Hot Target (5 page)

Which left only Cosmo Richter and James Nash, who was one of Decker’s XOs.

“Executive officer,” the woman standing beside Nash explained as Jane shook his hand. “Second in command. I’ll be filling that role, too, when necessary. I’m Tess Bailey. It’s nice to meet you, Mercedes.”

Nash was tall, dark, and elegantly handsome, but it was extremely obvious that he belonged to Tess, who looked more like the president of the elementary school PTO than a trained security operative. Her grip was solid, though, and her smile managed to be friendly and pleasant even while holding a warning.

Even if Jane wanted to—which she most certainly didn’t—it was clear that this was not a woman to mess with.

They all sat down to go through the procedures, to review what they knew about the Freedom Network, and to set up a preliminary schedule.

As Decker spoke, Jane couldn’t help but watch Cosmo Richter, a man they often addressed as Cos or Chief. And all she could think was,
Congratulations, Chief. Get ready to be whispered to.

“Your sister is an angel,” Jack Shelton said as Robin sat down next to him in the viewing room.

“I bet you say that to all the boys,” he said to the elderly man, his eyes on the movie screen. He both loved and hated watching the dailies—the film footage shot during the day. He’d done two different short scenes and—Oh, Christ, there he was. He had to watch his close-up through slitted eyes.

“She may have the habit of dressing like a three-dollar hooker when she goes out in public,” Jack said loudly enough for Janey to overhear from out in the hall, where she’d gone to take a phone call. It was hard to know if Jack was deaf or if he just didn’t care. “But do you know how many producers I’ve worked with who would’ve extended an open invitation both to the set and to the viewing of the dailies to an eighty-four-year-old opinionated queen?”

“One,” Robin answered. This was not the first time they’d had this conversation.

“That’s right,” Jack said. “Jane.”

“Considering this movie is about your life—”

“She treats everyone with respect,” Jack said. “Star, best boy, caterer’s assistant . . .”

“Here’s our little angel now,” Robin said as Jane crossed in front of them to sit on Jack’s other side. Up on the movie screen his face was gigantic and— Shit, was there something nasty in his nose?

“HeartBeat wants a Normandy scene, Jack,” she told him in true Janey fashion—point-blank. “I know you weren’t part of the D-Day invasion, but Hal was, and I think I’ve come up with a compromise.”

“A D-Day dream sequence,” Jack said.

Jane glared at Robin across the old man. “Did you tell him?”

“Did you see my nose in that last shot?” he countered.

Jack spoke over him. “Your assistant did. It’s a good idea. Make it a nightmare.”

“I intend to.” Janey ignored Robin. “I’ll run it past you first, all right?”

“You don’t have to,” Jack said. “I trust you.”

Janey kissed him. “Thank you. That is
so
nice. But I’ll still run it past you first.”

“You guys always talk through my scenes,” Robin complained. “Always.”

“Because you always do your scenes perfectly,” his sister said. “Every take is usable. We know that, so we don’t have to watch.”

“Yeah, well, you missed a
perfect
unidentified object in my nose just then. Do not let that scene get into the movie,” Robin told her. If it did make the edit, he just knew he’d end up nominated for an Oscar, and—just his luck—that would be the footage they’d show when his name was announced as a nominee. He’d have to sit in the Kodak Theatre on the big night with his hand over his eyes, unable to watch.

“We think we’ve finally found the actor to play young Jack,” Janey told old Jack.

“Think?” he repeated. “Shouldn’t we be past the
think
stage by now?”

Absolutely. They were well past the wire, having started filming. They’d better have found the right actor this time around. “His name’s Hugo Pierce,” Robin said.

“It’s Pierce Hugo,” Janey corrected him. “We have his screen test—it’ll be up in a sec. But first, shhhh! Listen.”

On the screen, old newsreel footage appeared, accompanied by a voice. Hey, that wasn’t just
a
voice; it was Jack’s voice.

“It was 1943. Looking back at the recent history of the gay rights movement, one might think, peering down through the murky tunnel of time, that 1943 was the dark ages for gay men in America. But the truth was, darlings, 1943 was a very good year to be queer.”

“God,” Jack said. “I sound old.”

“Honey, you are old,” Jane shot back, which made him laugh.

“Young men enlisted or were drafted into the armed forces,”
Jack’s reedy, crackly, voice continued,
“leaving their farms and small towns by the millions. We all crowded together in the big cities—Los Angeles and New York—as we prepared to go overseas to fight for America, for freedom.

“And, indeed, it was freedom we found, even as we prepared to fight and die. Those of us who knew that winning the Peoria Husband of the Year Award absolutely wasn’t in our future discovered—some of us for the first time—that we were not alone. We found each other in those cities that teemed with uniformed young men, away from our homes and our parents—away from all small-town, middle-class expectations, and our impending, unavoidable failures.

“In December 1942, I was twenty-one and slightly ahead of the game, having come to New York the previous September to attend art school.”

“When we finally cast our young Jack,” Jane leaned closer to tell him, “we’ll film scenes showing him at school and at the recruiters, and so on, beneath this voice-over.”

“When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, I raced to the recruiting office, as eager as any of my fellow Americans to defend my country.

“Within days I’d finished a battery of tests and had already been shipped off to boot camp, when suddenly I was pulled out of line and given new orders. I was being assigned to the Twenty-third Special Combat Group—to a unit that no one had ever heard of.

“After a full day and night of travel, I finally reached Pine Camp, back in good ol’ New York. I was brought into a barracks that was almost completely filled with men, told absolutely nothing, and left there to wait.

“For what, no one seemed to know.

“Back then it wasn’t called
gaydar,
of course, but whatever you label it, mine was clicking furiously. I was far from the only homosexual in that Quonset hut. In fact, darlings, I quickly realized that instead of the usual small handful, a large percentage of us were friends of Judy Garland. So to speak.

“What were the odds of that happening by coincidence?”

“That’s the end of the voice-over segment,” Janey said. “Now here’s the first part of Pierce’s screen test. Please, God, let him be good. It’s the scene that immediately follows the voice-over, where Jack—”

“I remember,” Jack said.

The camera’s focus would be on the auditioning actor’s face as the scene—a conversation among the other enlisted men in the army barracks—went on around him. The final version would be intercut with close-ups of classic gay code—eye contact, smiles, a red tie or two, jingling keys—all from young Jack’s point of view.

But right now, on the screen, Pierce Hugo swung an army duffel onto an empty bottom bunk, as the actor playing relentlessly hetero Ducky McHenry said, “Special combat. What the fuck is special combat anyway?”

As young Jack turned, the camera began a slow zoom in on him.

“He’s not as cute as I was,” Jack pointed out.

Janey laughed. “No one is as cute as you were, Jack.”

“Shut the hell up, McHenry,” one of the actors said wearily as the camera moved to a full close-up of Pierce’s face.

He was good-looking in an extremely superficial Abercrombie ad way. Robin tried to imagine kissing him and couldn’t.

“Ah, Christ,” another off-screen voice complained, “is he starting with that again?”

“No, no, guys,” Ducky’s voice said. “This shouldn’t be so hard. I been thinking, and what we need to do is figure out what we have in common, right? Then we’ll know what they’ll be sending us out there to do.”

Meanwhile, the camera stayed on Pierce’s face.

“He’s not
too
awful,” the Jack sitting beside Robin said.

“Hey, new guy,” Ducky said, and the camera pulled back to include him in the shot. He was speaking directly to Pierce. “What do
you
think?”

The audience was supposed to see a flurry of emotions cross young Jack’s face as he wondered how to answer that question, because he knew damn well what so many of the men in this barracks had in common. Pierce Hugo managed only to look frightened.

Jane made a sound that was half pain, half disgust.

“Whaddya do before Uncle Sam got his hooks in ya?” Ducky asked.

Relief appeared on Pierce’s face. It was a little too obvious, too “I’m acting!” and again Janey made that unhappy sound.

“I’m—I was—an art student.”

“Aha!” Ducky exclaimed. “Another artist! That makes twenty-two artists, seventeen actors slash waiters, and three radio announcers—”

“It’s obvious, friends,” someone interrupted as the camera stayed focused on Pierce, who was about as interesting an actor as a wooden spoon. “We’re going to put on a show for the Nazis.”

“I’m serious here,” Ducky shouted over the laughter. “New guy—were you pulled out of whatever unit you were supposed to serve with, all mysterious-like, no questions answered?”

Pierce nodded. “Yeah.”

“See?” Ducky said, triumphant. “Same as the rest of us.”

Jane stood up. Thank God. “Thank you, I’ve seen enough. Patty!”

The film sputtered to a stop and the lights came up.

“You didn’t give him much of a chance,” Jack chided gently. “What did he have, eight words of dialogue total?”

“Dialogue’s easy,” Jane shot back as Patty came down the aisle.

Robin smiled at her. Unlike kissing Hugo Pierce or Pierce Hugo or whoever he was, he
could
imagine kissing Patty.

She blushed and smiled shyly back at him.

“Jack’s main role in this movie is that of observer,” Janey continued. “The audience is going to get their cues about how to feel from Jack. And if he’s feeling like a two-by-four—”

“Pierce wasn’t that bad,” Jack objected as Robin got lost in Patty’s blue eyes. “Need I remind you, you’ve started filming. You need to cast this part.”

“Schedule another session with the casting director ASAP,” Jane ordered Patty. “The right Jack is out there, and I am going to find him, so help me God.”

Chapter
T
HREE

His mother would’ve loved this.

Cosmo sat quietly in the back row of the screening room as J. Mercedes Chadwick managed to be even more dramatic than the movie clips they’d all just watched.

Although, truth be told, Cosmo agreed with Mercedes’ assessment. The kid they’d seen hadn’t been up to speed. But apparently they didn’t have a big enough budget to hire a well-known, experienced movie star.

As Cos watched, he wondered if she knew that her intern was only catching a third of what she said. The girl, Patty, was totally distracted by the brother, Robin.

Robin, however, was fully aware of Patty’s crush and seemed to be mutually intrigued. Damn, and wasn’t that a train wreck just waiting to happen?

Cosmo would have bet two months’ pay that neither of them—not Patty and definitely not Robin—knew the least little thing about the other. Questions as basic as
What’s your favorite color?
or
Who was your favorite rock band when you were twelve?
had obviously been ignored. And if by chance either subject was touched on before the frantic removal of clothing, the responses would be short answers with no follow-ups along the lines of
Why Duran Duran?

Of course, some people went out and got married without bothering to dig deeper and ask
why
questions.

As for Patty and Robin, sooner or later they were going to wake up in bed together, orgasmed out, and then, look out. As soon as they started using their mouths to talk, all those little bubbles of happy fantasy were going to start bursting. Patty would realize—the hard way—that the man she’d welcomed into her arms didn’t exist, that the real Robin couldn’t hold a candle to her idealized, imagined version.

Or maybe she’d never see her mistake and spend lots of time crying and wondering why her Prince Charming had suddenly “changed.”

And Robin, well, he’d leap out of bed and hit the ground running. He was one of those super-insecure guys who hid all his self-doubt behind good looks, fast talk, and that hyper-confident attitude. He was one of those guys who rarely stopped moving, who never let anyone get too close, terrified of all that might come to light if he opened up and let someone in.

As for his sister . . .

Cosmo rose to his feet as Mercedes marched her red-hot bod up the aisle, the elderly man in tow.

Cos had had his share of close encounters with her type before. He knew without asking that her two favorite words were
me
and
now.
Although it
was
possible that she actually cared about this movie she was making, as well as this old man.

“ . . . round-the-clock bodyguards,” she was saying to Jack Shelton, “and Chief Richter here is the winner who pulled the first night shift.”

“I’ll be here only until 0200. Vinh Murphy’ll be replacing me then,” Cosmo reminded her. Tonight was something of an exception. Once they got the team set up, they’d alternate shorter and longer shifts, with irregular end times. The key was not to get into any repeated, regular patterns that could be anticipated by anyone watching the house.

“Vinh Murphy’s a former Marine,” Mercedes told Jack. “I’ll also be spending lots of time with James Nash and Tess Bailey, former Agency, and Larry Decker, who’s a former Navy SEAL like Chief Richter—you know, the commando types who got so much spin during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?”

“A chief in the Navy. Eureka.” Jack’s dark eyes twinkled, young in his wrinkled face, as he smiled at Cosmo. Slender and slight of build, he still stood arrow straight—time hadn’t stooped his frame in the slightest. His suit was obviously new and hand-tailored. Cosmo didn’t doubt for one second that, should he flip through the pages, he’d find similar styles in the most recent issue of
GQ.

“Silly me,” Jack continued, “here I was trying to figure out exactly how a Richter could’ve become a Native American tribal leader. Of course, I’ve lived long enough to know that anything’s possible.”

Cosmo shook the elderly man’s hand. “It’s an honor to meet you, sir. I’m familiar with your work.”

Mercedes and brother Robin did a visible double take, both of them looking at him with varying degrees of surprise and shock. Cosmo could practically read the producer’s mind.
Aha. So that’s why the Wonderbra and bootilicious miniskirt haven’t produced the requisite amount of drool.

Cosmo almost laughed out loud. People were so quick to judge, so willing to leap upon the most obvious conclusion.

Most of them, anyway. Patty was oblivious, smiling dreamily at Robin.

“Now, isn’t this intriguing,” Jack murmured, still holding tight to Cosmo. “But note, children, that he didn’t say he’s a fan, like,
Ooh, Mr. Shelton, I’ve been such a fan for years.
My guess is he got this assignment, did his homework—looked me up on the Internet Movie Database—and realized I’d dressed the sets of some of his favorite pictures.” He patted Cosmo’s hand. “He’s three hundred percent hetero, but the two-second fantasy that he might not be was lovely. Thank you, darling.” He turned to Mercedes. “If you’ve got to have one of those terribly clichéd affairs with one of your bodyguards, this is the man for the job. Of course, I haven’t met the others, but how can they even come close? He’s delicious.”

“Yeah,” Mercedes said. “Thanks a million, Jack. Look, I need you to be really careful, okay? If you get the sense that anyone’s following you, or if you get any weird phone calls or threatening e-mail—”

“I’ll make sure I let both you and HeartBeat know,” Jack said. “Although Scotty might not appreciate my sudden acquisition of a Navy SEAL bodyguard.” He turned to Robin. “Walk me to my car, Harold; my driver is waiting.”

“Nice meeting you, sir.” Cosmo found himself grinning. He was finally on an op where he could divulge the details—well, some of them—to his mother, and she was going to love hearing about this.

As Patty followed Jack and Robin out the door, Mercedes went down to the front of the little theater to collect a legal pad upon which she’d scribbled some notes.

“Sorry about that,” she said on her way back up the aisle, obviously not sorry at all. “Jack does love to stir things up.”

The woman didn’t walk. She paraded. Sashayed. Slunk. Or was it slinked? Whichever it was, she did it. On heels that were ridiculously high.

Cosmo went out the door ahead of her, checking the hall both ways. It was empty. And dimly lit. Most of the bulbs in the ornate ceiling fixtures were out.

“We have three days, tops, to find an actor to play young Jack,” she told him as he followed her up the stairs to the first and then the second floor. “If we don’t find him by then, we’re going to have to settle for Pierce Hugo.”

There were too many shadows. Every lightbulb in this place needed an increase in wattage. Cosmo made a mental note to tell Decker.

Mercedes was on her way into the suite that made up both her bedroom and her private office, but he stopped her. He stepped in front of her, opened the door, flipped on the light switch, and quickly scanned the room. The desks were all open, more like tables, and impossible to hide behind.

There were framed movie posters on the walls, including that of
Hell or High Water,
the low-budget
Blair Witch
knockoff that had kicked her career from zero to sixty before she’d turned twenty.

Apparently one of the problems with being an overnight success was the difficulty in making lightning strike twice. There were two other movie posters on her wall that carried her name as producer, but Cosmo hadn’t heard of either of them.

He went through her office to her bedroom beyond, and into the bathroom, too. She kept the place fairly neat, but both her dresser and bathroom counter were cluttered. Perfume, makeup, hair care products, lotions . . . Panty hose and bits of silky underwear hung on the towel racks.

No doubt about it, a woman lived here.

The big bathroom had no windows. This was the predesignated safe room in the house. If there was trouble—a code red situation—Jane would lock herself in here until reinforcements arrived.

“Oh, come on,” she was scoffing as he came out of the bathroom. “If someone really wanted to kill me, they wouldn’t break into my house and hide in here, waiting for me.”

Probably not, but wouldn’t they all feel foolish if they were wrong? Cos went to each of the bedroom windows, checking the locks. They were old, but still in good shape. He pulled the curtains closed.

“Do you not talk”—Mercedes’ voice was sharper now—“because you’re supposed to be blending into the background, or because you have nothing to say?”

He thought about that. “Both, I guess.”

“News flash,” she said, rearranging the piles on her desk, paper rustling, her movements broadcasting her frustration. “You don’t blend in, Rambo, so you might as well stop trying.”

“Name’s Cosmo.” He came back into her office.

“Yeah, see, that was a joke. What, do they remove your sense of humor when you—”

“It’s an insult, in the Teams, to call someone Rambo.”

She stared at him. “You’re kidding.”

“No, ma’am.”

Mercedes laughed her disbelief. “Rambo’s some kind of giant, ass-kicking hero and you think—”

“SEAL
team,
” he said. “It’s called that for a reason. Guy like Rambo, goes off on his own . . .” He shook his head. “It’s an insult. Don’t call me that again.”

She was wide-eyed. He’d purposely left out the
please
and he’d scared her. She swallowed before she spoke, and her tone was no longer flip. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to—”

“Apology accepted.” He nodded and moved back toward the door.

She pulled a smile out of her arsenal and picked up her telephone, pushing one button. “Hi, Patty, will you remind my brother that he’s got a five a.m. call tomorrow? He needs to go to bed, soon.” As she listened to whatever her intern had to say, she kept that smile in place, but it got decidedly strained. “Thanks,” she said, and hung up.

“I’ll be in the hall,” he told her.

“Is that how it’s going to work?” she asked, crossing her arms in front of her, obviously still rattled and choosing to express it as thinly veiled defiance. “You’re just going to lurk outside my door?”

He stopped. Nodded. “Until we get the security system up and running, yeah.”

“I work with my door closed,” she informed him coolly.

“Just don’t lock it.”

“Sometimes I take my laptop into bed with me,” she said. “If the purpose of all this is to make me feel more secure, I have to tell you that sleeping with my door unlocked isn’t—”

“It is,” he told her, as he realized suddenly what that phone call to Patty had been about. It was a message. To him. She was reminding him that her brother lived here, too, that she and Cosmo weren’t alone in the house. She was actually afraid of him. “You can lock your door if you want,” he added. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

He could just blast right though that door with one well-aimed kick, if there was trouble.

“Thanks,” she said, then rolled her eyes. “Thanks for giving me permission to lock my own door. God, I hate this.”

“I’m here—we’re all here—to keep you safe,” Cosmo said to reassure her, even though he didn’t particularly like her. Because, Christ, she wasn’t supposed to be afraid of him. “Your script . . . I read it. It’s good. The movie’s . . . It’s going to be good.”

Okay, and now she was looking at him as if he were a talking monkey in the zoo. What, didn’t she think he could read? She didn’t. She looked absolutely stunned that he’d actually read the script. Screw that shit. Disgusted with her, he headed for the door.

But she stopped him. “When’s your next shift?” Mercedes flipped the page on her desk calendar to tomorrow’s date.

“I’m not sure,” he told her curtly. “Deck’s making the schedule.”

“I’m going to hold a press conference,” she said, running a finger down a list of penciled-in appointments, “probably around four o’clock tomorrow. Any chance you can be there?” She looked up at him. “It’s kind of a public thing, and, to be honest, I’m a little bit nervous about putting myself out there—at least for this first time like this. . . .”

To be honest, his ass. It was beyond obvious that she had some kind of ulterior motive for wanting him there.

“I’ll bring it to Decker’s attention,” he told her.

She backed off, somehow knowing not to push. “Thanks. And . . . I’m glad you liked the script.”

Right.

Patty hung around the office, watching the hands of the wall clock move closer to eleven.

She should have gone home hours ago, but Robin, who’d shouted, “Tell Jane I’ll be back around nine-thirty,” as he’d gotten into his sports car and followed Jack Shelton’s limo out of the driveway, still hadn’t returned.

This was crazy.

She knew it was crazy.

But all she could think about was when, when, when was she going to see Robin Chadwick again?

Jane had issued a warning about her younger brother during their very first interview. “His definition of long-term means he stays for breakfast,” she’d told Patty. “Don’t let him get too close.”

But her very first day here, he’d picked up lunch, bringing her a selection of sandwiches and salads from the local deli. “I wasn’t sure what you wanted,” he told her with a smile that could only be described as sweet.

And Patty had found herself in a full swoon over a man who not only was gorgeous but who was going places fast. This was a man destined to be Hollywood’s Next Big Thing, and maybe she had an overactive imagination, but it didn’t take much to picture herself there, by his side, as he rocketed to fame.

She’d thought she’d see him again tonight if she stuck around, but it just kept getting later and later. She had to be on the set early in the morning—at five a.m. She’d read through tomorrow’s pages seven times now, and she’d contacted all but three of the extras needed for the party scene.

She really had to go.

But Robin needed to be on set early, too. He had a five o’clock makeup call. She shifted through the pages of schedules and . . . Yes. There was a car coming to pick him up at four-thirty.