Hot Target by Suzanne Brockmann Page A

California.” She looked over at her assistant. “Patty, call Steve Spielberg with my regrets. I won’t be able to attend his potato-picking party in Boise next week, gosh darn it.”
    Jules was hanging in. “Ms. Chadwick. With all due respect, yesterday this was a joke. But today the Freedom Network’s involved. There have been several e-mails that have raised a red flag. I don’t have the details yet, but my boss, Max Bhagat, is concerned. And believe me, when he becomes concerned, you should take it seriously.”
    Mercedes looked again at the computer documents Jules had given her—pages upon pages printed directly from the Freedom Network’s website. They included a sheet that had a picture of her face in the center of a target’s bull’s-eye.
    She laughed, but to Cosmo’s ears it sounded a little forced. “This is priceless, you know. I couldn’t buy this kind of publicity.”
    Her brother spoke, his voice sharp. “I think we’ve all agreed this has gone too far, Jane.”
    Mercedes—or Jane, as her brother called her—looked from Jules to Decker to Tom and finally to Cosmo, as if she’d somehow decided that she trusted him above everyone else in the room. “Am I really in danger?” she asked.
    He put down the script. Not from him. Nothing moved him less than a woman like J. Mercedes Chadwick. Yes, she was beautiful, with a perfect oval of a face that hinted at Middle Eastern ancestry. And her body . . . Cos let himself look at her, because the way she dressed, she obviously wanted him and everyone else in the universe to do just that. And why not—she had one hell of a body.
    And okay, yeah, he was a freaking liar. She moved him. He’d have to be dead for at least a year for cleavage like the kind she packed not to make him sit up and take notice. But she moved him kind of the way catching a glimpse of one of Silverman’s favorite porno flicks moved him. He was embarrassed and vaguely disgusted with his reaction. Because there was nothing real about it.
    Sex with women like J. Mercedes Chadwick was just a step up from getting it on with an imaginary girlfriend.
    And okay, yeah, it was a big freaking step. But it was just as impersonal—maybe even more so because it involved pretending that it wasn’t. And that always left him feeling no less alone.
    Cosmo was glad that this woman was a client—which would make her off-limits. Even if she threw herself at him, he’d have a solid reason to resist the temptation, thus avoiding all morning-after regrets.
    But right now she and the rest of the people in the room were looking at him, waiting for him to speak.
    He cleared his throat. “Lotta crazy people out there,” he told her. She seemed to want more, so he kept going. “Seems like a no-brainer to me—letting us come in and provide security, with HeartBeat paying for it.”
    She looked down at that picture again, frowning slightly. And Cosmo suspected that it scared her more than she was willing to admit.
    But she kept up her act. “They spelled my name wrong,” she said.
    “Yeah, but they got our address right,” the brother pointed out.
    There was silence then, as that bit of info sank in.
    J. Mercedes finally sighed, swearing under her breath. Then she looked up, again directly at Cosmo. “How do we do this?” she asked him. “How, exactly, is this going to work?”
     
    Badly.
    That was how this bodyguard thing was going to work.
    Until they installed a security system, someone was going to remain within earshot of Jane at all times.
    Welcome, boys and girls, to her personal hell. Until this was over, or until she convinced HeartBeat that the threat wasn’t real, she was going to have to stay in J. Mercedes Chadwick mode around the clock, just as she’d anticipated.
    Right now she even had to stay in character here, in her upstairs private office, where she would have slipped into a pair of sweats as she attempted to write that blasted D-Day dream sequence she’d told the studio