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Around the time Brett was startled by Sylvia and her thugs, Lucille waltzed into a hospital, dressed in a commandeered white coat and unfashionable blue scrubs. The unitard had been a joke, but this get-up was hardly better. Simon had a plan. A terrible, simple plan that grew worse and worse the closer she got to the front desk. But it was the only one they had, and this was their one shot, so it had to work.
The security guard behind the desk barely looked up from his computer as Lucille passed, though her footsteps echoed in the empty hallway. It’s working. He thinks I’m a doctor. The thought had her feeling almost giddy.
She sobered up as she reached the elevators, faced with an array of lettered wings and numbered floors. If she were a real doctor, she would know whether she wanted A7 or B13. Unlike the staff entrance, where she’d scanned her stolen ID card and strolled through undetected, this area wasn’t empty. There were people constantly moving. Even in the late hours of the night, the hospital never slept.
Lucille stared down at the clipboard she was carrying, pretending to consult it as she waited for the elevator. “Which floor?” she hissed into the tiny microphone in her cleavage.
Simon’s voice crackled in her ear. “I’m working on that.”
Lucille sighed and closed her eyes. She had a dozen retorts at the ready, but she was exposed in her current location, and arguing with Simon would only slow him down. Instead, she stared more intently at the blank chart in her hands.
A couple of nurses passed her, chatting together. One of them looked at her with a frown but turned back to the group and continued talking. The elevator arrived. Lucille got in.
“The D wing. She’s on the third floor,” said Simon in her ear.
Lucille nodded to no one in her empty elevator. When the doors opened again, she stepped out and headed to D, a wing in the back corner of the giant complex, its doors barred from general admittance. The swiped badge got her through and she was inside, standing in the eerie dim light of the psychiatric ward.
***
Brett was shoved into the back seat of a car. There was a sack over his head and his hands were tied behind his back. Like on a crime show where they find the kidnapped person bound and gagged. Only on those shows, they usually don’t reveal said person until they’re being saved, and by then the kidnapped person is so grateful, they forget what the hours of bag prison were like. Hot and stuffy was what they were. And smelly. And itchy. The sack they’d put over his head was some sort of old feed bag, the kind used for horses in the movies. It smelled like something earthy and grainy. It itched against his skin, but with his hands bound behind him, he couldn’t do a thing about it.
Unfortunately for them, they hadn’t gagged him. “Sylvia, where the fuck are you taking me?”
Silence.
“Hello? Sylvia. This is your cousin Brett. The one you just kidnapped? I repeat, where the fuck are you taking me?”
Silence. Then a deep voice, one of the men who’d “helped” him to the car. “Miss Stanton isn’t in this vehicle.”
“Great. Just great. So where are you bozos taking me then?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” the voice replied.
Brett tried to slouch back against the seat, but his hands were in the way. This was doing nothing to ease the pain in his shoulder. He was supposed to be keeping it in the sling in front of him, not twisted behind him. He debated telling his captors this but, considering they wouldn’t tell him simple information like where they were going, decided against it.
They were smooth drivers, he could give them that. Not once was he bumped or jostled. He might not have even been in a moving car at all if his heightened hearing hadn’t picked up the hum of the engine.
He thought about how Lucille would react when she learned he’d been kidnapped. Though, given her radio silence with Michel, it was possible she’d been kidnapped first. Maybe wherever he was going, she’d be there. The idea calmed him a bit. She’d know what to do; she always did.
After an endless amount of driving, they arrived. They were, of course, at Michel’s mansion, because where else would they be? The trouble had started there, and there the trouble would end. Hopefully.
***
It seemed odd that, unlike the rest of the hospital, the psychiatric ward was mostly deserted. But seeing as Lucille didn’t make a point out of hanging out in psychiatric wards, or hospitals in general, she had no point of comparison. A lone nurse sat at a desk, half asleep over a pile of paperwork. Lucille hurried by, keeping her steps as light as possible. When she was out of sight of the desk, she hissed at Simon, “Which room?”
This time Simon came through right away. “Solitary confinement room B. Apparently she got into a fight with one of the inmates or, uh, patients earlier and they put her in there. Amazing the stuff you can find when you hack into someone’s files.”
“I thought you said she was admitted today?”
“She was. Stay on your toes. This woman is dangerous.”
Lucille ditched the clipboard and followed the arrows to the solitary confinement area. With the way things were going tonight, she expected to find padded cells holding babbling people in straitjackets. Instead they were normal, single-occupant hospital rooms that locked from the outside.
She found B and peered through the small window at the plain, white-walled space beyond. On the twin bed lay a woman in a bikini bottom and a floral hospital gown, snoring. Her blonde hair was plastered to her face, damp and sticking out at odd angles. From this distance, Lucille couldn’t tell what age she was. She might have been fifty or fifteen, her plastic surgery was that pervasive.
“We have a problem,” she said to her microphone.
“She’s not there?”
“No, she’s here. She’s most certainly here. She’s passed out in her room, dead to the world. Because, you know, it’s the middle of the night.”
“That bitch!”
Lucille contemplated the situation before her. She didn’t want to go into the room. She’d been hoping, unrealistically, that she’d find the occupant awake, in an unbarred room, where she could whisper at her from the doorway. No part of her wanted to be trapped with a murderous lunatic supermodel. Given the choice, she’d take Sylvia Stanton any day. At least Sylvia had only tried to murder someone. Beverly Walton had gone through with it.
Gathering all her strength and promises to kill Simon herself if she got out of this alive, Lucille unlocked the door and slipped inside, careful to leave a crack so she could escape.
“Can you wake her up?”
“Probably, if I can figure out how. You don’t have a long poking stick in that creepy van of yours, do you?”
“No.”
“Fine. Then I’ll throw my shoe at her.” And she did. She lifted her pant leg, revealing the leather boots she’d been tiptoeing around on for the better part of an hour. Pulling one off, she leaned against the wall beside the door and lobbed it at Beverly’s head. The boot hit the back wall and fell right onto Beverly’s sleeping face. The model flailed, causing her to fall off the narrow mattress and waking her from her slumber. She gave a bellow and pushed herself off the floor, blinking and glaring through her mess of dirty hair at Lucille.
“What. The. Fuck.”
“Yeah, okay, sorry about that.” Lucille gave her best apology smile.
Beverly scoffed. She had dark rings of mascara around her eyes and lipstick smeared up to her nose. From this new angle, Lucille put her closer to the fifty range and applauded her plastic surgeon for making her look thirty-five.
“Beverly Walton?”
“Yeah?”
“Oh my God. I’m just such a huge fan of yours!” When they’d discussed it earlier, Lucille and Simon had both agreed she should play the woo girl. It felt weird. Lucille hadn’t been a woo girl since high school, but she was a professional.
“You’re not a doctor.”
Lucille shook her head, smiling as big as she could. “Nope, but they totally bought it. This was the only way I could get to you. No one’s seen you in years, and oh my God, I can’t believe it’s really you.”
“Why,” Beverly said, grimacing as she pulled herself off the floor and back to her bed, “did you throw your boot at me? Nice knock-offs, by the way.”
“They aren’t knock-offs. They’re originals from your line. I’ve had them for years and knew I had to wear them when I came to see you!”
“Am I supposed to be flattered that you threw one of my own boots at me?”
Lucille looked contrite. “I really am sorry. It’s just...you were sleeping, and I really need to talk to you...”
Lucille waited for Beverly to ask why she hadn’t nudged her awake like a normal person. She didn’t.
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow, when I get out of this hellhole?” Beverly’s gaze roamed the empty room, unfocused and incoherent. According to Simon’s source, Beverly had laid low for the past eight years but was a regular guest at this particular psych ward, checked in once a month by her eighty-five-year-old mother.
Lucille looked down at her solitary boot. “No.”
Beverly gave a huge sigh, leaned back against the wall, and closed her eyes. “Then what?”
Lucille paused long enough for Beverly to open her eyes. Then she glanced out to the empty hallway, like she didn’t want this to be overheard. “It’s private.”
The model rolled her eyes. “There’s no one here. They shut all the crazies up and turned out the lights.”
“It’s about...Simon Anton,” Lucille whispered.
The change in Beverly’s expression was immediate. Instead of unfocused, detached, and drugged, she looked sober, wide-awake, and very interested. “Oh honey, what’d that fucker do to you?”
Lucille drew back for effect. “What makes you think he did something to me?”
“Because it’s what he does. He comes into your life playing fucking Jesus and then slips away when all hell breaks loose.” Beverly’s jaw clenched. Her face would have turned red in anger, but she didn’t seem to have the ability to show emotion any longer.
Lucille looked at Beverly long and hard, sizing her up. Then allowed her shoulders to crumble, in a vulnerable breakdown. “Yeah, he did. He ruined my career, my marriage, my life. Because of him, my sweet twin babies have to...have to...go to public school!”
Beverly inhaled sharply. “No.”
Lucille nodded, hiding her face in her hands. “It’s true.”
“That bastard!” Beverly stood up and started pacing her little room, unsteady on her own bare feet, favoring her left side. “That conniving asshole. That goddamn motherfucker!”
This went on for quite a while, with Lucille fake crying, Beverly running through her repertoire of curse words, and no one coming to check on the commotion. Finally, Beverly sank down on the starched sheets, too exhausted to hold up her own weight anymore. Lucille wiped her dry eyes but let her lip quiver.
“I know you want revenge, honey. I want it too. I almost had it once. But I’ve been trying to track down that man for eight years with no luck.”
“What do you mean?”
Beverly got a long, far-off look on her face. “He disappeared without a trace right after—” She choked, her own fake tears caught in her throat. “But that’s a long story.”
Lucille’s face was intent on Beverly’s. In her ear, Simon was listening so hard she could hear him breathing. “I have time.”
It was Beverly’s turn to eye her up and down. She walked over, picked up the discarded boot from the floor, and handed it to Lucille. “I guess anyone who still has the boots from my collection seven years after they were discontinued has to be trustworthy, right?”
Lucille nodded. She didn’t mention that they’d picked the boots up that night from one of Simon’s old connections, a costume shop he used to frequent under the name Anton Marcos. They were uncomfortable, a size too small, and the best decision Lucille had made that night was taking the one off to throw at their designer. Now she put it back on, trying to hide her flinch as she zipped it up.
“Simon Anton was arrested eight years ago after my friend and part-time lover Cooper was horribly murdered.”
Lucille gasped appropriately. “No. And you think he did it?”
Beverly laughed. It was a cold, empty laugh. “No, but it was his fault.”
Lucille shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
Beverly sighed. “I told you it was a long story. Let me go back. I met Cooper one night at a party. One of those parties where everyone has already fucked everyone else and is just waiting for the right moment to release nude pics on the Internet, you know?”
Lucille would like to say she didn’t know, but she’d worked in this town for too long and had cleaned up after more than a few of those parties. So she nodded.
“Then there was Cooper. No one knew who he was. He just kinda appeared there—rich guy, houses all over the place, gorgeous as sin, and completely untouchable, unless you were one of the select few to be invited to one of his weekend getaways. He was all over me that night, flirting with me, eye fucking me across the bar, you know how it is.”
This time Lucille could definitely say she didn’t. Not out loud, of course.
“He said he’d seen some of my early work, this really obscure nude shoot I did for a BDSM magazine when I was younger. I couldn’t believe it. He said that if I was actually into that stuff and wanted to explore more ways to unleash my sexuality, to come to his house party that weekend. Obviously, I went. No one turned down Cooper. It was...erotic, deeply, deeply erotic.” Beverly trailed off, leaning against the wall with a sigh and a shiver. “Mmm. You see, Cooper chose only the best. And I mean the best everything, you know?”
Again, no idea.
“This one weekend was different. Someone suggested a change to the...routine. Cooper was angry about the suggestion, but we eventually swayed him to our side. Perhaps it did go a little too far,” she mused. “Cooper was going on and on about overstepping the boundaries between the sacred and the profane, but I was like, what the fuck have we been doing this whole time?
“Whatever. Things got out of control and someone died. It was one of our group members who was great to look at but kind of a bore to talk to. The whole thing was a total accident, of course. I couldn’t even tell you what happened anymore. One moment he was alive and humping the shit out of a dude chained to the wall, and the next moment he was dead and covered in blood.
“It was, like, all a blur after that. Cooper flipped out because it was all on camera.”
Lucille gasped, for real this time. What is wrong with her? Why is she telling me all of this? Because there was something wrong, something very wrong with Beverly. She spoke like she was reciting a monologue, without emotional investment in her words.
Beverly didn’t even blink. “Oh yes, we recorded all our...experiments. Kept us going until we got together the next time, you know? But this was, like, really on video. Right front and center on video. You could see faces. Fuck, my face all over it. And not just my face; other parts, too.
“Anyway, Cooper freaked out, kicked us out, and kept the tape for himself. He kept going on and on about murder. But it wasn’t a murder, you know? Because it was a total accident. We all tried to tell Cooper that it was an accident, we could just explain that to the police, and then it’d all be over. But Cooper said they wouldn’t understand, they’d find the tape anyway, so we might as well turn ourselves in now. We tried to get Anton to talk him down, but the fucker said he only dealt with PR issues for his clients, not criminal activity. PR issues, my ass. He was at more than a few of those parties.”
Lucille did not want to hear that about her uncle. Of course, it did clarify a lot of things about her adolescence, like when Simon had showed her how to tie a bondage rope on her fourteenth birthday. Still, he was her uncle.
When his name came up, the fucker in question gasped in her ear. She ignored him. “Do you think Anton was trying to get Cooper to go to the police?”
Beverly nodded. “Uh huh. Even though he joined in, he was always aloof, you know? Like he was too good for us.”
Lucille could hear Simon itching to protest and begged him to keep silent. This changed things. It made sense her uncle would encourage Cooper to take the video to the police. Cooper would come across as a hero for trying to save his friends from sexual deviancy and, in the process, save himself.
Beverly brought the attention back to herself with a dramatic wave of her hand. “Whatever. It didn’t matter after a while. I stopped sleeping and eating as a result of the stress. Every moment I expected the police to show up at my door or my agent to call and say the video had leaked. I looked awful. Though you’d think modeling agencies would want someone skinny who worked late hours to avoid going home. They did, but apparently they didn’t want a model who twitched all the time and looked like a startled chipmunk. They dropped me. Everyone dropped me. Not even the fucking plastic surgery helped.”
For a moment, Lucille felt for the half-naked former model. It was brief, and then she returned to her loathing. Heartwarming anecdote or no, this woman was the key to getting Simon’s name cleared, and Lucille needed her to say the magic words.
“I blamed Anton, of course. If it had only been Cooper, we could have talked him down, but the little shit was protecting him. So I decided to sneak into his house, get one of his guns, and make it look like a suicide.”
Lucille started. There was a rustling in her ear and then silence.
“But Cooper was there too. I couldn’t figure out why, because they were mumbling away in these low voices that I couldn’t understand or whatever. But, I couldn’t have a witness, obviously, so I left. The next day Anton was arrested for Cooper’s murder, and I figured he’d got what was coming to him.”
“That was the night Cooper was murdered?” Lucille gasped with the appropriate stunned, wide-eyed gaze.
Beverly smiled. It was scary. “Uh huh. Bullet to the chest, that very night.”
“Wasn’t Anton arrested for it?”
Beverly laughed her empty cackle. “Son of a bitch escaped. I don’t know how, but he got out. There was a rumor his little niece helped him, but I think it was some of his other ‘clients.’”
Lucille swallowed at the mention of herself. She would’ve helped Simon escape if she hadn’t been left in the dark. All she’d done was break up with the boyfriend who’d turned her only stable family member in in the first place.
“So Anton murdered Cooper, and now we’re going to murder Anton as revenge.”
Beverly studied Lucille for a long minute, her eyes once again unfocused. “No. The police think Anton murdered Cooper, but I never thought he did.”
“Because you killed Cooper.”
“What did you say?” Beverly moved toward Lucille, stumbling.
Oops. Lucille scrambled. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to assume. You’d never... I mean, you couldn’t...”
Beverly stopped, her face blank. “No, you’re right, aren’t you? I mean, I did, didn’t I? I killed him.”
There it was. The confession. A little wishy washy, and probably enough to get her off on an insanity plea, but it would be able to clear Simon. All Lucille had to do was extract herself from the situation and they were home free.
At that moment, five feet and ten inches of gay man dressed in a false beard and a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles appeared in the room beside her. From beneath the folds of his black overcoat peeked the business end of a pistol, pointed directly at Beverly’s fake boobs.