Not Wanted in Hollywood (18 page)

“Well” said Amber brightly. “Unfortunately we
can’t do anything right now, the club is about to open and things
could get a bit messy. I just need you to settle in and be patient.
Once the club closes we’ll take care of everything.”

Alistair’s jaw dropped and he looked
completely horrified. I had to admit that I was feeling slightly
sick myself. I don’t think there was any doubt as to how Amber was
planning to take care of everything. As the three of them left and
the door closed I heard a bolt sliding into place.

“
We’re in the
club somewhere,” I said to Alistair without looking
around.

I heard a thump behind me. I spun around to
find Alistair had slumped to the floor and was holding his head in
his hands.

“Did you hear her?” he moaned. “She’s going
to kill me.”

I liked that he didn’t really seem to care
that I was also going to be included in that equation. I squatted
down next to him.

“Alistair, you were the one who researched
this place. Do you know where we are?”

“
She’s going
to kill me,” he repeated. Obviously Alistair was unable to
multitask at this point in time. It seemed the news of his
impending death had taken over his entire brain, leaving no room
for the possibility of escape.

“Alistair, I need you to focus. Do you know
where in the club we are?” I said it as clearly and slowly as I
could and was rewarded when he looked up at me.

“We’re in the basement. We are going to die
in the basement of a strip club.”

Well that was
clear enough for me. I looked around. The basement was small and as
far as I could see, there didn’t seem to be any way of getting out
of it without first going through that door.

“
Maybe
there’s a weapon we could use, you know, to take her out when she
comes back for us.” Alistair raised his head and smiled. Of course
it wasn’t a nice smile. In point of fact it pretty much matched
Amber’s smile, but seeing as how it was on my side now, I was a lot
less bothered by it.

I clapped him on the back. “Brilliant plan,
now we just need to find something.”

Strangely
enough the basement of a strip club did not exactly lend itself to
finding weapons. We found a lot of old costumes that looked like
they had seen better days and bottles of caked makeup. Looking in a
closet I found a large tin.

“
Maybe we
could use this?” I said, showing Alistair.

The look he
gave me spoke volumes. He was right, as far as weapons went, it
didn’t really have the impact we were hoping for. Unfortunately
this basement looked like it wasn’t used for much in the way of
storage at all. I shook the tin. Hearing something inside, I opened
it up and found a sheaf of papers.

“
Alistair,” I
said.

“
You’re
wasting my time,” said Alistair. “Unless you’ve found something
useful, don’t bother me.”

At that moment if I’d found something useful
I would have used it on him.

“
I’ve found
the will,” I said.

“
What?” said
Alistair, coming up beside me.

“I’ve found the will leaving the club to
Brandi and it’s been signed.”

“
Fascinating
as that is, unfortunately I don’t see how it could possibly help us
out of this mess,” Alistair
said
,
resuming his hunt for a weapon.

We both froze
as we heard the bolt slide back. Alistair grabbed the tin out of my
hand and strode towards the door. I followed him to back him up. As
a figure came through the door Alistair held the tin high in the
air and brought it down hard. I grabbed his arm just before it
connected when I realized that the person opening the door was not
one of Hammy’s demented family, but was Brandi.

“What are you doing here?” I hissed.

“
Who cares,”
said Alistair. “The door is open, I’m leaving now.”

“
I heard
Amber talking,” said Brandi, swallowing nervously. “I called Susan
and she said she’d get help.”

“
We need to
get out of here now,” I said to Brandi. “Is there anyone
backstage?”

Brandi shook
her head. “
Denise
is having a meeting.
Amber and Hugh are out the front.”

“
Let’s go,” I
said. “We’ll go out the
back
.”

“
Finally,”
growled Alistair.

As we made our way through the back hallway we
were surprised when
Denise and Dominic
walked out of Hammy’s office. I pushed Brandi and Alistair forward.
Denise hadn’t seen us yet and with any luck we could hide in the
alcove until they went past.

“
Trudie, such
a pleasure to see you here,” boomed Dominic.

I closed my eyes. Once again I had that
horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that Dominic Caldwell was
going to get me killed.

Denise
’s eyes widened.

“
Go,” I
whispered to Brandi and Alistair.

Brandi scampered away and I hoped that she
would get help. Alistair, proving that sometimes people surprise
you, stayed with me and we both turned around.

“Hi Dominic, it is so good to see you. I
really would love to stay and chat with you but I’ve just got to
pop out for a bit. Can we please catch up later today.”

I could see the confusion on Dominic’s face.
Our interactions previously had consisted of me being quite
brutally honest with my desire to stay as far away from him as
possible. Actually suggesting that I wanted his company was as far
from my normal behavior as we could possibly get. I hoped he got
the message.

I heard a swift intake of breath from
Alistair and looked over. There standing next to him was Amber and
I could see that she was carrying a large knife which was now
pressed very firmly into Alistair’s side.

“
Now,” she
said with that smile that I knew, if I survived this, was going to
give me nightmares for weeks. “I think we all need to calm down and
think things through for the next few moments.”

I was
thinking. At this moment my mind was racing. Despite the fact I was
still relatively free, I couldn’t leave Alistair, because I could
see from the look in Amber’s eyes that she was quite capable of
killing him where he stood. Despite my questionable past, I had not
yet lost a client and I wasn’t going to start with Alistair,
tempting though the thought may have been at times.

“
What are you
doing sweetheart?” asked Denise.

She looked nervous and kept glancing at
Dominic. I didn’t blame her. Dominic was the unknown quantity here.
My personal hope was that we had enough of a relationship that he
might have a vested interest in my continued survival.

At that point Hugh walked into the
hallway.

“What’s happening here?” he asked slowly.

“
It seems
Alistair and Trudie didn’t have the patience to wait like I asked
them to,” said Amber, twisting the knife in Alistair’s side with
every word.

“
I feel I’ve
missed something,” mused Dominic.

I doubted it,
but I was so completely out of options that I was willing to follow
wherever he was going.

“
Amber and
Hugh here are Denise’s children who Hammy made give up when she got
pregnant. They are the ones who killed Hammy.”

There, everyone was up to date, now I just
needed Dominic to do whatever he planned to do to get us out of
this.

“
That was
messy,” remarked Dominic. “If you’re going to kill somebody there
really shouldn’t be a body left behind. It does make things
inconvenient.”

Of course. I
expected a brilliant rescue plan, what I get is Murder 101 for
psychopaths. If it was possible, Alistair looked even more
horrified than I did.

“
You’ve
really made quite the mess of things haven’t you?” said Dominic as
he casually strolled over to my side. “I wish I could help you, but
unfortunately for you, I am quite fond of Trudie.”

I was never going to admit how happy that
sentiment made me feel right at this point in time.

Dominic placed his hand under my elbow. “Now
if you will excuse me I will be taking Trudie and we will be
walking out of here.”

Amber looked at him as if he was crazy.

“What about Alistair?” I hissed. Alistair
looked at us as if to agree.

“
I don’t care
about Alistair,” Dominic said, totally unconcerned with Alistair’s
plight.

“
I’m going to
kill him,” Amber threatened.

Alistair whimpered and Dominic rolled his
eyes.

“How do you get yourself into these
situations?” he asked me.

“
Police,”
yelled out Griffin from the doorway, where he and Ramos were
standing with guns raised.

“
Finally,”
said Dominic.

“
No,” said
Amber, pushing the knife into Alistair a little bit harder. “It
wasn’t supposed to be like this. The club belongs to us. We earned
it.”

“
No it
doesn’t,” I said. “We found the will leaving the place to
Brandi.”

Amber faltered. “No, that isn’t possible. We
can’t have gone through all this just for him to leave it to
her.”

“
Miss,” said
Griffin. “Put the knife down now or we will shoot you.”

Amber looked down at the knife that she had
digging into Alistair’s side, indecision in her eyes. I could see
she was tempted to push the blade in and I held my breath. I let
the breath out when I heard the clatter of the knife as it hit the
floor.

“
Everyone on
your knees,” yelled Ramos.

Dominic
pulled me aside as the area filled with police. Amber, Hugh and
Denise ended up in handcuffs glaring resentfully at me. Not
unexpectedly Alistair had the same look.

“
I don’t
think I’ll be requiring your services anymore,” he said to
me
stiffly
, before being ushered away by
paramedics wanting to look at his side.

Once again I
was tempted to remind him that he wasn’t technically my employer,
his manager was. That being said I had a feeling that my time with
Alistair had reached its natural conclusion.

“
So you’re
unemployed?” said Dominic.

“
No,” I
sighed. “I do not want to work for you and I fail to see why you
would possibly want me in your employ. This is the second time you
and I have been in a hostage situation and we don’t even live in
the same city. Could you imagine what would happen if I worked for
you?”

Dominic gave an unabashed grin and for a
moment I could see why so many women were willing to ignore his
reputation. “I think it would be fun.”

Some people had the weirdest definition of
fun.

Griffin walked over to us and glared at
Dominic.

“
I’ll wait
over
there
,” Dominic said.

Griffin waited until we were alone.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“
I got hit on
the head again,” I said. “And I got kidnapped, again.”

Griffin stroked my hair back and tucked it
behind my ear.

“
I want you
to get checked by the paramedics and we need a statement,” he
said.

“
Okay,” I
replied.

Griffin smiled. “No argument, it must be my
lucky day.”

“
I’m too
tired to argue,” I said.

Brandi came up to me and I smiled. “You did
great Brandi. Thank you so much, you saved our lives.”

Brandi beamed.

“
This is
yours,” I said as I passed the paper I had hidden in the waistband
of my pants.

“
What is it?”
asked Brandi, looking confused.

“
It’s the
will Hammy showed you. It looks like he did sign it before he
died,” I said.

“
You mean I
own this place,” Brandi gasped.

I nodded and
pointed over to Dominic. “You see that man over there. The estate
owes him some money but I really think he might buy this place from
you, just make sure you have a lawyer look through the deal before
signing anything. You can leave and make a new start, somewhere far
away from here.”

Brandi’s eyes
filled with tears. “Thank you,” she gasped, before making her way
over to Dominic.

“You ready?” said Griffin.

I nodded and leaned into him as he put his
arm around me.

Lying in my bed later
that night
, I had trouble getting to
sleep. As expected that smile of Amber’s that was filled with
hatred for her father, was dancing in front of my eyes every time I
closed them. After giving my statement to Ramos and being given the
all clear by the paramedics, I had been shipped home by one of the
obliging uniformed officers.

I heard Griffin come into my apartment and he
stopped at my bedroom door.

“Am I still welcome to come in?” he
asked.

I sighed and sat up, clicking on the lamp
sitting on my bedside table. “Of course you are.”

“Can’t sleep?” asked Griffin as he sat down
on the bed beside me.

I shook my head. “How did it go?”

“
The three of
them are turning on each other like sharks in a feeding frenzy.
According to each of them it was the other’s idea. The kids are
mostly blaming Denise. From the sounds of it there seems to be a
lot of resentment that has built up over the fact that she chose to
give them away so that she wouldn’t lose Hammy. It seems Amber’s
real name is Janine Eaton.” He looked at me expectantly as if
thinking I’d be shocked that I didn’t even know her real name,
because I obviously truly believed that these girls were all born
with names like Amber and Brandi. I had become very comfortable
early on with the fact I would never know the real names of these
girls. “Seems Amber is really a paralegal from Wisconsin. She
tracked down her mother and then the two of them managed to track
down her brother. Seems this family had skills in strategy. Amber
went and got a job at the club. Hugh was already working for
Alistair and managed to talk him into doing the documentary
there.”