Page 3 of Exit Strategy

“Uh-huh,”I barely responded before heading toward his trailer. The last thing I would take from him was his moralizing on the environment. Hard to take some of that seriously from a man who owned six houses, forty cars, four personal aircraft, and two yachts.

“Quick and clean. My wife will be visiting the set this afternoon,” he added. I nodded, said nothing, and went to his trailer.

It wasn’t really a trailer, it was a half million-dollar RV, REX1. “Rise and shine, decent or not, I’m coming in,” I announced myself as I was taking the steps inside. I heard a flurry of movement and a few soft curses. There was a woman in the first bedroom, which was no real surprise. This was a regular occurrence. Enough so that we had a protocol for it, and there was even a non-disclosure clause in the security contracts. If anyone talked, leaked anything, even mumbled about it in their sleep, it was job forfeiture, monstrous fines, and a possible civil lawsuit.

“Get out of here,” the woman said, clutching the top sheet to her chest.

“That’s the idea. Let’s go,” I said.

“No, you get out, I’m a guest of Mister Arik Rex.” Her tone was hot.

I grabbed the sheet and jerked it out of her hands. She squawked indignantly and by trying to hold on; the momentum toppled her over. It wasn’t surprising that she was naked underneath. I spotted a pile of clothing that had a bra strap sticking out of it, so I grabbed that and tossed it at her. “Here are your clothes. Put them on. This is the express service, and I’m the head of his bloody security detail,” I added.

She looked at me, a mixture of confused and startled. That was maybe the only hard part – them realizing the betrayal. That there would be no soft murmured goodbye, no lingering kiss, no long gaze into his magnetic blue eyes while an orchestra chord rose…Fuck me, I’ve got to stop reading the tabloid stories.They were affecting my head.

Her next action was predictable. She dug her phone out from where she had it tucked away. The phone was the thing that had to be caught. Her face was illuminated by the screen, and it flickered color, and then I snatched it from her hands. “Hey, you can’t do that!” she shouted.

“Get dressed before I carry you out over my shoulder and give everyone a good hard look at that fanny,” I said. She lunged for the phone, but I caught her, flat palm against the base of her collarbone, the smack of skin against skin audible. I pushed her back onto the bed. “Dressed, now, unless you want everyone on set to see your pink bits, eh?”

With my other hand, I opened her photo gallery and started deleting every pic in the last 24 hours, wiping out her evidence of having been in his presence, in his trailer, and anything else that was a breach. She lunged at me again, and I almost lost the phone. She evaded the palm, tried to go inside, and ended up tangled on the floor, twisted in the sheet. I dropped a knee against her shoulder.

There were still rules – no knees to the neck, not that I would do that to even a deranged star fucker.

I pulled up her social media activity and started deleting that as well. She struggled and threw a few punches against my thigh and then several that were decently aimed at my cods. Her fist connected with the cup, and it made a twin-coconut clacking-together sound. “Sorry to spoil that. All you groupie types and angry actress types are super predictable. You all go for the knackers and the eyes.”

I finished with the phone while she struggled under me. Satisfied with thesanitizingof the device, I tossed it on the bed and let her up. She was red in the face, chest heaving with anger. It made her tits really pop out. It was a shame she was pissed. I didn’t pick up Rex’s leavings, but the thought did cross my mind on occasion; they were never shabby, always easy on the eyes.

“Clothing, now. If you’re not dressed in one minute, you’re going out that door naked,” I said for the last time.

She threw her clothes on with trembling hands, her eyes sharp like daggers. I was wary of her. Women were by far more dangerous than they were given credit for. If there was something she could have improvised into a suitable weapon, she would have used it. Anything sharp could go between the ribs, or be used to slash at arms, face, or hands.

Most were fighters, the ones that managed to make it this far. The wallflowers and the shrinking violets didn’t make it through his vanguard. Rex liked his conquests to be independent, strong willed, aggressive, and assertive. They were nothing like his mouse of a wife. That woman might as well have been a marble statue for as much as she projected herself or made herself known. She was shock pale to boot, fire-red hair, tits like a teenage girl – nothing like his taste in groupies.

It was something to do with his church, lots of words about purity and environmental shit. It was religious noise, and that was something that I had long since learned to tune out.

His piece du jour was still fighting with a shoe when the minute timer I tapped on my watch went off. “Time’s up, chippy, time to go.” I grabbed her by the elbow and started moving her toward the door. She grabbed at her phone, leaving behind a shoe and both of her stockings.

“No, wait,” she pleaded as I kicked the door open and started pulling her down the stairs. She bucked and pulled back, but that was fine. I turned halfway down the steps leading up and pulled her off her balance. This was a maneuver I had perfected over the last few weeks, with a little practice from one of the women from legal. The woman pitched forward and would have face-planted at the foot of the stairs, if I wasn’t in the way. Instead, she collapsed over my shoulder, and I caught the backs of her legs before she could flip. Two steps down and I was on terra firma. Rotate to the left but pull short so no skulls smack the side of the RV, and then it’s the goat path around the front of the vehicle, down to the security tent, and then one of the lads stuffs the wildcat in a golfcart and takes her to front of the set, or to her car, whichever is closer.

By that point, it was out of my hands and handled.

I passed the angry woman off to one of my guys, a chisel-faced kid from Arizona. He wanted to be a cowboy actor but missed the genre by sixty some odd years. He took the woman and showed her that he had hand restraints and a taser, both of which went a good distance to calming her right the fuck down.

“Let me know when you’ve finished your run to the Humane Society,” I said.

“We’ll get this lost cat back home,” he said, throwing a passable Hollywood salute, but there was nothing military in it. He meant well, so I wouldn’t bust his bollocks over it.

I went back inside and swept the vehicle for anything the woman might have left behind that was compromising – drugs, drug paraphernalia, lingerie, weapons, etc. Satisfied it was clean, I thumbed my phone.

“Housekeeping, aye? ... Hey, Maria… Aye, it’s Kurt. We’ve had a stray cat get into REX1. I need a full cleanup… Oh, I know how often they seem to get in. I might need to call maintenance and have them look at the closer on the door.” I laughed.

One of the things that had astounded me about picking up the Hollywood gig was just how many open secrets there were, and how, despite no one talking about them, everyone knew. The amount of screwing around that went on, the scads of drugs that were being consumed, and there was more than a little bit of deviant behavior going on past even just coke and star fucking.

I ran a tight ship in Rex’s security.

My detail had a monthly drug screening, weekly depending on who was going to be on set. I had learned that some certain types who shall go unnamed are much more into the party scene than others. That was another thing that had gotten the previous head of Rex’s detail removed from his position.

Can’t do a good job of perimeter security while doing lines of coke off a certain runner-up Actor of the Year’s dick. A certain actor that Rex himself disliked having around.

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