Rage Factor (11 page)

Dixie entered the elegant Four Seasons Hotel at six fifty-five
A.M
. When she’d called Belle Richards the night before to accept the job and get the principal’s background and itinerary—with the intention of scoping out the destinations in advance—Belle was rushing out the door. Dixie managed to get the name of the kid she was hired to protect, Sarina Page, and not much else.

Standing now in front of the VIP suite, Dixie raised her hand to knock. She’d barely touched the door when it opened an inch.

Snapping alert, she leaned her crutch against the wall and loosened her jacket around the Smith & Wesson holstered beneath her arm. From somewhere inside the suite, a TV commercial battled the drone of a hair dryer.

Dixie placed her knuckles firmly against the door. Tapped. The door opened another inch.

“Hello!” she called.

She heard a third sound—
someone weeping?
But the hair dryer drone blasted over it.

The TV commercial segued to cartoon music.

Between the door and the jamb, a sliver of an opening offered a skinny view of the far right corner of the living room. Dixie eased the door wider. A floor-length mirror reflected the sofa—and someone lying on it.
Crying.
Drunk, maybe. Or hurt.

Sliding the gun from its holster, Dixie eased into the room. Back to the wall, she scanned as she moved, the .38 locked with her probing gaze. A woman lay facedown on the sofa, wearing a robe, long, glossy hair draped across her face. A red scarf trailed from her neck.

Swinging her cast around a wet spot on the floor, Dixie crossed the room in three strides. Still scanning for movement, she placed one hand on the silky kimono, near the shoulder.

“Lady—?”

The body was cold … and …
rock hard.

She nudged the blond hair back. A
goddamn dummy!
Then who was crying?

The mirror flickered with movement—the door inching open!

Dropping to one knee, Dixie aimed. As the door swung wide, a mass fell from above it and thumped to the floor.

But no one was there.

She swiveled: aimed at the mirror.

Something wrong with that mirror.
It looked … wavy … as if floating.

“Come out of there!” Dixie cocked the revolver. The click was barely audible over the hair dryer drone. “Now!”

“Okay! Okay, okay, okay.” The mirror rolled up like a window shade, revealing a metal stand, a bedroom doorway, and a scrawny teenage girl. “That cannon looks totally unfriendly. Would you mind pointing it somewhere else?”

Dixie steadied the gun. “Who are you?”

“I’m
her …
me!… I’m Sarina Page! Stop pointing that thing at me.” She fingered a black object in her hand, and the crying stopped. Then she turned her back on Dixie, folded the metal frame, and shoved it into the bedroom.

A
trick mirror. A goddamn crying dummy. Where did she get all this stuff? What the hell was going on?
Dixie holstered the .38. If anyone but Belle Richards had hired her, she’d walk out right now.

“What’s with the practical joke?”

Sarina pointed a remote control at the door. It slammed shut against the stuff that had fallen—which now looked like a trapper’s net.

“How did you miss the liquid soap on the floor?” the girl countered.

Dixie glanced at the wet spot she’d avoided.

“You were supposed to slip on the soap, knock the door open on your way down, and release the trap.” The girl stomped across the room and kicked the mass of netting aside, allowing the door to close. “The net would’ve held you long enough for me to grab your gun.”

Dixie wished she could wrap her hands around Belle Richards’ throat right now.

The girl’s thin face was flushed with irritation—or embarrassment—at the failure of her elaborate hoax. Shaggy, collar-length hair framed quick gray eyes, a narrow nose, and an ample mouth. No acne, of course. Rich kids never suffered crooked teeth, pigeon toes, or acne. Above faded black jeans that hugged her thin legs like chimney soot floated an oversized dust-colored shirt. A whiz kid, Belle had called her. Couldn’t tell by looking.

“Why would you do that?” Dixie demanded.
“What
is going on?”

“I was proving a point.” The girl hopped on a chair and yanked down a wire apparatus that had held the net above the door. “I may be only sixteen—practically seventeen—but I can take care of myself. I
don’t
need a bodyguard.” She hopped down.

Standing nearly a head taller than Dixie’s five feet two inches, she slid an appraising gaze over Dixie, as if buying a used car. “I especially don’t need a bodyguard who’s not even as big as I am.”

A VIP
client.
Belle had said. Suppressing the urge to flip the kid over her lap and spank her, Dixie cocked an eye at the failed contraption. A
crying dummy to lure her into the room, soap to trip her, a net to capture her—all to prove she doesn’t need a bodyguard?
“Fortunately, someone who cares about you feels differently.”

“My mother.” Sarina spotted the cast on Dixie’s left foot.
“What
is
that?”

Dixie shrugged. “Leftover from a previous case. Had to do some serious butt-kicking.”

“Cool.” A trace of a smile threatened to break through. “Outstandingly cool.”

As Sarina tossed the dummy and other items into the bedroom, Dixie sized up the posh suite. Every table held a fat vase of pink flowers—roses, carnations, other varieties Dixie couldn’t name. Pink hearts nestled in some of the arrangements. A TV flickered inside a discreetly camouflaged entertainment console, Bugs Bunny chattering over the hair dryer drone still issuing from the bedroom. Abruptly, the hair dryer stopped.

“Was that the whatchamacallit, Sarina?” A woman’s voice.

“Bodyguard, Mother. All hundred butt-kicking pounds of her.”

“Hundred and twenty pounds,” Dixie muttered.

“Tell her I’ll be right out.” The hair dryer whirred back to life.

“Maybe she thinks you’re deaf.” Sarina pointed to one ear. “But hey—I, on the other hand, am certain you have exceptional hearing, superb eyesight, and the speed of a hummingbird.” Her scathing gaze swept over Dixie again. “Otherwise, I don’t have a prayer in hell of escaping the bad guys.”

Terrific.
A whiz-kid, prank-playing smartass. Dixie glared at the telephone, beginning to understand why Belle had been too rushed to give any details. One phone call would get her out of this mistake.

“How many bad guys you figure we’ll have to fight off?”

The girl rubbed at a red spot on her thumb.

“If you listen to my mother, every serial killer in the western hemisphere.” She scooped up a high-tech toy of some sort, a foot-high mass of metal and plastic. When she moved a lever protruding from the top, appendages that appeared to be legs and arms moved in synch.

“And do you?” Dixie asked.

The girl raised an eyebrow.

“Listen to your mother?”

The hair dryer stopped again. “Sarina, does the bodyguard know you have a seven-thirty dentist’s appointment?”

Dentist? Dixie looked at her watch.

“She knows now, Mother.”

The hair dryer droned on.

“It’s seven o’clock,” Dixie said. Driving anywhere in Houston at this time of day took at least half an hour, especially with a new crop of rain clouds rolling in. February in Houston was crazy-weather time. Scrape ice off your windshield in the morning, wear short sleeves that afternoon. Rain was an everyday threat. “Do you know where the dentist’s office is?”

“Not a clue.”

On the television, familiar theme music announced a cable rerun of
Guerilla Gold
, an old series about three young women who started their own investigations firm after being ousted from a chauvinistic police academy. When the sultry lead appeared on screen, Sarina strolled nearer the set.

Dixie wondered what had sparked the girl’s interest. The show had been off the air for at least ten years. By today’s cop show standards, it was as tame as Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

But in the opening scene, the star, Joanna Francis, wore
tight black jeans and a loose-fitting gray shirt similar to Sarina s, collar flipped up around a swirl of auburn hair. Sarina flipped up her own shirt collar. She squared her shoulders like the woman on the screen. Then, suddenly aware she was being watched, the kid cut her eyes at Dixie. With an embarrassed grin, she tweaked the collar again. “So … is this totally unchic?”

In the oversized shirt, she brought to mind a lanky Oliver Twist. Or a shaggy stray puppy: lost, underfed, but cute.

“You look great,” Dixie said, meaning it. “Chic is overrated.” Smelling coffee, she spied a service cart laid with fresh fruit, a basket of assorted sweet rolls, and a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich.

“Help yourself.” Sarina grabbed the sandwich and flopped on the couch.

Eyeing the chocolate croissants, Dixie merely poured herself a cup of coffee. Black. “What can you tell me about this bad-guy situation?”

Sarina had turned up the TV volume a notch, to conquer the hair dryer noise.

“On the flight from LA, another card showed up,” she said distractedly, eyes glued to the television. “It’s on the desk over there. Weirded Mother out big time.”

Dixie carried her coffee to the desk and set it on a notepad supplied by the hotel. A square envelope addressed in blocky red letters lay beside a commercial valentine. Dixie lifted the card by its edges, careful not to smudge any fingerprints. Inside, following a short love poem, was a personal message printed in the same square letters:
YOU CAN’T RUN AWAY, WE WILL FINALLY MEET IN HOUSTON.

“What do you mean, this
showed up?”
Dixie said.

“Mother found it in her tote bag about twenty minutes before we landed.”

Meaning the stalker was either on the plane, in the airport, or had dropped the card in her mother’s bag somewhere on the way.

“Did you take a cab to the airport?”

“No. Marty drove us.”

Marty?
Mercifully, the hair dryer whirred to silence. Now the television seemed to be blasting.

“Turn the TV down,” Dixie said. “So we can talk.”

“What’s to talk about? This nutcase sends notes. That’s all I know.”

“Sarina, turn down the television.”

“I guess good hearing is not one of your qualifications after all.” Tossing Dixie a drop-dead look, the girl lowered the volume. On the screen, the star and her two partners were karate-clobbering a gang of nasty-looking men in leather jackets.

“How long have these notes been arriving?” Dixie asked.

“A month or so, I guess.”

“Sarina!” The voice from the bedroom. “Are you still here? You’ll miss your appointment.”

“We need specifics, Mother. Like
who
and
where”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s right there in my address thingy.” The speaker appeared in the bedroom doorway. “Good God.
You’re
Dixie Flannigan? From Belle’s description, I expected an Amazon at the very least. How can you be a bodyguard?”

Dixie looked at the woman, and then at the TV screen, just as Sarina switched channels.
Oh, shit
Sarina Page was the daughter of TV princess Joanna Francis, the beautiful star of
Guerilla Gold
and at least one other long-running series. Sarina’s father would be actor John Page, Joanna Francis’ former husband, also a veteran TV star. The only thing in Dixie’s book worse than a mouthy teenager was a mouthy teenage celebrity brat.

Joanna Francis was in town to shoot a cable movie. Dixie had read that somewhere. Maybe she’d have caught on quicker, she consoled herself, if Sarina’s last name had been Francis.

Unlike the understated young star of
Guerilla Gold
, the veteran actress wore a bright yellow designer suit, an
animal print blouse, and tiger-striped fuck-me shoes. Pure Hollywood.

“I can have Belle Richards send someone else,” Dixie offered. “If you’re worried I can’t handle it.”

“No.” Joanna turned to a mirror near the sofa and scrutinized her famous face. “Belle said you’re the best.”

“Then, you want to tell me about these notes you’ve been getting?”

In the mirror, the star’s luminous complexion lightened a shade. “They’re all like that one. Greeting cards. Christmas first, then New Year’s. After that, friendship cards—”

“Where are the others?”

“With my attorney in Los Angeles. Belle didn’t fill you in on all this?”

“She hasn’t had time. Did you alert the LAPD?”

The actress tossed back her auburn hair with a head movement Dixie recognized from every role she’d ever played.

“My attorney advised against it. He said the police can’t keep a secret. They might leak something to the press. And after the incident last year,
any
suggestion that I might not be able to finish the film could jeopardize my contract with the production company.”

Dixie recalled the “incident.” Joanna had passed out during a press conference, was rushed to a hospital emergency room and treated for drug overdose. Reporters said she was drunk during the interview. It later turned out she’d had an allergic reaction to an antibiotic, but the tabloids preferred their own version of the story.

“Ms. Francis, how do you expect to catch this creep without the police?”

“I don’t care if he’s caught. I just want him stopped.”

The only way to stop him, of course, was to catch him, but Dixie didn’t want to argue the point. Her job was clear and simple: keep Sarina Page unharmed until she boarded a plane back to Los Angeles.

“Did all these cards appear out of nowhere, like this one?”

“The first two came in the mail.” The star ran her tongue across her perfect lips, as if they’d gone dry. “The others showed up at the studio. In my dressing room. On my lunch tray. Under my car’s windshield thingies.”

“Were all the messages this subtle? This one sounds more like a smitten fan than a killer.”

“One of them claimed we were meant for each other. It said I should stop dating. Save my
purity”