Rachel Gibson
Lola Carlyle Reveals All
© 2002
With much thanks and appreciation
to the Thursday night girls:
Laura Lee Guhrke, Jill Hill, and Cathie Wilson.
You make me laugh
and keep me relatively sane.
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my thanks to the following people who helped during the writing of this book: Floyd and Gloria Skinner, for sharing their knowledge of yachting with me; Coast Guard Petty Officer Mike Brock, for taking my call and answering all my questions; and to the many authors of the many research books that I pored through in the writing of this book.
Prologue
Of all the humiliations Lola Carlyle had suffered in her life-and the list was quite long and juicy- seeing her naked pictures on the Internet was without a doubt the worst. Anyone with a modem and a credit card could view fifteen different photos of her in the buff. Each one a bit more embarrassing than the last. Knowing that they were out there was a constant disgrace, a weight on her shoulders, an anvil on her head pressing into her skull.
The photographs had been taken of her several years ago by her ex-fiance, Sam The Jerk. Sam, the guy who’d always professed his unending love, the guy who’d told her she could trust him with anything, had used her photographs to bail himself out of his financial problems. Four years after their breakup, he’d developed
In the past, Lola had posed for professional photographers-too many times to count. But Sam was an investment banker, and he’d shot the pictures with a disposable Kodak he’d picked up on a munchie run. In a moment she could only look back on and attribute to complete insanity, she’d allowed him to snap a series of butt- naked photos of her in his bed, riding his stationary bike, and sitting in the middle of his kitchen table chowing on candy bars and bags of Doritos.
The absolute worst photograph had been taken of her kissing a king-sized Tootsie Roll. At the time, the pictures had been meant to be funny, a silly joke on her career, for which she never ate anything that wasn’t baked, broiled, or tossed in zero-calorie dressing. Never ate anything fattening that wasn’t routinely purged from her body.
What the photographs hadn’t shown was the sickness that had begun right after she’d binged on all that junk food. The vicious cycle of guilt that always began after her total loss of control. The panic that she might have gained an ounce, which always sent her straight to the treadmill or the toilet.
It was a compulsion she now controlled, but at one time it had almost taken her life. Even now, every time she looked at the old images of her five-foot-eleven, one-hundred-and-ten-pound body, it triggered the voice in her head that told her she should skip lunch, or it urged her to visit the Colonel and order a bucket of chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a diet Coke.
Worse than the humiliation of those tacky pictures appearing on the Internet for the world to see was the knowledge that there wasn’t anything she could do about them. And she’d tried. She’d begged Sam to give her the photos and to removed them from the net. She’d offered him money, but even after all this time, he was still so bitter about their breakup, he’d refused. She’d hired an attorney and was told what she basically already knew. Sam owned the photographs and he could publish them wherever he liked. She’d taken him to court anyway, and she’d promptly lost.
Her only option now was to hire a hit man. A choice she might actually consider if she knew beforehand that she wouldn’t get caught, humiliating herself and her family further. Because in a family filled with fairly prolific sinners, Lola had always been the biggest black sheep. Which was quite an accomplishment when one considered Uncle Jed’s recent troubles. None of them had spent time in the penitentiary, though county jail, yes. Pen, no. And seeing her in prison orange just might finally do her poor mother in.
Lola reached for the tabloid she’d tucked in her suitcase and glanced at her face on the cover of the
She tossed the magazine aside, and with her Miniature Pinscher, Baby Doll, tucked beneath one arm, she walked out of the tiny bungalow. It seemed her name was never mentioned anymore without comment on the twenty-five pounds she’d gained since she’d turned her back on the modeling business.
She wasn’t fat, and she wasn’t in hiding, either. She was on a much-needed mental health
She figured all she needed to force Sam to pull the plug on his site was a good private investigator and some fresh dirt. Sam hadn’t always been up front in his business dealing, and she knew there had to be plenty she could use to blackmail him. It was so simple, she didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before.
As soon as she got home, Sam The Jerk was going down.
Chapter 1
Max Zamora was getting too old to play Superman. Adrenaline rushed through his veins and raised the hair on the backs of his arms, but did little to dull the fiery ache shooting up his side, stealing air from his lungs. At the age of thirty-six, he felt the pain of saving the world much more than he used to.
He took steady breaths to control the pain and the nausea threatening just below the surface. Above the pounding in his head, he listened to the sounds of tourists and taxicabs, of island music and waves hitting the docks. He heard nothing out of the ordinary filling the humid night air, but Max knew they were out there. Somewhere. Looking for him. If they caught him, they wouldn’t hesitate before they killed him, and this time they would succeed.
Light from the Atlantis Casino illuminated blurry patches of the marina, and for a split second his vision cleared,
