Page 5 of Love on the Run

The dress was too tight.Callie wriggled, but she couldn’t change the fundamental fact that there just wasn’t enough fabric.The black silk shantung dress was visually stunning, but it constricted around her body, making it hard to breathe and impossible to move naturally.The man at her side didn’t seem to notice.He examined her the way an art critic views a sculpture, and she straightened up under his inspection.It wasn’t a good idea to let Malcolm get angry.Callie knew that life could get very unpleasant when he was in a bad mood.

His mood was good tonight.He smiled as he looked her over.“You arepicture perfect, Calista.” He offered her his arm in an old-fashioned gesture of chivalry.Mal liked to be thought of as a gentleman, and looked the part, with his taller than average frame, hair just silvering at the sides, and flashing, indulgent, intelligent smile.He dressed well, spoke well, acted well…. But Callie wasn’t fooled.Not for months had his gentleman act fooled her.

She’d been taken in at first, before she knew the truth.Sure, what girl wouldn’t be?He was well-connected in the movie industry, charming when he wanted to be. So charming.Callie had been surprised she caught his eye.But for nearly a year, she’d been his preferred date for the dozens of Hollywood parties and insider gigs he attended. He worked hard to promote her as an actress; her success would help his own standing in Hollywood. She hadn’t known, then, and not for months afterward, that he was involved with far more than the movie industry.

Now she knew. Because there were other parties, too.Very special, private parties where starlets and up-and-comers and the movie industry elite mingled and got high off the newest, hottest drugs—supplied by Malcolm—as if they didn’t have a care in the world. Callie hated those events, usually held at the insanely expensive ocean-view mansion he owned, but Malcolm insisted that she go.So she went, always dolled up in some ridiculously over-priced, form-fitting dress, so that everyone knew that Malcolm had the prettiest, classiest girl on his arm.Malcolm took pride in his girls being all natural, too. No implants, no surgery.Thank God.If Mal had wanted her to get an operation, Callie would have taken her chances and left, no matter what he told her.“I paid for you, Calliecat,” He’d say.“Your apartment, your food, your clothes. All from me. You’re mine. I’ll never let you go.” Malcolm said things like that often, and Callie believed him.

They had been at this particular party, at his beach house overlooking the Pacific, for about an hour. Callie watched with veiled disgust as people she was supposed to respect made fools of themselves in front of her.She had never been into hard drugs, but in the past year, she’d learned to hate what they could do to people. Malcolm knew it too, but he loved it—loved the control it gave him.No matter how rich or powerful a person might be, the chemicals had the power in the end. And they all looked so normal, those people. You’d never know they were slaves. Unless you knew the signs. Sadly, Callie did.

Standing on the balcony, she tried to focus on the view outside, but the expanse of the ocean was mostly lost in the dark, making it look like the twinkling lights of the valley was a sea of light spilling out into a void, dropping off into pure darkness. She looked at the edge of lights, where in the daytime she’d see a beach, and wondered how long it would take her to get there. Callie longed to get out of this place. Part of her knew that the old Callie would have left. She sighed, feeling tears start to prick at her eyes. Where had the old Callie gone? The one who wasn’t afraid?

Then Malcolm came charging around the corner, grabbing her roughly by the elbow. She didn’t even cry out at the sudden pain. She’d learned to keep her mouth shut.

“Come on, I have to take care of something real quick, and then we’ve got to hit another party.”

“You’re leaving your own party?” she asked, as he yanked her along with him to the garage, two floors below and facing away from the beach.

“Business, doll. More important than the leeches upstairs.” He calledthemleeches, she noted dully. When he was the one who sunk his feelers into them, sucking out everything good in their souls.

The garage door was open, and within seconds a man she recognized pulled up in an old, oddly battered car, stopping about thirty feet from the garage.Where had he gotten such a junker, she wondered. No one in Malcolm’s line of business ever drove a car older than last season.

Mal noticed, too, and let out a mocking laugh. “What the hell is that? I’m going to have to change your name to Fred Flintstone, Eddie.”

The man heard him as he got out of the car. “Never mind about my current financial state, Foster. We have a much bigger problem.”

Callie saw the dull glow of the LA night sky beyond the trees.How did I get here, she wondered for the hundredth time.How did I get into this mess?

The other man stormed up to Malcolm, totally ignoring her. Eddie started talking, spitting mad about something. Mal’s expression shifted from amused to surprised to enraged. After Eddie took a breath, he snapped something back.Callie stared at the concrete floor while the men argued, the volume increasing by the second.Maybe she could walk away from it.She began to step toward the garage door, thinking that she could wait on the lawn. Malcolm was getting red in the face, out of control. Oh, what had he taken tonight? Something very expensive, but not one of the smooth ones. No, the substance racing through his veins tonight made him superman, a dragon. He could take on the world, if the world was stupid enough to get in his way.

Callie only caught the gist of their fight—something about a shipment going wrong, something in Mexico. Someone ratting them out. Malcolm wanted to blame Eddie, but he refused responsibility. Names and dates slid by her; she listened without caring.She slid out of her strappy heels, stepping on the grass with her bare feet, experimentally wiggling her toes in the soothing, cool green carpet.The men began to shout.Eddie yelled sharply, just once.

Then there was a popping sound, a gunshot. Callie spun around to see what happened.It was loud, but certainly not so loud that the guy should now be lying still on the concrete floor of the garage, a slowly widening halo of red surrounding him. As Callie kept looking, it occurred to her that the man’s face was no longer there. Her stomach twisted.

She looked back at Malcolm, at the shining object in his hand.At the gun.

“Mal? Did you do that?”

“Don’t say anything, Callie. I didn’t do anything.We can work this out.”

But Callie kept shaking her head, staring at the ground, at the man…the body. “You shot Ed. Youkilledhim.” Her mind froze, unable to work.

“No, I didn’t!” Malcolm yelled, raising the gun, waving his arm wildly. His eyes were red and unfocused.What was he on?

All at once, Callie felt a flash go through her.Run.That was all. So she ran.It was her one chance to get away.Run away.She stumbled down the driveway in her bare feet, hiking up the tight skirt of the stupid dress as she went.I’m never wearing this again, she thought absurdly.Then she heard another popping sound from behind her.There was no pain, not yet, but it suddenly got much harder to run.As if she were in a nightmare, her feet went slower and slower.She heard Malcolm yelling behind her, his voice tinny and small in her ears.She came to Eddie’s beat up car, so out of place in this world.Get away. She grabbed the door handle, yanking it open.The keys sat in the ignition—poor Ed thought he’d be going right away.Drive.Drive, Callie. Get away. Her legs felt like water.Malcolm kept yelling behind her. Her vision began to dim.

Then she woke up.

* * * *

Callie blinked, trying to identify where she was. It was lovely, warm and quiet. Breathing shallowly, she tried to slow her heartbeat down. The nightmare had felt so real. She reached out and felt a blanket drawn over her, a thick woolen blanket that smelled faintly—but not unpleasantly—of dog. She opened her eyes fully, but saw little more than a wall of wooden planks, stained honey gold. She was in a twin bed, tucked into an alcove of some kind, and all three walls of the room were paneled with those rough planks. The scent of pine wafted toward her, making her think of mountain slopes. And then she smelled, more faintly, coffee.

She wasn’t alone in this house. Callie turned her head, seeing that she was in a kind of loft. The fourth wall of the room came only halfway up, so that she could glimpse a wall of windows rising to a peaked roof about twenty feet beyond. There was also another bed in an alcove just like hers across the room. The floor between them was covered with an old-fashioned braided rug in soft blues and greens, a big oval that just left the corners of the wide plank floor exposed. A ladderback chair sat in the middle of the rug, as if someone had drawn it up near her own bed. Had someone been watching over her? Where was she?

Callie sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed, shaking her head to clear a lingering dreaminess. Then she looked down at herself in shock. Her leg was now bandaged up very professionally, but that wasn’t what shocked her. She was wearing a shirt that she’d never seen before. A man’s shirt. Dear Lord, what did she do this time? She struggled to remember, but could only recall driving, driving until she was dead tired. She’d barely pulled off the road in time. And then…what happened? She brought her hand up to her face, hoping a headache wasn’t coming on, and suddenly inhaled the scent of clean cotton. She found it strangely comforting.

The aroma of coffee wafted up again. Determined to figure out what was going on, Callie stood up, swaying a little. She put her hand out on the wall to steady herself, feeling the silky smooth grain of the wood. She took a careful step, thumping a bit on the unfamiliar floor. The big shirt came nearly to her knees. A dog barked below her, and she heard the rhythm of paws running closer.

“Hey, Bruiser.No.” A man’s voice, low and authoritative, stopped the paws—and Callie—in their tracks. “It’s all right, boy. She’ll be down.”

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