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T
HE PHONE CHEEPED
out “Like a Virgin”—an interesting, if retro, choice. Max let it ring a few times before he answered without speaking. It was Gordon.

“Is this Max? Max, are you there? Max? Whoever you are, let me talk to Max. I know we can work something out—”

Max covered his mouth and made a noise somewhere between a bleating sheep and a grunting weight lifter.

“Max?
Max?
Are you all right? Jerry told me they called Talia…Can they hear us?”

“They’re holding me for ransom. You’ve got to help me, Gordon.” Then he cried out. “
Please
don’t hurt me! Please!”

“They’re hurting you? Are you all right? Talk to me, Max!”

“You need to…Oh,
please
, just come and get me.”

“Don’t worry, Max, we’ll send someone—”

“No, they want you, just you! If you don’t come, they’re going to kill me.”

“That’s outrageous! They can’t kill you—you’re a star. Let me talk to them!”

Max covered the phone and mumbled a few words to himself. Barked an order like a sergeant major. Screeched like a spider monkey.

And waited. Gordon never did like to wait. Finally, voice trembling, Max spoke into the phone. “They said—they said they don’t want to talk to you. They’re sending you the video so you know they’re serious.”

“Max—”

“Nooo!
Please! Oh, God. No!
”

He sent the video and hit End.

A
FEW MINUTES
passed, and the phone rang again. Max let it ring four times before answering.

Gordon sounded shaken. “Max? Max? Where are you?”

“You gotta come for me, Gordon. I’m in a town called Paradox. And they said come alone—no police. If there are any police they’ll slit my throat. They want a million dollars by sunset.”

“I can’t come up with that kind of money!”

Max muffled the phone again. Begging, pleading with himself. Clapping his hands together once, twice—simulating hard slaps to the face. (He used to get high with a Foley artist. The guy was a real bore except when he was ripped, when he would perform his best sound effects.)

More barked orders. A kitchen chair thrown across the room. When Max spoke again he was almost hyperventilating from all the activity. Max was able to summon tears at the drop of a hat (even though as a leading man, he was never allowed to do so) and so he let tears seep into his voice. “They’re serious about killing me, Gordon. They want one million dollars in small bills.”

“But I can’t—”

“If you don’t bring the money…please, oh God, no,
Jesus
!”

“OK, OK, just tell them to stop. Tell them I’ll be there!”

“Someone will call you in a little while and give you the address. Please, Gordon, no cops. They said they’ll kill me, and they’ll kill you.” Max hit End. The phone rang again but this time he didn’t answer.

Let Gordon stew for a while.

A half hour later, he called Gordon once again with the address. He made sure he sounded like a dork.

M
AX FIGURED IT
would take Gordon time to round up the money, but he wanted to be in place early enough for his ambush to work. He had to be prepared for the possibility—the
probability
—that Gordon wouldn’t come alone. He needed a place to see Gordon’s approach—he should be far enough from the house that he could see who Gordon had with him, but close enough to get the jump on them. Fortunately, there was a corral across the road and halfway up the hill opposite. At the far side of the corral stood a ramada and a galvanized steel water tank, now empty. It looked like there hadn’t been a horse there in years. Max positioned himself behind the tank. It was hot as hell—the shade of the ramada had not yet reached him. He watched the road to the house until he was cross-eyed. He’d see the dust long before a vehicle showed up.

Max looked at his array of phones and decided to keep the prepaid for emergencies, since he doubted it was charged for more than an hour or two. He was starting to like Luther’s smartphone. He used it to call Dave Finley.

“Yo.”

Max said, “It’s me.”

“What’s going on? You OK? Damn it, bud, everyone’s wondering what happened to you. Karen said you called, but I tried your phone and just got voice mail.”

Max thought of the phone, buried in a plastic bag near a barbed-wire fence somewhere along the freeway north of here. Max told him about that.

“You mean you buried your phone in the desert? Why would you do that?”

“Have you heard anything?”

“Just what Karen said. She said you sounded all screwed up. Where are you, man? I could come get you.”

“Come and get me?” Had he heard right? “I thought you were working.”

“The Matt Damon? That was a one-week gig, it ended yesterday. What’s going on?”

Max thought about it. He went in and out of being able to think clearly, and right now, his mind was buzzing like a hive of bees. Had Jerry Gold told Dave about the kidnapping?

No. Jerry knew Max and Dave were friends, but as far as Max’s business manager was concerned, Dave was just the help. Somebody who palled around with Max on Max’s downtime. So unless Gordon had gone to the press, which Max was pretty sure he wouldn’t do, Dave didn’t know what had happened.

What was about to happen.

Max looked down at the semiautomatic sitting in the dirt by his leg. Was he really thinking of holding a gun on Gordon White Eagle? Was he that crazy?

“Hey, Max! You there?”

What had he planned to do? Ambush Gordon, and put the gun to his head?

“Max, look. I know you’ve been under a lot of pressure, and I don’t blame you for leaving that place. You need a break, man—just chill out a little, then you can get back to work.”

Get back to work. That was what everybody wanted. They didn’t care about him; they just wanted him to get back to work so everyone could draw a paycheck.

“I’m getting a divorce,” Max said. Saying it even surprised him. But it was incredibly liberating.

“A divorce? Really?”

“Yup.”

“What about the kid?”

He’d forgotten about the baby Talia was going to bring back from Africa. Funny he could forget something like that. “I don’t know,” he said slowly.

“Are you serious? That’s going to look really cold, man. You just going to leave her with the kid? Just like that? We tried to go the adoption route, and I don’t think—”

“Let her work it out. I’m sure she and Jerry will figure it out.”

“Jerry?”

Max said, “It was Jerry’s idea—the whole adoption thing. He said it would raise our profile—make us look selfless and responsible…”

He flashed on the day Jerry had laid it out for them. Why not adopt a baby from Africa?

It had seemed reasonable at the time.

Even thinking about it, how Jerry had presented them with the “promotional opportunity,” without a thought for the child who would be brought to the United States as a prop in a publicity stunt—

Unbelievable. Had he gone that far afield?

He thought of the buried meds and booze in his backyard.

Yes, he had gone that far afield.

A stupid ploy like that, and Max had agreed to it. Talia had loved the idea, started planning all the expensive baby stuff from Petit Tresor for furnishings or a whole designed nursery by Wendy Bellisimo, and Baby Dior for clothing—he knew the names she tossed around by heart by this point. He’d sat passively by while they—Talia and Jerry—made a decision like that. Without a thought for the child who would be coming, without a thought of what the future would be like for that child or for Talia or even for himself. Anything to feed the beast. Celebrity was a state that constantly altered; it needed to be fed and watered and entertained and placated, or it could disappear any minute.

Max hated himself at that moment. How could he have been so stupid? So out of touch with reality?

“Max?” Dave was saying. “You guys are really through?”

“Talia doesn’t know, and I don’t want you telling her. In fact, I don’t want you to tell anyone we’re talking. I have to sort a few things out. I need the space. Is that OK? Will you give me that?”

“Sure…but why?”

“Because I’m asking you to, brother.”

A pause. “You can count on me,” Dave said solemnly.

“Good.”

“Hey, where are you, man?”

Max told him.

Silence. Then Dave said, “You know what? I could come out there and pick you up.”

“Come out? What are you talking about?”

“I could bring the bikes. I could drive ’em out there and you and I could ride back to LA. Like the old days, when you were just starting out.”

“That’s crazy.”

“No it’s not. I could leave now. We were filming out near Death Valley and I decided to drive over and see Seth.”

“Seth?”

“The guy with the bike shop in Blythe, remember? I took a couple of Harleys for the shoot and figured I was close enough to Blythe he and I could go for a ride. But I could just as easy drive over so’s you and I could ride back.”

“What about your rig?”

“Seth can drive it.”

“I don’t know.” Max was getting a headache. What Dave said didn’t make much sense to him. “Have you talked to Jerry?”

“Jerry?” Dave snorted. “Why would I talk to that pissant?”

Max rubbed his forehead. The throbbing above his left temple drove him crazy. The heat was getting to him too. What was he thinking, planning to ambush Gordon? What would he do—wave the gun in his face? Could he really get Gordon to fix him?

“That sounds good,” Max said. “I could use a good ride about now.”

“I can be out of here in a couple of hours.”

Max heard an engine—sounded like a truck. Far enough away, but going slow.

“Let me think about it,” Max said. “I’ll call you back, OK?”

“Max, if you—”

But Max didn’t hear him. He was watching the white truck coming his way.

Chapter Eighteen

T
HE TRUCK WAS
a new Chevy. A Silverado 2500HD, the same kind of truck Dave Finley hauled his bikes with. There was something stealthy about the way the truck moved, even though the engine was big. It cruised to a stop just beyond the nearest neighbor to Luther’s, about an eighth of a mile away.

Max had seen it before.

His heart sped up. Something was wrong here…How could Gordon react that quickly? He rummaged through his memory bank, trying to place the truck. There were plenty of expensive new trucks and Suburbans at the Desert Oasis, but all of them had the center’s logo on the side. This one was plain, no frills, the kind of truck a company would buy for a work vehicle.

The passenger door opened and a boy hopped out. The kid wasn’t big—kind of weedy-looking—but he wasn’t a little kid. Closer to a teenager. He held a gun down by his side but at the ready. Maybe he’d learned how to do it from cop shows.

The driver’s side opened and a figure stepped out. From where Max was, the lower half of the person was blocked by the truck’s hood. The person was lean and straight-backed, with hair clipped close to the skull. Max thought it was a woman, but he wasn’t sure. The person was dressed like a man and moved economically. The two of them met in front of the truck.

It
was
a woman. But like none he’d ever seen. She moved like a man. He wondered if she’d had a sex-change operation.

The woman spoke to the kid. He nodded and trotted across the dirt road toward the west, ran up a desert hill and disappeared. The woman walked up the road. Casual. Glancing at her watch. A big watch—a man’s watch, like his Breitling. When she reached the tall bamboo ringing Sam P.’s yard, she crouched low and followed it to the entrance, gun at the ready.

Max remembered where he’d seen the truck. It had been parked outside the Rat Motel. He remembered the truck pulling out and following the limo.

Either Jerry or his brother Gordon—probably it was both of them—had sent the guys in the limo. So why had the woman and kid followed them? Did they hope the limo would lead them to him?

Did more than one set of people want him?

He was beginning to feel like a pawn.

Max took a deep breath. He had no doubt the woman and boy would come here to the corral, once they finished with the house. Maybe they’d find his kidnappers. They would surely see the shot-up Saturn, the glass, the evidence of a gun battle in the carport.