Kissed Blind (A Hot Pursuit Novel Book 2) (26 page)

Oliver coughed and placed a hand over his stomach. He retrieved his pocket square and wiped a line of sweat from his brow. “Good evening, everyone…” he said. His speech began with nice sentiment after nice sentiment. He cited Camille’s accomplishments over the years but halted where her story began. My breath hitched, and I thought for a moment Oliver was going to renege on his promise, but then he wobbled and caught himself on the podium. Behind him, Camille’s photograph in character from
Acts of Desperation
was displayed. He stood upright and made a joke about having too many cocktails on an empty stomach. Moments later, he collapsed.

“Oliver!” Camille shouted, lifting from her seat. She looked from side to side and charged the stage with her dress bunched in her hands. A camera followed her, and the crowd was a flurry of hushed murmurs. Chaos erupted.

Vance and Cici appeared on the stage kneeling next to Oliver. Vance turned him on his back, and I was there in seconds. Oliver’s coloring was awful, and his breathing shallow and labored. Vance had his ear to his chest and two fingers on his neck feeling for a pulse.

“Someone call an ambulance!” I looked off-stage, and a man held one hand in the air and the other held a phone to his ear. 

“Have they?” Vance looked at me.

I nodded.

“He’s having a hard time breathing. We need to get him off stage.” Vance placed his hands under Oliver’s shoulders.

“Oli! Oli!” Camille said on her knees next to him, lightly smacking his cheeks. “Look at me, darling. What’s wrong?”

Oliver released his first groans followed by a horrible gurgling noise.

“Get him out of here,” Camille uttered. “No one needs to see him like this.”

Vance and another robust man carried him off stage. Camille followed closely behind and stopped to say something to the emcee along the way.

The emcee stepped up to the microphone and addressed the crowd. “Please, everyone, remain calm. Oliver needs a little fresh air. Tonight is a celebration, so please, celebrate.” She walked off to where they’d laid Oliver.

We all surrounded him, and the deep, wet gurgling sound started again.

“Is he choking?” I bent down next to him. “Turn him on his side.”

No sooner had I uttered the words had Oliver began to froth from his mouth and cough.

“Where is that damn ambulance?” Camille covered her eyes and held back tears.

Someone had thrown me a towel, and I held it to Oliver’s lips. “Can you hear me? Oliver, open your eyes.”

Oliver’s lids opened a crack, and his eyes rolled back in his head. He began convulsing.

Twenty-Nine

A team of doctors and nurses surrounded Oliver in the emergency room, poking, prodding, and hooking him up to more machines than any human should ever have to be connected to. His blood pressure and pulse had dropped to a heart-stopping low. I’d heard a variety of terms ranging from dilated pupils, cardiac dysrhythmia, and partial paralysis. None of them sounded like good prognoses. They pumped him full of various medicines, and by some miracle stabilized him. Oliver was taken to a private wing in the hospital. How could he have been fine one minute and the next not?

One of the nurses had come out of his room and said he’d regained consciousness, and normally that would have been a good sign, but he was hallucinating and running a fever. It seemed similar to the illness he’d come down with in Cincinnati, although this was, without a doubt, more severe than that had been. The hospital ran a slew of tests and a full toxicology report. Being in Hollywood, I assumed they’d thought a certain designer drug was the culprit, and for all I knew, it was possible.

After a long wait, the doctor walked into the waiting room with bronzed hands crossed in front of his crisp white lab coat. “Mrs. Pierce, Oliver is beginning to come around. He’s becoming more lucid and—”

She hopped out of her seat. “He-he is?”

“Yes, but he’s not out of the woods yet. He requested to speak with you.”

She took two steps before the doctor stopped her. “Actually, he’d like you two to join her as well.” He pointed to Vance and me.

Vance and I looked at each other with furrowed brows, shrugged, and stood.

“Whatever he wants,” I added.

“What about me?” Cici asked.

“Why don’t you release a statement to the media and tell them Oliver is coming around, but we don’t know much else. I’m sure they’re chomping at the bit by now,” Camille said.

“Sure.” Despite her chipper tone and broad smile, Cici left with rounded shoulders.

Camille knocked on Oliver’s door before entering. We found Oliver supine in his bed, looking pale and slightly green. He watched us enter the room. His eyes were sunken in and rimmed in red. Vance and I stayed at the foot of his bed.

“Darling.” Camille sat at his side and attempted to put his hand in hers, but he pulled away. “Darling? What’s wrong?”

“I know.” His voice was cold as steel.

“You know what?” Her chin tilted down as she shrank back.

“The bourbon. I know you poisoned me and probably have been poisoning me.”

Vance and I looked at each other with wide eyes. I went through the catalog of events over the past weeks and everything I’d heard in the media in recent months regarding his health.

She laughed heartily and placed her hand over her abdomen. “That’s absurd! Totally ridiculous.”

“My toxicology report came back. It could have only been you Camille. All these months where I’ve suddenly become ill. I’ve been to doctor after doctor and thought it was just a string of bad luck combined with exhaustion, but it’s been you all along, hasn’t it?”

“I find it rather telling that you’re so quick to accuse me, of all people, the one who constantly speaks your praise. Have you ever thought to look at that doe-eyed assistant of yours? I bet she tries to sneak strawberries into my food like she did with that smoothie she
accidentally
forgot to throw away. She just wants to be the next Mrs. Pierce.”

He shook his head and puffed a small laugh. “Oh, please.
That
is ridiculous. You should have never drunk that, and you know it.”

“Really? Okay. And what about that little car accident of yours? Rats chewing through brake lines—who’s heard of anything so bizarre?”

“Strange things like that can happen.”

“Oh sure, right. They happen all the time. And what about that special new tea she’s been fixing you lately, huh? I guess you don’t see the coincidence in that, do you?”

“No, I don’t. She’s observant and pays attention to what I like. It’s what I pay her for.”

“And what else are you paying her for?” Her look silently accused him. “If I hadn’t shown up in Cincinnati, would you two still have been sleeping in separate rooms?”

“Camille.” His tone held a certain finality. “They found solanine in my blood.” The color drained from her already pale complexion. “I had a hunch and told them to look for it. Looks like it was a good one.”

“What’s solanine?”  I asked.

“Do you want to tell them,
darling
, or should I?” His voice hardened and offered a warning.

Camille scooted her chair away from his bed and slowly rose, staring directly into his eyes. “You brought this on yourself.”

My skin felt like an accordion someone had squeezed, and all of my body heat escaped. I took a step toward Camille.

Oliver held up his hand. “It’s okay—she can’t do anything to me anymore. But I want to clear some things up, and I have a few questions that deserve answers.”

“Do you now?” Camille crossed her arms.

“You’ve been poisoning me for months.”

Her shoulders tipped in a barely visible shrug.

“Those men who took me the day I got sick on set, where I can only assume you also poisoned my salad, you hired them?”

Her lips were flat and even. “I needed you impaired, and it offered a convenient distraction to your little security girl here. You left me no other choice.”

“You tried to kill me? The man who always stuck beside you, the man who held onto your secret, the man who lifted you up for so many years before your career took off, you tried to murder?”

“Yes, because you’re the ungrateful shit who wants to throw me away like a used tissue, just toss me in the trash with yesterday’s lunch.”

“But why make me sick over and over for the past few months?”

“To show you how much you needed me. I felt you slipping away months ago, but I always helped you feel better, didn’t I?”

“By what? Backing off of poisoning me?” He huffed in disbelief.

“Sure that, but also the special juices, arranging the doctor’s visits, and getting you medicine.”

“But you were the cause of everything!”

She held up her hands. “I had to do it, don’t you see? We needed each other! I saved you all those times just like I knew you’d save me when I drank that smoothie.”

“Wow.” He laughed and appeared dazed. “You’re sick.” He took a deep breath and released it slowly. “We’ve put on the charade long enough, and I’m tired of acting.”

“Maybe
you’re
acting. Have you ever thought for a second I’m not, that I still love you?”

“One thing I know for certain is that you’re a tremendous actress, and this has been your greatest performance. You don’t try to kill someone you love.”

She rolled her eyes. “God, you’re so obtuse.”

“And you’re a psychopath. What sane person does something like this?”

“Maybe one who’s been pushed to her limits by her thankless husband.”

“Do you not see how crazy this is, poisoning me and hiring men to kill me?”

She ran her hand over her hair from root to tip. “For all the good it did me. The greedy thieves tried to blackmail me, even after they screwed up in the park. They couldn’t do one simple thing.” She swatted something floating in the air. “I should have never trusted them again. I don’t know why I was surprised when they did what they did.”

“Jesus, that was you too?” He furrowed his brow. “Why would you do that?”

“Because, you wouldn’t leave well enough alone. You pushed and pushed and pushed me the moment I arrived in town, throwing her name in my face the first opportunity you got. A little accident in the park where you were killed would’ve shut you up and would’ve been less of an inconvenience to Martin on the set.”

“How considerate of you.” He shook his head. “And then people would have seen your suffering. I bet you would have loved all the attention.” His mouth slacked as he looked away.

“Probably.” She shrugged. “But I even gave you another chance after that, but again.” She narrowed her eyes. “You insisted on starting arguments every chance you got. And now this divorce nonsense.”

Oliver’s muscles tightened, and he drew his head back stiffly. “I just… I can’t… I just can’t believe you’d do this. And you say you love me.”

“Oh please. People show their love in different ways. Have I ever mentioned your diddling on the side? What was that last actress’s name, the young, up-and-coming who knew you’d launch her career?” She thrust one finger toward him. “I never said a word, not one, or even acted the slightest bit jealous. That’s love, Oliver. That. Is. Love.”

“You’re insane. It’s been long enough, and it’s time for the truth to come out.” Both remained silent for a few beats. Oliver turned to Vance and me. “Twenty years ago—”

“Oliver don’t!” Camille’s lips pulled back in a snarl. “I swear to God.”

His icy stare landed on her face. “I’m finished listening to you and trying to be rational. I have to tell someone for my own protection, since killing people comes so easily to you.” He returned his gaze to Vance and me. “Like I was saying, twenty years ago, Camille and Lindy Hollon were up for the role of Sember Adler in
Acts of Desperation
—”

“I won’t let you do this to me.” Camille lunged for Oliver and wrapped her hands around his throat.

In an instant, I pulled her off him, and Vance forced her to the ground.

“Christ!” Oliver clutched his neck. “You’re certifiable!”

Vance lifted Camille to her feet and held her hands behind her back. “Should I call the police?”

“No, not yet. I’m going to finish what I have to say, and I want to watch her face as I do it.”

“Oliver…” Camille offered her final warning and struggled to free her hands.

“The day before Camille and Lindy were supposed to audition for the role of Sember Adler, Camille decided she’d stack the cards in her favor. She arranged a lunch with Lindy. Her plan was to have her become so ill she wouldn’t be able to show up for the audition. Solanine, as you asked before, is a poison. It’s odorless and tasteless. It should have only made Lindy sick, but because she was starving herself with the popular diet of cocaine and diet Coke, her body couldn’t handle it and she died. Her death was ruled an accidental overdose, but Camille and I both know that’s not the real reason, don’t we?”

“No one will believe you, and you’ll look just as bad as me if you come out with this now, twenty years after her death. What will they say about you?” Her hot stare focused in on Vance and me. “And you two, if either of you speak to the media, I’ll sue you both for everything you have, and then I’ll go after your families. I don’t need to remind you of the nondisclosure agreement you both signed. You’re bound by that little piece of paper, you understand?”

I opened my mouth but only grunts came out.

“Camille!” Oliver barked.

“Don’t you ‘Camille’ me, and don’t you dare underestimate me.”

He laughed. “Don’t you dare underestimate me. I’m going to finish filming my movie, and then I’m going public with the divorce. Don’t fight me. I can spin Lindy’s death any way I want, or I don’t have to mention it at all. If anything should happen to me though, Vance and Diana know the truth. I’m just as smart as you. I’ve made enough money that if it destroys my career, then so be it. It won’t destroy me, and my conscience will be clear. But you are the public’s perception of you. There is no real Camille Pierce. Your life will be a shell of an existence, and I will see to it that it’s as miserable as I can make it.”

Camille’s nostrils flared, and her jaw clenched.

“You’re not coming back to Cincinnati with me,” Oliver added. “I’ll have all your things sent here. As far as I’m concerned, we’re officially separated. The only way this stays clean is if you sign the papers. Sign them, or I will go for your jugular.”

Camille panted the rage from her body.

Cici rapped on the door and spoke through a crack, “I heard you’re feeling better. Can I come in?”

Oliver looked to Vance, and in a silent exchange, told him to release Camille. She snatched her hands free and rubbed her wrists.

“Come in,” Oliver said.

“Hey, how’re you feeling?” Her voice was syrupy sweet, but her concern genuine. “I told everyone you’re exhausted because of the grueling filming schedule and all the travel.”

“How right you are. Stress can take a toll on our bodies. Thanks for handling that.” He adjusted the covers on his chest.

“No problem. I’m happy to help.” Cici stopped suddenly and looked at all of us. By the expression on our faces, she saw something was up. “Do you need me to do anything else?”

He looked at Camille and back to Cici. “Actually, I’ll need you to go to the house and pack my bags. As soon as I’m released, I’m going back to Cincinnati. Diana and Vance, please gather your things and be ready to leave.”

“Sure,” Cici answered but knitted her brows together. “What about Camille?”

“She’s not coming with us. Camille, please leave.”