Gemma Halliday - Undercover In High Heels

The final piece of the puzzle clicked in my brain. “Dusty saw you take the panty hose.”

Mia frowned, obviously peeved that I’d skipped ahead in the script. “Yes. At the time I told her I’d run my first pair. But after she found Veronika, it became clear that Dusty wasn’t as stupid as she looked. She confronted me. Told me she was going to the cops with what she’d seen. Maybe the cops would have believed her, maybe not. But I couldn’t take that chance. Not when the press is eating this story up. I have a Barbara Walters interview scheduled! So, I had to write Dusty out of the picture.”

The way Mia referred to killing Dusty, as if she’d simply dropped a character from her little show, made me sick to my stomach.

“So, you killed her, too?”

Mia smirked. “I used Margo’s scarf to try to throw suspicion on her. Nice plot twist, huh?”

I glanced behind Mia’s shoulder again. Nothing. No sign of security. No sign of anyone.

I felt my heart clench in my chest as Mia took another step toward me and I realized I was truly on my own here. Maybe if I could just slowly inch backward toward that metal detector…

“What are you doing?” Mia took a step forward, shoving the gun in my face.

I froze. “Nothing.”

She snarled at me. “Then stop moving! I don’t want to have to shoot you. It’s supposed to be strangulation. Don’t make me ruin your scene.”

I gulped-and just barely avoided having those five cups of coffee sitting in my bladder stain Marco’s leather pants.

“So, what happens next?” I asked. Not that I really wanted to know. I was pretty sure that this was the point in the script where Mia went for an R rating by adding some gratuitous violence via one badly dressed blonde. But I figured the longer I kept her talking, the longer I had to come up with some brilliant plan to get away. (Yes, I was aware that as plans went, so far mine had backfired miserably.)

“Next, ” Mia said, taking a menacing step forward, “the nosy new wardrobe assistant is found dead by the back gate. The Magnolia Lane strangler strikes again.”

Mia’s wide eyes suddenly went calm as she took a step toward me, and I realized it was now or never. Unless I wanted to be found with black-and-blue marks on my neck that would really clash with my red leather and porn shoes, I had to move.

I watched Mia take one more step, closing the gap between us. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and said a silent prayer. Then in one swift movement that would make my mother’s tabby cat jealous, I pushed off the ground and lunged at her throat.

She screeched, thrown off balance, and staggered back a step as my weight slammed into her anorexic build. Had she been the one wearing three-inch heels, she might have fallen backward, giving me the upper hand. Unfortunately, she was wearing sturdy work boots and I was the one in the three-inch heels. She quickly regained her footing, dropping the belt to grab a handful of my hair instead.

I screamed. Loudly. It was one thing to catch a hair or two in a zipper, quite another to have an entire handful yanked from the roots. With visions of bald spots dancing in my head, I retaliated, my fingernails clawing at her face.

Her turn to scream. “Not my face, you bitch!”

She stomped on my foot with one of her boots, crushing my toes. I yelped, then knocked her cap off her head and grabbed a handful of blonde locks.

Yes, I admit it, we were in an all-out catfight. If this had been MTV, we’d be in the money. Only the winner of this catfight didn’t get her own reality special and label of Celebrity Bitch Queen. The winner got to walk away alive. The loser…well, I didn’t even want to think about the loser. Mostly because as Mia shifted and I felt that gun barrel poking my ribs, I had a bad feeling it might be me.

I grabbed her wrist and focused everything I had on pointing that gun anywhere but at my person. I danced her backward toward the metal detector. She resisted, pulling the other way. We tugged and pulled back and forth, moving closer and closer. One more little inch and…

Beep, beep, beep!

The thing went off, echoing through the air and, I hoped, making little red lights dance on Bug-eyed Billy’s monitor at the security office.

Mia dropped her hands, momentarily stunned before she realized what had happened.

“You stupid bitch! Look what you did!”

I let go of her and took another step back, setting off the machine again.

“Stop it! Stop walking back and forth!”

She straight-armed the gun in front of her, and I froze.

“You ruined everything! This was the perfect episode, ” she screamed. If she’d sounded crazy before, she looked it now, her hair sticking out on one side, red scratches down the side of her face, and her eyes big and wide, burning with an emotion only Freud could identify.

“That’s it, ” she said, taking one giant stride closer. “I’ll have to go with the alternate ending.”

My breath stopped as she cocked the gun, the sickening click echoing through the air. Suddenly time stood still, each beat of my heart thumping in my chest like a drum, blood rushing in my ears, the scenery going fuzzy until all I could see was the barrel of Mia’s gun. Big chicken that I was, I closed my eyes and felt hot tears build as I braced myself for the sound of a bullet thundering through the chamber.

And then it happened. The gun went off.

I sucked in a breath…

Then slowly let it out. What do you know-I wasn’t dead. One more breath in and out. Yep, still living.

I flipped my eyes open.

And saw Mia lying on the pavement in front of me, her eyes wide and unseeing, a big red stain pooling around her blonde curls.

Bile rose in my throat, and I would have screamed if I’d been able to find my voice.

“I told you I’d catch up to you!”

I looked up.

Oh hell.

It hadn’t been Mia’s gun going off.

It was Isabel’s.

Black hair flapped behind her like a cape, long, fishnet-clad legs pumping toward me, gun pointed out in front of her as two more cracks filled the air, bullets pinging off the side of the metal detector that started beeping like a car alarm again.

Was I the only person in L.A. not packing?

“You shot her!” I yelled, ducking behind the metal detector.

“You’re next, bitch!”

I held my hands out in front of me to ward her off. “Look, Isabel, I didn’t have anything to do with your boyfriend…”

“Snake hates me, and it’s all your fault!” Two more shots rang out.

“I’m sure you’re better off without him.”

“What do you know, Blondie?” Another bullet ricocheted off the side of the metal detector.

“Have you thought about couples therapy? I saw this Dr. Phil episode the other day about rage in relationships…”

But, luckily, I didn’t have to go any further.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a blue streak race across the lot and go flying at Isabel like a linebacker, tackling her to the ground with a thud.

I watched, relief thudding through me, as Queen Latifah pinned Isabel beneath her considerable bulk, one hand on her walkie-talkie as she yelled, “I’ve got a two-fifteen here! Requesting backup! I repeat, a two-fifteen!”

Five security golf carts surrounded the scene, dozens of uniformed officers and security personnel wrapping bright yellow crime-scene tape around the dark red puddle staining the asphalt. Three huge spotlights, courtesy of the lighting department, shone enough wattage down on the scene to make it feel like noon instead of midnight. And me, sitting on the edge of the medic’s van, wrapped in an ugly green blanket, serious amounts of mascara streaked down my cheeks as I watched the medical examiner wheel Mia’s lifeless body away.