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  An electric shock as a hand slipped inside his crotch.

  Evacuate. Evacuate immediately. Get out now, people.

  Davie!

  Somehow, by some fucked-up osmosis or conscience, he heard that last mental scream in Sarah’s voice.

  He took a step backwards, desperate for breathing space. It was far enough to remove the fingers that were snaking round his solid cock.

  Move forward. Move back. Move forward knowing that she was the ultimate manipulator who was doing this only for her own professional advancement and to play with his head. Move back knowing that he was in a relationship with a woman he truly wanted to be with. Move forward because he was so horny right now and so wanted those lips to be round his—

  ‘Am I interrupting something?’

  Man, who sent the cavalry? He spun round to see Mellie, in the doorway, one hand on her hip, looking like she’d just walked in on them doing nothing more startling than chatting about library books.

  ‘Nice chains,’ she told Princess. ‘Remind me to yank them one day. Davie, can I have a word?’

  ‘Erm, yeah, sure.’

  ‘Excellent. Princess, they need you on set. Much as I like the look you’re going for, I’m not sure it’ll work with our core audience.’

  ‘Shame,’ Princess jibed back dryly. ‘I think I’m rocking it.’

  ‘Absolutely. Davie?’

  Turning on her heel, she left the room and Davie followed her, ignoring Princess’s satisfied grin. As his erection collapsed and he pulled up his jeans, his thought processes immediately went to juvenile self-defence. He hadn’t actually done anything wrong. He hadn’t touched her. There had been no sexual contact on his part. I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

  Would he have?

  Fuck, did he almost totally betray Sarah?

  Cue self-flagellation and condemnation.

  How could he have done that? He’d been faithful to her every moment since they’d met, and OK, so they hadn’t had much time for each other lately, but did that really mean he couldn’t keep it in his pants even when a naked twenty-one-year-old hot babe was trying to drag it out?

  He was pathetic. Pathetic.

  But he hadn’t actually done anything, so did it count?

  If a dick gets a hard-on in the forest, does the rest of the world have to experience the fallout?

  He waited until they were back in the office before he spoke. ‘Mellie, I—’

  ‘Save it! I don’t want to know. But you might want to do up your pants before Mike gets here. He’s on his way in.’

  Davie had just buttoned up the waistband of his custom 501s when his head of security knocked and entered.

  Feechan’s face was a mask of gravity as he strode over to the desk and fired up the laptop he’d carried in with him. ‘You need to see this new video on YouTube.’

  ‘Tell me it’s kittens. Or suicidal goats. Or my ex-wife making out with her girlfriend,’ Davie said, deploying his usual tactic of resorting to humour when things got tense.

  ‘I wish it was.’

  Feechan pressed ‘play’ and then stood back to give Mellie and Davie full view of the screen.

  ‘Those are my gates,’ Davie announced to no one in particular.

  The image was of the outside of his home, the six-foot-tall perimeter wall punctuated by two huge, solid wooden gates, decorated at the top with black iron spikes to dissuade enthusiastic fans or paparazzi from entering. He could also see the two cameras, mounted on the gate posts, both trained on the area immediately in front of the gates so they could see any caller who pressed the buzzer.

  Davie already knew that whoever was turning the tables and filming the gates would be too far back for their image to be caught on his security system and made a note to address that pronto.

  ‘So someone’s got an image of the perimeter of my house. No biggie.’ Davie shrugged. It was barely out of his mouth when the gates began to open. All three of them watched in silence, transfixed by the movement of the huge wooden barriers, until they were at their widest point, where they stopped to let a car exit the property.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ Davie murmured, truly chilled for the first time since this whole fiasco began.

  As the black GMC came closer to the camera, he could clearly see the driver. He watched as it turned right, then headed down the street. Only when it disappeared out of sight and the focus of the camera returned to the gates did Davie realize that he’d been holding his breath since the vehicle driven by Zac and carrying his kids appeared on the screen.

  A tornado of rage started to form inside him. This was crossing the line. Whatever sad fuck was filming his kids would be tracked down and—

  ‘Mike, get every man you’ve got on this. I want security on Bella and Bray, I want—’

  Mike raised his hand to stop him. ‘There’s more, Davie.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He watched as Mike pressed a button on the keyboard that made the image fast-forward. In almost cartoon style, the gates closed, and then the image stayed the same for a few seconds, before the gates started to open again and his Veyron took centre position on the screen. Davie racked his memory. Yep, he’d gone out straight after the kids. Had he noticed anything? Anyone strange hanging around? Nope. He’d been too busy thinking about the day ahead to notice some fucked-up freak filming from the other side of the road.

  The Veyron came closer, before turning in the same direction as the GMC and heading into the distance. The focus returned to the gates and held the shot as they slowly closed.

  ‘Christ,’ Mellie said softly. ‘This ain’t good.’

  ‘It’s still not done,’ Mike warned, just as a cracking noise from the screen made both Mellie and Davie jolt.

  If you looked closely, you could just see the end of the barrel from where the noise had originated.

  Mike pressed ‘rewind’ and then played it again. ‘Look here. You can see where the bullet hit.’

  They watched closely as the barrel came just into shot, then recoiled slightly as the bullet left the chamber. Their eyes immediately went to the spot Mike was pointing at. Small chips of wood flew off the gate.

  ‘Some bastard just shot at my house?’ It was phrased as a question thanks to Davie’s tone of stunned disbelief.

  Mike nodded solemnly. ‘I think you’re going to have to start taking this seriously, Davie.’

  ‘Fucking hell. Mellie, what do you think?’ he asked, realizing that Mellie was uncharacteristically quiet.

  ‘I think you need to catch this prick. Because despite what you said earlier, you ain’t bulletproof.’

  17.

  ‘Killer Queen’ – Queen

  Mirren

  ‘So where are we with the terms?’ Mirren asked calmly. The current situation didn’t faze her. The studio had attempted to make changes to their arrangement before, but they’d always managed to iron out the differences and come to a resolution that both sides could live with.

  Sitting in the seat at the other side of Mirren’s desk, Perry didn’t even need to look down at her notes. ‘We finally reached agreement on everything except the books and merchandising, but they’re refusing to budge.’

  ‘What do they want?’

  ‘Twenty-five per cent. Right now, they’re on ten.’

  ‘What would the net effect be?’

  ‘About ten million a year based on this year’s projections.’

  Mirren ran the figures through her head. She knew the studio was hurting. Cinema figures were down, and thanks to a seemingly uncontrollable pirating industry, so were DVD and online sales. Her market had been unaffected, rising by 10 per cent last year, but the studio had taken a couple of big hits on action movies that hadn’t even recouped their costs.

  However, just because they were hurting in other areas didn’t mean they were going to take the cream off her pot.

  Absolutely no way. That wasn’t the way they did business.

  Mirren had the entire franchise to saf
eguard. Sure, it was riding high at the moment, but who knew what would happen in a year, two years, five years? If the Clansman income dipped for any reason, she still had wages to pay, jobs to protect. But it was more than that. Twenty per cent of all McLean Productions’ profits were now being diverted to build Chloe’s Care, a drop-in centre currently under construction in East Hollywood for teenagers with addiction issues. Sometimes it was her only reason for getting out of bed in the morning, the only thing that made any sense of what had happened. This was Chloe’s legacy – a safe refuge where a messed-up teen could find food, shelter or someone to talk to, no matter what state they were in, no matter what they’d done to get there.

  The centre was going to take over $1 million a year to run – split between Mirren’s personal contribution and a portion of the profits from McLean Productions, so if she let a major studio like Pictor eat into her earnings, it eroded her ability to sustain any future downturns and therefore jeopardized the centre. That wasn’t going to happen.

  ‘Don’t budge, Perry. How long have we got until contract deadline?’

  ‘Two weeks.’

  ‘OK. Put a call in to Wes Lomax and set up a lunch meeting. Somewhere highly visible. The Ivy. Tell them to put us up front. It’ll be better than a thirty-second slot on Entertainment Tonight.’

  Perry nodded, grinning, immediately understanding the strategy. ‘I like your style.’

  The intercom on Mirren’s desk beeped and she responded to the interruption. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Your next appointment is here,’ announced her secretary, Devlin, a six-foot import from NYC, who’d been with her since a few months after he stepped off the red-eye in search of a job behind the scenes in the industry. Mirren knew he had aspirations to move into production, but right now he was happy to learn everything he could from being the constant presence at her side.

  Perry got up and headed for the door, with a parting, ‘I’ll keep you updated.’

  ‘Thanks, Perry,’ Mirren replied, then held out a hand to greet the replacement.

  Brad Bernson had worked for her many times over the years, doing everything from tracking down the scumbags who were supplying Chloe with her drugs to doing background checks on potential employees. An ex-marine, he’d gone into the military police, rising to lieutenant colonel before retiring and setting up on his own. Mirren trusted him as much as she trusted anyone. She had to hope that, especially in this case, it wouldn’t be misplaced.

  Introductions over, he took the seat recently vacated by Perry. ‘What can I do for you?’

  It was one of the things that Mirren liked about him – he was straight to the point. No screwing around, no unnecessary pleasantries.

  ‘I need you to find out anything you can about this woman. Her name’s Marilyn McLean. I’ve written down all her details. She won’t be on any US databases, but she may have entered the country in the last few weeks.’

  Brad lifted the file with the photograph on the front. It was clearly an old one, taken many years before. Mirren had absolutely no idea whether Marilyn even resembled that image now. Her mother had always been supremely vain, dying her hair, fixating on her appearance, desperate to halt the clock of the ageing process. The blonde hair would be piled on her head, full face make-up before she’d leave the house, lots of pink clothes and indecently short skirts, which were excruciatingly embarrassingly inappropriate to her teenage daughter. Marilyn didn’t care. She was Jono Leith’s mistress, and as long as he was happy, that was all that mattered.

  The memories forced a wave of bile to rise from Mirren’s stomach. There was no one she despised more than Marilyn McLean.

  ‘Same name. Is she a family member?’ Brad’s right eyebrow was raised in question.

  ‘My mother.’

  ‘And do you want her to be approached if we find her?’

  ‘Absolutely not. Just let me know straight away.’

  ‘OK, will do. I’ll be in touch if I have any questions after reading the file.’ Brad rose and was out of there with no further discussion, leaving Mirren’s teeth clenched with dread. For once, she wanted Brad to fail, to discover that Marilyn was nowhere to be found.

  She honestly and truly hoped that her mother was dead.

  18.

  ‘Closest Thing to Crazy’ – Katie Melua

  Zander

  ‘What the fuck were you thinking?’ Wes Lomax screamed. Yep, actually screamed. Zander was pretty sure that his hair fluttered in the blowback. No one in this town spoke to a star of Zander’s calibre like that. No one. But Wes was more than just a studio head. He’d discovered Zander, Mirren and Davie twenty-two years before and made them stars, but only Zander had stayed with him since that first movie. Wes had tolerated years of negative press, defended him against all oncoming attacks, helped him through his addictions and coped with every shred of drama Zander had brought to his door. And right now, Zander knew that gave Wes the right to vent his frustrations with a baseball bat if he had one handy.

  Round the boardroom table, the Lomax lawyers, publicity chiefs, exec producers, bean counters, several anonymous suits and Hollie, staring downwards in the hope of escaping the wrath. Only Zander kept his head up, although he couldn’t stop a sigh. There was no getting away from the fact that he didn’t come out of this well. The only ray of consolation was that Raymo Cash had refused to press charges, largely due to the fact that Mirren had told cops he made the first move.

  ‘It was self-defence,’ Zander said calmly, and not for the first time. ‘The guy came at Mirren. I pushed him back.’

  ‘Then fell on him and felt the repeated inclination to punch him in the face?’ Wes didn’t hide his cynicism. ‘And it just had to be the same prick you punched out last time?’

  ‘I’m just lucky like that,’ Zander agreed wearily.

  It was a fuck-up. There was no arguing with that. But Cash had deserved it, and given the same situation, he’d do it again.

  ‘Where are we with this diabolical fucking disaster?’ Wes was pacing now, flexing his forearms with dumb-bells as he went. In his mid-sixties, he was still as trim as he’d been in his thirties. There were many facets of his character that were the stuff of legend. His voracious sexual appetite, especially for twenty-something girls and preferably more than two at the same time. His instinct for making great movies, which had ensured the success of the Dunhill franchise and steered Lomax Films through a global financial crisis that had buried many bigger companies. His absolutely manic, bordering-on-psychotic temper, as illustrated right at this moment.

  Paula Leno, the vice-president of publicity, a twenty-two-year veteran with the company, spoke up. ‘Raymo Cash isn’t pressing charges. Why go through the tiresome ignominy of a trial when he can sell his story to the tabloids instead? Of course, he’s spinning a different tale from Zander, saying that he was attacked for no reason. We’ve put an opposing line out there via anonymous sources and all the papers have picked it up. It weighs in our favour that he’s not going down the legal route, as it makes it look like he has something to hide. It also goes in our favour that the majority of the television-viewing public think he’s an arrogant asshole who is utterly delusional about his talent and popularity. In short, our polling figures are showing that this hasn’t dented your popularity. In fact, the opposite is true. But that’s only the case because LAPD have backed up our confirmation that you were tested and shown to have no alcohol or drugs in your system. And also the fact that – to quote Lou Cole’s column in the Hollywood Post – you looked “damn hot” while you were rolling about on the ground. You really need to send her flowers. She has been the lead voice in your media defence, probably thanks to the fact that you were defending her best friend. Gotta love press impartiality

  Right now, Zander did. He made a mental note to thank Mirren for getting the truth out there, while Hollie made a physical note on her tablet calendar to send Lou Cole the entire contents of the most expensive flower shop she could find.

  Wes loo
ked slightly mollified by Paula’s analysis of the situation, but he wasn’t ready to let Zander off the hook just yet. He turned to the row of three men in suits that clearly came with a price tag including several zeros. He was obviously paying these guys way too much. ‘Where are we legally?’

  Brian Thompson, VP of legal, did the talking. ‘No charges, so nothing official. But it wouldn’t surprise me if Cash came at Zander for financial damages. We’ll set up a contingency for that. The big problem for us is insurance. At the moment, they’re citing the incident as breach of Zander’s behaviour clause, so we have to suspend shooting with him. Hopefully, we can get it lifted, but there are no guarantees on it. They’re playing hard ball.’

  ‘Give me a revised schedule and a cost on that,’ Lomax ordered the VP of finance, sitting at the opposite end of the table.

  Zander wanted to put his head on the desk and let the cool surface of the marble ease the splitting pain in his forehead. A shooting suspension could cripple production, cost millions and – if it continued indefinitely – derail the whole movie. This was as bad as it got without the death of a star. Which right now would be a more favourable option.

  Wes headed for the door. ‘And Zander, son, I’m taking every dollar this costs from your obscenely bloated pay cheque.’

  With that, he was off, leaving a trail of spit and fire behind him.

  ‘That went well,’ Paula noted as she rose from the table.

  Zander gave her a grateful smile. They’d worked together for a long time and they had a real bond of affection, despite the fact that he’d cost her more work hours than any other Lomax talent. ‘Thanks for having my back there.’

  ‘It’s my reason for being,’ she told him with a smile. It was the only love in the room. The lawyers were furious, the bean counters were panicking, and Hollie was giving him the silent treatment. It lasted all the way across the car park into the car.

  Zander was the first one to break the ice.

  ‘Is this when you tell me you’re going to work for Matt Damon?’ he asked, repeating her much-promised threat, the one that was reiterated every time he royally fucked up. Now being a case in point.