Callie had finally agreed just so that everyone would leave and she could get at least a couple of hours of sleep before dawn. Today she was definitely paying the price. Her brain felt like mush and her face didn’t look much better. This glamorous image was harder to maintain than she’d imagined. In fact, her whole impression that acting was a frivolous career had been turned on its ear. It was hard work.
She walked into Terry’s dressing room and flopped down in the big easy chair in front of his mirror. He glanced up from his script.
“Hey, dollface, what’s up?”
“I look like I’ve got two small carry-ons under my eyes. Fix it.”
He grinned. “I’m talented, but I’m no plastic surgeon. Go see Suzy,” he said, referring to their makeup genius.
“If Suzy sees these, she’ll quit the business rather than have her reputation compromised.”
Terry came over, grabbed her elbow and hauled her up. “You don’t need makeup. You need food, something to revive you.”
“I don’t have time for food.”
“We’ll make time. We’re not shooting until one. It’s still early for the lunch crowd. We can run across the street, eat our soup and be back here in fifteen minutes with plenty of time to get dolled up for the camera.”
“Fifteen minutes to get served at the deli? Since when?”
“You’ll be with me, remember?”
“Oh, of course. I’d forgotten how the waitresses fall all over themselves trying to catch your attention,” she said snidely. “The rest of us could die of starvation.”
“Yes, well, fame does have its privileges,” he remarked drily.
“Forget fame,” Callie retorted. “It’s that sexy dimple that gets them. It would work if you were a bus driver.”
“Whatever,” he mumbled, clearly embarrassed. “Are you coming or not?”
“I’m coming,” she said, patting his cheek affectionately. “Cutie.”
Terry groaned but otherwise let the taunt slide.
Slipping out of the studio in the middle of the day made Callie feel as if she were playing hooky. She usually relied on Terry to bring her back a cup of soup or a salad. He made the trek to the nearby deli just before noon every day like clockwork.
Because she usually holed up in her own dressing room for a final rehearsal of her lines, Hank wasn’t expecting her to head for the exit. She caught a glimpse of him engaged in one of his increasingly heated exchanges with Lisa. This one, at least, was verbal. At the last instant, she thought of Jason’s warning.
“Maybe I should tell Hank we’re going,” she said, hesitating at the door.
“We’ll be back before he even notices we’re gone,” Terry reassured her. “I’ll protect you.”
“Who’s going to protect you?”
“No need,” he promised, doing an elaborate scan of the sidewalk. “The coast is clear.”
Callie rolled her eyes and followed him to the curb. Terry took her hand and led her between two parked cars, glancing up the one-way street to be sure there was no traffic in sight. Callie followed the direction of his gaze and assured herself that the nearest car was waiting for the red light to change on the other side of Eighth Avenue, a hundred or more yards away.
They had taken no more than two steps into the street when Callie heard an engine accelerating as if it were coming out of a turn at the Indy 500. It squealed around the corner on two wheels and took aim straight at them.
In the blink of an eye, the car was on top of them. Terry reacted with lightning-quick reflexes, shoving Callie backward so hard that she landed on her tailbone with a painful thud. He dove after her but not in time to avoid the car, which grazed his side and sent him sprawling.
The driver never even touched the brakes. Callie closed her eyes and prayed harder than she’d ever prayed in her life as she painfully scrambled toward Terry’s inert form.
Within seconds, it seemed, Hank came racing out of the studio, apparently alerted to the near-miss by one of the other cast members, who’d been exiting behind them and had seen everything. He knelt beside Callie.
“You okay?”
“Just shaken up a little. Check on Terry. I think the car hit him.”
“I’m okay,” Terry insisted, barely stifling a groan as he straightened up. “Just a little dust on my pants.”
“You’re damned lucky you don’t have tire treads over your middle,” Jonathan Baines said, joining them. “It happened so fast, I didn’t even have time to scream a warning.”
“Did you see the car?” Hank asked, going instantly into his professional cop mode. “Make, model, color? What about the driver?”
Callie couldn’t dredge up anything but that instant of terror. Terry was no more helpful.
However, Jonathan, whose photographic memory was much envied by others in the cast, closed his eyes and withdrew into some sort of trancelike state. Then he, too, shook his head.
“It happened too quickly for me to get much of a look at the driver,” he said with regret.
“What about the car?” Hank asked.
“Older, maybe an ’85 or ’86,” Jonathan guessed. “Some kind of Chevy, I think. Dull blue or gray. Pretty nondescript, actually.”
“The perfect car for a planned hit-and-run,” Hank said.
The actor’s eyes widened. “You think it was intentional?”
Hank fixed his gaze on Callie and Terry. “Don’t you?”
Terry sighed heavily. “If so, then it had to be me they were after. I cross here every day about this time. Callie never does.”
“Which means it’s not over, after all,” Callie whispered, trembling so hard she felt as if she’d been caught in a blizzard without her coat. Even her teeth were chattering.
Terry wrapped an arm around her. “Sorry, dollface. Looks like I’ve done it again.”
“Not you, this crazy person,” Callie said adamantly.
“It’s because of me, though, that you’re at risk,” Terry repeated.
Jonathan regarded them all with curiosity. “What the devil is going
