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The passenger door opened and a boy hopped out. The kid wasn’t big—kind of weedy-looking—but he wasn’t a little kid. Closer to a teenager. He held a gun down by his side but at the ready. Maybe he’d learned how to do it from cop shows.

The driver’s side opened and a figure stepped out. From where Max was, the lower half of the person was blocked by the truck’s hood. The person was lean and straight-backed, with hair clipped close to the skull. Max thought it was a woman, but he wasn’t sure. The person was dressed like a man and moved economically. The two of them met in front of the truck.

It was a woman. But like none he’d ever seen. She moved like a man. He wondered if she’d had a sex-change operation.

The woman spoke to the kid. He nodded and trotted across the dirt road toward the west, ran up a desert hill and disappeared. The woman walked up the road. Casual. Glancing at her watch. A big watch—a man’s watch, like his Breitling. When she reached the tall bamboo ringing Sam P.’s yard, she crouched low and followed it to the entrance, gun at the ready.

Max remembered where he’d seen the truck. It had been parked outside the Rat Motel. He remembered the truck pulling out and following the limo.

Either Jerry or his brother Gordon—probably it was both of them—had sent the guys in the limo. So why had the woman and kid followed them? Did they hope the limo would lead them to him?

Did more than one set of people want him?

He was beginning to feel like a pawn.

Max took a deep breath. He had no doubt the woman and boy would come here to the corral, once they finished with the house. Maybe they’d find his kidnappers. They would surely see the shot-up Saturn, the glass, the evidence of a gun battle in the carport.

Where was the kid? He had gone west, which meant he could be circling around the corral. Kid could have seen him from that angle, might be closing in even now. Max had no doubt the kid knew how to use his firearm. Max had spent time shooting at a range; he had been taught to shoot and shoot relatively well. He had worked with marksmen. The kid had carried his weapon as if it had grown out of his arm. Casual, but alert.

Max could easily be seen hiding behind the tank. He should move. But there was no place to go.

He had the semiautomatic. He could shoot the boy if it came to that.

But could he?

He’d almost blown Sam P. to kingdom come. But this was a boy. He didn’t think he could shoot a boy.

But where to hide?

A sharp whistle rent the air.

The woman stood at the edge of the carport, among the broken glass, looking in his direction.

No, not his direction, to the right. Far to the right.

The kid yelled, “What?”

The woman stuck two fingers in her mouth and blew again.

Max sank into the ground, flat on his stomach. He hunched his shoulders like a turtle hiding in its shell. He hoped the color of his body and his clothing would look like a shadow on the earth. He heard the boy run, maybe thirty yards from him, to his right. Pelting footsteps, occasionally sliding on rock and sand, the kid yelling, “What is it?”

Max had the absurd desire to close his eyes.

Instead, he canted his head slightly, so he could see the house.

The woman and the boy stood outside the carport. The woman started around the Saturn, moving loose-limbed but alert, like a panther.

They were swallowed up by the shadows. If Max was going to escape, he’d better do it now.

Chapter Nineteen

WHENEVER JERRY GOLD was conflicted about something—“conflicted” being one of Gordon’s favorite expressions (Jerry’s half brother had upscale hippie psychobabble down to a science, along with the unlimited wardrobe of Hawaiian shirts, tai chi pants, and Birkenstocks)—he reverted to what he’d been before he became Max Conroy’s manager. Always, he went back to the storyboard.

Better to cover all the bases.

He locked Talia out of his office, grabbed a ream of 8 ½" x 11" copy paper and his favorite Sharpie, and set up on the desk overlooking the pool. Talia knocked halfheartedly a couple of times, then gave up. The woman had the attention span of a gnat. He wondered now why he had gotten involved with her at all. Yes, there was the secret pleasure of banging Talia L’Apel, a big star in her own right, and he cherished the idea of cuckolding Max Conroy, heartthrob of girls and women from fourteen to sixty. She was terrific in bed too. You’d be surprised how many hot-bodied actresses weren’t. It sometimes seemed the more alluring and sexy they appeared, the more frigid they were in the boudoir. Not so with Talia, who brought the same exuberance to the sack as she did to the ski slopes.

Gordon had called an hour ago, telling him about the kidnappers in some hick town called Paradox and their demand for a million dollars by sunset. He was relieved that the kidnappers had called again, after Talia had turned them down. But on the minus side, there was no way Gordon could possibly come up with the money that quickly. And the idea of letting go of a million dollars…

What if the kidnappers got the million dollars and killed Max anyway? And left him to rot in the desert sun somewhere for hunters to find six months from now?

Fortunately, there was a Plan B.

“You remember Shaun?” Gordon said. “She’s Mickey Barron’s granddaughter. The stunt man.”

“I thought she was a stunt woman.”

“That’s right, Jer. It runs in the family.”

Jerry said, “But she’s the one who—” He lowered his voice. “The one, who, you know, at Big Bear Lake?”

“Why are you whispering?”

“You know people listen in on cell phones.”

“How’s this? She’s the one who looks like a man. You met her when she was here one time.”

Jerry did remember meeting her. How could he ever forget? Jerry suppressed a shudder. When he had first met her, he really couldn’t tell if she was a man or a woman. Not because she was ugly—she wasn’t—but because of the vibe she gave off. The way she carried herself, the way she walked. Maybe it was her center of balance. Little things, all put together to create an odd, well, dissonance. But that wasn’t the worst thing. What really got to Jerry was the feeling that she was sizing him up for a coffin. She spooked the hell out of him, and that was even before he learned about her résumé.

“Are you listening, Jerry?” Gordon said. “This is important. She’s going to extract him from the kidnappers. And the good news? She’s already there. I sent her to find him.”

“In Paradox?”

“That’s right.”

“It’s still dangerous, though. What if he gets killed in the crossfire?”

“You ever look on the bright side?”

“Just hedging my bets. That’s what I wanted to tell you about—I’m in the middle of something here. I’m writing an alternate storyboard. And you know it could work, especially if we don’t have the body. It might be easier too.”

“Shaun’s going to get him and bring him back, Jerry. Everything’s going to be fine. These guys who took him sound like Grade A dildos. They’re in too deep and they don’t have any idea who they’re dealing with. Nobody messes with Gordon White Eagle.”

Jesus, Jerry thought; he really takes himself too seriously. He wondered if Gordon was using a little of his own product—the pot he supplied some of the underage counselors with. That, or all that guru happy-crappy had gone to his head. “I’ll write the alternate scenario, just in case.”

“It hasn’t been researched, Jer. You can’t just come up with something off the cuff and think you can fool the cops. Everyone these days is a forensic expert after all those years of watching CSI . We have to get this right the first time, because there won’t be another. I worked damned hard to get Max to where I wanted him psychologically, and in my professional opinion, he’s primed. I put a lot of work into him, Jerry, and I’m proud of my work. He’s more than just a soon-to-be-dead movie star. He’s proved my thesis !”