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Her little brother laughed. “Relax, Janey. I’m not going to sleep with her.”

Jane just looked at him. She liked Patty. A lot. The girl was smart, she was sweet, she was way overqualified for this glorified gofer position. The lack of backbone could be worked on—besides, Jane had plenty of that to go around.

Best of all, though, despite being paid only a stipend, Patty liked Jane. It was a win-win situation.

As long as Robin kept his own little win zipped up tight inside his pants and out of the equation.

Problem was, Patty had a serious crush on Robin. Which meant it was going to have to fall to him to keep his distance.

God help them all.

“You need to lighten up,” her brother told her now. “What is it
Variety
calls you?” He reached for a copy of the trade magazine that was out and open on her desk and started to read the latest section that Patty had highlighted. “ ‘Never too serious, party girl producer and screenwriter J. Mercedes Chadwick heats things up at the Paradise.’ ” He looked at her over the top of the oversized page. “Who are you, you too-serious she-bitch, and what have you done with my real sister, the party girl producer?”

Jane gave him the evil eye that she’d perfected back when she was six and he was four.

It didn’t scare him as much anymore. “Look,” he said, “I know you’re freaked out by these e-mails—”

“But I’m not,” Jane interrupted. “I’m freaked out by the fact that the studio’s freaked out. I don’t need a bodyguard. Robbie, come on. It’s just a few Internet crazies who—”

“Patty told me you got three hundred just today.”

“No,” she scoffed. “Well, yeah, but it’s, like, three crazies each sending a hundred e-mails.”

“You’re certain of that?”

“Yes,” she told him.

Robin was silent, obviously not believing her.

“Really,” she insisted. “How could this possibly be real?”

More silence. “Who’s paying?” Robin finally asked.

“For my lifetime of sin?” Jane responded. “I am, apparently.”

He gave her a get serious look—which was vaguely oxymoronic. Robin—telling someone else to get serious. “For this added security that HeartBeat Studios wants to set up,” he clarified.

“They are,” Jane said. Her budget for this film was already stretched thin. She was using her personal credit cards to pay for craft services. No way could she afford round-the-clock guards.

“Then I don’t see what the big deal is,” Robin said.

“You don’t understand,” Jane said. And he didn’t. Her brother, while not exactly simple, presented his true self to the world at all times. Well, except for lying to her about his intentions toward Patty . . .

Robin was a player and he didn’t try to hide it.
Too many women, too little time
—he’d said as much in his first interview with
Entertainment Weekly.
Consummate actor that he was, he came across as charming. The reporter—a woman, natch—portrayed him as boyishly honest about his inability to resist temptation, rather than selfish and spoiled.

To be sure, his being spoiled was partly Jane’s fault. As his older sister, she’d bent over backward to try to make life as easy as possible for him. Well, at least she had after she’d ended that phase where her every waking moment was devoted to tormenting her wimpy little freak of a half brother.

It had been difficult growing up with their parents. Between her and Robin, they’d had three households—Jane and her mom’s, Robin and his mom’s, and their father’s, where they spent every other weekend with him and his wife du jour.

Which meant that most of those weekends it was just Jane and Robin and their father’s housekeeper, who rarely spoke English and was replaced with an even greater frequency than the stepmom of the moment.

It was during one of those weekends that Jane first discovered that Robin’s entire life reeked of neglect. His mother was referred to by her own mother as “that drunken bitch,” so she probably shouldn’t have been too surprised.

Somewhere down the line, just a few years before Robin’s mother died and he moved in full-time with their father, Jane stopped being his chief tormentor and became his champion. His protector. His ally.

“What’s not to understand?” he asked her now. “HeartBeat wants to hire a couple of bodyguards for you. Use it. Spin it into something that’ll get us two, maybe three stories in the trades. If you do it right, maybe AP’ll pick it up.”

“I don’t want a bodyguard following me around day and night.” Jane’s public persona, “Party Girl Producer Mercedes Chadwick,” was as much a fictional character as any she’d ever created for one of her screenplays—the real-life gang in
American Hero
not included.

For the first time in her career—a crazy, seven-year ride that had started with a freak hit when she was still in film school—Jane was making a movie based on fact.

And was getting death threats because of it.

“I don’t want to have to be the ‘Party Girl Producer’ here in my own home,” she told her brother. Her feet hurt just from the idea of wearing J. Mercedes Chadwick’s dangerously high heels 24/7. Which she would have to do. Because her bodyguards would be watching her—that was the whole point of their being there, right?

And no way would she risk one of them giving an interview after the threat was over and done, saying, “Jane Chadwick? Yeah, the Mercedes thing is just BS. No one really calls her that. She’s actually very normal. Plain Jane, you know? Nothing special to look at without the trashy clothes and makeup. She works eighteen-hour days—which is deadly dull and boring, if you want to know the truth. And all those guys she allegedly dates? It’s all for show. The Party Girl Producer hasn’t had a private party in her bedroom for close to two years.”

If HeartBeat Studios hired bodyguards, she’d have to lock herself in her suite of rooms every night.

Patty knocked on the door, opening it a crack to peek in. “I’m sorry,” she reported. She started most of her conversations with an apology. It was a habit Jane intended to break her of long before
American Hero
was in the can. “They’ve set up a meeting here for four o’clock with the security firm they’ve hired—Troubleshooters Incorporated.”

Jane closed her eyes at Patty’s verb tense. Hired. “No,” she said. “Tell them no. Leave off the thank-you this time and—”

“I’m sorry”—Patty looked as if she were going to cry—“but the studio apparently called the FBI—”

“What?”

“—and the authorities are taking the threat seriously. They’re involved now.”

“The FBI?” Jane was on her feet.

Patty nodded. “Some important agent from D.C. is going to be here at four, too. He’s already on his way.”

Jules Cassidy hated L.A.

He hated it for the usual reasons—the relentless traffic jams, the unending sameness of the weather, and the air of frantic, fear-driven competition that ruled the city. It was as if all four million inhabitants were holding their breath, terrified that if they were on the top, they’d fall; if they were climbing, they wouldn’t make it; and if they were at the bottom, they’d never get their big break.

It was called the City of Angels, but the folks who gave it that name had neglected to mention that the particular angels who lived there didn’t answer to the man upstairs.

Jules could almost hear one of those satanic types laughing as he gazed at his current number one reason why he hated L.A.

A kid, barely out of his teens, was pointing a handgun at Jules’ chest. “Give me your wallet!”

There had been a sign saying, “Park at your own risk” posted at the entrance to this parking garage that was cut into the hillside beneath his West Hollywood hotel. But Jules had foolishly assumed any risk would occur at night, not during broad daylight. Of course, in here it was shadowy and dank. The small lot was only half-filled, and no other people were in sight.

The garage walls were concrete block, and the ceiling looked solid, too. A bullet would ricochet off rather than penetrate and injure someone on the other side. The open bay doors on his right, however, led directly to the street. It wasn’t a major thoroughfare, but there was occasional traffic.

“You don’t want to do this,” Jules said, carefully keeping his hands where the kid could see them, even while he inched his way closer. He was glad his sidearm was in a locked suitcase in the trunk of the car, so he could hold his jacket open and take his wallet out of his pocket with two fingers without flashing his shoulder holster. “Just turn around and walk away—and do yourself another favor while you’re at it. Wipe the gun so your prints aren’t on it and—”

“Shut up,” the kid ordered him. He had primitive tattoos on his knuckles—despite his tender age he’d already done prison time. His hands were also shaking, another bad sign. He was obviously in dire need of a fix—the most desperate of all the desperate Los Angelenos.

He was in such bad shape, he’d forgotten to pull his ski mask down over his face. He was wearing it on top of his head, which didn’t do much to conceal his identity.

Clear thinking wasn’t part of the heroin withdrawal process, so Jules tried to eliminate any confusion on his end.

“I’m putting this on the ground”—Jules did just that—“and here’s my watch and my ring, too.” The ring—nothing fancy, just a simple silver band—was going to do the trick. The kid’s hands were shaking too much to be able to pick it up without his looking down, and when he did . . . “I’m going to back away—”

“I said shut the fuck up, faggot!”

Well, all-righty then. Jules could just imagine the conversation shared over a needle.
Hey, if you ever need some fast cash, go on over to West Hollywood and rob a homo. They’re all rich, and if you do it right, you can probably make ’em cry, which is good for a laugh. . . .

“So this is a hate crime?” Jules asked in an attempt to distract because he just couldn’t bring himself to cry. But it was too late. The time for conversation was definitely over.

The kid realized that his mask was up.

Jules wasn’t sure what changed, but he got a heavy whiff of
I can’t go back to prison,
which wasn’t a good emotion to combine with
I need a fix. Now.

He couldn’t wait for the kid to fumble with the ring.

Instead, Jules rushed him, taking care to knock his gun hand up and to the left, away from the open bay door, which proved to be unnecessary as the weapon went flying, unfired.

It skittered on the concrete as Jules sent the kid in the opposite direction.

He used the basic principles of Newton’s second law to launch himself after that weapon, scooping it off the floor and holding it in a stance that was far less theatrical than the kid’s had been, but also far more effective.

The kid rolled onto his ass, his face scraped and bleeding, and he looked at Jules with a mixture of disbelief and horror. “Who the fuck
are
you?”

“You didn’t think a fag would fight back, huh?” Jules asked. Holding the gun steady with one hand, he took his cell phone from his pocket with his other and speed-dialed the LAPD number he’d programmed in—standard procedure for an out-of-town visit—on his flight from D.C. “Yeah,” he said into the phone as the line was picked up. “This is Agent Jules Cassidy, with the FBI.”

“Ah, shit,” the kid said, too stupid to realize his mistake hadn’t been that he’d mugged the wrong man, but rather that he’d left his home this morning intending to commit felony armed robbery instead of checking himself into a rehab program.

“I need immediate police assistance in the underground garage for the Stonewall Hotel in West Hollywood,” Jules told the police dispatcher. He looked at the kid. “You, sweetiecakes, have the right to remain silent. . . .”

C
HAPTER
T
WO

Producer J. Mercedes Chadwick’s house in the Hollywood Hills was an elegant old monster built back in the silent film era. But when Lawrence Decker followed Cosmo Richter and Tom Paoletti into the front hall, he’d realized that
old
was the defining word. The building probably hadn’t been renovated since the late 1940s.

From the gate, it had looked impressive. From inside, with a collection of buckets strategically positioned under obvious signs of water damage on the ceiling, it was clear that the place was a major fixer-upper.

“Someone else is paying the bill, right?” Cosmo had murmured to Tom as they stood in the foyer, waiting for the girl clutching the clipboard to fetch Ms. Chadwick from the back.

“HeartBeat Studios,” Tom murmured back.

Decker was well aware that securing HeartBeat as a regular client would be quite an accomplishment for Troubleshooters Incorporated. The work would be easy—silver-bullet assignments—compared to most of the operations Deck had been on overseas. While providing security for a Hollywood studio wouldn’t quite be paid R & R, it would be close.

Easy assignments, good money. That’s why Tom himself was here today with Deck, and why he’d dragged Cosmo Richter along, too.

The SEAL chief was tall and muscular, with a lean face and pale blue eyes he usually kept hidden behind sunglasses. Yeah, he was impressively dangerous-looking—something no one had ever been able to say about Decker, even during his own years with the Navy.

Cosmo was here as a human exclamation mark, strategically in place for the client to gaze upon after Tom and Decker assured her that they would, indeed, be able to keep her safe.

Of course, the first thing they needed to do was install a security system. Currently, there was nothing here—aside from a fading sign on the creaky automated gate at the end of the driveway: “Beware of Dogs.”

This place dated from the time when state-of-the-art security meant a stone wall with bits of glass in the concrete on top, a front gate, and a matched set of big, loud, and ugly, with lots of sharp teeth.

“We have a list of improvements a mile long that we’re planning to make,” Ms. Chadwick had told them breezily as she’d led the way to the suite of rooms she and her brother were using for their production company’s main offices. Her impossibly high heels had clicked on the marble tile floor. “But we’re wait-listed with the contractor. You know how hard it is to get work done these days. . . .”

According to the file Tom had given Deck, she’d produced her first movie—a low-budget horror flick called
Hell or High Water—
back when she was in film school. She sold her little student film to a distributor for a ton of money and put herself on the map as a mover and shaker.

Apparently, in Hollywood, youth was in. And J. Mercedes Chadwick was still young, barely twenty-six. She dressed younger, looking like Britney Spears’ brunette twin, with long, dark hair cascading down her back and a significant gap between the below-the-hips waistband of her microskirt and the bottom edge of her shirt.

Which was . . . quite a shirt. It had one hell of a neckline.

J. Mercedes Chadwick was a very healthy young woman, no doubt about that.

Her long legs were bare and as golden tanned as her stomach, her toenails painted an exotic shade of dark pink.

She had what Decker thought of as Greek goddess eyes—bluish green and an unusual contrast with her dark hair and rich Mediterranean complexion. She was gorgeous—although not by Hollywood’s standards, because she hadn’t managed to starve herself boyishly thin.

And that was a choice that was quite intentional—calculated, in fact. He’d realized it when they were introduced, as she’d held his hand just a little too long and gazed into his eyes just a little too meaningfully.

She knew what most of Hollywood had forgotten. That as fashionable as it was to be whip thin, most men still liked women with substantial curves.

But if his libido had kicked on from that soulfully probing look, it kicked off just as quickly when she gazed at Cosmo the exact same way.

Cos, bless him, didn’t crack a smile. He just looked back at the woman with a total lack of expression, as if all that cleavage meant absolutely nothing to him.

Of course, maybe it didn’t. Decker didn’t know the younger man very well.

One thing he did know was that J. Mercedes Chadwick liked standing out. Hence the three-inch heels that pushed her well over six feet tall and made her tower over mere mortals such as Deck.

There was, he also realized, probably nothing that this woman ever did that was unintentional.

She couldn’t have been more different in height and coloring, but she made him think of Sophia Ghaffari—whom he hadn’t seen since that drink they’d shared in a bar in Kaiserslautern, Germany, over six months ago.

Sophia was working for Tom Paoletti now—as a matter of fact, for the past four months both she and Deck had worked out of the same office in San Diego. But Decker had spent most of that time OUTCONUS, on various assignments. The few occasions he’d been back in the States, she’d been out of town.

Which was probably a very good thing, considering.

They all sat now—Cosmo, Tom, Decker, Mercedes, and her brother Robin who was as fair as she was dark—on a series of sofas and easy chairs in a huge room with windows looking out over the wilderness that was the back garden.

“Isn’t a high-tech security system going to be enough?” Mercedes was arguing with Tom. “I mean, great, if HeartBeat wants to pay to install a system, I’m not going to say no. But really, with the kind of technology that’s available these days, isn’t the idea of two guards—one inside and one outside the house, around the clock—just a little extravagant?”

Decker answered for Tom. “Considering the size of this house, Ms. Chadwick, no.”

She was obviously not happy with the idea, but as she turned to look at him, he knew what it was about her that reminded him of Sophia. It was that smile and the eye contact as she asked, “But does it have to be day and night? I have . . . friends who can keep me safe at night.”

Across the room, her brother covered a laugh with a cough.

Mercedes Chadwick didn’t bring the question “Do you want to make it with me?” to the table. No, her attitude was “
When
do you want to make it with me?”

It was an approach to being a woman in the business world that was a direct 180 from the dress-and-act-like-a-man school. Instead of trying to de-sex, Mercedes Chadwick used her sexuality to try to gain control.

Just like blond and beautiful Sophia Ghaffari had done back in Kazbekistan, when she and Deck had first met.

As Mercedes smiled at him, Decker wondered if she would go as far as Sophia had to gain the upper hand.

Jesus, was he ever going to stop thinking about that?

“Your privacy won’t be compromised,” Tom told Mercedes, trying to reassure her.

She laughed. “Yes, it will. Look, can’t we just pretend that you’ve got guards posted here around the clock? I don’t mind having one of your men tag along when I go out. That actually might be kind of fun. And it’s okay with me if someone hangs here, guarding the place while I’m gone, but . . .”

Deck exchanged a look with Tom.
Fun?

“I know this may seem inconvenient—” Tom started.

“And I know you really want this gig,” she cut him off. “So let’s compromise.”

“There is no compromise.” Tom was absolute. “We’re talking about your personal safety.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’m so sure some of those scary e-mailers are going to come out here and try to hit me with their computer keyboards. Or maybe they’ll chain-mail me to death. ‘If you don’t forward this to ten people in the next two minutes, great misfortune will befall you . . .’ ”

Cosmo Richter, who’d seemed all this time to have his full attention focused on the garden, finally looked over at Mercedes and spoke. “Is there a reason, miss, why you feel the threats that have been made against your life are a joke?”

“Joke,” she said, looking from Cosmo to Decker to Tom. “Yes, joke. That’s a good word for this, thank you. It’s a giant joke, gentlemen. It’s probably a stunt that the studio’s come up with to get publicity for this movie. You don’t
really
think someone wants to kill me, do you?”

Her intercom buzzed, breaking in before Tom could respond.

“I’m sorry to interrupt.” The voice of Mercedes’ personal assistant came through a speaker. “But an FBI agent named Jules Cassidy is down by the gate, and”—she cleared her throat—“the opener’s stuck again.”

The brother—Robin—stood. “I’ll go.”

The FBI agent drove a rented Mercury Sable.

Robin wasn’t sure exactly what he’d expected, but it sure as hell wasn’t a four-door family sedan.

The FBI agent was also shorter and younger than he’d imagined, getting out of the car as Robin approached the gate. Compact, with a trim build, he had dark hair that he wore cut short and a face that could have appeared next to Robin’s on the cover of
Tiger Beat
magazine.

He could just imagine this guy’s meeting with his high school guidance counselor. “You could be a model or a TV star—you don’t really need any acting skills for that—or . . . Oh, here’s something just perfect! *NSYNC is looking for new blood—” “Well, you see, Mrs. Smersh, I hate to disappoint you, but I really have my heart set on becoming an FBI agent. . . .”

“Sorry,” Robin called as he came the last few feet down the drive. “It sticks sometimes.”

The gate actually stuck most of the time, and they’d gotten into the habit of leaving it open. But Jane had wanted it closed today—probably to fool the private security team into thinking she was taking precautions with her safety.

It took him four tries to get the damn thing to work. His smile definitely felt strained around the edges by the time it finally opened.

Now that they were both on the same side of the fence, the agent flashed his badge as he held out his hand. “Jules Cassidy, FBI.”

“Robin Chadwick, SAG.” They shook hands. “I’m the brother.”

“Nice to meet you. SAG?”

“Screen Actors Guild,” Robin explained. “Sorry, I have this inability to not be an asshole, especially when I’m not provoked.”

The double negatives didn’t stop Jules for even a second, and he laughed, taking off his sunglasses and . . .

Hello.
Big eye contact. The FBI guy not only was shorter and younger, but he was also gayer than Robin had expected.

Ever since he’d gone blond to play Hal Lord in
American Hero,
he’d been hit on by gay men more times than he could count. It had been a little nerve-racking at first, but he’d learned to remove any potential mystery as quickly as possible.

“Not gay,” Robin said now. He thought of sweet little Patty up in Jane’s office, who’d given him that shy smile when he’d emerged from the meeting. He knew without a doubt that he’d be welcome should he come a-calling at her apartment later this evening. Yes, he knew he’d promised his sister that he’d be good, but Patty was
so
cute. . . . “Don’t waste your energy.”

Jules laughed again. He appeared to be genuinely amused. “You’re making some pretty large assumptions, aren’t you?”

“Assume everything,” Robin told him cheerfully. “That’s my motto. It keeps me out of trouble.”

“I would think it might get you into it,” Jules countered.

“And still you flirt with me, you devil. What part of ‘Not gay,’ did you not understand? Drive through, will you, so I can try to close this behind you.”

Jules Cassidy, FBI, was still laughing—and he was pretty damn adorable when he laughed. Harve and Guillermo and Gary the Grip and even Ricco, who was in a long-term relationship, were going to swoon when they met him. He got back into the Sable and drove through the gate. He stopped just on the other side, though.

Robin gave up on the idea of closing the gate after his fifth try.

“I hate that motherfucking thing,” he said, adding as he realized Jules had rolled his window down, “There, does that convince you? A very heterosexual use of the manly verb
to motherfuck,
positioned in my sentence as a salty adverb.”

“Salty adjective,” Jules corrected him. “If it were an adverb it would be motherfuckingly.”

“Whatever. My sister’s the writer in the family,” Robin told him. “Which is why she’s the one getting the death threats—which she’s not taking at all seriously. Tell me the truth, Jules Cassidy, FBI. Do we really have something to worry about here?”

The FBI agent got real serious, real fast, morphing from happy, flirty gay boy into completely grown-up hard-ass with a nearly palpable sense of purpose and a determination that matched his set of giant steel balls. Holy macaroni, Mrs. Smersh. Wherever did you get the idea that Jules Cassidy couldn’t act?

“Yes,” Jules told him. “You do. Have you ever heard of the Freedom Network?”

It was very clear to Cosmo that J. Mercedes Chadwick couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“You’re telling me,” she repeated, making sure that she got it right, “that there are thousands of people—tens of thousands?—who consider Chester Lord—a little-known Alabama district court judge who’s been dead since 1959—their personal hero?”

FBI agent Jules Cassidy nodded. “Yes, ma’am. They call themselves the Freedom Network. Chester Lord wrote a number of books and—”

She was incredulous, her lip-glossed mouth hanging open. “And these are people who don’t even live in Alabama . . . ?”

“The majority are in Idaho.”

“This is a man who was überconservative even for his time,” she pointed out. “There are rumors that Judge Lord looked the other way and allowed lynchings—”

“I believe they refer to him as honest and old-fashioned,” Jules told her. “And his son Hal was a hero in the war—you surely know more about that part of it than I do. But I can tell you one thing—apparently these people are very protective of the memories of both father and son, and they’re not at all happy at the idea of you outing Hal in your movie.”