Gemma Halliday - Undercover In High Heels

After the studio security guards had swarmed from every direction toward Isabel’s kicking and screaming body, the rest of the evening had kind of blurred together. Isabel had been handcuffed and dragged away by three security guards, shouting obscenities the whole way. A medic had arrived on scene and scooped my crumpled, crying self off the ground and into a van, where he’d examined me head to toe and pronounced a slight case of shock. (Understatement alert.) Then the LAPD had arrived in full force, followed closely by the media.

I searched the flashbulbs and camera crews for a glimpse of Felix. True to my word, he’d been the first call I’d made once security had arrived on the scene. He’d been so excited about the story, he hadn’t even cursed at me (much) for taking his car. Instead, he’d yelled something about evening editions and calling a cab. But if he were here now, he was lost in the crowd of paparazzi.

I did, however, spy Detective Prune Face making his way onto the scene, along with two other plainclothes detectives wearing gun bulges and grim expressions on their faces. No sign of Ramirez.

I wasn’t quite sure whether that made me glad or not. On the one hand, the thought of his big arms around me was comforting enough to downgrade my shivers from a 7.2 to mild aftershocks. On the other, I could only imagine the lecture I’d be getting once he saw the outcome of harebrained scheme number three thousand gone awry. If, that is, he was still even speaking to me.

“Maddie!” I looked up to see Dana rushing toward me, her fake blonde locks flapping behind her. A uniform stopped her at the crime-scene tape, but after a couple of nods from Prune Face, he let her through.

“Ohmigoooooood! Are you okaaaaaay?” Dana grabbed me in a rib-crusher hug.

“Ouch.”

“Oh, sorry.” She stepped back. “What happened to your hair?”

I cringed, gingerly lifting a hand to my head. “Mia ripped out a chunk. It’s bad, isn’t it?”

Dana was such a good friend, she didn’t even answer that. “God, I’m so glad you’re okay!” she said instead, diving in for another hug. “I was so worried about you. I waited and waited in the trailer, but no one showed up. And I got totally bored, so I, like, booted up Mia’s computer to surf YouTube some more. And guess what I found? Letters, Maddie. Just like the ones she said she’d been getting. Know what I think? I think maybe Mia’s been writing them all along.”

Does my friend have good timing or what?

“Anyway, ” she continued, “I peeked my head out the door to tell you, but you were, like, totally gone. I was so totally worried about you!”

She gave me another rib crusher. But, honestly, this time I didn’t even mind.

“Uh-oh.” Dana stepped back.

“Uh-oh?”

“Trouble at three o’clock.”

I turned my head to the left.

“No, three o’clock.” Dana grabbed my chin and tilted my head right.

Detective Prune Face was talking with the latest plainclothes to appear on the set. He was dressed in worn-in-the-right-places jeans, a muscle-hugging T-shirt, and wore a day-old growth of stubble on his dimpled chin, along with a tired expression that said he’d been out chasing down one errant blonde all night.

Ramirez looked up and caught my eye, his jaw going tense.

I gulped. Uh-oh.

“Um, I’ll just be over here if you need me…”Dana trailed off, wisely giving Bad Cop a wide berth as he made a beeline toward the medic van. If my legs weren’t still in a jelly state, I might have joined her. As it was, I just hugged my green blanket a little tighter as his imposing form stopped in front of me.

“I’m so, so sorry, ” I squeaked out, my voice doing the caught-coloring-on-the-walls thing. “I so didn’t mean for this to happen; I was just going to call security, that’s all. And I’m so, so sorry about ditching Officer Mustache, but Dana was here all alone and she’s my best friend and she looked so much like Mia, and then there was another letter, and I was sure he was going after her again, only the he turned out to be the she that he was going after and-”

But I didn’t get any further. Ramirez leaned in and covered my lips with his. Roughly. Possessively. His hands grabbing my shoulders, pulling me to him with a fierceness I’d seen only in Cary Grant movies.

By the time he came up for air, my legs weren’t the only part of me turning to jelly.

“Oh.” I sighed.

Ramirez looked down at me, his eyes dark, a frown hovering over his brows. “You’re going to be the death of me, you know that, right?” he rasped out.

“I’m so amazingly sorry. For everything. But, get this-Mia was the one writing the letters all along!”

“I know.”

I cocked my head to the side. “You know?”

Ramirez nodded. “I just came from the crime lab, where SID has been analyzing the envelopes Mia’s letters arrived in. The only DNA found in the saliva on the seal was a match of the sample we took from Mia’s lipstick.”

“So you already knew that Mia was the killer?”

“We had enough to question her as a suspect.” He glanced at the red stain on the asphalt. “At least, that would have been our next step.”

“I’m so, so sorry, ” I apologized again. “If it’s any consolation, she totally confessed to me before Isabel shot her.” I paused. “Hey, how did Isabel get on the lot, anyway?”

Ramirez scrubbed a hand over his face, as if the evening had taken more out of him than he was willing to admit. “Apparently she stole a stunt car they were going to use for a chase scene in that new police drama. She hijacked the driver outside the studio, and security let her drive the damn thing right onto the lot.” He paused, narrowing his eyes at me. “Apparently security doesn’t check credentials as closely as they should, Fe-lay .”

I bit my lip. “Sorry about that. Seriously, mega sorry. And you have every right to be angry.”

He shook his head at me. “Angry? Jesus, Maddie, I’ve been worried sick. I’ve been all over L.A. County looking for you. Do you have any idea how scared I was that something had happened to you? That Isabel had tracked you down?”

My heart clenched in my chest. “You were worried?”

“Of course I was worried. Dammit, Maddie, I don’t know how you do it, but you’re a walking time bomb. You get taken hostage, receive death threats, get your place ransacked, your car rammed into, appear in Internet porn…”

“Oh, you heard about that, huh?” I felt myself go red.

Ramirez raised an eyebrow at me, but continued. “…impersonate a member of the press, sneak onto studio property, and manage to get yourself attacked by not one, but two killers in one night.”

“You forgot the grand theft auto, ” I mumbled, remembering Felix’s multiple messages.

Ramirez raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“Uh…”

But luckily I didn’t have to answer as he raised two hands in front of him. “Wait. Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

Thank God. Because I so didn’t want to tell him.

“All I want to know right now, ” Ramirez continued as he took a step closer, “is that you’re all right.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but he put an index finger over my lips. “Don’t talk. Just nod.”

I shut my mouth. And nodded.

“And that you’re done chasing killers and pissing off junkies?”

I nodded again.

“And that I won’t be getting any more calls on my police scanner that my girlfriend has just suffered an attempted murder.”

I paused. Then nodded slowly.

“And, ” he said, leaning in so close that his body pressed against mine, “that you’re coming home with me.”

Heat pooled south of my belly button and I did a long, low shiver.