Page 72 of Born for Starlight

I threw my phone across the back seat of Beto's sedan.

Sixteen years of training, and that was my tactical response. Throw the phone.

"Trouble?" Beto asked.

"No."

He looked at me in the mirror.

"Everything," I said. "Get me to the hotel. Fast."

He got me to the hotel fast. I spent the ride replaying the call, and it got worse every time I let it spin through my head.

Dantas hadn't bothered with hello. "Your movie star was at São Marcos an hour ago. Front desk. She gave her name, asked for Luzia's doctor, and sat in the lobby for twenty minutes where the whole world could look at her."

"Tell me exactly," I said, and he did, in cop speak. He didn't cut me any slack. She'd gotten his nurse pulled downstairs. And when the nurse asked if she was with the American, Angelica told her, and I quote, “I might be.”

"Fix your house, my friend," Dantas finished. "The hospital is done for you. If your movie star goes near it again, my nurse will be stuck digging her own grave."

That was the point where I threw the phone.

The nurse must have called Dantas after Angelica’s visit, so scared she could barely talk. She had a right to be. Somebody inside that hospital allowed three girls to be discharged to some asshole with no relationship to them. And that somebody was still in the building. If the wrong person connected the famous American actress to one small checked-out girl, two things would happen. The children got moved somewhere deeper, and one brave nurse ended up floating in a river.

That was the damage. That was what Angelica had brought about without thinking. With just going off half-cocked because she couldn’t trust me.

Do you blame her?

I sat in the back of the sedan and worked out who I should be maddest at. The man I'd posted on the floor, who let a movie star stroll past him. Angelica, who blew a hole in a covert operation because I told her to sit tight. Or me, for building a plan that treated her like an idiot.

Beto slowed for the hotel drive. I was out of the car before it stopped rolling. I scooped the phone off the seat, cut through the lobby, bypassed the elevator, and hit the stairs. I needed to hit something. Stairs were what was available.

The man in the gray suit stood up when I came out of the stairwell. He opened his mouth. Wrong move.

"When did she leave?"

"Senhor, she didn't. She's been inside all⁠—"

"She was across town an hour ago. You're fired. Gross incompetence."

He sputtered. I stared. He stopped sputtering and slunk toward the elevators.

It wasn't fair, and I knew it. His job was watching the way trouble comes up. Nobody told him the principal might go out through the back way. That was my failure, not his. I fired him anyway. I called Beto from the hallway, and told him to have a better man on this floor by dark.

Then I flung open the suite door.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" I roared before I even spotted her.

Angelica looked up at me from the couch.

She was wearing the hotel robe. One long bare leg was propped on the coffee table. She was painting her toenails a soft pink, and the little polish bottle sat next to the ice bucket, cap off. I was pretty damn sure she wasn’t wearing anything underneath the robe.

She'd had time to think about this moment. She’d totally set the stage.

She bent forward to blow on her toes. The robe slid open another inch, almost baring her breast. She did it on purpose.

One time it would work. Not twice.

"What are you talking about, Matthew?" Pure innocence. She had an Oscar nomination, and I was watching why.