Hollywood Hit (30 page)

Nikki’s eyes widened. Her mouth opened. She gasped for air and her nails scratched at the mattress beneath her.

“Yes, little girl, I intend to cause you a whole lot of pain before I set your soul free.”

He jerked his hand away from her skin. As if releasing her took all his will power.  He sucked in short breaths, “But not yet.”

Nikki coughed and grappled for air. A gasp shook her ribs.

“Got something you gave me, little girl, long time ago.” Calvin hunched his shoulders forward, curved his back, and pulled his shirt up over his head. The scar with hard edges sprayed outward across Calvin’s belly.

“Look at it, little girl." Calvin said. "Look at what you done to me.”

Nikki turned her head away from the sight of Calvin’s belly and pressed her eyes shut.

“Dammit, look at it!” Calvin grasped Nikki’s jaw and yanked her face toward the side of the bed where he stood. “Open your fucking eyes!” he yelled into her face.

Nikki popped her lids open and her eyes bounced from the madness that gripped Calvin’s face to the hard white scar on his belly.

“I had years to think about all I wanted to do to you. All the pain I want you to feel. How long I want you to feel it. I want you to feel
this
kind of pain.” Calvin stabbed at his stomach. His eyes peered at her. He took a long breath and settled his fury.  He kneeled down, his face beside her. His hands stroked her hair away from her forehead. “So much pain that you beg me to let you go. To release you from this world. To set you free.”

Tears heated Nikki’s eyes. Tears made of fear, tears made of hate, tears made of frustration for the future she would never have.

“Don’t cry, little girl.” Calvin wiped the giant tear that rolled from Nikki’s eye. “Because them tears ain’t going to get you nowhere.”

*

Rush didn’t care about a warrant. Let the little fucker try to press charges. He blasted his shoulder into the door a second time and the already-weak lock cracked open. He burst into the room with Briggs and two additional Worldwide security guys behind him. Finding Trevor didn’t take long. His head lolled on the end of an army-green couch, the needle still stuck into his vein, the tourniquet still tied off above his elbow.

“Wake the fuck up!” Rush yelled into his face. He didn’t have time to mess around with this scumbag who might be the only person with the knowledge of who’d taken Nikki. Rush smacked Trevor’s face while Briggs and his guys scoured the place. Trevor’s eyes fluttered open. His gaze didn’t focus. Rush smacked his cheek again, this time harder. Trevor’s brow wrinkled.

“Hey, man, who are you?”

Rush heaved Trevor from the couch and slammed him into the wall. “I am your worst fucking nightmare.”

Trevor’s eyes widened and the edges of fear crept into his high. Rush had reached through the drugs. He pushed his face toward Trevor.

“Where is she?” he asked. The muscles in his body twitched to smash this little scumbag to smithereens. He held himself back. Trevor was the only possibility he had of finding Nikki. He was Rush’s only hope.

“W…what? Fuck, man, I don’t know who you’re talking about.” Trevor’s eyes rolled around his head like loose balls in an arcade machine.

Rush pressed the neck of Trevor’s shirt harder to his body and lifted his feet from the floor. “I’ll ask once more.” Rush’s eyes were steely slits and his tone low. Rush needed to make certain Trevor didn’t make the mistake of believing his threats were idle. “Either give me the right answer or things will get ugly.”

“Man, stop. It hurts.”

“It’ll hurt worse if you don’t tell me what I need to know.”

Briggs walked from the back of the apartment, “She’s not here,” he said.

Rush stared into Trevor’s face and pressed his thumb against the dirtbag’s windpipe, cutting off his air. Trevor squirmed against the wall like a bug with a spear through its back. His face turned red, then his eyes bulged.

“I have your attention now?”

Trevor nodded. Fear grasped his face as his air ran out.

“You’ll answer my questions?”

Trevor’s arms flailed along the wall. He nodded.

Rush moved his thumb from Trevor’s windpipe. “Where is Nikki Solange?”

Fear pulsed through Rush. Not fear about the dirtbag whose life he was about to end, but fear about what pieces of a woman he might find behind the locked door.

He eyed Briggs and nodded. Two men bent low spread out on either side of the dilapidated bungalow. Briggs maintained his position at the back door. They’d try for stealth and then move to force. Rush’s fingers wrapped around the metal knob and he pushed. Locked. The door was locked. According to Trevor there had been no one but Calvin and Nikki in the house when Trevor slipped out the back door with enough cash for a two-week high in his pocket.

“Roll,” Briggs whispered into the microphone on his collar.

The plan was simple and could easily fail, but if they could pull Calvin from Nikki they might get her out alive.

Rush circled down the alley and jumped into the Worldwide truck now marked with an On the Go delivery sticker and logo. He pulled to a stop in front of the house and jumped from the truck. He restrained his urge to rush up the walk and slam through the front door. Patience was key. Patience and timing would save Nikki. He carried a brown box and an electronic clipboard to the front door. He pressed the doorbell and waited. He pretended to search his clipboard, but his ears listened for footsteps.

Nothing.

Again Rush pressed the doorbell, two times, then a third. His presses grew insistent. He’d let the dirtbag inside know that someone needed him and wouldn’t go away easy. Rush was betting on the fact that Calvin wanted to be left alone with Nikki. He didn’t want to raise suspicions about the dirty little house sat back behind some trees. The ideal spot for the foul work Calvin intended to do inside.

Rush held his breath. Then… there it was. The sound of heavy footfalls toward the front of the house. Then a pause. Finally the creak of the front door.

Calvin stood behind the security screen. Mean eyes peered out, but he stretched a wolf’s grin across his face.

Rage flooded Rush. His jaw tensed. He lifted the box and forced his lips to curl into a delivery man’s smile.

“What can I do you for, sir?” Calvin asked. One empty hand hung at his side, the other braced the door, out of Rush’s eyesight.

“Delivery,” Rush said. His glance darted from Calvin to his digital reader.

“Can’t be right,” Calvin said. “Just moved in here, ain’t nobody I know got this address yet.” Calvin stepped back from the screen and turned to close the door.

“Got this address.” Rush furrowed his brow. “Looks like here maybe it’s been forwarded. Sent first to somewhere in Tennessee.”

Calvin stopped. He turned his head to Rush and pulled up one eyebrow.

“Where in Tennessee?” Calvin asked, pressed forward, not yet opening the screen, not yet showing Rush the other hand still hidden behind the door.

“Can’t quite make it out,” Rush said. He tilted the digital reader toward Calvin.

Calvin’s eyes slid from Rush to the machine, then back to Rush. His hand reached for the door. There was a click, and then the latch released. Calvin’s other hand came from behind the door as the screen opened.

Two empty hands and an open door.

Rush locked eyes with Calvin. A mean smile broke over Rush’s face, then he tackled the son of a bitch to the ground.

*

Glass broke. The back door exploded. Rush’s fist slammed into Calvin’s nose again and again and again until blood gushed from the pulp of Calvin’s face.

“We got him,” Briggs said.

Rush jumped up. He scanned the front room—no Nikki. He lunged toward the back of the house and shoved open the first bedroom door.

White-bright light blinded him. He hooded his eyes with his hand and peered into the room. Nikki lay pale and helpless, trussed to the bed. A red rose of blood blossomed on her shirt.

His heart split, a deep ache lodged behind his ribs. “I need cutters and an ambulance!" He pressed his fingers to Nikki's neck. A soft wheezing sound came from her lips, and her eyelids fluttered open.

“Rush,” she said. Her voice a soft whisper through cracked lips.

“Shh, baby,” he said.  Rush pressed his hands to her body to determine where she bled.

“You’re here. You came to get me.”

His fingers came up slicked with red. He ripped off his shirt and pushed it hard against the wound in her side. She winced and a tiny moan escaped her lips.

His heart broke with the sound. Her eyes fluttered closed and Rush hung his head. Where was the fucking ambulance?

A siren wailed in the distance.

“Baby…” He pulled his lips together and fought a burn behind his eyes. “Nikki, baby, don’t leave me. Please, baby—”

“Rush,” she whispered, unable to open her eyes. “Stay with me, please. Stay.”

“Nikki, baby, I won’t ever let you out of my sight again.”

The breeze lifted Nikki's amber colored curls from her neck. She closed her eyes. She listened to the never-ending crush of waves upon the shore. The thought that the waves never ended, the sound never ended, somehow soothed her. She'd spent three months holed up and hiding out north of Los Angeles. No phone. No Internet. No TV. Aside from trips to visit her doctor or the courthouse she'd lived in seclusion.

“Nikki!” Rush called from the deck of the house, “Celeste is here.”

Well virtual seclusion. A smile curved over her lips at Rush's voice and the knowledge that Aunt Cici had just arrived to spoil her. Aunt Cici would fill Nikki in on all the Industry gossip everything that she was missing, but not yet longing for.
Yet
. Nikki could feel a restlessness stirring in her body. A desire to find another script. Make another film.

She inhaled a giant breath. She was lucky to be alive. She was lucky to have survived her childhood and to have found love. She was shockingly lucky in many many ways.

“You okay?” Rush asked. He'd walked down the stairs and across the expanse of beach to check on her. He was always checking on her. He reached for her hand and his gaze searched her face.

“I'm more than okay,” she said.

Rush returned her smile and pressed his arm around her waist. He was cautious, careful about the wound on her side that was still healing. A scar she would forever carry. A reminder of just how close she’d come to not having this life. This man. This very moment. 

He'd saved her. He'd saved her in more ways than just finding her on that horrible day. He'd saved her by loving her and she'd saved herself too. She saved herself by finally loving herself and then loving Rush.

“Your aunt wants to see you.” Rush steered her away from the ocean and toward the house. “She has a carload of boxes and bags.”

Nikki shook her head, but her smile remained. Aunt Cici took particular pleasure in dressing her.

“She's also in the kitchen.”

“The kitchen?” Nikki asked.

Aunt Cici wasn't really a cook. In fact she was a little bit of a disaster when it came to preparing food.

“I already started dinner.” Nikki quickened her steps across the sand.

“Celeste said something about it needing more salt.” Rush cocked an eyebrow and his lips angled up into a wicked smile.

“She better stay away from my oven,” Nikki said. She'd accept Aunt Cici being a nosy-nelly. She'd even allow Aunt Cici to bring her outrageously expensive clothes and dress her like a doll.  But she would not let her aunt ruin a good meal.

“Better get in there,” Rush said. His voice was teasing. “But first this.” He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and pulled Nikki to him. She pressed into his chest and looked up into his eyes. She would always love this spot, wrapped in Rush's arms.

His lips pressed to hers.

Heat spiraled up through her bare feet and pooled in her belly. The gentlest moan eased over her lips.

He pulled back and locked his onyx eyes onto her. 

“Can't we make them leave?” Nikki asked. One kiss from Rush was never enough. She always wanted more.

“She invited others,” Rush said. “Christina and Bradford are on their way.”

Nikki sighed, but her smile remained. She loved her family and friends. Rush would still be here after they returned to LA.

“I love you,” Rush said. He pulled a curl that bounced around her face on the breeze and tucked it behind her ear.

“I know,” Nikki said. “And I love you too.” 

“I Want to Thank the Academy…

…and especially my Aunt Cici because without her, there would be no
Boundless Bound
.” Nikki looked at her aunt, seated in the front row and wedged between Ted Robinoff and Jackson Nichols. Cici threw Nikki a giant kiss. Aunt Cici understood the feelings that throbbed through Nikki. She’d experienced the same wild ride only thirty minutes before.

“I have to thank Liam Wadsworth”—Nikki’s hand fell onto Liam’s arm—“my fellow producer, for giving me the script.” Nikki nodded to her left. “Lydia Albright for letting me produce with her. Jackson Nichols, Bradford Madison, the rest of the cast and crew. Mike Fox, Jessica Caulfield-Fox, and Christina Darmides who was my roommate while we filmed
Boundless Bound
.” Nikki nodded toward the audience where Christina sat beside Bradford. “Thank you to Ted Robinoff, and Worldwide Pictures for financing the film.”

Nikki took a deep breath. Blood buzzed through her, the lights, the cameras… She clutched the golden man closer to her body.

“I also have to thank Jeb Schmaltzer, who trusted a newbie from Tennessee with absolutely no credits to give him notes on his beloved script. Without Jeb, I wouldn’t have this.” Nikki held the award toward the ceiling of the Dolby Theatre. “This award is dedicated to you, Jeb Schmaltzer.”

Nikki bit down on her bottom lip to stop the quivering and to quell the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes. “I also need to thank my mama, who I know is here in spirit tonight.” Nikki ran a finger under each of her eyes.