Wicked Ambition (34 page)

Ivy had been keeping an eye on her sister. Nothing could compare with having come face to face with her in San Francisco, but scoping all she could on the web—every update, every development—was like foreplay. The anticipation was exquisite, the purest agony, knowing as she did that the countdown had begun. Following an aborted bomb scare in New York, Robin’s name was hot on the media’s lips.

Just wait until they saw what was next.

Ivy laughed. She hadn’t meant to do it out loud and it was enough to spark Graham’s renewed attention.

‘Somethin’ funny?’ he leered, coming over to renew the flirtation.

‘Nothing that you’d understand.’

He took her response for playful banter. ‘Why’n’t you explain it to me over a drink?’

Men were such pathetic, predictable creatures. ‘I don’t think so.’

Graham chuckled. ‘Give me time,’ he threatened. ‘I’ll have my wicked way yet.’

Ivy grimaced. If it wasn’t Graham in pursuit of her attentions, it was Connor—except while she could leave her supervisor at the end of the day, Connor was hanging around like a dick in the wind the minute she returned to the apartment. It was a miracle she had managed to secure all she needed amid the incessant knocks on the door. On one occasion she had opened it, the computer tucked just out of sight, its screen boasting rifles and semi-automatics and charges of ammo, an order of arsenal enough to supply an army, so that all Connor would have had to do was to peer over her shoulder…

Connor was blind, as blind as Graham, as blind as them all.

This summer, at last, they would meet the truth.

It was the end of her shift. Ivy pulled off her cap and pushed through the exit.

‘Your time’s up,’ she called, letting the door swing shut behind her.

PART 3

43

I
t took a long time for Turquoise to surface. She felt herself swimming from a deep-sea bed, up and up through the fathoms towards a distant light that kept moving further and further beyond her reach. Every part of her ached, her limbs heavy and dragging her down, and it was hard to see and harder to breathe. She couldn’t get a lungful; the water was too close, all around, above and below and everywhere, holding her in. On a blink it rushed in, black and cold, stinging her lids and splintering a piercing agony through her skull.

Pain shoved her into consciousness. Her eyes opened to darkness, swollen and sheer, a thick curtain she could reach out and touch. The world was invisible. Nothing could ground or place her, no light, not even a shadow, to guide her vision. Was she dead?

A rising tide that built in her chest till she wanted to scream told her she wasn’t. She was alive. The scream didn’t come, just a muffled cry that hit an impenetrable wall. Her
lips were fused, suffocated, zipped together. Gingerly she brought her fingers up, both hands at once because she could not separate them, and missed her face as disorientation played tricks and spots burst behind her eyes. Finally she met her skin, wanting to weep at the company of it, because she was here, she was whole…and the band of tape still soldered to her mouth.

Keep calm
.

Breathe
.

The words looped in her head, insufficient to betray the isolation and terror of her situation.
Hostage
. Helpless. Hopeless.

But inhaling through her nose, unable to take in the oxygen her body craved, only exacerbated her fear. Her heart catapulted as she attempted to lift a corner of the tape but couldn’t get the angle, because she had no strength and her wrists were tied so tightly that the cords burned and every twist arrived with a fresh bolt of agony. With a whimper she tried to sit, pushing herself up on her elbows, her stomach muscles cramping as her legs failed to deliver. Reaching her ankles, she found them bound as well. Picking frantically to free them, blind and bewildered and her lungs on fire as she fought the desperation to take a throatful of air, she accepted it was no good.
I’m going to die here. I’m going to die
.

In tantalising drips, images seeped through, half remembered, half dreamed.

The letters ANGEL RESIDENCE, gleaming in the light…

A glittering glass of water, freezing cold, and the crack of thawing ice…

Ava’s smile…

The word, one word…
‘Surprise’
—

Her vision was assaulted by light. A shaft came pouring in, brighter than the sun, pursued by footsteps. Turquoise squinted through the haze, willing herself to focus: the throb at the back of her head was disabling. The door closed and a softer glow was switched on.

‘Hello, again,’ said Ava. She was sitting primly against the wall of what Turquoise saw was a small, cell-like room. It was about twelve feet by ten, white-polished marble, bright and clinical as a hospital waiting room. Ava’s legs were crossed and her hands were linked primly at the knees. Through a vapour of confusion Turquoise went to speak, before remembering she was gagged. Her tongue was woollen and stuck to the roof of her mouth.

‘You’ve been asleep for a while. I tried to rouse you but you must have been very tired. Do you think we can talk now? Are you up to it?’

Turquoise trembled.
What are you doing? Why aren’t you setting me free?

‘I know this is a shock.’ Ava’s voice was as calm and cool as her surroundings, and as unruffled as if the women had been catching up over lunch. Nothing about her demeanour betrayed anything out of the ordinary—just the eyes, which had lost the Ava sparkle and were now as flat and unfeeling as a reptile’s. Which was the real Ava, that one or this?

‘You’re going to live,’ she said. ‘Do you hear me? Do you understand?’

From the mattress she was confined to, a single cream pad that smelled of plasticky, floral antiseptic, Turquoise nodded. She stared up, wild-eyed, at a woman she did not know.

‘But first we need to teach you a lesson. You’ve been a bad girl. Do you know why?’

Dumbly she shook her head.

‘Have a think,’ Ava encouraged, leaning forwards, her almond eyes glittering with false reassurance. A plait of white-blonde hair was draped over one shoulder and she wore a familiar pantsuit—the last one Turquoise had seen her in. In pieces she recalled the journey to Cosmo’s house and the alarm she had felt when her friend had opened the door.

Her friend…

‘Is there anything you want to tell me?’ Ava pressed, with the soft insistence of a parent wheedling confession from her child. ‘When you’re ready I’ll let you speak, but I want you to be ready, Turquoise, because if you start screaming I’m going to have to punish you and you won’t like that.’ A beat. ‘Even if you do, your cries for help will be a waste of energy. No one will hear you because we’re soundproofed. You could cry until your throat burst and still they wouldn’t come.’ She smiled kindly. ‘All right?’

Turquoise closed her eyes, tentatively stepping through the twisting corridors of memory until she landed on it. Her only defence:
the tape
. Awkwardly she lowered her bound wrists, fumbling towards her jeans pocket and diving into it. She found it empty.

‘Looking for something?’ Ava held up her own hand, between the fingers of which the evidence shone blackly as a jewel.

Injustice hit Turquoise in a red cloud, dazzling her vision so that when she rose and stumbled towards the other woman it was useless: she went crashing down, unable to
break her fall, her knotted fists slamming against the waxy floor.

Ava clicked her teeth. ‘There, there,’ she crooned, ‘no need to go getting silly. Cosmo’s on his way and you’ll want to be on your best behaviour for him, won’t you? You’ve made him wait. He tried to come down sooner but you were far too sleepy, and that’s no fun for him, is it? Understand we had to sedate you: you were quite the feisty thing.’

Cosmo…

‘You know he doesn’t like it when you disobey him.’ Ava waited before delivering her blow. ‘Not like the old days.’ With startling strength she pushed Turquoise back on to the mattress. Her face loomed close, surveying her victim’s horror with interest.

‘Do you promise to be good?’

Turquoise did nothing. She prayed for the nightmare to end but knew in her soul it was no nightmare. This was real. The pain coursing through her body told her so.

Gently Ava peeled back the tape. It left a gluey residue on Turquoise’s mouth that she longed to wipe but her hands were helpless. Ava did it for her.

‘Water,’ she gasped.

Ava obliged, crossing to a steel panel in the corner of the room, above which a faucet was fixed. She returned to her chair and held the glass out, removing it from reach every time Turquoise went for it, smiling slightly, toying with her prey until at last she got bored.

Turquoise drank the liquid thirstily, her hands shaking. With every gulp, life seeped back into her veins. Her brain was slow to catch up.

Think, think, think…
But that was all she could think.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she rasped.

‘Why do you imagine? I’m a loyal and faithful wife.’

‘Ava,
please
, for God’s sake. This is me!’ Turquoise’s lips were so dry she could barely force the words out, her oesophagus raw. ‘Look at me. Look at what you’ve done!’

But the Ava who might once have heard her was gone. The blonde woman’s expression gave nothing away save for perverse pleasure. She was enjoying this.

‘You’re right,’ said Ava. ‘This
is
you, Turquoise—the real you. On your back, tied up, waiting for a man to have his wicked way and then throw a bit of cash in your direction. How much do you fetch these days? A girl like you must be raking in a fortune.’

‘How dare you,’ she whispered. ‘How
dare
you?’

‘I’ve been pretending no more than you have, darling. The star the world knows is a fiction, isn’t she? A lie. If I hadn’t known better I’d have believed it, too.’

Turquoise’s soul dropped through her feet. She’d assumed that Ava was ignorant of her husband’s past because surely no one could abide it…unless they were as evil as him.

‘Cosmo told you everything.’

‘From the beginning.’ Ava bared her teeth. ‘People ask how we keep the strongest marriage in Hollywood alive, and there’s your answer.
Honesty
. I stand by my husband and he stands by me. Truth, right to the end. We’re a team, Turquoise—not that you’d know how that feels, existing alone in your frightened little bubble.’

All this time she had found comfort in knowing she wasn’t by herself in her suffering, even if the man she’d shared it with was her most hated adversary. The idea that
Cosmo had never been in that state, that he’d
always
had Ava’s confidence, made her weak with sorrow.

Ava licked her lips. ‘Madam Babydoll sure seems a long time ago, doesn’t she?’

It had been so many years since she had encountered the woman’s name. Hearing it on Ava’s lips was horribly uncanny. Cosmo really had shared it all.

‘Oh, no,’ Ava went on, seeming to read her mind, ‘he didn’t need to enlighten me about
that
. I was there, you see. Cosmo was the prize all of us Babydolls wanted.’

It couldn’t be. It was impossible.

‘After you,’ mused Ava, ‘there was a gap to fill.’

She wrestled to understand. It made no sense.

‘For a while, Lily Rose and I were the favoured package.’ Turquoise detected an edge of bitterness in her captor’s voice. ‘Cosmo switched to blondes, in an effort to forget what he went through with you, I suppose. That’s one thing you never grasped, Turquoise. You had it the wrong way round, thinking these men owed you when in fact it was you who owed them. You were lucky to take those jobs, don’t you see? We all were.’

Turquoise caught a flash of a pretty Californian girl with a tan like honey.

The way I see it
, Lily Rose had purred,
it’s an opportunity to get noticed
.

Clearly it had been for Ava, as well. Ava had taken work from Madam Babydoll? She’d known Lily Rose? She’d been there? It was too much. It couldn’t be true.

‘Cosmo couldn’t keep his secrets for ever,’ Ava elaborated. ‘As soon as he told me about that unfortunate girl—you remember, Turquoise, the one you killed?—I knew that
ours was an unbreakable bond. Other women would come and go but none would secure his trust like I had. He forgot about Lily, he cleaned up his act, he stopped using Madam Babydoll.’ She smiled. ‘We knew how to create our own entertainment. Cosmo Angelopoulos became Cosmo Angel, and I went along for the ride.’

She glared at her assailant. ‘I’d hardly say he’d “cleaned up his act”.’

Ava gave a private smirk. ‘Which brings us to the matter of your footage.’ Again she held the treasure up to the light. ‘It’s no shock to me, so you can forget that one straight away. In fact Cosmo and I aren’t averse to sharing this kind of thing together—another badge of a contented marriage, you might say: something to bring us closer.’

Every word was poison.

‘What concerns us is what you plan to do with your home movie. I’m sure you’d agree, if it ever got out there would be hell to pay.’

Turquoise said nothing. She didn’t need to.

‘Never go for the timid ones, there’s a hint. They might prove easy targets but they always lose their nerve. Your friend at the hotel was a pleasant enough young man, and
very
eager to please—meaning, naturally, he was eager to please us, too.’ Ava smiled, gratified. ‘The manager called the morning you checked out. Ordinarily they wouldn’t have followed it up but since a maid confirmed she’d seen you in Cosmo’s suite, well, they couldn’t ignore it. Of course we allayed their fears, corroborated your story and promised we were all friends.’

‘I thought we were, Ava,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘I really thought we were.’

‘It didn’t take a genius to figure out the rest,’ Ava went on. ‘Cosmo invited you to us on the assumption you would bring the evidence, and so you did.’ She shook her head, curious. ‘Did you really think you had the upper hand? That you could threaten us? Your plan was over before it got started…while ours hasn’t even begun.’