For The Wicked (Fantasy Heights) (13 page)

Amanda didn’t care. Shelley had this coming, and more.

It took ten minutes to reach Shelley’s place. She pulled up to a curb, surprised to see a very nice condo. Antiqued brass porch light on. Sheer, gorgeous drapes covering well-lit front windows. How could Shelley afford a place like this if she wasn’t working? Did she expect Darren to pay for it?

After huffing out an annoyed breath, Amanda marched up the front steps and pressed the doorbell.

Shelley appeared almost instantly, dressed in pink capris and a white twin-set. She smiled from ear to ear and held the door open. “Come in, come in. Is Thomas with you?”

Son of a bitch. “Uh, no.”

She stepped into the foyer and Shelley led her through to a living room. The place must have come furnished. Its living room suite with lush cream brocade upholstery whispered stories about a considerable price tag in a French accent.

Shelley poured her a shot of something dark and handed it over, then held her own glass up as if she expected Amanda to toast her good fortune.

Amanda tossed the whole thing back without prejudice. She was not above indulging in liquid courage when the need arose. And the need was definitely upon her.

Shelley didn’t drink the toast, but the girl clearly had a head start. Which made Amanda feel better. Much easier to interrogate the girl if they were both half loaded.

“So.” Amanda did her best to sound interested yet calm. “What do you start on Monday?”

“Oh! I suppose I never said, did I? I got the greatest job, thanks to Thomas.”

“Really. He didn’t mention it.”

Shelley watched her a moment, then clicked her tongue. “Don’t be like that. He was just being friendly.”

Amanda’s deception meter buried itself in the red. Thomas? Friendly? Not bloody likely. “When did you talk to him?”

“He texted me about two weeks ago, and we’ve been talking off and on ever since. I told him I liked it up here, and that it would be nice if I could stay close to my sister, and he’s been helping me out. He put me in touch with the owner of this place, and—”

Amanda stood up. There was absolutely, positively, no way Shelley was telling the truth. Thomas would not have done any of this without telling her.

Shelley protested. “What… Where are you going?”

“Did you really think I’d fall for this? I don’t know what I ever did to earn so much contempt, but I’m sure I’m very sorry for it. You’ve punished me any number of times, now.”

“What are you talking about? You think I’m lying?”

“I know you’re lying. Thomas would never have talked to you, let alone helped you.”

Shelley snorted and dug her phone out of her pocket. “Wanna bet? Look at all these messages.”

Amanda stood by, mentally preparing an argument against made-up text messages. She wouldn’t put it past Shelley, who clicked and swiped on the phone, then held it up to scroll through hundreds of texts. Long conversations between Shelley and Thomas’s private cell number.

Oh, hell. If all of those texts were made up, that was an awful lot of work. Far too much effort for someone as flaky as Shelley. Amanda didn’t want to believe it, but maybe…

Guilty. Guilty as charged.

She had no idea what to say. She couldn’t even breathe. This could not be happening again.

Cheerful as ever, as if she hadn’t just crushed Amanda under her heel, the younger girl chattered onward. “So this place I’m working. I start in an office position, but I’m hoping it turns into something else. I guess it’s sort of an escort service.”

What? “I beg your pardon?”

Shelley clicked her tongue. “Uh-huh. Go ahead and feign the outrage, as if Thomas hasn’t told me all about Fantasy Heights. He said you probably wouldn’t like me working there, and thought I might like Trebizond better.”

“What…
What
? Did you say Trebizond?”

No. No, no, no. There was something seriously wrong, here. She knew about Trebizond. They were DriveRate’s version of the Paramour Project. The scruples-free version.

“Yeah. Trebizond,” Shelley confirmed.

“And you say Thomas hooked you up with them?”

“Yeah. And what’s your deal? I tell you Thomas spilled the beans about Fantasy Heights and all you can do is ask me about Trebizond?”

Some things were clicking home, now. Not right. Something was definitely not right. No matter what, nothing would ever convince her that Thomas would recruit for the enemy. Those texts. Anyone with access to the Internet could probably learn to clone a cellular number without too much trouble.

She turned on Shelley. “Look. I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, but you have to call those people back and turn them down. You can’t work there. They’re criminals. The people who own the company have brainwashed people. They’ve
murdered
people.”

Her blood ran cold when Shelley gave her a quizzical look. “My God. You really don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?”

“I know. I know all about Trebizond and DriveRate. Thomas told me everything, and I don’t care.”

“Excuse me?”

“These DriveRate people are powerful. They pay well. And I want a life of my own, just like you said.”

“Oh, my God. How did you turn into this person? Go pack your stuff. I’m taking you home to Mom and Dad. You need some serious help.”

A moment later, she was stumbling backward through the foyer, shoved away by a suddenly irate Shelley.

“Get out! Get the fuck out of my house!”

Amanda righted herself half a step away from colliding with the hall closet door. Caught between bone-deep fear for Shelley and a near overpowering revulsion for what this all meant, she rested against the door. What the hell was she supposed to do? She couldn’t let Shelley get entangled with Trebizond. She would never be able to live with herself if something happened. And it undoubtedly would, never mind that Shelley would fit right in with DriveRate’s cesspool of damaged minds.

“Shelley…” she attempted.

The girl stomped around her to open the front door. “Get out, or I’m calling the police.”

“Please do. I’ll wait here. And you can tell them all about your new job and why we’re fighting.”

This led to another profane outburst and a scuffle that ended with Amanda shoved onto the front porch.

She stood there for a moment or two, stunned into incredulity. This was madness. Insanity.

So upset now she could hardly form a sentence, Amanda walked backward down the porch steps.

Her mind began to jolt along in fits and starts like a car running out of fuel. The condo’s front windows seemed to dip and swirl. She stumbled, catching her heel on the walk.

The ground shifted. Or seemed to. Vertigo? Her head felt seriously weird. Sort of sluggish and lopsided. Maybe she shouldn’t have slammed that shot of whiskey or whatever it was. And maybe she shouldn’t drive.

She’d call someone to pick her up once she reached the car. Nearly there, she aimed the key fob and pressed the unlock button. Just as she was about to open the door, someone grabbed her forearm.

It was a big hand. Her eyes traveled from the hand, up an expensive shirtsleeve to a beefy shoulder, and finally onto a familiar face. Tony. Brandon and Lily Briggs’s bodyguard.

“Tony? What are you…”

“You shouldn’t drive in this condition. Where’s your purse and phone?”

“I… In the car?”

Tony took the car keys from her hand.

She frowned as he reached into the car for her purse. He dug through it, pulled out her phone, and pocketed it.

So odd, how Tony had appeared out of nowhere. And why wasn’t she stopping him? Why did she feel so strange? Her head, her thoughts, sloshed like a fishbowl.

Tony did not let them settle. He pulled her around the car to the passenger’s side. She didn’t seem to have control of her limbs anymore. No will to fight him, or ask what he wanted. She felt as if she were walking on stilts of different lengths, one side dipping, the other too high.

She careened alongside him and then the world tilted again. She landed in the backseat of her car, head lolling.

Tony next appeared in the driver’s seat. “All right. Now you may relax.”

Only she didn’t relax. She struggled to stay alert, to make sense of Tony’s actions as he drove away. Losing battle. Her attention skidded in long streaks. Every once in a while, when the car would turn or stop or hit a bump, she would reach the crest of a wave and her thoughts would break the surface enough to register what was happening.

After a time, she saw trees out the window. Thick trees. Tony hauled her from the car into a building. A barn, she thought. Or maybe a garage. Slat walls. Support beams. No windows.

Right in the middle of the dimly lit space, Tony began to undress her. At last, she was able to force out a small sound of protest. “What are you… Where are we?”

“Don’t worry,” Tony told her. “You’re in wardrobe.”

Oh. This was a fantasy. And she recognized the costume. She’d worn it before. White micro-mini skirt. White jacket.

While Tony corralled her nerveless legs into the skirt, flashes of past images sketched a memory. Pictures in the conservatory. An office. Glass walls inside the Viewing Room. And Derek. Derek would join her at the desk. Derek with that ridiculous hair and naughty mind.

Oh, God, she’d missed Derek so bad. She couldn’t wait to see him again.

“Derek?” she asked aloud.

Tony fumbled her. A new pair of hands came from somewhere, and another familiar face swam into view. Brent. Brent Johnson.

Wait a minute. Brent. What was Brent doing here? He was bad. “They fired you,” she said aloud.

“Nice to see you again, too,” he responded.

“Christ,” Tony complained. “It took you long enough to get here.”

“A little warning might have been nice. What’s with all the gas tanks outside? What the fuck is going on?”

“Independence day. Help me get Amanda into this suit. I’ll explain in a minute.”

The two men worked together to get her into the white jacket. She would have threaded her arms through the sleeves just fine, but her hands felt weird, as if they’d been sealed in something thin and airtight.

Wrong. Something wrong. This was not wardrobe. This shouldn’t be happening, should it?

“What are you… Why am I…”

Tony cut her off. “Quiet. You’re not supposed to talk on set.”

Oops. Thomas was always telling her to…

Her mind snapped back to Thomas, but ricocheted off Shelley, only to rebound onto Josh. Dumped. She’d been dumped. Again. How could they do that to her? She loved them.

The tears returned. Or tried to. The singing tension in her throat splintered and crackled as if her chest and head had been replaced by a tube of broken glass. Nothing worked right. Not her mind, not her body.

“Okay. Let’s get her into that chair at the table,” he said. “Yvette wants this to look as close as possible to the usual fantasy setup. Girl on the left, Brandon on the right.”

Brent assisted. “God, not this crap again. What is it with her and the white suit and office fantasy?”

“Hell if I know. All I know is, this is our best chance to get rid of Yvette. She wants to clear the decks tonight. But first she wants to play out the fantasy with Brandon while everyone’s here.”

“That’s gross, man. And if she wants you to drug everyone, they can’t watch anyway.”

“The drugs serve another purpose. She wants them still alive when the fire starts. They’ll all die in the fire… Amanda, Josh, Thomas. Lily, too.”

“What? But… Okay, I can understand Yvette wanting to take out the Fantasy Heights crew. They’re a threat. But why kill Lily? Yvette promised you could have Lily for yourself once she had control of Brandon.”

“I know what she said. But count the kits on the table, Brent.”

Amanda looked at the table before her, too. Sitting in the middle was a black duffel bag. Beside it, lined up neatly, were five little black plastic cases. The kind that held Janos drugs.

“There’s five,” Brent said. “If she only plans to kill Amanda, Josh, Thomas and Lily, why are there five instead of four?”

“I’ve been asking myself that question for the last three days. It’s obvious there’s something Yvette’s not telling me. And I’m sure that means my name is on one of those cases, right along with Lily’s. That way, Yvette gets Brandon free and clear. I’ll be damned if I’ll let that happen. So we’ll follow her plan to the letter until Josh and Thomas are under control. With those two out of the way, the rest will be easy. We’ll make our move. You help me with this, and you’ll be my second in command.”

Amanda couldn’t tell anymore whether what she was hearing was fantasy or reality. She sat there, very quietly, watching Brent’s face.

Maybe he’d forgotten his lines from the script or something, because he didn’t respond right away. But after a moment, he gave a sharp nod. “I’m in. Tell me Yvette’s plan.”

“It’s already begun. First, we used the stepsister to lure Amanda away from Thomas and friends. Now, we use Amanda to lure Brandon. I can’t get to him any other way, now that he doesn’t trust me anymore.”

“True. And then?”

“After Brandon, then we use Amanda again to lure in Josh, and then Thomas. Once everyone’s here, they’re all sedated and Yvette has had her fun with them, we torch the place and let the fire take care of the rest.”

“Got it,” Brent said. “How do we bait Brandon?”

“I’ve got Amanda’s phone. We’ll take a picture of her, send it to him, and Brandon’ll come running. Help me with her.”

The two of them moved her around in the chair. They tugged at the white jacket’s lapels until she was all but spilling out. Tony lifted one of her hands to nestle it between her breasts.

“Hush, now,” Tony soothed. “Sit still for me. We’re gonna take your picture.”

It felt good to be still. Cold, though. If only there was a blanket. Brent lifted her cellphone and held it in position until a bright flash made her eyes squeeze shut. Hurt. So hard to hold a thought. Things kept moving and revolving and the ends of ideas never fit back together quite right. And then she would drift. Get lost and wander away from the fire, out into the wild.

A commotion called her back. When she pulled herself together enough to see what was happening, she found she was no longer alone at the table. Brent and Tony had brought Brandon Briggs to join her.