Gemma Halliday - Undercover In High Heels

But apparently my kickboxing was a little rusty, as my attacker was quickly on my heels. I heard his footsteps echoing through the nearly empty lot behind me. But I didn’t turn around to look. I couldn’t. I was too freaked out. He was gaining on me-no small surprise, considering that my lungs still felt like I’d been inhaling Tabasco sauce.

I bolted past 6G, weaving through the maze of warehouses until I turned a corner and found myself in New York. The city streets were eerily still in the nighttime, dark in a way the real New York never was. I barreled through the Bronx and Manhattan, turning a corner and finding myself in San Francisco. I tripped once on the hilly terrain, but quickly scrambled to my feet as the steady pounding of footsteps behind grew closer.

I barreled on, turning the corner and curving back down a hill lined with fake Victorians. My throat hurt, my head hurt, my thighs burned, my entire body protesting that this was the hardest workout I’d had since Dana made me try a Billy Blanks Tae Bo video with her. I’d almost died of exhaustion then.

Only this time if I pooped out, I really would be dead.

I surged forward, running on pure adrenaline. I hit the bottom of the hill and rounded another corner into the Central Park section of the lot. I could feel him gaining on me, my heart racing as I wove between the trees. He was so close I could hear his breath coming hard and fast behind me, warning me that an out-of-shape shoe designer was no match for a determined killer.

And then I saw it. The metal detector.

Abandoned at this time of night, but the blinking red light over the archway indicated it was on. I prayed it was hooked up to a remote monitor somewhere in the security office. If I could make it to the metal detector, my shoes were sure to set it off-hadn’t they always?-and security would come running. I surged forward, new hope spurring me on. I felt my legs pumping so hard it was like running on overcooked spaghetti. My arms were shooting back and forth like pistons, my entire body leaning forward, urging me on despite the ever-present footsteps hovering just behind me.

I was so close, only a few more feet. I could see the gate beyond the metal detector, closed and locked now, of course. A sole overhead lamp illuminated the ugly plastic frame. Only right now, it looked like heaven to me.

I closed my eyes and pumped with all my might, visualizing myself as Flo-Jo, crossing the Olympic finish line. I was close; I could make it…

But on my steady diet of Top Ramen and takeout, it was clear I was no Olympic athlete. And as I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder, it became clear I wasn’t going to make my finish line.

I felt his hot breath on my neck as he spun me around. Hard.

“Unh.” The force threw me to the ground. I landed on my butt, facing the menacing figure in black. I crab-walked backward, whimpering as he hovered above me.

Then he stepped into the light and my breath caught in my throat, my paralyzing fear for a moment converted into pure shock.

“You!” I found myself saying, like some victim in a bad detective film.

She snorted, her perfectly manicured brows drawing together over familiar green eyes. “Surprised?” Mia asked. Then she threw her head back and laughed, tendrils of blonde hair escaping from the cap on her head. “Some detective you are, huh?”

I shook my head. “I…I don’t understand.”

“That’s not surprising; you’re not exactly a rocket scientist.”

Hey!

I ripped my gaze from her eyes-which were wide and slightly unbalanced, I now noticed-and let it travel down to her hands. One was twisting a brown leather belt. The other held a gun.

I gulped.

“You killed Veronika?” I squeaked out.

“Don’t pass judgment on me, you little twit, ” she said, pointing the gun at my nose. “If you saw what Veronika was doing, you wouldn’t think she was such an innocent victim. She was blackmailing someone, all right. Me!”

My head was spinning, partly from the lack of oxygen, but mostly with bits and pieces of information that had been swirling in my brain for days. And suddenly, as if by magic, they were falling into place.

“It was about the letters all along, ” I said.

Mia grinned, showing off two rows of perfectly bleached teeth. They seemed to glow in the moonlight, giving her face an eerie otherworldly look. If it was possible, she creeped me out even more.

“Yes, it was about the letters.”

“Only…” I paused, letting things fall into place. “Veronika didn’t write them. You did.”

For a moment her creepy smile faltered. Apparently I wasn’t playing the role of “dumb blonde” to her satisfaction. “It was all Blake’s fault. I was trailing in the ratings because of his stupid nerves. The man couldn’t even give a goddamned red-carpet interview without breaking into a sweat and stuttering like Porky Pig. And then that bitch Margo goes and tries to write me out of the film script. Me! Can you believe it? I’m the star of the show. So, I decided I needed more screen time. If the writers weren’t going to give it to me, I’d just have to write myself a new part.”

“Like the victim of a stalker fan?” I glanced behind Mia. Where was this extra security everyone kept talking about? If I could keep her talking long enough, surely someone would see us, right?

“Why not? Do you know how much fan mail I get every single day?” She snorted. “Five times as much as that Margo, I’ll tell you. So, I started sending some to myself. Increasingly obsessive. Then they started arriving daily, threatening my life.” She smiled again, and I was reminded of a wolf grinning down at its prey.

I shuddered. I hated being prey.

“You wouldn’t believe how the media ate that story up, ” she continued, eyes shining like a fever victim’s. “You know I hit the cover of Star , People , and US Weekly all in the same week?”

“So what went wrong?” I glanced over Mia’s shoulder. Come on, come on, what’s the holdup?

“Veronika, that’s what.” Her smile disappeared, her jaw setting into a hard angle as she stared at a point just beyond my head. “That nosy bitch. One day I come into my trailer and who do I find there but nosy Veronika? Lost her copy of the shooting schedule and wanted to borrow mine. Or so she said. She found one of my letters, half-finished. She may have been a nosy little bitch, but she wasn’t stupid. She put two and two together and realized I’d made up the entire story for the press.”

“And she threatened to go public if you didn’t pay her off?”

Mia nodded, her cap bobbing up and down. “Greedy bitch. She wanted half a mil.”

Which would have seemed like a fortune to Veronika. Only, according to Entertainment Tonight , Mia made at least that per episode.

“Why didn’t you just pay her off?”

Mia’s face distorted, her lips curling back to bare her wolfish teeth at me. “Because that wasn’t the way I planned it. Being a blackmail victim was not in my script. Blackmail is dirty and deceitful. I’m the damn star of this show! No one drags me to that level.”

O-kay.

Eccentric artist didn’t even begin to describe the kind of crazy that was going on here.

Mia took a step toward me, her eyes flashing, the gun catching the light as it glinted in my direction.

I winced, feeling my throat tighten up.

“So you killed her?” I squeaked out, stalling for time.

“Minor rewrite. But a good one, don’t you think? The perfect opportunity to escalate my stalker into a full-blown, above-the-fold murder story. I told her to meet me in my trailer after the wrap and I’d give her what she wanted. Greedy little thing actually thought I was going to pay her off. Ha!” Mia laughed out loud, a short bark that held little humor. “So, I handed her the money, and while she was busy counting it I came up behind her and strangled her with a pair of panty hose I’d taken from wardrobe earlier that day.”