Chapter Five
A space big enough for the Maserati miraculously opened up the second time Roman circled the block and he slid into it with a sense of satisfaction. It didn’t alleviate the subterranean layer of concern building in him, but it stopped the frustration from boiling over.
He looked around. He was familiar with the studios in this section of Van Iuys, but his knowledge was from back in the seventies. He hadn’t worked Hollywood from inside the studios since then.
He oriented himself and headed for the big, discreet building that was Kate’s. She had told him how pleased she had been with the bargain she got the old aircraft hangar for and how perfect it was for her work, with its endless amounts of square footage. It had been painted a fresh coat of white, and did nothing to advertise that movies were shot inside now.
He glanced at his watch again and his worry increased. His stride lengthened. What had happened? Why hadn’t she shown?
Just as he found the public entrance to the hanger, Roman got a hint of a possible answer. A long, tall skinny drink of water of a man stepped out from the building, a heavy briefcase hanging from his arm. Roman didn’t know his name but he recognized the man’s face and build. It was the lawyer that had been with Garrett five days ago in The Standard car park.
The lawyer nodded at Roman as he passed. He had been recognized.
Roman didn’t nod back. They didn’t know each other and as far as Roman was concerned, he didn’t yet know if they were enemies or not. Jovial nods were for when he knew where they stood on the board in relationship to each other.
The fact that Kate hadn’t turned up for their meeting and now this guy was emerging from her studio didn’t make him any happier, either.
He stepped inside and was bathed in the cool wash of air-conditioning. The area immediately inside the door was a low key reception area, unmarked by any company logo or name. A male receptionist sat behind a desk with nothing on it. His gaze ran over Roman, sizing him up.
Security, Roman realized. And top notch security at that.
“Kate Lindenstream isn’t expecting me,” Roman told him, fishing out his wallet and pulling out his driver’s license. “But she knows me. She’ll vouch for me.”
The man turned the driver’s license around and studied Roman, then the photo. “Got any other ID, sir?” he asked.
Roman nodded, appreciating the thoroughness. He pulled out his current social security card and flipped it onto the desk so it was facing the guard the right way around. The guard looked at it, then at the driver’s licence, then put the licence down on the desk next to the social security card, and picked up the telephone next to his elbow. “Have a seat, sir,” he suggested.
Roman moved away from the desk, letting the guard speak into the phone without being overheard, which was what the command to take a seat had really meant. He wandered over to the coffee table where a stack of magazine sat in a squared off pile, and read the spines. All of them were this month’s and none of them had anything to do with the movie industry. If anyone wandered into the studio by accident, they wouldn’t have a clue they had stumbled into the headquarters of one of the biggest producers in Los Angeles. The guard would ensure they didn’t progress any further inside. They would be bounced back out into the street without ever realizing where they were.
“You can go in, Mr. Xerus,” the guard said.
Roman turned. The guard was holding out his cards, his other hand pointing toward the inner door.
Roman walked over and took back his cards. “Thanks.”
“Someone will show you to Kate,” the guard said. “Just push on the door handle.”
Roman walked over to the door and just as he put his hand on the handle, he heard a lock click. The handle turned without resistance. He pushed the door open and stepped inside.
It was not what he expected.
The aeroplane hangar was still a hangar. The curved iron roof and struts soared seventy-five feet overhead, and frank concrete flooring spread across the expansive space. Some of the iron roofing sheets, perhaps one in every five, had been replaced by clear plastic ones. Natural light blazed down from the roof, illuminating a quiet, empty area, dotted with left-over bits of scenery, flats and props from the last three movies Kate had made, along with a dozen other movies, for Kate rented out the space to other directors when she didn’t need it herself.
Roman’s business brain tripped into high gear as he spotted props and scenery that he could easily sell at a hundred times their actual value to movie buffs and collectors, or that he could refurbish and store, for use by other directors for other movies. There were six Doric columns in prime condition collecting dust there. Doric columns appeared in dozens of movies, and directors were always desperate for them at the last minute.
“Mr. Xerus?”
He turned to his right. Hovering by a flower cart from nineteenth century London, complete with flowers, was a woman in the tightest pair of leather pants he’d ever seen, six inch spiked boots, and a tee-shirt with rolled up sleeves showing off painfully thin and blindingly pale white arms. Her hair hung lank, pale, and blonde down her back, while pimples dotted her forehead. She was clutching a clipboard to her chest like it might leap out of her arms if she loosened her grip. Production Assistant, Roman mentally classified. And very new at it, too.
“Hi,” he offered.
“Umm...Ms. Lindenstream said to show you to her trailer, so if you’ll just...if you’ll come with me?”
Trailer. Of course. It clicked into place with the neatness of Lego. The whole hangar was one big film studio, with no partitioning walls, no internal structure, except for the high-security reception area. Kate simply arranged things as she needed them for any particular movie situation. Her office was kept permanently inside a trailer that was parked inside the hangar when she was here. When she was on the road and filming on location, the trailer just moved with her.
Efficient. Elegant.
The P.A. was wobbling her way around a small mountain of scenery flats all stacked together and held secure with elastic packing straps. She glanced over her shoulder to ensure he was following her, and nearly tripped over her own stilettoes.
Roman hid his grin. The girl could barely be sixteen. She should be in bobby socks and giggly about her latest crush, in high school with her best friend forever. Instead, she was trying to make her bones in one of the most unforgiving industries in the world.
He dismissed her deliberately from his mind. He couldn’t afford to adopt every stray kitten he came across. He would have drowned in cats centuries ago.
Once they have moved far enough around the scenery, he spotted the trailer. It was big, yes, and once upon a time it had probably been expensive, but now it looked battered, weathered and old. The trailer had seen a lot of miles, and some of them had been tough. The paintwork on the back of the trailer, which faced them, was chipped and scraped by stones and gravel from countless unsealed roads and off-road travel. The bumper was dented and dinged. The license plate was faded by sun and age, and the cover over the spare tyre was so bleached by the sun the manufacturer’s logo had disappeared.
But there were three, not one, large gas bottles attached to the back of the trailer, and someone had done a damned fine job of building the extra racks to take the bottles. The trailer had what looked like pretty new tyres on it, too. The treads were good and they were top quality all weather tyres. There was an awning attached to the side of the trailer – not a tiny standard thing, either. This had been added to it after the fact, and it was a solid, useful-looking one.
The trailer was a home away from home and apparently an office on wheels. There were cables and plug-ins snaking from the side of the trailer over to a power box on the side of the hangar, and another tube wriggling its way out of a small door. That would be the water line.
Roman circled around to the side door. It was open, and the steps were lowered. He could hear Kate’s voice from inside.
The P.A. hovered by the door. “Go on in, Mr. Xerus.”
Roman hesitated. “What’s your name?”
“Britney.” And she blushed.
Of course. Britney. He made himself smile at her. “Thanks, Britney.”
She smiled back nervously, and bit her lip.
He stepped up into the trailer.
It was quiet inside. Kate was the only one in there, and she was on the phone, listening intently. She was sitting behind a perfectly normal desk littered with files, and a big laptop computer with its screen propped open. A cordless phone was jammed against her ear and her fingers were pressed against her other temple.
When she saw him, she waved him in, her frown not budging.
Roman moved another pace in and waited, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. Something was indeed wrong.
The trailer was unlike any normal trailer, on the inside. No big surprise there. It had been virtually gutted, except that, at the back of the trailer, through a door, Roman spotted what looked like a perfectly normal bed. Kate’s home away from home when she was filming on location. Hence, the water line. There was probably a bathroom back there, too.
The rest of the trailer had been turned into a business office, with two desks. One large one that Kate was sitting behind and a smaller one with a full sized desktop computer and printer set up. For the assistant, he assumed. The desks were cherry wood and glowed with care.
Along the walls were cabinets and shelves, cupboards and other built-in furniture that housed normal office equipment. It was an efficient, tidy arrangement. Economical, too. This way, Kate avoided the horrendous office space rentals that every other executive in L.A. got stuck with.
There were two very comfortable chairs in front of Kate’s desk and she waved at Roman again, this time with more force, insisting he sit in one.
Roman shrugged and sat. It put him directly in front of her. Her eyes met his and her brows lifted by the tiniest fraction before her gaze flickered away, drawn back by the speaker on the phone. The crease between her brows deepened.
He wasn’t the problem, then. It was the jerk on the phone.
A tiny trickle of relief touched him and he was able to study Kate with a neutral gaze, absorbing once more her natural features.
She wore makeup well, and knew how to use it, for she had started out as a model at a very early age, then moved into films as a B-grade actress, before landing one unforgettable role in a major production. That had been her entry into directing and production. That had given her the connections she needed. She had used all the money she had raised, plus all the influence she could leverage to fund her first low budget movie, and nothing had stopped her since.
She had long ago ceased trading on her looks, and Roman suspected that sometimes she even forgot she was considered a stunning blonde beauty. And she was all that.
He’d known who she was and what she looked like before he’d met her, but he hadn’t been prepared for the impact of her appearance in person. She was shorter and more fragile than he had expected, although she was still tall for a woman. But her eyes were as stunning in person as they were on the screen and in photos. No one had to touch them up. They had impact. More so now she was a power player in the industry, because she didn’t bother too often with feminine charm. She stared directly, with no quarter given, and her gaze with like a laser, direct and deadly. The jolt of her stare had been forceful, that first night.
But it was the way her mind worked that intrigued him the most. Roman hadn’t been braced for that one at all. She thought cleanly and clearly and with no quarter given for fools and those who were in the wrong. It was refreshing, especially coming from a Hollywood player and a woman.
Kate was winding up her call at last. It wasn’t a happy conclusion, for her frown hadn’t shift. “So, get back to me if anything changes,” she said at last, and paused. “Thank you.” She switched the phone off, dropped it on the desk, pressed her fingers to her temples and looked at him. “I missed our meeting, didn’t I?”
“I get the feeling you didn’t blow me off for anything minor.”
“Is that why you came here? To see if I had stood you up?” Her frowned deepened. “I would have told you, if that was the case. Some excuse. I wouldn’t have left you just sitting there.”
“I know. That’s why I came here.”
Kate stopped rubbing her temples and looked at him properly. “You’re checking up on me?”
Roman picked his words carefully. “I figured something major had happened if you forgot to even phone. I thought I’d see if you needed...help.”
Kate gave a laugh. It was probably supposed to be a dry one, but it twisted and there was a panicky sound to the end of it, and she pressed her lips together, her fingers over them for a moment. “Help?” she repeated. “I’d take help from Lucifer himself if I knew how to contact him, and if I thought he could possibly help. But I don’t think even he could get me out of this, Adrian.” She pressed her lips tightly together again and took a deep breath.
“What’s happened?” Roman asked.
Kate sighed. “What hasn’t happened? But I could sum it up in two words.”
“Calum Garrett.”
She sat back. “How did you...?”
“I passed his lawyer fellow as I was coming in.”
“MacDonald.” Her mouth curled down in disgust.
“What has Garrett done?” Roman asked curiously.
Kate stood up. “I need coffee. I’ve been up since...early. Want one?”
He shook his head. “I’ve had too many already today, thanks.”
“It’s French Roast,” she coaxed, moving over to the sideboard where a mini espresso machine sat gleaming.
“Maybe the smell will talk me into it,” Roman lied. “You go ahead. And tell me what Garrett did.”
She held up the coffee scoop. “One. There is nothing directly connecting Garrett to any of this. He’s as devious as original sin, the fucking bastard. But he’s made sure I know it’s him every time, because that MacDonald character has delivered the coup de grace each time. The first time I wanted to skewer him with his own ancestral broadsword. The second time, I was ready to strangle him with my own bare hands. Now, it’s just fucking humiliating.”
As she spoke, she set up the espresso machine for making a single cup of espresso, her movements sharp and hard. Kate was growing angrier with each statement.
“Details, Kate,” Roman cajoled, keeping his voice soft and non-confrontational, although he had already begun to suspect the shape of it. If MacDonald was involved, then Garrett was staying in character. He was toying with Kate business-style, using legal means to strangle her and bring her to her knees. “What was the first thing?” he pressed.
She waved her hand again, this time at the window of the trailer. “You see it out there?” she asked.
He glanced at the window. “I saw it. It’s a great studio.”
“It’s empty.” She let her hand fall. “That great studio is costing me eight thousand dollars in lost revenue a day. There was supposed to be a horror film in here, on their third day of principal photography.”
“How did Garrett shut you down?” Roman asked curiously.
“My lawyer took a whole two days to confirm it was one of his companies, working it back through parent corporations and umbrella subsidiaries. But it seems that when you connect enough dots, back far enough, Garrett owns controlling shares in the company that holds the finance on this building.” She shrugged.
“He called in the loan?”
“If it had been that simple, I could have rallied around a few interested backers and paid it off.” She scowled. “He put a lien on it. Now the building is in escrow and under legal dispute. I can’t use the damn property to conduct business until the dispute is settled.” She dropped into her chair and scowled even harder at her coffee. “The son of a bitch.”
“And the second thing?” Roman prompted her.
She blew on her coffee. “You’ll notice I’m not exactly swimming in staff.” Her mouth turned down.
“Just Britney and the security guard.”
“John is working as a personnel favour to me,” Kate said. “Britney is a new hire and I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep her.”
“Labour issues?”
“Employment and Immigration. And Labour. Enough of my employees were illegal or underage and the rest of them had records or histories or shaky ID papers that they didn’t want looked at too closely for reasons of their own...this is Hollywood. Everyone’s got secrets. Immigration carted off two illegal aliens and suddenly, I didn’t have a workforce. Everyone else melted away like butter at noon.”
“Everyone?”
“Enough of them to make it not worth while bringing the rest in to work. I told them to take a holiday, the five or so I had left.”
“Garrett has a long arm,” Roman observed.
“It was Garrett Industries that won the government contracts for the barrier renewal project in Texas and California. Worth billions. I heard Garrett was millions cheaper than the nearest bid, and he’s bringing the contract in on time and under budget. The federal government would do anything to ensure he’s kept happy. If he picked up the phone and called his pals at Immigration and said ‘Pay Kate Lindenstream a call for me,’ they’d spill coffee on their crotches in their scramble to get it done.”
Roman nodded. Kate wasn’t stupid. Likely, Garrett had done something pretty much exactly like that. Although the phone call would have been a bit more subtle than she thought.
“And the third thing?” he asked.
Kate looked at him. Her eyes got bigger. And damn it if her chin didn’t move in the merest hint of a quiver.
Roman’s gut clenched. Fuck, what had Garrett done to her?
Kate pushed a stapled bunch of legal-sized sheets across the desk, turning them with her hand so by the time they were in front of him they were the right way up for him to read.
Roman skipped all the legal phrasing and got to the meat of it, flipping the top page to read the relevant details. “Theft of intellectual property?” He put the paper down. “Well, he’s not fooling around.” He looked up at Kate.
Her scowl hadn’t moved.
“Does this halt the picture?”
“Pretty much,” she said. Her tone was even. Neutral. “Everything is built on the shooting script, and the shooting script is built on the reading script, so...”
Roman touched the legal papers again. “I’m assuming this is a nuisance suit. You wrote the script. You did the research. I remember the publicity about the time you spent in Turkey doing it. You’ve always written your own scripts. This...” He looked down at the paper. “This Roy Cummings that claims you stole his script and re-wrote it, I presume is a lot of bullshit designed to stop production until you give Garrett whatever it is he really wants.”
“It’s as obvious to you, too?” Her knuckles were white around the coffee cup.
“Not obvious, no. But I had a couple of major clues. I passed MacDonald on the way here. And I saw that thing between you and Garrett go down in the basement at The Standard last week.” He tapped the legal suit. “And you said this was number three, so MacDonald must have dropped this off just now. He would have delivered in person just to make sure you knew Garrett was behind this. Along with insults number one and two, it does start to stand out in neon.”
Kate flexed her fingers, then wrapped them about the cup once more. “I want his balls, Adrian. I want him on a butcher’s block and a cleaver in my hand.”
“There’s better ways to get even,” Roman pointed out mildly. “I’m sure you’ve thought of some of them already.”
“Yeah, over the last few days I dreamed up some doozies. But he’s fucking with my movie now.” She stood up abruptly. “He’s interfered with my project.”
There was a look on her face, a line to her jaw that spoke of a deep-held fury and capacity for explosive action. Roman felt the fine hairs on the back of his neck prickle with painful alertness. The predator in him stirred. His incisors shifted.
He held his reaction at bay with sheer willpower, and was suddenly glad he was not Garrett right now.
“Kate,” he said, speaking with the soft tone one used with high-fettled animals, to keep them soothed and calm.
She focused on him.
“What, exactly, does Garrett want so badly to go to all this trouble?”
“What trouble? He’s surrounded by lackeys. He would have said ‘make her life miserable’ and it was done.”
“You don’t know that. From what I hear, he’s a hands-on CEO.” Roman cleared his throat as Kate sent him a withering look. “Anyway, what does he want?”
“He wants in on my movie.”
“He wants a role?” Roman asked, frankly stunned.
Kate shook her head. “He says he can get me Patrick Sauvage for five million, and he’ll cover Sauvage’s daycare fees. But, he wants to be on the set for filming, in exchange.”
“And you said no?” Roman was flummoxed. “Why on earth would you turn down a deal like that? Sauvage is asking forty million a movie now.”
“Thirty-five.”
“Forty,” Roman said firmly. “He just signed for the Superman remake at forty.”
Kate closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath and let it out. “Garrett is a movie junkie. He’s just trying to deal himself in on la-la land.”
Roman leaned forward. “So, let me be clear. You turned down a chance at Patrick Sauvage for five million on a principal?”
Kate opened her eyes. Her gaze riveted him to the spot. “You’re saying I should have taken his money?” Her tone was reasonable. Light.
Deceptive.
Roman wasn’t fooled. He’d seen warmer eyes over duelling pistols. But despite seeing through her mellow tone, he could feel his heart start up all by itself...something that hadn’t happened in a good long while. Duelling mentally with Kate was stimulating him in ways he’d almost forgotten.
“Come on, Kate,” he chided her gently. “You really think I’m the sort that would suggest lying down with the dogs like that? If I was, I wouldn’t have come here to check if you were okay when you didn’t show today. I would have fucked off and figured you had better things to do, and found something more interesting to do myself.”
Her eyes didn’t release him. “It sounded a lot like you were suggesting I should have grabbed the deal.”
“I was clarifying. I wanted to be sure you really do have the backbone I thought you had.” Roman grinned. “I have to say, I admire your guts. There’s not too many people I know with courage enough to take on Calum Garrett.”
Kate leaned forward. “Truth? I didn’t know I was taking him on. I just turned him down, Adrian. I figured that was it.”
“Even after the basement thing? I told you that sort of guy doesn’t take no for an answer.” He leaned forward, too. “Would knowing you were taking him on have changed your answer?”
She considered for a good long five seconds, her full lips pursed. “No,” she said at last. Then she smiled at him. “Damn it, you always manage to do that somehow, don’t you?”
“Do what?” he asked, honestly curious.
“Make me see the whole picture more clearly.”
“Is that what I do?” He was honestly surprised. “It’s not intentional.”
“But you do it anyway. It’s the way you think. You see things just differently enough. From twenty thousand feet up, or further out, or something. So you always end up asking the question that makes me step back and see it all from the top of the chessboard.” She swayed forward through the few inches of space that remained between them and touched her lips to his.
As kisses went, it barely counted. There was four feet of cherry wood desk between them, just to start. Kate looked like she had been short on sleep for the five days since Roman had last seen her, and no woman, no matter how wonderfully endowed her natural beauty, could come up looking fabulous after being on her feet for a week of high stress and too much coffee.
But the touch of her lips was delightful anyway. They were soft and pressed against his own. Heated moist flesh. Human flesh. And if Roman had a weakness, it was for the warmth of a human’s touch.
His hand rose to cup the corner of her jaw all on its own. He slid his thumb underneath, to touch the soft flesh beneath her chin, and feel the echo of her pulse.
Then she was pulling away, leaning back into her chair. She pushed her hand through her messy, tangled curls and cleared her throat, her eyes on her coffee mug.
Roman read her awkwardness far too easily. She had stepped over her own go-slow barrier. He could smell her arousal.
He spared her any more discomfort. “Do you want to take Garrett on at his own game and win, Kate?”
She lifted her head. “God, yes. Who wouldn’t? But I don’t have the sort of resources he does. He has hot and cold running lawyers and connections around the globe—”
“That’s not the game you want to play, though.”
She frowned.
Roman sat back. “I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer’?”
Kate’s frown stayed in place, but Roman could see she was thinking it through. He stayed silent, letting her puzzle it out. She looked at him. “How is that any different from letting him win?”
“You keep control. Including the end play.”
Her eyes lost their focus as her mind went into overdrive. Roman could see her working it out. Her lips parted, as the ideas came faster and faster. Her pulse was leaping at the base of her throat as her excitement rose.
She refocused on Roman and her smile, this time, was sparkling with wickedness. “Adrian, you’re a fucking genius.” She moved around the desk, still thinking, refining it. Excitement was making her movements hurried. Adrenaline had woken her from the five day slump.
She reached over her desk and picked up the cellphone lying there. “One moment,” she said, and rapidly thumbed out a text message. The corners of her mouth turned up in a smile that had all sorts of devil mixed up in it.
Roman wondered what mischief she was suddenly brewing.
She tossed the phone back onto her desk, then pushed at his shoulder so the chair swivelled to face her. Then she nudged his surprise a cog further. She sat in his lap.
“Your idea is perfect, Adrian.” Her voice was the low, husky contralto that always seemed to vibrate at the bottom of his spine. “Or it will be, if you come with me.”