Chapter 8
Olivia was gone.
Trevor was pumped full of adrenaline, his reaction all consuming. His emotions were wrecked, completely short-circuited, every molecule of energy directed toward a tactical response.
“Are you drunk?” he asked Mac, who sat beside him in Olivia’s rented car as they flew toward the studio.
“I could shoot an apple off a nun’s head right now.”
“Good. I need you on your toes.”
“Do you know where they’re holding her?” asked Mac.
“I don’t even fucking know who took her.” Hawk slammed his palm on the top of the steering wheel. “The director. My best guess at this point is the director, Evan Lockheed.”
They careened around turns and through hillsides.
“Whoever took her isn’t likely to have brought her to the set,” said Mac.
“Right. But all possible suspects should be at the studio thirty minutes from now. I need to narrow it down. Get addresses. I don’t fucking know where to start.”
Trevor cursed himself and the length of time he’d spent talking to Mac before heading back to the hotel to pick up Olivia. God only knew what time she’d been taken. All that remained was a scribbled note in the stalker’s handwriting—I’m taking what’s mine.
He pulled into the studio lot, his gun holstered at his side and Mac two steps behind him. Just like the first time he’d come on the set, there were no barriers to entry, and he cursed colorfully.
In the distance a man sat in a classic director’s chair, an open binder in his lap. “Lockheed!” Hawk snapped, and the man’s head came up. “Where is she?”
The director stood up, dropping the binder to the ground. “Who? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Hawk grabbed him by the collar. “Olivia, damn it.”
“I thought she was with you.”
Mac bent down and picked up the binder, flipping through it. “Is this the right handwriting?” he asked, showing the pages to Hawk.
“No, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t write the letters.”
“The stalker’s letters? I assure you I did not,” said Lockheed.
Hawk loosened his grip on the man’s shirt but didn’t let him go. “It’s someone with access to the script.”
“That’s half the people on the set!” squeaked the director. “More than that if they really wanted to get their hands on a copy.”
“Trevor!” Olivia’s voice rang out, Trevor twisting around to find her. She stood on the roof of the same building the sniper had shot from, a big man half-hidden behind her.
“It’s the goddamn bodyguard,” said Hawk.
People all around them were screaming, dropping to the ground or running away. Lockheed cursed and pulled away from Hawk, desperate to get away, and Hawk let him go as he looked for cover, finding it behind an apple cart. Mac was ten feet away behind another vendor stand.
Hawk pulled out his weapon. “Let her go!”
A gunshot echoed through the set for the second time in as many days. “That son of a bitch is shooting at us,” said Mac.
“Cover me,” said Hawk. “I’m going in.”
“Got it.”
Hawk ran for the building as Mac fired, darting for the cover of the overhang and making it safely across the lot. He moved quickly around the building, again scaling the ladder that ran up the back, just as he had when he first arrived at the set.
Olivia was in even more danger this time.
If the bodyguard wanted her dead, she would already be so long before Hawk made it to the top of the building, and he chanted, “No, no, no,” under his breath as his muscles pulled him toward the top.
The continued play of gunshots gave him hope Mac was keeping up a major distraction.
Olivia was crying as he crested the edge, her captor coming into view before her, the twisted lines of her face speaking to her terror. He pulled his gun, another hidden at his ankle if he needed it. “Let her go!” he yelled.
The bodyguard turned toward him, yanking Olivia with him, holding her in front of his body. “She is evil. A witch, here to kill us all.”
The guy was a whack job, the look on his face all too sincere. He remembered his training on how to deal with someone who was delusional. “No, you misunderstood. She’s a young woman. Innocent and good.” He took a slow step toward the pair.
The bodyguard raised the elbow of the arm holding the gun, pushing the weapon into Olivia’s neck and making her whimper. “Don’t come any closer!”
“Okay, I won’t. Look, I’m staying right here. We can stop this right now. Just let her go.”
“She needs to die.”
She cried more loudly, almost howling now. Hawk trained his weapon on the man, but he couldn’t get a clear shot. “Let her go! You’re making a mistake.”
A sound of gunfire exploding in a steel barrel rippled through the air, the bodyguard and Olivia falling to the ground.
For a moment Hawk didn’t know if one or both of them had been hit.
“No!” The single word was ripped from his rib cage as he rushed to her side just as Olivia moved to free herself from the bodyguard’s big arms.
Hawk kneeled down in front of them, a pool of blood quickly spreading across the tarred roof beneath the bodyguard.
He couldn’t see the shot that had taken him down.
He checked for a pulse, finding a weak one.
Hawk signaled the all clear to Mac and told him to call an ambulance before moving again to Olivia, cutting the ropes that bound her wrists with his pocketknife. “What happened?”
“I was waiting for you. He just walked in and grabbed me.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“He tied me up and threw me in the back of a van. I hit my head. He kept mumbling about how I ruined everything.”
He pulled her tightly against his chest. “Thank God you’re okay.”
“Where were you? You were gone so long.”
“I’m sorry. I went to see an old friend. My partner in arms down there on the set who just saved your life.”
“I think he’s going to be my friend, too.”
Hawk smiled and tried to laugh, but a sob came out. “I think he already is.”