Instinctively I dropped the walkie-talkie, my hands flying up to my neck. I gasped for breath. In vain, I might add, as the pressure on my throat tightened. I tried to call out, but made no sound. Just a sickening gurgle of air being squeezed out of my lungs.
I fought to keep the world from going fuzzy, my vision blurring as the pressure behind my eyes built, stronger and stronger until I thought they’d bulge right out of my head. I kicked my legs wildly, coming up against a whole lot of empty space. My lungs burned, my stomach spasming, begging for oxygen. The lot began to fade from my vision, a big black nothingness slowly wrapping around my brain. In another two seconds, I knew I’d be a goner. I had to do something. Fast.
I closed my eyes, summoning up what strength I had left, and channeled Dana, doing the one move I’d remembered from the aerobic kickboxing class she’d dragged me to last fall. I moved my leg back in a swift motion, kicking back like a donkey in the region I hoped contained my attacker’s family jewels.
I heard a soft grunt behind me, his grip loosening momentarily. That was all I needed. I clawed at the strap around my neck, pulling just enough slack to slip it over my head. I bolted forward, tripping on my heels in the attempt. Marco’s leather pants scratched against the pavement as I fell on all fours, scraping the palms of my hands. But I barely felt it. My entire body was so grateful for air that I was taking huge, thirsty gulps of the stuff as I scrambled back up to my feet and took off running like a shot.
But apparently my kickboxing was a little rusty, as my attacker was quickly on my heels. I heard his footsteps echoing through the nearly empty lot behind me. But I didn’t turn around to look. I couldn’t. I was too freaked out. He was gaining on me-no small surprise, considering that my lungs still felt like I’d been inhaling Tabasco sauce.
I bolted past 6G, weaving through the maze of warehouses until I turned a corner and found myself in New York. The city streets were eerily still in the nighttime, dark in a way the real New York never was. I barreled through the Bronx and Manhattan, turning a corner and finding myself in San Francisco. I tripped once on the hilly terrain, but quickly scrambled to my feet as the steady pounding of footsteps behind grew closer.
I barreled on, turning the corner and curving back down a hill lined with fake Victorians. My throat hurt, my head hurt, my thighs burned, my entire body protesting that this was the hardest workout I’d had since Dana made me try a Billy Blanks Tae Bo video with her. I’d almost died of exhaustion then.
Only this time if I pooped out, I really would be dead.
I surged forward, running on pure adrenaline. I hit the bottom of the hill and rounded another corner into the Central Park section of the lot. I could feel him gaining on me, my heart racing as I wove between the trees. He was so close I could hear his breath coming hard and fast behind me, warning me that an out-of-shape shoe designer was no match for a determined killer.
And then I saw it. The metal detector.
Abandoned at this time of night, but the blinking red light over the archway indicated it was on. I prayed it was hooked up to a remote monitor somewhere in the security office. If I could make it to the metal detector, my shoes were sure to set it off-hadn’t they always?-and security would come running. I surged forward, new hope spurring me on. I felt my legs pumping so hard it was like running on overcooked spaghetti. My arms were shooting back and forth like pistons, my entire body leaning forward, urging me on despite the ever-present footsteps hovering just behind me.
I was so close, only a few more feet. I could see the gate beyond the metal detector, closed and locked now, of course. A sole overhead lamp illuminated the ugly plastic frame. Only right now, it looked like heaven to me.
I closed my eyes and pumped with all my might, visualizing myself as Flo-Jo, crossing the Olympic finish line. I was close; I could make it…
But on my steady diet of Top Ramen and takeout, it was clear I was no Olympic athlete. And as I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder, it became clear I wasn’t going to make my finish line.
I felt his hot breath on my neck as he spun me around. Hard.
“Unh.” The force threw me to the ground. I landed on my butt, facing the menacing figure in black. I crab-walked backward, whimpering as he hovered above me.
Then he stepped into the light and my breath caught in my throat, my paralyzing fear for a moment converted into pure shock.
“You!” I found myself saying, like some victim in a bad detective film.
She snorted, her perfectly manicured brows drawing together over familiar green eyes. “Surprised?” Mia asked. Then she threw her head back and laughed, tendrils of blonde hair escaping from the cap on her head. “Some detective you are, huh?”
I shook my head. “I…I don’t understand.”
“That’s not surprising; you’re not exactly a rocket scientist.”
Hey!
I ripped my gaze from her eyes-which were wide and slightly unbalanced, I now noticed-and let it travel down to her hands. One was twisting a brown leather belt. The other held a gun.
I gulped.
“You killed Veronika?” I squeaked out.
“Don’t pass judgment on me, you little twit, ” she said, pointing the gun at my nose. “If you saw what Veronika was doing, you wouldn’t think she was such an innocent victim. She was blackmailing someone, all right. Me!”
My head was spinning, partly from the lack of oxygen, but mostly with bits and pieces of information that had been swirling in my brain for days. And suddenly, as if by magic, they were falling into place.
“It was about the letters all along, ” I said.
Mia grinned, showing off two rows of perfectly bleached teeth. They seemed to glow in the moonlight, giving her face an eerie otherworldly look. If it was possible, she creeped me out even more.
“Yes, it was about the letters.”
“Only…” I paused, letting things fall into place. “Veronika didn’t write them. You did.”
For a moment her creepy smile faltered. Apparently I wasn’t playing the role of “dumb blonde” to her satisfaction. “It was all Blake’s fault. I was trailing in the ratings because of his stupid nerves. The man couldn’t even give a goddamned red-carpet interview without breaking into a sweat and stuttering like Porky Pig. And then that bitch Margo goes and tries to write me out of the film script. Me! Can you believe it? I’m the star of the show. So, I decided I needed more screen time. If the writers weren’t going to give it to me, I’d just have to write myself a new part.”
“Like the victim of a stalker fan?” I glanced behind Mia. Where was this extra security everyone kept talking about? If I could keep her talking long enough, surely someone would see us, right?
“Why not? Do you know how much fan mail I get every single day?” She snorted. “Five times as much as that Margo, I’ll tell you. So, I started sending some to myself. Increasingly obsessive. Then they started arriving daily, threatening my life.” She smiled again, and I was reminded of a wolf grinning down at its prey.
I shuddered. I hated being prey.
“You wouldn’t believe how the media ate that story up, ” she continued, eyes shining like a fever victim’s. “You know I hit the cover of Star, People, and US Weekly all in the same week?”
“So what went wrong?” I glanced over Mia’s shoulder. Come on, come on, what’s the holdup?
“Veronika, that’s what.” Her smile disappeared, her jaw setting into a hard angle as she stared at a point just beyond my head. “That nosy bitch. One day I come into my trailer and who do I find there but nosy Veronika? Lost her copy of the shooting schedule and wanted to borrow mine. Or so she said. She found one of my letters, half-finished. She may have been a nosy little bitch, but she wasn’t stupid. She put two and two together and realized I’d made up the entire story for the press.”
“And she threatened to go public if you didn’t pay her off?”
Mia nodded, her cap bobbing up and down. “Greedy bitch. She wanted half a mil.”
Which would have seemed like a fortune to Veronika. Only, according to Entertainment Tonight, Mia made at least that per episode.
“Why didn’t you just pay her off?”
Mia’s face distorted, her lips curling back to bare her wolfish teeth at me. “Because that wasn’t the way I planned it. Being a blackmail victim was not in my script. Blackmail is dirty and deceitful. I’m the damn star of this show! No one drags me to that level.”
O-kay.
Eccentric artist didn’t even begin to describe the kind of crazy that was going on here.
Mia took a step toward me, her eyes flashing, the gun catching the light as it glinted in my direction.
I winced, feeling my throat tighten up.
“So you killed her?” I squeaked out, stalling for time.
“Minor rewrite. But a good one, don’t you think? The perfect opportunity to escalate my stalker into a full-blown, above-the-fold murder story. I told her to meet me in my trailer after the wrap and I’d give her what she wanted. Greedy little thing actually thought I was going to pay her off. Ha!” Mia laughed out loud, a short bark that held little humor. “So, I handed her the money, and while she was busy counting it I came up behind her and strangled her with a pair of panty hose I’d taken from wardrobe earlier that day.”
The final piece of the puzzle clicked in my brain. “Dusty saw you take the panty hose.”
Mia frowned, obviously peeved that I’d skipped ahead in the script. “Yes. At the time I told her I’d run my first pair. But after she found Veronika, it became clear that Dusty wasn’t as stupid as she looked. She confronted me. Told me she was going to the cops with what she’d seen. Maybe the cops would have believed her, maybe not. But I couldn’t take that chance. Not when the press is eating this story up. I have a Barbara Walters interview scheduled! So, I had to write Dusty out of the picture.”
The way Mia referred to killing Dusty, as if she’d simply dropped a character from her little show, made me sick to my stomach.
“So, you killed her, too?”
Mia smirked. “I used Margo’s scarf to try to throw suspicion on her. Nice plot twist, huh?”
I glanced behind Mia’s shoulder again. Nothing. No sign of security. No sign of anyone.
I felt my heart clench in my chest as Mia took another step toward me and I realized I was truly on my own here. Maybe if I could just slowly inch backward toward that metal detector…
“What are you doing?” Mia took a step forward, shoving the gun in my face.
I froze. “Nothing.”
She snarled at me. “Then stop moving! I don’t want to have to shoot you. It’s supposed to be strangulation. Don’t make me ruin your scene.”
I gulped-and just barely avoided having those five cups of coffee sitting in my bladder stain Marco’s leather pants.
“So, what happens next?” I asked. Not that I really wanted to know. I was pretty sure that this was the point in the script where Mia went for an R rating by adding some gratuitous violence via one badly dressed blonde. But I figured the longer I kept her talking, the longer I had to come up with some brilliant plan to get away. (Yes, I was aware that as plans went, so far mine had backfired miserably.)
“Next, ” Mia said, taking a menacing step forward, “the nosy new wardrobe assistant is found dead by the back gate. The Magnolia Lane strangler strikes again.”
Mia’s wide eyes suddenly went calm as she took a step toward me, and I realized it was now or never. Unless I wanted to be found with black-and-blue marks on my neck that would really clash with my red leather and porn shoes, I had to move.
I watched Mia take one more step, closing the gap between us. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and said a silent prayer. Then in one swift movement that would make my mother’s tabby cat jealous, I pushed off the ground and lunged at her throat.
She screeched, thrown off balance, and staggered back a step as my weight slammed into her anorexic build. Had she been the one wearing three-inch heels, she might have fallen backward, giving me the upper hand. Unfortunately, she was wearing sturdy work boots and I was the one in the three-inch heels. She quickly regained her footing, dropping the belt to grab a handful of my hair instead.
I screamed. Loudly. It was one thing to catch a hair or two in a zipper, quite another to have an entire handful yanked from the roots. With visions of bald spots dancing in my head, I retaliated, my fingernails clawing at her face.
Her turn to scream. “Not my face, you bitch!”
She stomped on my foot with one of her boots, crushing my toes. I yelped, then knocked her cap off her head and grabbed a handful of blonde locks.
Yes, I admit it, we were in an all-out catfight. If this had been MTV, we’d be in the money. Only the winner of this catfight didn’t get her own reality special and label of Celebrity Bitch Queen. The winner got to walk away alive. The loser…well, I didn’t even want to think about the loser. Mostly because as Mia shifted and I felt that gun barrel poking my ribs, I had a bad feeling it might be me.
I grabbed her wrist and focused everything I had on pointing that gun anywhere but at my person. I danced her backward toward the metal detector. She resisted, pulling the other way. We tugged and pulled back and forth, moving closer and closer. One more little inch and…
Beep, beep, beep!
The thing went off, echoing through the air and, I hoped, making little red lights dance on Bug-eyed Billy’s monitor at the security office.
Mia dropped her hands, momentarily stunned before she realized what had happened.
“You stupid bitch! Look what you did!”
I let go of her and took another step back, setting off the machine again.
“Stop it! Stop walking back and forth!”
She straight-armed the gun in front of her, and I froze.
“You ruined everything! This was the perfect episode, ” she screamed. If she’d sounded crazy before, she looked it now, her hair sticking out on one side, red scratches down the side of her face, and her eyes big and wide, burning with an emotion only Freud could identify.
“That’s it, ” she said, taking one giant stride closer. “I’ll have to go with the alternate ending.”
My breath stopped as she cocked the gun, the sickening click echoing through the air. Suddenly time stood still, each beat of my heart thumping in my chest like a drum, blood rushing in my ears, the scenery going fuzzy until all I could see was the barrel of Mia’s gun. Big chicken that I was, I closed my eyes and felt hot tears build as I braced myself for the sound of a bullet thundering through the chamber.
And then it happened. The gun went off.
I sucked in a breath…
Then slowly let it out. What do you know-I wasn’t dead. One more breath in and out. Yep, still living.
I flipped my eyes open.
And saw Mia lying on the pavement in front of me, her eyes wide and unseeing, a big red stain pooling around her blonde curls.
Bile rose in my throat, and I would have screamed if I’d been able to find my voice.
“I told you I’d catch up to you!”
I looked up.
Oh hell.
It hadn’t been Mia’s gun going off.
It was Isabel’s.
Black hair flapped behind her like a cape, long, fishnet-clad legs pumping toward me, gun pointed out in front of her as two more cracks filled the air, bullets pinging off the side of the metal detector that started beeping like a car alarm again.
Was I the only person in L.A. not packing?
“You shot her!” I yelled, ducking behind the metal detector.
“You’re next, bitch!”
I held my hands out in front of me to ward her off. “Look, Isabel, I didn’t have anything to do with your boyfriend…”
“Snake hates me, and it’s all your fault!” Two more shots rang out.
“I’m sure you’re better off without him.”
“What do you know, Blondie?” Another bullet ricocheted off the side of the metal detector.
“Have you thought about couples therapy? I saw this Dr. Phil episode the other day about rage in relationships…”
But, luckily, I didn’t have to go any further.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a blue streak race across the lot and go flying at Isabel like a linebacker, tackling her to the ground with a thud.
I watched, relief thudding through me, as Queen Latifah pinned Isabel beneath her considerable bulk, one hand on her walkie-talkie as she yelled, “I’ve got a two-fifteen here! Requesting backup! I repeat, a two-fifteen!”