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Where was the kid? He had gone west, which meant he could be circling around the corral. Kid could have seen him from that angle, might be closing in even now. Max had no doubt the kid knew how to use his firearm. Max had spent time shooting at a range; he had been taught to shoot and shoot relatively well. He had worked with marksmen. The kid had carried his weapon as if it had grown out of his arm. Casual, but alert.

Max could easily be seen hiding behind the tank. He should move. But there was no place to go.

He had the semiautomatic. He could shoot the boy if it came to that.

But could he?

He’d almost blown Sam P. to kingdom come. But this was a boy. He didn’t think he could shoot a boy.

But where to hide?

A sharp whistle rent the air.

The woman stood at the edge of the carport, among the broken glass, looking in his direction.

No, not his direction, to the right. Far to the right.

The kid yelled, “What?”

The woman stuck two fingers in her mouth and blew again.

Max sank into the ground, flat on his stomach. He hunched his shoulders like a turtle hiding in its shell. He hoped the color of his body and his clothing would look like a shadow on the earth. He heard the boy run, maybe thirty yards from him, to his right. Pelting footsteps, occasionally sliding on rock and sand, the kid yelling, “What is it?”

Max had the absurd desire to close his eyes.

Instead, he canted his head slightly, so he could see the house.

The woman and the boy stood outside the carport. The woman started around the Saturn, moving loose-limbed but alert, like a panther.

They were swallowed up by the shadows. If Max was going to escape, he’d better do it now.

Chapter Nineteen

W
HENEVER
J
ERRY
G
OLD
was conflicted about something—“conflicted” being one of Gordon’s favorite expressions (Jerry’s half brother had upscale hippie psychobabble down to a science, along with the unlimited wardrobe of Hawaiian shirts, tai chi pants, and Birkenstocks)—he reverted to what he’d been before he became Max Conroy’s manager. Always, he went back to the storyboard.

Better to cover all the bases.

He locked Talia out of his office, grabbed a ream of 8 ½" x 11" copy paper and his favorite Sharpie, and set up on the desk overlooking the pool. Talia knocked halfheartedly a couple of times, then gave up. The woman had the attention span of a gnat. He wondered now why he had gotten involved with her at all. Yes, there was the secret pleasure of banging Talia L’Apel, a big star in her own right, and he cherished the idea of cuckolding Max Conroy, heartthrob of girls and women from fourteen to sixty. She was terrific in bed too. You’d be surprised how many hot-bodied actresses weren’t. It sometimes seemed the more alluring and sexy they appeared, the more frigid they were in the boudoir. Not so with Talia, who brought the same exuberance to the sack as she did to the ski slopes.

Gordon had called an hour ago, telling him about the kidnappers in some hick town called Paradox and their demand for a million dollars by sunset. He was relieved that the kidnappers had called again, after Talia had turned them down. But on the minus side, there was no way Gordon could possibly come up with the money that quickly. And the idea of letting go of a million dollars…

What if the kidnappers got the million dollars and killed Max anyway? And left him to rot in the desert sun somewhere for hunters to find six months from now?

Fortunately, there was a Plan B.

“You remember Shaun?” Gordon said. “She’s Mickey Barron’s granddaughter. The stunt man.”

“I thought she was a stunt woman.”

“That’s right, Jer. It runs in the family.”

Jerry said, “But she’s the one who—” He lowered his voice. “The one, who, you know, at Big Bear Lake?”

“Why are you whispering?”

“You know people listen in on cell phones.”

“How’s this? She’s the one who looks like a man. You met her when she was here one time.”

Jerry
did
remember meeting her. How could he ever forget? Jerry suppressed a shudder. When he had first met her, he really couldn’t tell if she was a man or a woman. Not because she was ugly—she wasn’t—but because of the vibe she gave off. The way she carried herself, the way she walked. Maybe it was her center of balance. Little things, all put together to create an odd, well, dissonance. But that wasn’t the worst thing. What really got to Jerry was the feeling that she was sizing him up for a coffin. She spooked the hell out of him, and that was even before he learned about her résumé.

“Are you listening, Jerry?” Gordon said. “This is important. She’s going to extract him from the kidnappers. And the good news? She’s already there. I sent her to find him.”

“In Paradox?”

“That’s right.”

“It’s still dangerous, though. What if he gets killed in the crossfire?”

“You ever look on the bright side?”

“Just hedging my bets. That’s what I wanted to tell you about—I’m in the middle of something here. I’m writing an alternate storyboard. And you know it could work, especially if we don’t have the body. It might be easier too.”

“Shaun’s going to get him and bring him back, Jerry. Everything’s going to be fine. These guys who took him sound like Grade A dildos. They’re in too deep and they don’t have any idea who they’re dealing with. Nobody messes with Gordon White Eagle.”

Jesus, Jerry thought; he really takes himself too seriously. He wondered if Gordon was using a little of his own product—the pot he supplied some of the underage counselors with. That, or all that guru happy-crappy had gone to his head. “I’ll write the alternate scenario, just in case.”

“It hasn’t been researched, Jer. You can’t just come up with something off the cuff and think you can fool the cops. Everyone these days is a forensic expert after all those years of watching
CSI
. We have to get this right the first time, because there won’t be another. I worked damned hard to get Max to where I wanted him psychologically, and in my professional opinion, he’s primed. I put a lot of work into him, Jerry, and I’m proud of my work. He’s more than just a soon-to-be-dead movie star. He’s proved my
thesis
!”

Jerry laughed out loud. “I don’t think you’re going to be able to patent that, Gord.”

“No, but I’ve proved to myself I can do it,” Gordon said—a little prissily, Jerry thought. “And you’re not going to mess it up for me. We agreed this was the way to go.”

“It sure is fucked up now, though, isn’t it, Gord? How’d he get away from you? Now we’ve got kidnappers demanding money, and what if they hack him to little pieces? Talk about a damn clusterfuck!”

“Shaun’s good. She’ll get him back, and she’ll get him back in one piece.”

But Jerry heard a smidgen of doubt in Gordon’s voice. And anyone who knew Gordon knew he never suffered from doubt.

After Jerry ended the call, he went back to his new storyboard. It was beginning to take shape—simple, elegant, with a logical explanation for the lack of a body.

He liked it.

He liked it a lot.

G
ORDON STARED OUT
at the beautiful Verde Valley and the distant red rocks of Sedona, and thought,
It’ll work out
.

But in his heart of hearts, he was worried. The first time Gordon had met Shaun, he’d thought she was beautiful but unsettling. He hadn’t liked the way she’d looked at him, as if he were a specimen in a petri dish. If she were an owl, he’d thought, she would eat him.

Gordon had known then that Shaun was as dangerous as nitroglycerin.

Shaun had helped him out a few times, mostly by intimidating her prey, like the socialite who claimed Gordon had fondled her while she was sleeping. Whether he had or he hadn’t was immaterial. The woman was a hysteric, threatening to bring down the whole enchilada—the beautiful healing center he had built up from nothing. The Desert Oasis wasn’t just a business he loved. In many ways, he
was
the Desert Oasis. He could work a Hollywood party like nobody’s business, but he was at home here in the Arizona desert. He felt a spiritual call from the baking red rocks, the deep blue skies, the hawks and eagles that inspired him, and the very wealthy and fucked-up people who came to him for help.

Shaun had a talk with the woman, and that was the end of that.

Mickey Barron’s granddaughter put the fear of God into people. Usually, it was no big deal. But there were a couple of times when Gordon needed a…permanent solution, distasteful as that was. Shaun was good at what she did. She’d done a spectacular job on the Russian mobster who had threatened to kill him over a debt. Gordon would be eternally grateful to her for that one.

And the DePaulentis situation had gone off without a hitch.

But Gordon couldn’t help but feel that under Shaun’s cold, unruffled, professional exterior beat the heart of a lunatic.

Chapter Twenty

“M
ATERNAL
”
WAS NOT
a term Shaun would have used for herself five months ago. In fact, she had never even thought of having children. Children slowed you down. They dulled your instincts. They were something that could be held over your head. They had to go to school, or be homeschooled. They had to be fed, clothed, entertained, cajoled, raised from mewling little creatures that were, face it, ugly. She never oohed and aahed over a baby like most women did. More often than not, she ignored them. They could do nothing for her.

She’d been in a relationship once with a woman who’d had a little kid. The kid had been whiny, and worse, the woman had always put him first.

But now, watching her son creep quietly over and around broken glass, seeing the concentration on his face, his hair falling over his brow, Shaun felt her heart bloom.

From the moment she’d met him five months ago—he’d actually tried to rob her on the street one night—Shaun had felt an immediate jolt of recognition. He was like her—they were two peas in a pod. After she’d subdued him (falling just short of breaking his arm), she’d sat him down and told him the facts of life. Then she’d asked him about his family and he’d said he had none.

Turned out that was a lie. (Jimmy was a very convincing liar.) But as their relationship deepened and he came to see her as his true mother, he admitted that he’d lived with his aunt for three years. His father was in prison, and his mother died of a drug overdose.

Poor kid needed a real family.

They’d been together ever since.

The night before they left on this trip, they’d had popcorn and watched an old western. The hero stood up against the bad guys after they harassed his son, and said, “You stay away from my boy!”

My boy.

Now she asked him, “What do you think happened here?”

“There was a gunfight. But where is everybody? You checked the house, right?”

“No one there.”

But it had been a cursory look around. She’d cleared every room in the main house, but hadn’t had a chance to do a thorough search. Just enough to know that Max Conroy was gone. “How long ago do you think this happened?”

Jimmy screwed his eyes shut and thought about it. Looked at her. His eyes were hazel and steady. He was just like her. She experienced that quizzical bloom in her heart again.

“I can still smell nitroglycerin.” He added, “When did they call Gordo?”

“Don’t be disrespectful. His name is Gordon.”

“
You
call him Gordo.”

“I’m an adult.”

“No fair.”

“You need to concentrate.”

He nodded. He was a serious boy, her son. He looked at the vehicles and the four bays separated by wooden posts. “He could’ve grabbed a car and escaped.” He ticked them off on his fingers: “Three cars. The old Cadillac over by the mailbox, the Saturn. And the Chevelle SS—that one’s cool. Leaves two places in the garage.”

“So?”

“I don’t think there was another car, though. At least not in the carport.” He leveled his gaze on Shaun. “I think there was just the Chevelle and the Saturn.”

“Why do you think that?”

He shrugged. “There’d be more glass. Someone would have driven over it.”

“They called Gordon forty minutes ago. You see anything out there?”

“No.”

Shaun stared at the blood soaked into the concrete apron near the kitchen door. She reached down and pressed her finger into it. Dry, not even sticky. She sniffed it. Copper.

She’d always loved that smell.

“You think they killed him?” Jimmy said.

Jimmy’s question echoed her own thoughts. They could have killed him by accident, panicked, and taken off. Maybe there had been another car out front. There could have been a whole caravan of them. The dirt held lots of tire tracks, all of them muddled together—too much sand. Still, they would look at the tracks and see what they could see.

She stared at the silent hills bristling with saguaros, rocks, and mesquite. Noted the corral, the lean-to, the stock tank. The sun was at the top of its curve, and there was hardly a shadow anywhere. She kept her eyes on the scene, looking at it as if it were a tapestry. Looking for one thing out of place, one thread pulled. She saw the desert as a whole, as if she were taking a landscape photograph with her mind. Nothing registered. Closed her eyes to reorient herself, and looked again. This time Shaun looked at objects individually. The palo verde tree by the road. The lean-to. The water tank. The top of the hill. The sky. The house down the road. The house beyond that. A horse. Some calves. Two cars parked outside another house. All the way around, a panorama. Back to the bamboo surrounding the yard and the old Cadillac parked by the mailbox. Panned right and left again. Up and down.