Her Bodyguard

She lifted the card from Gillian’s fingers. “Anyway, somehow Soap Opera Digest got wind of that plot twist and ran it as their lead story last month. Ever since it came out, half my mail is get-well cards and the other half is outraged complaints.”

Either way, Gillian’s job was to respond. Lara switched on the computer on the desk and showed her the various form letters. As time and inspiration permitted, she should add a sentence or two to customize the form letter, thus making the fan feel she was receiving a personal response. “I wish there were time to send each of them an answer from scratch, but there just isn’t. Still I’m really grateful for their concern. For their...loyalty. Some of them have been writing me for years. Which reminds me—”

Lara showed Gillian how to check to see if the fan was new—in which case the name was to be added to a database Lara maintained, along with a code that showed which form letter she’d received—or if the fan was an old one, then Gillian should review the file to make sure a repeat response didn’t get sent.

Autographed photos of Lara were stored in this drawer, prestamped envelopes in that. “And that’s about it for the fan mail,” Lara said at last. “Except for the...special cases.”

“The reality impaired,” Trace murmured.

Lara rounded on him fiercely. “They’re not all—”

“There?” he supplied gently. “Any woman who thinks she might be Sarah? A fictional long-lost daughter of a fictional Dr. Daley, star of a prime-time soap opera? Anyone who believes that isn’t playing with a full deck, Lara.”

Gillian had wondered herself, of course. Dr. Laura Daley was fiction. Lara’s maiden name was Laura Bailey. Both women, the fictional one and the factual, had sold their babies—one for the money to go to med school, the other for a red sports car. And it was Lara’s own husband who’d created the Dr. Daley character. Why? The story was just too juicy to pass up? But how could Lara have allowed Corday to use her own life as fodder for a soap opera?

On the other hand, people did it all the time, selling their real-life tragedies or scandals to TV, to be dramatized as a movie of the week. So why couldn’t Lara sell her own story—sell me—all over again?

“They’re a little confused,” Lara admitted, regaining her good temper. “So we try to straighten them out gently, pointing out that Searching for Sarah isn’t based on reality.”

Except that it is. Almost. Gillian found herself nodding to hide her confusion.

“I have a form letter for the special cases,” Lara went on, “but those I handle personally. If you run across any letter where the fan thinks she might be Sarah, you bring that right to me and I’ll deal with it, okay?”

Straightening them out gently, she’d said. Except that when Gillian had written Lara a year ago to say that maybe, just maybe, she might be Lara’s birth daughter, Sarah Scott, Lara’s response had been ferocious, not gentle: If I didn’t want you when you were born, why would I want you now?

“Laaaara. Lara-darling?” The owner of that caroling soprano paused in the office doorway. Gillian recognized the blonde in the Range Rover, who had coolly nodded her through the gates on the day of her interview. This morning she radiated warmth. “Oh, there you are, darling!” Her blue eyes switched to Gillian and widened. “And you must be my poor, poor replacement!”

“Gillian, this is my daughter Joya,” Lara said, and completed the introductions while the girl glided across the hardwood floors to offer her hand. Her palm was marshmallow soft, her grip fashionably limp; her inch-long mauve fingernails made shaking hands a bit of a hazard. Gillian could see why she’d gotten behind in her paperwork.

“Did you need something, sweetie?” Lara asked.

The girl turned a dazzling smile upon her. “Just your car for a little bitty while? Stupid Toby took the Range Rover back to the dealer. He says it’s lost its new-car smell and the dealer should have some sort of spray to make it smell new again. I mean, I ask you, so it smells like it’s three months old instead of three days? Who cares? Anyway, I told Duffy and Pooh I’d meet them for lunch out at Bailey’s Beach, so could I pretty, pretty please take your—”

“No,” said Trace from the window seat. “I may need it.”

Sunshine gave way to storm clouds in the blink of an eye, as Joya whirled to face him. “Well, too bad! I asked first!” She glanced over her shoulder at Lara. “Didn’t I, darling?”

Lara bit her lip, glancing from one to the other. Trace shook his head slowly and Joya caught the movement from the corner of her eye. Her head snapped around.

“You stay out of this, Trace! It’s none of your business.”

“We could drive you, I suppose,” Lara said. She put a soothing hand on the girl’s arm.

Joya shook it off and backed away. “I don’t want to be driven to lunch like a snot-nosed child. I—”

“Then stop acting like one,” suggested Trace.

Joya stamped her foot. “You shut up!”

Gillian drifted back a step...another, then turned. If there had been some way to creep out of the room she’d have taken it gladly. Next best option was to act as though this ugly little scene wasn’t happening, go about her business. She stooped by the last box in line and examined its contents.

Behind her, Trace’s voice overrode Lara’s placating murmur. “If these so-called friends of yours can’t be bothered to drive a mile out of their way to pick you up, then call a taxi. You can afford it.”

“Trace—” Lara interposed on a note of pleading.

“At least I pay my own way here,” Joya declared in a vicious singsong, advancing on him. She snatched up the catalog he’d set aside, flipped its pages at random. “Unlike some of us who just lounge around, preening and flexing—”

Trace laughed aloud. Gillian chose a letter from the box at random. This one was a manila envelope and seemed to contain something thicker than a letter. A gift from an admiring fan? She could ask Lara to show her what to do in cases like that. Lara looked as if she’d welcome a distraction, but Gillian hadn’t the nerve. Joya was standing over Trace, her hands clenched as though she wanted to smash his upturned, gently smiling face but didn’t dare. Frustrated as the girl appeared, she might lash out at the next person who spoke or moved.

“Flexing and preening and sucking up to older women. Getting Lara to buy you goodies: What are you shopping for this time, Trace, another set of custom golf clubs? Or were you a very good boy last night? You deserve a gold Rolex this morning?”

“Joya, that’s enough!” Lara said sharply.

Gillian stood, opened the envelope. Any distraction was better than this.

“Enough? It’s not half enough,” Joya snarled. “It’s time somebody said something! If Daddy could see this—this big lapdog who’s taken his place. I bet he’s spinning in his grave! Spinning and puking!”

The package held something wrapped in several folds of a plastic bag. Pulling it out and unwrapping it, Gillian drifted to Lara’s side. From the bag she removed a mottled white-and-brown card, folded loosely around some oblong object. “Mrs. Corday, excuse me, but this letter contained some—”

“If you don’t mind, honey,” Joya snapped, “you can wait your turn! I’m—”

“Stop!” called Trace, lunging to his feet and swinging Joya out of his way—just as Gillian shook the item free of the card and into her hand.

Her gasp feathered out, loud in the sudden silence.

White fur...the hardness of bone beneath... the stench of rotten meat. Trace caught her wrist and turned it, flipping the object off her palm and onto the desktop.

“Oh, gross!” cried Joya.

“Oh,” said Lara, as she sank onto the office chair.

LARA’S “GIFT” WAS THE FOOT of some small animal. Rabbit’s foot, Gillian thought with revulsion. But not a commercial, sanitized rabbit’s foot you could buy on a key chain. Horrible as she thought those were, this was much worse. A homemade job, it looked like, with dark stains on the soft fur.

She became aware that Trace still held her wrist. Warm and oddly comforting, his fingers curled around her. She could feel her own pulse, slamming against the base of his thumb. And his slower, heavier beat, like an answer you could depend on.

“You’re not going to faint on me, are you?” he asked absently, looking up from the rabbit’s foot into her eyes.

“Of course not,” she said, though she did feel—detached. Floating a few inches off the floor. As if she could tip forward and fall into his deep hazel eyes—pools of slate green spangled with gold and gray. Aware, also, that even if her knees did buckle, he was strong enough to hold her upright.

“Of course you’re not,” he murmured on an odd note, something almost with an edge to it. “And what have you got there?” He reached and caught her other wrist and lifted it, scowled at the bloodstained card she still clutched. “Drop it.”

The wrapper fell to the desk and he released her at last. She stood, rubbing her wrists. Trace used the eraser ends of two pencils off the desk to push open the curled card and pin it flat to the blotter. Lara wheeled her chair up beside her to watch. Joya also crowded closer.

On the inner surface of the bloody card were printed the words:

Lara-mommy! I saw this and thought of YOU. You could use some luck—maybe more than you know? See you SOOOOOOON. Your loving SARAH XXX.

“Gross!” Joya repeated. She sounded more excited than repelled.