, and the floor was a cold concrete beneath the butt of my jeans. I could make out the mingling scents of must, mold, and chocolate lingering in the air.

I wiggled on the ground, testing the bonds at my hands and came up against sticky plastic. If I had to guess, I’d say I’d been duct taped.

As I wriggled, I heard a sound to my right and strained through the darkness to identify it. A large form moved in the shadows to my left. I prayed to God it wasn’t a rat.

“
Hello?” I tentatively called out.

“
Cam?” came the reply.

I could have cried with relief.

“
Trace! Are you okay?”

“
Fine. Mostly. You?”

“
The same,” I said, ignoring the dull ache still throbbing in my head. “My hands and feet are bound.”

“
Mine too. Hang on. I’m coming over to you,” Trace said.

I heard rustling, and a minute later the large form took the shape of Trace’s body, inch-worming along the concrete toward me on his butt. As I’d guessed, lengths of gray duct tape had been used to secure his feet together, his hands behind his back.

“
Ouch,” he said as he approached, his eyes going to my forehead. “You sure you’re okay?”

I nodded.

“
Liar.”

“
It’s that bad, huh?”

He didn’t answer. Which didn’t do a whole lot to reassure me.

“
Is Jamie Lee with you?” I asked, my eyes sweeping the area behind him as they began to adjust to the darkness.

He shook his head. “She was in the car with me, but they separated us when we got here.”

“
They have the flash drive?” I asked.

He nodded solemnly.

What were the chances they weren’t checking its contents right now?

“
They’re not going to be happy when they find out there’s nothing it,” I said.

“
Which is why we need to find Jamie Lee and get the hell out of here before that happens.”

I nodded. “Turn around. Maybe I can get the tape off of you.”

He complied, the two of us sitting back to back, our fingers fumbling at the other’s wrists. After what felt like an eternity of grunting and twisting, I finally managed to slip my fingers under a corner of the tape at his wrists and pulled, a ripping sound causing me to do a silent “woohoo!” Five minutes later his hands were completely free, and he was undoing my bonds. We made short work of the tape at out feet, then stood, stamping feeling back into our limbs.

“
Any idea where they took Jamie Lee?” I asked.

Trace looked down the rows of empty crates piled to our right and left. “I don’t know. They knocked me out. She was gone when I came to.”

I did a mental eenie-meenie-minie-mo. “Let’s go left,” I decided.

Trace nodded, leading the way through one row after another, slowly scanning the shadows for either of our gun-toting friends as we slunk around the empty crates.

I cringed as my stomach involuntarily groaned at the scent of chocolate lingering in the air.

“
Shhh,” Trace said.

“
Sorry,” I whispered back. I would have pointed out that it wasn’t like I could control my stomach’s response to chocolate, but I could tell Trace was too on edge to care. His posture was tense, his jaw clenched shut, his eyes unreadable black, his mind clearly with Jaime Lee. Trying not to wonder what the guys with guns had in store for her. Hoping we got to her before they could follow through.

As we rounded the last row to the left, the empty crates gave way to a series of offices along the far wall. Four doors stood open. One was closed. And light filtered out under the door.

Trace gave me a silent knowing look in the dark, then, keeping to the shadows, approached the closed door.

I followed a quick step behind, my heart beating double time.

To the right of the office door was a window, dirty horizontal blinds closing off our view. Trace and I crouched down and duck-walked underneath it. He peeked up, narrowing his eyes as he tried to see between the bottom of the blinds and the top of the sill.

“
Can you see anything?” I whispered.

He nodded. “She’s here.” His voice was flat, void of all emotion. Or maybe so heavy with it that I couldn’t read one from the other, I wasn’t sure.

I moved in closer, gingerly lifting my eyes over the sill. If I closed one eye and tilted my head all the way to the left, I could just see through the slats of the blinds.

The abandoned office only held a few items of furniture – a small metal desk with a rusty stapler and empty pen cup on top, a couple of crates in the corner, and a straight-backed wooden chair – holding our starlet. Jamie Lee was no longer bound, but the fact that Ferret and Crew Cut were standing over her with a gun pretty much assured that she wasn’t going anywhere without force.

“
What are we going to do?” I whispered in the dark.

But I quickly realized I was talking to myself.

Trace had already left the window and was at the door to the office.

“
Wait! Don’t you think we should make a plan or-“

Too late.

Trace used his I-do-my-own-stunts skills once again, and before I could stop him he had his cowboy-boot-clad foot cocked back and was slamming it forward into the door. The wood around the lock splintered and the flimsy door flew inward in one swift movement.

I took half a second to be duly impressed, then jumped up and ran after him.

I hit the doorway just in time to see Trace lunge for Ferret, surprising the guy enough that he knocked the gun from his hand, the weapon sliding across the floor until it came to a rest under a metal desk.

“
What the-“ Ferret went down with a hard crunch as Trace tackled him to the ground. Trace cocked Ferret square in the jaw, knocking his head back so fast I feared he’d have whiplash. He was momentarily stunned, but quickly regained his composure, sending a punch to Trace’s gut that made the air whoosh out of him in a sickening sound.

“
Ohmigod, ohmigod, Trace! Do something!” Jamie Lee shouted, waving her hands in front of her in a flapping motion.

Which didn’t help Trace any, but served to spur Crew Cut into action, the hulk of a guy jumping to his pal’s aid. He grabbed Trace by the arm. Trace shook him off, but it gave Ferret just enough respite to clock Trace in the nose, rocking his head backward. I cringed. Trace was good, but two on one was hardly a fair fight.

“
Ohmigod, ohmigod! Trace!” Jamie Lee screeched.

“
Get her out of here!” Trace shouted to me as Crew Cut pinned the actor’s arms.

Frantically I grabbed the first thing I could lay hands on – a wooden crate of stale chocolate bars - and swung it in Crew Cut’s direction. The corner of it hit him in the back of the head with a thud hard enough to shatter the wood, sending a rain of candy bars down on the struggling trio. While it wasn’t exactly a death blow, fortunately it stunned him long enough for his grip to loosen on Trace and for me to grab Jamie Lee and haul her toward the door.

“
Ohmigod, who are you?” she squealed. “Ohmigod! Trace, help!” She flapped her hands in front of her in classic girl-fight fashion, smacking me in the face.

I swear to God if I lived through this, I was going to kill her.

I held tight to the back of her shirt, propelling her forward.

“
The gun! Get the gun!” she screeched.

Good thinking. Still gripping the back of her shirt, I spun toward the metal desk.

Too late.

I found myself nose to nose with the barrel of said gun. In the hands of Ferret.

“
Freeze,” he growled.

Like I had a choice.

I froze, my eyes cutting to the right, finding Trace, his nose bleeding and quickly swelling, pinned up against the wall by Crew Cut’s bulk.

Not good.

I bit my lip.

Ferret’s beady eyes were shooting daggers at us as a thin trickle of blood trailed down his chin. Crew Cut was shifting menacingly from foot to foot. Jamie Lee was alternating between screeching, “Ohmigod” and sobbing in my arms.

But it was Trace’s eyes that held me. Dark, defiant, no long playing a role but a real guy in real trouble. He stared at Jamie Lee with a look of devotion that I would have killed for.

Then his eyes cut to me.

Back to the semi-hysterical actress.

To me again.

The meaning was clear. He was counting on me to get his girl out of this mess alive.

I shot a look to the door. It was a good three feet away. No way could we make it there before Ferret got off a shot.

I looked around the room for anything I could use as a weapon. Chair? Out of reach. Crate? Shattered. Desk? Too heavy for me to lift.

“
Ohmigod, I am too young to die!” Jamie Lee sobbed, waving her hands in front of her face again.

I looked at her - flapping, sobbing, throwing a fit a two year old would find over-the-top. And I did the only thing I could think of.

I shoved the spastic actress square into Ferret.

“
OHMIGOD!” She screamed, tipped over on her spiky heels, her flailing hands flapping at Ferret as she crashed into him.

On instinct his finger squeezed the trigger, a loud crack ripping through the air as his shot went wild, Jamie Lee knocking into his arm. At that instant, Trace kicked Crew Cut in the shins and lunged forward, propelling himself toward Ferret and the gun.

Ferret went down, Trace went down on top of him, Crew Cut went down on top of
him,
and Jamie Lee found herself at the bottom of the dog pile.

“
Uhn. Help! I can’t breathe!” she wheezed.

I dove for the desk and grabbed the stapler. Hardly a deadly weapon, but…

I aimed it at Ferret. Which was kind of hard considering he, Trace, Crew Cut and Jamie were all grappling together on the ground so fast they were a blur.

I squeezed the stapler, a small metal staple flying out…

…
and hitting Jamie Lee in the temple.

“
Ouch! Trace, help!” she screamed.

Oops. My bad.

I squinted one eye shut and tried again, aiming for Ferret.

I squeezed.

“
What the hell!”

Five small, metal staples hit him square in the face. Not enough to damage, for sure, but definitely enough to distract him long enough for Trace to smack his head against the floor. I heard a sickening crunch and blood spurted out from Ferret’s nose. I think I even heard a couple teeth tinkle along the concrete floor. I swallowed down the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, as I watched Trace palm the gun. He stood up, panting, but pointing the gun with a straight arm down at Crew Cut and Ferret.

“
You move, and you’re a dead man.”

I grinned. It was exactly the same line he’d uttered at the end of
Die Tough
.

But I figured that the bad guys had seen the movie, too, because they didn’t, in fact, move. The look in the actor’s eyes was enough to tell them that even if the line was a fake, the intention behind it was real. Trace looked only too eager to put a hole or two in the guys.

The five of us sat frozen as the sound of sirens in the distance moved closer.

“
You okay?” Trace asked, not taking his eyes off his pinned prey.

“
Ohmigod, Trace, they were going to kill me!” Jamie Lee sobbed.

“
No, I meant you.” His eyes cut to me for a quick second. “Your arm.”

I looked down.

And for the first time registered a dull ache in my left bicep as I saw a red stain spread along the sleeve of my T-shirt. I blinked. Apparently Ferret’s shot hadn’t gone
completely
wild.

“
I’ve been shot,” I said dully. And then for the second time that day crumpled to the ground as I watched the world fade to black.

* * *

I came to in a haze of blue and red flashing lights, police radios crackling, and my battered self laid out on a white stretcher surrounded by paramedics in blue uniforms with stethoscopes hanging off their necks, shouting a bunch of words I didn’t know, let alone could pronounce. I was pronounced “stable” (one of the few words I understood) and whisked away to the nearest hospital for surgery. Three hours later I had a semi-private recovery room, a hell of an anesthesia hangover, and the bullet they’d dug out of my bicep as a souvenir of the evening. It was somewhere around dawn, and I was just about to close my eyes for a well-earned rest, when my two partners in crime came bustling through my hospital room door.

“
Cam!” Mrs. Rosenblatt immediately rushed toward me, enveloping me in a boa-constrictor worthy hug. I could hardly breathe, but, to be honest, after the night I’d had it was nice to be breathing at all.