Hollyweird Read online

  TERRI CLARK

  Woodbury, Minnesota

  Copyright Information

  Hollyweird © 2012 by Terri Clark.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Flux, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Cover models used for illustrative purposes only and may not endorse or represent the book’s subject.

  First e-book edition © 2012

  E-book ISBN: 9780738735801

  Cover design by Ellen Lawson

  Cover images: Devil horns © iStockphoto.com/bubaone

  Devil trident © iStockphoto.com/Kathryn Kirsch

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  This book is dedicated to all those living with or affected by Sarcoidosis. Thank you to my doctors and nurses for their first-rate care and to the Inspire support group for offering knowledge and camaraderie. My unending gratitude goes to my family and friends for always being there for me. I love you forever. And finally, blessings to all my Sarc brothers and sisters, especially my soul sister Courtney. May a cure be in our near future. For more information—or to show your support—please visit the Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research at www.StopSarcoidosis.org and help us Kick In to Stop Sarcoidosis.

  ALY

  It’s not every day you get a chance to meet the celebrity whose pics plaster your locker and Facebook page. But a phone call from EnterTEENment Magazine had me poised to do just that. I, Aly King, was about to meet the Dakota Danvers. Never heard of him? What planet are you on? Think Jared Padalecki or Penn Badgley and you get the idea. Hot TV hunk, huge teen following. Dakota’s mega-popular CW show is called Paranormal PI. The title’s pretty self-explanatory, but basically he’s this brooding, kick-butt, supernatural sleuth who rids the world of evil and fights to avenge his loved ones.

  Swoon. Thunk.

  Now I’d be meeting him. For real. And my life would never again be the same. I just knew it.

  As I watched my best friend, Desi Moreno, screech up to It’s a Grind coffeehouse in her black ’71 Dodge Dart, AC/DC’s “Back in Black” blaring so loud the windows of her car seemed to bow with the beat, I took a sip of my Triple Black Cherry Mocha and felt my insides tickle at the idea of telling her the news.

  She would so fuh-reak.

  Here’s the thing about me and Des, we’re total opposites, a true Gen Y odd couple. I’m all straight-laced, logic-centered, and show-me-the-facts, whereas she’s multi-pierced, mystical, and rebellious. She laughs at my unwillingness to believe in anything intangible, and I tease her about her woo-woo ideology. She is yin, I am yang. Together we are taijitu, the balance of yin and yang. Without her, I never would’ve survived the last two years. She wasn’t just my best friend; she was my other half, my family. In fact, I always teased her with that corny “you complete me” line from the Jerry Maguire movie. So, of course, I’d texted her with a 911 page to meet me at our favorite java joint just as soon as I heard I’d won.

  Sitting here now, under a cheerful yellow umbrella, I appreciated the endless cerulean of the Colorado sky. Its unblemished beauty was as bright as my mood, but I tried to hide that bliss as Desi sauntered over to my table wearing her fave peace-heart tee and raising one dark eyebrow.

  “This is an emergency?” She sucked her blue gum between her teeth until it popped. “What? You went into severe caffeine withdrawal and needed me to ply you with a constant supply of mochas?”

  “Sit down,” I said, and then bit my straw to tamp down my excitement. “I have something to tell you and you’re going to lose your mind.”

  She twisted her mouth to one side, which gave me a good view of the teeny skull-and-crossbones piercing her right nostril. “Good lose your mind, or bad?” she asked.

  “I think you should sit,” I repeated as I twisted the end of my ponytail, a nervous habit Des immediately cued into.

  “Uh oh, that’s never good,” she said, pointing to my fingers. “Spill it, blondie. You’re scaring me and we both know that’s not easy.” She screeched her metal chair across the concrete to sit close to me. “Is it your dad? Is something wrong? Tell me he doesn’t want to move again. I thought we’d talked him outta that.” She covered her mouth in horror as if that were the worst thing she could imagine. “It’s almost summer. The summer before our senior year, Al. Next year we’re supposed to rule the school. There’s prom, our class trip, senior ditch day, and a bajillion other things we’ve been looking forward to forever. Tell me you are not leaving,” she demanded.

  “I am,” I told her in all seriousness. You can’t imagine the absolute effort it took to keep a grave expression on my face when my tummy played Dance Dance Revolution. And, yeah, I felt a twinge of remorse playing her like that, but come ooo-on, how often can you spring this kind of news on your BFF? I just had to milk the moment. Especially since this was the best thing that had happened to me since that day.

  “I’m going to California.” Dramatic pause for effect. “In July.”

  “Not funny.” She scowled and pitched my crumpled straw wrapper at me. “April Fool’s was last week.”

  “No joke.” I held her gaze until she could see I meant what I said.

  “No, no, NO!” she protested, springing up. Her warm brown skin paled like the pigment had leached out. “If this is because of your dad’s job, we’ll just have to find him another one. I know things have been rough for him since your mom died, but your biggest support system is right here. You can’t—”

  “Des!” I yanked her down into her seat.

  “Aly, you can’t leave me,” she wailed as she slumped against the chair back. “We’ve been together since we were six. Shared the best times and the worst. Eleven years together is more than most marriages.”

  Seeing tears start to well in her cocoa eyes, and noticing the concerned glances of the other bean addicts sitting on the patio, I felt guilt prickle my heart. “You’re right, Des, I can’t leave you. And I won’t. Not ever,” I vowed with genuine earnestness. “That’s why I’m taking you with.”

  Her jaw slackened. “Huh?”

  Finally, I unleashed the effervescent joy I’d kept contained. “I won,” I whisper
ed excitedly. “I. Won.”

  “Oookay,” she said, looking unnerved by my abnormal ebullience. “Whadja win?”

  “Only just a once in a lifetime, miraculous, I-still-

  can’t-believe-it dream come true. I, my dear best friend, am taking you”—I pointed to her—“to L.A. during summer break. You’re looking at the Grand Prize winner of EnterTEENment Magazine’s Meet Dakota Danvers Contest. We’re talking an all-expense-paid trip, six sunny days and five balmy nights, to Cali and we get to do a photo shoot with Dakota himself.”

  Her mouth fell open, but she neither squealed nor screamed. Not sure she believed me, I reached across the table and squeezed one of her be-ringed hands. “Des, I won. For real. We”—I shook my finger between her and me—“are going to meet the Dakota Danvers, live and in person.”

  “Shut. Up!” she finally blurted.

  This, I had expected. “It’s true. It’s true.” I yanked my Blackberry from my back pocket and showed her the caller ID. EnterTEENment Magazine. 213-555-4267. “See?”

  “Oh my,” she breathed in awed realization.

  Then Desi did the last thing I ever expected …

  She fainted.

  Jameson

  “I’m in,” I said with no small amount of triumph. Tilting back my chair, I laced my fingers behind my head and propped my boots on Michael’s scarred wooden desk. At least I think I glimpsed wood, or that particle-board crap, beneath the chaotic checkerboard of neon sticky notes and coffee-stained papers that lent the only color to his otherwise Colgate-white office.

  “Really?” Michael nodded in approval before smoothing a hand over the DQ ice cream swirl of steel hair that ineffectually covered his receding hairline. “He didn’t have a problem with you being nineteen?”

  “Naw, Dakota said he’d get me a fake ID so I could get into clubs and buy him booze. He liked that I had an inside connection and was impressed with my resumé and references. But I think it was the call from Megan Fox that cinched it.” I gave my immediate supervisor a searching look. “How did you impersonate her?”

  Michael huffed on his nails and then buffed them on his white button-up shirt. “One of my many God-given talents. So, Danvers really doesn’t suspect a thing?”

  “Are you kidding me? The dude’s a beefy pretty boy,” I spat before giving an over-exaggerated flex of my not-too-shabby biceps and a braces-perfected smile. “There’s no room in his brain for anything other than ego. I just gave that a good stroke.” I held up my hand to stop Michael before his smirk could slide into a smart-ass comment. “His ego, Mikey,” I said, calling him the nickname he loathed. “Nothing else. You know I don’t swing that way. He doesn’t either, but between feeding his self-love and having a personal recommendation, it was like offering a fresh-faced intern to David Letterman, too good to refuse.”

  Michael snorted. “Dakota Danvers isn’t the only one with healthy self-confidence.”

  “What can I say?” I shrugged off the slight. “I hate guys like him.”

  “Need I remind you, you are a guy like him and that’s why you’re here in the first place?”

  “I am not,” I argued, yanking my feet off the desk and leaning forward in outrage. “I’m … ” What was I? Hot-headed. Cocky. Foolish. Hell, maybe I was like Dakota Danvers. Was that how people saw me?

  “Doesn’t matter what you are, or what you were,” Michael said, clearly understanding where my thoughts had turned. “What matters is this is your last chance for redemption.”

  I checked my flinch when he jabbed his finger at me to emphasize the point and just slouched in my chair like I didn’t care.

  “You can’t screw up, Jameson. The boss is watching you closer than ever. You’ve already been given more leeway than most.” He gave me a knowing look. “Don’t you think it’s about time you succeed on your own merit and not by fast-talking your way out of a corner?”

  “Yeah,” I said, tugging at the unfamiliar short and spiky hair on my head, knowing he was right. I’d recently been given an extreme makeover for my undercover assignment and I still wasn’t used to the new me. I also wasn’t used to not being able to talk my way outta trouble with a wink and wit. Guess it was time to try something new. “So now what?”

  “This personal recommendation, this”—Michael sifted through scratch papers and stickies until he found his notation—“Francis Ferrari, who is he?”

  “A good guy,” I said with sincerity. “He’s more Italian than the Leaning Tower of Pisa, has a sainted wife, Anna, five rugrats, and an epic heart. Plus, he’s totally legit. He might be Dakota’s driver, but he has no clue about Dakota’s true intentions. Or mine.”

  “Great. So how’d you get him to recommend you?”

  “Research, Mikey.” I nodded to the frozen mocha I’d brought him from The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. “A couple weeks ago, I found out where he gets his morning coffee and started hanging out there.”

  “In other words, you did what you always do—”

  “Talked my way in,” I finished, somewhere between smug and contrite due to my earlier reprimand.

  Michael sat his short and scrawny self on the corner of his desk closest to me and, despite knowing he’d moved in to press an important point, I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing when a Post-It that said Heaven Can Wait stuck itself to his ass.

  “Just be careful. You can’t blow your cover,” he told me. “This is your last chance. Our sources say something big is going down this summer. It’s your job to figure out what Danvers is up to and put a stop to it. Take. Him. Out. You do, and you get a second chance. You don’t, and … ”

  Michael might’ve faltered in what he said, but I knew what “you don’t” meant. I sliced a finger across my neck. “Finito.”

  Michael cleared his throat and, dropping his disconcerted gaze from mine, discovered the note stuck to his white Dockers. He plucked it off, read what it said, and gave a crude snort before saying, “Yes, well, I’m sure you’ll do fine. Just pay attention. Danvers can’t be too dim if he has the sense to make his front line look like the real deal with people like Francis.”

  True enough. And also something I had not thought of. I needed to figure out if he had a hidden evil entourage.

  Once again my geekoid supervisor waded through the papers on his desk until he found a large, padded white envelope, which he handed to me.

  “Here’s everything you need—ID, money, credit cards, key to your apartment. As of this moment, you’re deep undercover.” He lowered his voice to a scary, unnatural baritone. “Deep.” I chuckled until he said in all seriousness, “You can’t come back here,” and then I winced. For all intents and purposes, I’d been grounded for bad behavior. I had to pull off this job if I didn’t want to get booted entirely.

  I tore open the envelope and thumbed through the contents before pulling out two cell phones. “I know you say Hollywood’s all about connections and networking, but isn’t this a little … much?”

  Michael nodded to my left hand, where I held the newest, top-of-the-line iPhone loaded with every gadget, app, and feature imaginable. “Use that one in your personal life and for your PA job.” Then he pointed to the simplistic white flip-phone in my right hand. “That one only connects to the big guy. Don’t call him, he’ll call you.”

  I gulped and stared at the spartan cell like it was a two-headed, albino rat snake. Then my alarm snapped to reverence. A direct line! Damn, but that was cool, even if I couldn’t call him. I stood and tucked a phone in each of my front pockets.

  “Guess this is it,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest and not daring to acknowledge my shredded nerves.

  Michael gave me a kind smile. Or was it pitying? “You can do this, Jameson.”

  This being, find out whatever super-secret evil plan the PowerThatBe thinks Dakota is up to, squash it before it can be unleashed, and take him out. No pressure there. I thought I’d schooled my features not to reveal my “yeah, right” doubts, but apparently Michael saw
right through that. He chuckled without humor.

  “Things will come together, Jameson. They always do.”

  I sure hoped so, but I had to point out one thing that had been gnawing at me. “He doesn’t seem evil,” I said. Annoying? Yeah. Narcissistic? Hell, yeah. Nefarious? Hard to imagine.

  “It’s a façade, Jameson, like so much in Hollywood. Don’t be fooled. Soon you’ll understand why they call L.A. ‘Hell-A.’ And you’ll know exactly why he needs to be eliminated.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” I said as I came to a fierce conclusion. Dakota might just be a meathead or he might be wicked, like Michael said, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was this:

  It was me or him …

  … and I would be the last man standing.

  ALY

  Three months later

  “If you tell, I’ll sentence you to a slow and torturous death. I’ll make the rack en vogue again and I’ll be relentless with the crank. I’ll strap you to a—”

  “Shut it, Des.” I gave her a playful shove against the wall as we walked down the exit ramp from our plane.

  During the landing, we’d squealed and squirmed in our seats at the breathtaking view of the Pacific ocean and the kitschy-cool, UFO-shaped LAX airport, but just as soon as the flight attendant thanked us, on behalf of Linus the Lynx Kitty, for flying Frontier, Des had gone spazztastic.

  “Des, I’ve sworn up and down, even made a blood oath”—I held up my left index finger with its black bandage—“against my will, I might add, that I would not tell Dakota you passed out.”

  However, I’d said nothing about not using it as blackmail material for the rest of our lives. Mwuhaha.

  Desi blasted out a noisy breath. “ ’Kay, I believe you. But I’m wiggin’ out. We’re steps away from meeting him, well, his handler, who handles him, and bo-o-oy would I like to handle him, and it’s just a matter of time before—”