Lethal Exposure (10 page)

Easy, easy. You can solve this with sweet talk. You’re the best at it.

“How do you know all this?” he asked Tanner.

Tanner’s eyes met Sebastian’s. “That’s the thing. Someone had a camera installed inside the conference room. It was turned on and broadcasting the session via live stream through the hospital’s Wi-Fi Internet connect. Colin Cruz’s private confessions of his sex addiction went straight to the World Wide Web.”

“Someone installed a camera in the session room?”

“It must be the saboteur,” Dr. Butler guessed.

Tanner clasped his hands behind his back and paced the small piece of ground in front of his desk. “When Colin realized what was happening, he freaked out. He thought he’d been set up by someone at the hospital. He took the room hostage, and then destroyed the camera so we can no longer see what’s going on in there.”

“Has he made any demands?”

“We haven’t tried negotiating with him. We didn’t get that far. He’s too upset and the place was besieged with paparazzi within minutes of the session being aired on the Internet.”

A sudden calm settled over Sebastian. He had his emotions under wraps. He slid off Tanner’s desk. “It’s in the bag.”

“What do you mean?” Tanner asked.

The head of security was a good three inches taller than his own six-foot height, but Sebastian wasn’t going to let the man intimidate him.

“Just take me to Cruz.”

After the skateboarder’s friend sent him a text message saying their therapy session was all over the Internet, Colin had paced the room, searching for the Web camera until he’d found it embedded into the wall behind the seascape.

That threw Colin into a tailspin. He was paranoid and sweating, terrified the mobster whose wife he’d slept with would hear about the Internet stream. He’d made everyone sit with their backs against the wall while he paced and ranted and waved the knife around. Julie had spent the last hour and a half speaking calmly, reasonably, reassuring him that as long as he let everyone go unharmed everything could be resolved.

Colin was beginning to settle down and she almost had him convinced to give her the knife, when the skateboarder got another text message.

“Dude,” the skateboarder said, “my buddy says paparazzi are swarming the hospital.”

Colin let loose with a fresh string of curses.

“Give me that.” Julie got up and snatched the cell phone out of the guy’s hand. “You’re agitating him.”

“Hey!”

“Hush. You sit there and be quiet.”

Colin pointed the knife at her. “You be quiet, too, and sit back down. All of you shut up and let me think.”

But Julie didn’t sit back down. She stood her ground, held out her hand. “Give me the knife, Colin. You know you don’t want any more trouble. This can end right here. All you have to do is hand me the knife and we’ll all walk out of here. I’ll explain to Dr. Carpenter what happened. I’ll intervene on your behalf.”

“I’m screwed. My career is over.”

“No, no, it’s not. You can turn your life around. You can be a role model.” She took a step toward him.

His hand was shaking and his eyes looked so desperate.

“That’s it. That’s right. Give me the knife.” She took another step and then another. “You look so tired, Colin. Like you’ve been carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. It’s okay to lay your burden down. We’re here to help you.”

Colin’s eyes misted with tears but he blinked them back.

“That’s it,” she soothed as if she were cooing to her hamster, Felix. “I know you don’t want to hurt anyone. I know you’re a good person.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone.” Colin was shaking his head.

“You just need help.”

“I do, I need help.” His voice cracked.

“Please, please, give me the knife and we’ll fix this.” Almost there. One more step.

Colin extended his hand. He was about to pass her the knife.

And then Sebastian Black knocked on the door and ruined everything.

TANNER HAD LED the procession from the basement office to the elevator to the sexual dysfunction unit on the fifth floor. They’d walked down the corridor, headed for the therapy room that was flanked by two armed security guards and Colin Cruz’s physician. Tanner nodded and the guards stepped aside.

Sebastian had approached and knocked on the door and called out, “Colin, Sebastian Black here.”

There was a long moment of silence and then Colin said, “Sebastian Black, the publicist?”

“Yes.”

“Go away, Black, you’re as bad as an ambulance chaser.” Colin’s voice was high and reedy. The voice of a man on the edge. He was dangerous and Julie was in that room with him.

Hang on to all your bravado. Don’t get distracted. You can talk him down.

Sebastian let out a hearty laugh. “You can let go of the role now, Colin. I know you’re a dedicated actor and that you believe in staying in character at all times when preparing for an upcoming part. But I think the good people here at Confidential Rejuvenations might have misunderstood our intention.”

“Huh?”

“Now’s the time to come on out and tell the press that you’re not really a sex addict. That this was all prep for your upcoming movie about a sex addict who takes his therapy group hostage. And I’ll confess that little bit of theatrics with the camera and the Internet stuff was nothing more than my idea of a publicity stunt. It’s all my fault. Not all my ideas are good ones.”

“Yeah…” Colin’s reply was muffled by the door, but Sebastian could hear the relief in the young actor’s tone. “Stupid idea, Black.”

“Open the door, shake everyone’s hand, no hard feelings and you and I will go out to meet the media together.”

A moment passed.

“Colin?”

The door cracked open and Colin Cruz emerged, face flushed, hair mussed, but mercifully empty-handed.

“Damn.” Sebastian heard one of the security guards whisper to the other. “He’s good.”

But Sebastian was already looking past Colin into the room, his eyes searching for only one person.

Julie’s eyes met his. In her hand, she gingerly held the switchblade knife Colin had used to hold the room hostage. The minute he saw her, he started breathing again and it was only then did he realize he’d been holding his breath.

She was all right. Relief left him weak.

Everyone else rushed out, pushing past Julie and Colin and Sebastian, scattering down the hallway, heading back to the safety of their rooms.

“Dude,” Colin said, in a low shaky voice, “you’re a genius.”

“I charge like one, too.”

“You saved my reputation.”

“All in a day’s work.” Sebastian shook the young actor’s hand. “Give me a second and I’ll escort you to our press conference.”

Sebastian walked past Colin and went straight to Julie. She tilted her chin up. He expected her to fall into his arms. Or at the every least give him a grateful smile, and a heartfelt thank-you.

But he didn’t get any of those things.

Arms akimbo, Julie glared at him.

“Are you okay?” he asked. He was desperate to touch her but he could tell that was the last thing she wanted.

“Jackass,” she muttered and passed the knife to Tanner, who’d followed Sebastian into the room.

“Excuse me.”

“You heard me. You’re a jackass.”

He couldn’t have been more stunned if she’d hauled off and slapped him across the face. Sebastian took her by the shoulders. “Wait a minute.”

She twisted away from him. “Hands off,” she hissed.

“What am I missing here? I just saved your life and the lives of nine other people and you’re calling me a jackass? Wanna clue me in?”

“Because now, thanks to you and your publicity stunt scheme, that young man—who is deeply troubled by the way—isn’t going to get the help he so desperately needs.”

“Huh?”

Julie pointed to where Colin stood in the corridor waiting for Sebastian. “Do you seriously think he’s going to stay in therapy now?”

He couldn’t believe she was blaming him when he’d been the one to rescue her. He’d expected her to look at him as if he were some action hero. A knight slaying her dragons. Prince Charming squiring Cinderella at the ball. Instead, she was looking at him as if he had leprosy.

Sebastian wasn’t used to that. Nor was he accustomed to what he was feeling. Tenderness, affection, apprehension, guilt. What he’d wanted to do—what he’d had to fist his hands to keep from doing—was to lift her in his arms, take her back to his hotel room, slowly strip off her clothes and make love to her all night long.

“Hey, the cow was already out of the barn because of that video camera hooked up to the Web,” he said, unnerved by what he was feeling and falling back on flippancy. “I was only trying to defuse an explosive situation and it worked.”

“No, what you did is feed into Colin’s fantasy that he has the right to do whatever he wants when things don’t suit him. I had it under control. I was talking him down, but did you even bother to assess the situation before you so cavalierly offered your solution?” She looked mad enough to spit fire.

Sebastian took a step back. He would never have believed Julie was capable of such a passionate outburst. And against him. She was livid.

“We’ll talk about this later,” he said.

“Don’t bother,” she retorted and stormed off with a toss of her head.

Sebastian turned to Tanner. “Was I out of line in any way?”

Tanner shrugged. “She’s medical personnel. They have a different way of looking at things. My fiancée, Vanessa, and I have had to work through a few differences of opinion like this. Give her time. She’ll come around.”

“I don’t have the time and I don’t need her to come around. I barely know her.”

“You might not know her very well, but she’s got your number.” Tanner chuckled.

What the hell? Since when had he been become the butt of everyone’s joke?

Colin Cruz was out in the hallway nervously shifting from foot to foot. Sebastian went to join him. “You really think you can convince them it was all a stunt for a movie role?” he asked.

“I got you to let your hostages go, didn’t I?” Sebastian straightened his sleeves beneath his jacket, tightened his tie and then ran a hand through his hair.

Julie might be mad at him, but it didn’t matter. He’d done what he’d been hired to do. Make a bad situation look good. It’s what he did best.

“Come on, Cruz,” he said and headed for the elevator. “Let’s spin this thing.”

DR. BUTLER SENT Julie home early. She didn’t want to go, but he insisted, saying she’d been through a scary ordeal and needed time to process what had happened.

She suspected the truth was the chief of staff wanted her out of the way of the media so Sebastian could do his spin-doctoring without her mucking things up for him. She was still furious over his interference.

“I was handling it,” she told her hamster, Felix, as she sat on her sofa with her feet—shod in fluffy pink socks—propped up on the coffee table. A nighttime drama played on the television, but she had the sound muted. She’d started watching the program to distract herself, but quickly lost interest. Today, her own life had been a regular soap opera. She didn’t need any more drama.

Felix sat in her lap, busily gnawing a carrot.

“I totally had it under control. Sure, I was scared when Colin found that camera and the skateboarder got that text from a friend that our session was on the Web. And then when Colin flipped out and pulled the switchblade from his pocket, I did get a little panicky. But who wouldn’t?”

Felix blinked.

“Oh, you think that now. You’re here and safe and warm, but in the heat of the moment, you never know what you’ll do.”

Great. Here she was talking to a hamster as if he was a person. Felix polished off the rest of the carrot and ran up her arm to sit on her shoulder.

“I’m sure it must have looked like he took us hostage. He was waving the knife around and saying stupid things, but really, we were never in any actual danger.”

Felix made a sympathetic hamster noise.

“I’d almost talked him into putting the knife down and walking out of the room when that irritating Sebastian Black interfered. He’s so smooth and glib and cocky and…ooh, ooh, there he is on TV.”

The television program had given way to the ten o’clock news and there was Sebastian in all his peacock glory. Julie reached for the remote and pumped up the volume.

The anchorman smiled at the camera. “A scary incident at Confidential Rejuvenations—a facility that has suffered more than its share of bad publicity of late—was the scene of what was at first mistakenly believed to have been a hostage situation involving star actor Colin Cruz.”

The camera switched to Sebastian, who was being interviewed outside Confidential Rejuvenations. He reiterated his lie that Mr. Cruz had merely been deeply immersed in his character of a sex addict for a new film role and the leak of his therapy session was nothing more than a publicity stunt.

Julie ground her teeth and threw the remote at the screen. It fell harmlessly short of the television set, hitting the carpet with a soft bounce. “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

Felix quivered on her shoulder. He hated loud noises.

“Sorry,” she whispered, then scooped him up and put him back in his cage, just as the doorbell chimed.

Julie padded to the door and stood on tiptoes to peer through the peephole. She saw Sebastian lounging insouciantly against the column on her front porch.

She jerked opened the door. “What the hell do you want?”

“Good evening to you, too, Julie.”

“I saw you on TV. Looking as vainglorious as ever.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Vainglorious?”

“It means conceited. Look it up. Good night.” She reached back to close the door, but he quickly stepped across the threshold.

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily.” He strolled past her. For the first time, she noticed he carried a paper bag. “I brought wine. I hope you like red. We’re going to have a glass and hash this out.”

She followed him into her kitchen. “There’s no reason for us to hash anything out.”

“Yes there is. You’re mad at me and I don’t like it when people are mad at me.” He started opening drawers.