Tall Cool One (25 page)
There was absolutely nothing in the
This Is How We Do Things
Big Book, East
or
West Coast edition, that covered being confronted at gunpoint by uniformed men who didn’t speak English when you were completely nude in a mansion that you had broken into. Anna glanced at Sam and saw she was at a total loss now that the usual “I’m Jackson Sharpe’s daughter” thing hadn’t worked. In fact, Sam looked petrified.
Shit.
Anna took a deep breath. She knew that panic would be disastrous. The best thing she could do, she realized, was stall until help came, thin a hope as that might be.
“Por favor,”
Anna asked.
“Useme nuestra ropas. Estos son en el cuarto de baño.”
“What’d you say?” Sam demanded.
“I asked if we could get dressed.”
The guards discussed this. After much consultation, they told Anna that they would follow her and the other girl to the bathroom. If the girls were not dressed in thirty seconds, the guards would shoot their way in. Anna told Sam the plan, skipping over the shooting part. Sam was freaked out enough already.
Rifles at their backs, blankets and shawls wrapped around them, the girls edged out of bed. They shuffled to the bathroom and changed as quickly as they could. Fortunately, their clothing had dried overnight.
“We are so fucked,” Sam muttered darkly as she pulled on her Mexican skirt. “Tell them in Spanish who I am, Anna.”
“I did. They didn’t give a shit.” Then Anna had an idea. “Look. Maybe they have a radio in their car. They can check with their boss, who can check with Las Casitas.”
The guards were waiting when the girls came out. Thankfully they didn’t have the rifles pointed at their chests anymore. That was progress. Anna turned to the shorter, marginally less threatening of the guards.
“Yo tengo una idea,”
she said.
“Vete al carajo, y—”
She never got the rest of sentence out. He slung the gun up to his shoulder and aimed it directly at her chest, suddenly infuriated.
“¡Vamanos, vamanos!”
the taller one shouted, glowering.
“Le estamos llevando a nuestra jefe. ¡Ustedes están en apuro importante!
”
“What the hell happened?” Sam whispered desperately as the guards marched them out of the house, hands in the air. “I thought you were telling them something
good.
”
“I was trying!”
“Then why are they using our hearts for target practice?”
“I don’t know,” Anna admitted, hoping that Sam didn’t notice her voice cracking. Parked directly in front of the white mansion was a single black Hummer with tinted windows. That the grounds surrounding the mansion were utterly magnificent barely registered on Anna when she saw the sinister-looking vehicle.
“¡Salen la puerta y en nuestra Hummer!”
“He wants us to get in the Hummer,” Anna translated. “They’re taking us to his boss.”
“Dead or alive?” Sam asked, her voice choked with tears. “How do we know they aren’t kidnapping us or something? We have to
do
something! Maybe we should run.”
“And get shot?” Anna hissed. She willed herself not to cry. “What do you think they’ll do when they see us . . . ?”
Her words were drowned out by a whup-whup from above. A helicopter. It was circling above the estate at about a thousand feet.
“Shit,” Sam cried. “They’ve called in reinforcements!”
The guards looked up, too. Then they started chattering in Spanish, pointing to the chopper and arguing vehemently. Anna couldn’t understand a thing over the noise of the chopper.
“We’ve got to run!” Sam yelled.
“No! That’s crazy, Sam!”
Anna’s heart hammered as the helicopter descended and landed a hundred yards from them in the middle of the estate’s front lawn. Were they going to be taken away in the helicopter to God knew where?
The helicopter shut down its engines, and a door popped open. Two men leaped out, ducking their heads so they wouldn’t be decapitated by the still-whirring blades. One of the men was Latino and wore a Mexican military uniform; the other one was light-skinned, in jeans and a blue shirt. The man in civilian clothes strode toward the girls, tall and purposeful. The guards’ rifles fell to their sides as they stared in awe.
Anna could not believe what she was seeing. It couldn’t be.
“Dad?” Sam asked.
“Sam!”
It was like a scene from a movie. Jackson stopped and held out his arms. Sam ran toward her father and flung himself into his embrace as the two security guards looked on, gape-mouthed.
“Sam,” Jackson exclaimed. “Thank God!”
“How did you—?”
“It doesn’t matter. You scared the hell out of me.”
Now that they were apparently safe, Anna realized how frightened she’d been—her hands were still shaking, and she felt weak in the knees. She didn’t think she’d ever been so happy to see anyone as she was to see Jackson Sharpe at that moment.
“
Oye,
Jackson Sharpe!” one of the security guards cried.
“¡Ay, caramba! ¡Usted es mi estrella de las peliculas preferida! Que hace usted aquí en México, Señor Sharpe?”
The helicopter pilot, who wore the uniform of the Mexican army, had joined Sam and Jackson. “He says you’re his favorite movie star,” the pilot reported to Jackson.
“Gracias,”
Jackson told the men, keeping an arm around his daughter. “Now if we could—”
“¡Uno momento!”
One of the guards scurried to the Hummer and came back with a disposable camera, which he handed to his partner. Then he parked himself next to Jackson.
“Una fotografía para nuestras esposas, por favor, Don Jackson?”
“He wants some pictures for their wives,” translated the pilot.
“And just like that, we’re their new best friends,” Sam chortled ecstatically, throwing her hands in the air in an expression of both joy and frustration. “What was the last half hour all about?”
But she stepped away from her father; the taller guard put his arm around Jackson’s shoulder and beamed, and his partner snapped a quick photo. Then they switched. They were starting to hunt for paper for autographs, but the Mexican pilot called them off. So the men got into their Hummer and drove away, seemingly the two happiest private security guards south of the border.
The girls boarded the helicopter with Jackson and the pilot. As the helicopter took off, Jackson craned around and reached for his daughter’s hand.
“You’re lucky that I’m too frightened to be angry at you, Sam.”
“What do you mean?” Sam asked.
“You really scared me,” her father told her reflectively. “I know the new baby has been hard on you, but you can’t just pick up and leave town without telling me. If you need a time-out, just let me know. I’ll understand. And if I’m not acting like I understand, remind me. Deal?”
“Deal,” Sam responded.
Watching Sam and her dad, Anna got a lump in her throat. Silly as it was, she wished it were her father, tall and strong and sure, who had marched off that helicopter to save her.
“Hey, Anna.” Sam nudged her.
“What?”
Sam was beaming. “How cool is this?”
Anna had to smile back. “Very.”
“I just can’t figure out why the guards didn’t leave us alone once we told them who my dad was. At first I thought maybe they were the two people in the world who weren’t fans,” Sam started. Then she leaned over toward Jackson. “Sorry, Dad.”
“That’s all right, sweetie,” he replied with a wink.
“I don’t get it, either,” Anna added.
“Do you think it had something to do with what you said to them in Spanish?” Sam asked.
“No way,” Anna answered. “I just told them to call Las Casitas.”
“Uh, excuse me, sir,” Sam said to the pilot.
“Yes?” the pilot responded.
“Can you translate something for my friend here?” she asked. Clearly she had grown suspicious of the accuracy of Anna’s Spanish. “Anna, tell them what you said.”
“What?” Anna asked.
“Tell them what you said, Anna,” Sam repeated with mock impatience.
“Fine,” Anna said. She wasn’t used to being challenged, nor was she sure if she liked it.
Vete al carajo—”
The pilot burst out laughing.
“Why are you laughing?” Anna asked, utterly bewildered.
“Go out to the car is ‘
vete al carro.’ ‘Vete al carajo’
is . . . how do you say it in English? Go fuck yourself.
”
Sam roared with laughter, as did her father, and the pilot. Anna joined in. It
was
pretty funny, and probably they were both laughing from relief. “You know, I don’t know which is more surprising,” Sam declared. “That Anna Percy used the F word, or that Anna Percy made a mistake.”
F
reaky. An hour later, Sam was reunited with Dee and Cammie at the Las Casitas pool while Anna was packing her stuff in her room. Everything at the resort was normal—or as normal as life got at a two-thousand-dollar–a-night resort. People were sunning, crowding the swim-up bar for their first cocktails of the day, and having breakfast at one of the many poolside tables. It was so normal that Sam found it difficult to believe that her adventure with Anna in the desert had actually happened.
Cammie hugged Sam hard. “How dare you go off to Mexico without me, you bitch,” she teased.
Sam couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw actually saw tears in Cammie’s eyes. Was Cammie actually touched? Really and truly touched? Wow. This was an emotion that Sam had rarely in her life seen Cammie display.
“I can’t believe you guys came with my dad,” Sam marveled.
“I can’t believe your dad came here when he was supposed to appear on
Leno,
” Cammie shot back. “Or that he forgave you for skipping out on the appearance.”
Sam shrugged. “What’s he got to worry about? Now Leno probably just wants him even more.”
Cammie looked impressed. “That’s true.”
Next it was Dee’s turn to hug Sam. “Wow, I’m so glad you’re okay. And Poppy wants you to know she’s here in spirit.”
“Which is actually the way I prefer it,” Sam said, laughing.
“We were out all night looking for you,” Cammie told her. “With the Mexican police.”
Sam was amazed. “You did that, for me?”
“Not really
all
night,” Dee put in, her face very serious. “We took breaks. Cammie more than me.”
“It wasn’t a contest, Dee,” Cammie pointed out, then turned her attention back to Sam. “I did walk miles looking for you. Don’t let it happen again, because it was hell on my new Sigerson Morrison heels.”
Sam grinned happily. She could read between the quips; Cammie really did care.
Dee looked around. “Wow, if it wasn’t for Poppy, I’d want to stay for a while. This place looks awesome.”
“Another time. My dad wants me to pack up and check out,” Sam complained. “There’s another storm coming. Can you guys hang out here for a bit? I’ll be right back.”
Cammie smiled. “As long as they keep those mimosas coming.”
Sam hugged her friends again—it really was touching that they’d flown down with her dad to look for her—and then headed for her casita. Yet she had a niggling feeling at the pit of her stomach as she walked back to pack. Too bad she’d never had a chance to say good-bye to Eduardo before he went back to France. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t like they really knew each other. He was just a cute guy with a cute accent who for some unfathomable reason had wooed her like someone out of a
telenovela.
Whatever. Like she’d told Anna, it was probably better this way. It wasn’t like they were going to fall in love. Because that shit never happened to her. So why obsess about—?
There he was. Waiting on the front step of her casita.
“Hi,” she mustered, suddenly feeling shy.
“Hello.”
She couldn’t read his face. “Are you mad?”
He looked very serious. “Let’s start with relieved.”
“No shit,” Sam told him, going for blithe. “We almost got shot by these two guards. They pointed some big-ass rifles at us.”
Eduardo’s brows knit together. “Why do you say it like it’s a joke?”
“Why not? It’s over, we’re fine, the end.” When he didn’t speak, she shrugged. “It’s not like I intended to stand you up last night. My friend Anna and I drank this vicious mescal and she accidentally ate the worm and then I—”
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me,” he interrupted.
Sheesh. He seemed so stiff and formal. Where was the charming, sexy guy she’d met the day before? Maybe she’d just imagined that he was wonderful because she so wanted it to be true. It was amazing—and sad—how her own mind could fool her so badly.
“Okay.” Sam didn’t quite know what to say. “It was almost fun. I . . . um . . . have to go. So I guess we’re victims of premature evacuation.”
He didn’t laugh. “I’m glad you’re all right, Samantha.”
“Oh, sure. No problem. Well . . .”
“Well . . .”
God. She had to end this and put them both out of their misery. She’d go inside, pack up, and be on the way back to Beverly Hills inside of twenty minutes. Stupid, stupid, stupid, that’s what she was. Stupid for having hopes that some guy who’d picked her up in Mexico could be special.
“So, ’bye, Eduardo.” She made herself step past him to the front door of her casita. Once inside, with the door safely shut, she added, “I am such an asshole. And that is the end of that sordid little tale.”
“Anna? Excellent!” Anna was sitting alone at the lobby bar, eating eggs Benedict—she was ravenous—and drinking French-press coffee. She turned to see Lloyd hurrying toward her, a huge grin on his face.
“Hello, Lloyd,” she said in a monotone, forcing herself not to actually roll her eyes.
He lifted his sunglasses and stuck them in his hair. “I heard you were back. Good thing. Your father was ready to kick my butt for losing you.”
“You didn’t lose me, Lloyd,” Anna assured him, trying to hold on to civility. “I’ll make sure he knows.”
“Bad, bad girl.” Lloyd wagged a finger at her. “Now, if you had stayed and played with me last night, you would have avoided all this drama.”
Play with Lloyd? How revolting was
that
idea?
