Star Crossed (Stargazer) (34 page)

D
aniel moved from the side of the Eiffel Tower overlooking the Strip to the side with the dull view of concrete suburbia stretching toward brown mountains, because it matched his mood. His heart had been racing ever since Wendy mentioned moving to L.A., which had shocked him into blind anger. She couldn’t leave New York. She just couldn’t. Couples had fun together all the time and then let each other go because a relationship would be inconvenient. People in love did not let each other go.

Daniel knew this. He’d known it when he asked Wendy to marry him. He’d known it when he asked for a honeymoon. He’d known it when he picked this fight with her, but in the back of his mind he’d been hoping she would be the one to cave so he wouldn’t have to deal with the inevitable.

But of course she’d been right. She’d been grasping for a solution to the problem and he’d refused to budge, but the solution was obvious. He hated his job. He’d always hated it. He’d taken it because he felt guilty that his brother was dead and he was not. He’d accepted that fate for years, right up until Wendy made him laugh. Now he remembered how happy his life could be. From now on, he wouldn’t settle.

Rapping his knuckles on the iron rail to bring himself back to reality, he hurried to the elevator, half expecting to find Wendy along the way. He looked for her again in the casino and on the walk back to his hotel room. Outside the door, he rehearsed in his mind what he would say to her, more nervous than he’d ever been meeting a megastar, because this really mattered. He slid his card through the lock and cracked the door. “Wendy?”

Nothing.

Damn, he’d missed her. She must have packed the same way she unpacked, by flinging things. But as he walked in, he saw that she hadn’t touched her clothes. She hadn’t been back to the room.

He called her, texted her, and e-mailed her, increasingly alarmed when she didn’t answer. She
always
answered
something
. She must be more pissed at him than he’d ever been at her.

He didn’t have much time before he needed to leave for the airport to catch his flight to L.A., but he packed his suitcase as neatly as he could. He really needed to leave and she hadn’t shown up. Pacing, he wondered
whether he should pack her suitcase for her, on the off chance she suddenly appeared and they needed to rush out. If he didn’t pack it, they were strangers. Enemies. If he did pack it, they were a married couple who’d had an awful quarrel.

He packed it.

She didn’t show.

He sat on the bed, beating his brow with his fist. He would have to miss his flight and stay. He couldn’t leave without her.

His phone rang and he dove for it. Thank God!

But it wasn’t her, he realized as the ringtone played a few more notes. It was his father, barking at him in his clipped British accent that Olivia Query’s baby daddy couldn’t take the pressure anymore of his family living with another man. Though the world would find out with just a little digging the terrible secret that he’d served time in juvie, he’d agreed to be interviewed on a gossip show tomorrow, outing Victor Moore.
That
was the reason Daniel had to fly to L.A. tonight. He couldn’t stay until Wendy returned.

Cursing his job, his father, Victor, and all baby daddies who had never heard of condoms, Daniel scribbled a note for Wendy on a hotel notepad:
Call me! I love you & I’m sorry
. This time he had no regrets leaving it on her suitcase, because he meant it.

At the airport, already making calls to pinpoint what had gone wrong in Olivia and Victor’s marriage, besides everything, he sat down to wait at the gate for Wendy’s flight. The call for first class was announced.
The rest of the plane boarded. The door was closed. The plane took off without Wendy.

Daniel called Sarah.

“She’s angry with me,” he admitted. “Would she decide to stay another day in Vegas on a whim? That sounds like her.”

“Yeah, she might,” Sarah said. “But not when she’s been in so much trouble here lately. She loves this job more than life itself.”

“So she said,” Daniel murmured. “And if she did decide to stay an extra day, she would call you and tell you that, wouldn’t she?”

“See, you know her pretty well.”

“I do,” Daniel said. “And no matter how mad she was, I don’t think she’d disappear without checking in, especially because we got married, and—”

“You did
what
?” Sarah shrieked through the phone.

“Two nights ago we got married, with Lorelei and Colton at the ceremony,” Daniel explained, “so the media would assume it was Lorelei and Colton tying the knot. Things were going okay, but this afternoon we had an argument and decided to get divorced. I didn’t mean it, and I hope she didn’t, either.”

Sarah was silent so long that Daniel was about to ask if she was still there. He couldn’t afford a dropped call right now—

“You got
married
?” she yelled. “Is that why she made Tom and me leave town, because we would have stopped her?”

“Yes, but—”

“You manipulative ass! I knew she was up to something. I let her get away with it because she hates my husband,
hates him
, and she’s never said a word about it. We don’t have to agree about everything just because we’re friends. But I thought you were going to screw her, Daniel. I never would have left her alone if I’d thought you were going to
marry her
!”

Daniel rubbed his brow. “So you don’t have any idea where she would have gone or who she would have contacted—”

“What if Rick really is after her, like you guys were thinking at first?” Sarah insisted. “Do you know how terrified she is of that guy? Do you know how hard she is to terrify?”

“Yes,” he said, jogging through the airport with his suitcase rolling behind him. “I’ll find her.”

Back in the taxi, he phoned Detective Butkus, who dutifully took down the latest details of the saga but said he couldn’t file a missing persons report until Wendy had been gone twenty-four hours. It sounded to the detective like Wendy was furious with Daniel and would come back when she was ready. If Daniel had been Detective Butkus, he would have thought the same thing. But as Sarah had said, Daniel knew Wendy pretty well. And he was scared for her.

Then he phoned his father and said he couldn’t go to L.A. Someone else could go, or his father could go. When his father predictably started yelling, Daniel shouted back, “I am having a family emergency!” then hung up and blocked his father’s calls.

The taxi dropped him off in front of the Paris casino. He wheeled his suitcase just inside the door, slipped the security guard he recognized from that afternoon a hundred-dollar bill, and showed him Wendy’s picture on his phone. “Long blond hair,” Daniel added. “Beautiful woman.”

“Yeah,” the guard said. “She left with some movie star, the one who’s in town because he was on that TV show last night? He had his arm around her.”

Daniel swallowed. “Colton Farr?”

The guard snapped his fingers. “Exactly!”

Daniel ran across the street to the casino where he’d been staying, dragging his suitcase, cursing the whole way. Just inside the door, he handed his suitcase off to a bellhop, along with another hundred and his business card, and asked him to call if Wendy was in the room or her suitcase was gone.

He hurried across the casino floor to the blackjack tables. Maybe Rick had been following Wendy around town. More likely, Colton himself, boor, emotional abuser, asshole, who’d wanted her from the very beginning, had taken her.

Daniel assumed what was becoming his usual position on the periphery of Colton’s blackjack table and waited for Colton to notice him. Colton did his usual double take. He cursed with a vehement shake of his head, scooped up three ten-thousand-dollar chips and some change, and slammed away from the table. All his former deference to Daniel was gone.
He approached him with his own arms crossed and demanded, “
Now
what?”

Daniel nodded toward a door at the back of the huge room. “We need to talk in private.” He led the way into the service corridor. He’d worked in this casino enough times to know that the hallway where they were headed had no traffic and no security cameras. After he’d closed the door behind them, it was the perfect place to ball his fist and sock Colton in the eye.

“Hey!” Colton hollered, holding his cheekbone. “What the fuck, man?”

Daniel hadn’t hit anyone since high school. The searing pain in his hand just made him madder. “I’ll tell you what the fuck.” He lunged at Colton, knocking him into the wall, and pressed his arm across Colton’s throat. “Where’s Wendy?”

“With you!” Colton choked out.

He sounded sincere. He was also an actor. Daniel eased some of the pressure off Colton’s neck, making him think he was being released. Then, while he was still off balance, Daniel slammed him into the wall again. “Tell me where she is and I’ll walk away. If I find out later that you know where she is and you lied, I will fuck you over so hard that you’ll wish you were still doing community theater in Des Moines. You know I can do it.”

“I have no fucking idea! Get
off
me!”

With a final curse, Daniel threw Colton to the floor and paced a few steps away, running his hands
through his hair. He was out of ideas. If Colton wasn’t lying, Rick must have Wendy after all. And Daniel had no clue how to find them.

“Have you lost your mind?” Colton exclaimed from the floor. “You sound British all of a sudden, like you’ve always secretly wanted to play Hamlet.”

Daniel’s pesky British accent had come back, which made sense. He’d never been so stressed in his life. He asked Colton, “Have you ever heard of a guy who looks like you getting into parties or hanging with the paparazzi?”

“No,” Colton said, sitting up against the wall and touching one finger to the bruise under his eye. “But if you have a question about those prying assholes, you should ask Lorelei. She makes friends with them for some damn reason.”

“Call her,” Daniel said. “Right now.”

Colton coughed, spat blood on the floor, and pulled his phone out of his back pocket. He glared at Daniel as he waited for Lorelei to answer, but as soon as she did, his voice was friendly. “Hey! Listen, strange question. Ever heard of a photographer who looks like me?” His fair countenance grew darker, and the fluorescent lights of the hall seemed to dim as Daniel watched.

“Hold on,” Colton said. “I’m going to give you to Daniel. Tell him everything you just told me.” As he handed the phone up to Daniel, Colton said, “I don’t know what’s going on, but it doesn’t sound good.”

Taking the phone, Daniel noticed in passing that his hand was shaking. “Tell me,” he demanded.

“He’s been hanging with the crowd outside my house for a few years,” Lorelei said. “I thought that was creepy at first, because he showed up right about the time I started dating Colton, like he was trying to take advantage of looking like Colton, planned it or something. He seemed really nice, though. We joked about his looks. I got comfortable with him, I guess because he reminded me of Colton so much, and then—come to think of it—he’s the one who told me last weekend that I should call Wendy.”

Daniel took one pained breath. “What do you mean?”

“I was just talking to him outside when I was on my way to a club, because sometimes I tell the guys where I’m going to help them out a little, you know? And he said if I was having image trouble, he’d heard of this kick-butt girl at Stargazer who seemed to be saving ass for everybody he’s been taking pictures of lately.”

“What’s this guy’s name?”

“Rick.”

Daniel put one hand to his forehead. “Have you seen him in Vegas this week?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean he’s not there. I haven’t been looking. You know what, though? I’ve seen a friend of his, Billy. He’s probably still out in front of the casino. He has a handlebar moustache and he always wears a hat. The paparazzi dress a little weird—”

“Thanks. Bye.”

“Hey!” she exclaimed. “Why do you sound British?”

Daniel hung up on her and tossed the phone down
to Colton. “Sorry.” He barged through the door, back onto the glittering casino floor.

“Hey!” Colton called. He was out of breath when he caught up with Daniel. “If Wendy’s in trouble with this guy, let me help you.”

Daniel didn’t want Colton’s help, but he might need it. As they wound their way through the banks of slot machines, he told Colton about the attacks on himself and Wendy.

“You’re kidding!” Colton exclaimed as they pushed open the exit to the Strip, neon glowing everywhere in the night. “We thought you guys kept leaving the party early to screw.”

“I wish.” Daniel led the way down the sidewalk to where the paparazzi sat on folding chairs. They all jumped up as Colton approached. Cameras blazed as they took his picture. Daniel’s instinct was to guide Colton calmly away, because every bit of what they did next would be at the top of the gossip blogs tomorrow. It didn’t matter anymore.

Blinking into the flashes, he called, “Is Billy here?”

“I’m Billy.” Sure enough, the old man stepping forward wore a Wild West moustache and a floppy fishing hat.

Daniel drew him out of hearing of the other photographers, though they had no time to get out of shooting range. As the cameras flashed on, he handed Billy his last hundred, then asked, “You have a colleague who looks like my friend here?” He put a hand on Colton’s shoulder.

“Sure,” Billy said, folding the bill into his pocket. “Rick.”

“Do you know where he is?” Daniel asked, trying hard not to sound like he was afraid for his wife’s life.

Billy gave the worst possible answer to a man whose wallet was empty. “I might, if I didn’t have to work for a living.”

Daniel had no idea what to do now. He thought Detective Butkus might finally help him, but by the time the detective took Billy to the police station and pressed the truth out of him, it might be too late for Wendy. Daniel glanced toward the paparazzi, then back toward the security guards at the entrance to the casino, and calculated how quickly the two groups might come to Billy’s aid, and therefore how long Daniel could kick the shit out of him.