Ellie Winslow! Look this way! This way, Ellie!”
“You look beautiful tonight, Ellie. Can you show us the ring?”
“Dane, have you two set a date?”
And then the zinger she was bracing herself for: “Any new leads on Reese’s disappearance, Ellie?”
As she felt her stomach sink, Dane slipped his hand under her arm and guided her away from the reporter who had asked what all the others hadn’t had the nerve to. “Just ignore ’em,” he told her under his breath.
“Yeah, this is me,” she answered, pasting a smile on her face, “ignoring them.”
“Good girl.” His hand slid down her hip and patted her there—a photo op missed by no one.
Dane turned to the reporters as strobes flashed. “I’d like to thank you all for coming. This is a big night for us,” he told the crowd. “And my beautiful fiancée, Ellie Winslow, is here to support me. My film Ticking Clock! has been a labor of love for us and I hope you all enjoy it and, come opening weekend, you bring your friends. By the way,” he added with a wink, “we have set the date. But that’s our secret right now.”
She bit the inside of her cheek. And a pretty good secret it is, she thought, since they were about as close to “setting a date” as they were to jetting to the moon.
Ellie allowed herself to be pulled along under Dane’s protective arm as he worked the crowd. She bore the questions with a patented smile as photographers clicked away. Caleigh leaned close to her ear and shouted. “He’s doing great, right? Look at him. He’s a freakin’ press monster.”
And she actually meant that in a good way. “Hmm,” Ellie said by way of reply.
“How are you doing?” Caleigh scanned the crowd behind Ellie’s head like a shark for chum. “Great dress. Who is it?”
“Um, it’s a Chlo—”
“Hey, would you mind if I steal Dane away from you for a sec to talk to Lara Walker from The Inside Edge? They wanna do a segment on him and I promised them I’d steer him her way.” She wrinkled her perfect little nose. “Thanks, sweetie.”
And without further ado, Caleigh removed Ellie’s hand from Dane’s arm and spirited him away, leaving Ellie momentarily alone. “Sure. Why not?” she mumbled, mostly to herself. Then, head down, she made her way toward the theater entrance, hoping to lose herself in the ladies’ room for a little while as Dane did the rounds.
A reporter with a TV tabloid logo on her mike thrust it under Ellie’s nose, cutting off her path. “Ellie, when are you going to go back to modeling? I hear Vogue is still making you offers, and all the runway designers would love to get you back up there for the Paris season.”
Ellie sent her an even smile. “I’m actually done with modeling. Completely done. I’m just a photographer now.”
The woman tilted her head like a confused rottweiler. “Does being the daughter of film luminaries like Linea Marks and Brad Winslow make it somehow easier to walk away from a career a million girls would give their right arm for, or is it really because you still feel in some way responsible for your sister’s disappearance?” She smiled and thrust the microphone back in her face.
“Ya know, I’ve got to get inside now.” You slime-sucking codfish. “Would you excuse me?”
“Word from the South Dakota police,” the reporter continued, “is it’s a cold case now. Care to comment on the fact that they’ve given up on finding her?”
“No, I wouldn’t.” She smiled an evil smile at the bottom-feeder’s cameraman and plunged into the crowd, feeling a panic sweat travel up her chest toward her face. She dug into her purse for her cell phone. Elan, Dane’s driver, would come and rescue her. Dane would never even know she had gone.
But a tall guy on the other side of the velvet ropes caught her by the arm in the chaos and, with an imploring look, tugged her to a stop. “Please, Miss Winslow. Please just a moment of your time.”
Except for the facial hair—the Colonel Mustard goatee and mustache, and the way he was dressed, in an ill-fitting, poorly made windowpane-check suit that looked like it might have been borrowed from an old theater company—he wasn’t bad-looking. And the gold watch fob dangling from his front pocket looked…well, real.
Desperation glinted in his world-weary blue eyes. She suspected he wasn’t more than thirty, but appeared older. His grip was strong.
“Please,” he said, “it’s taken me so long to find you.”
He wasn’t the first crazy fan who’d laid hands on her, and he wouldn’t be the last. Ever since the swimsuit issue she’d done for Sports Illustrated, they’d crawled from under the oddest rocks to get a closer look at her.
She tried shifting from his unyielding hold and glanced around to see a burly security guard dressed all in black heading her way. “Let go of me now or I swear they’ll bodily remove you,” she warned.
He did. Instantly. Ellie pivoted to make her escape.
“It’s about your sister,” he called after her over the din around them.
She exhaled sharply and turned back on him. “When the hell will you people stop—”
“You’re almost out of time.” His gaze fell to the necklace at her neck.
She narrowed her gaze at him. “What?”
“You must look for the photo.”
“What photo?” Her mind skipped back to the darkroom and the photo she just developed. To the smile on Reese’s face.
The refrigerator-shaped security guard with the buzzed haircut was almost on them, barreling toward them as if he’d skipped breakfast.
Urgently the man leaned into her. “You must go back to the beginning. To the trunk. That’s how you’ll find her.”
“Trunk?” Uneasiness frizzled up her spine. “Who are you? And what do you know about my sister?”
“Hands off the celebrities, amigo.” The guard shoved himself between them, grabbed the stranger’s arm and yanked him practically off his feet. “No touchy, touchy.”
Ellie backed up a few more steps, muted by fear.
“Please,” the man shouted, trying to be heard above the noise of the shouting fans. “I just need to—”
“Sorry about this, Ms. Winslow,” the guard said, as he hauled Colonel Mustard toward the curb. “Man, the locos that show up for these things, eh?”
“In two days,” the man shouted over the triangle of the guard’s arm, “it’ll be too late! I beg of you! I won’t be able to help you after that!” A moment later he was swallowed by the crowd and disappeared.
Frozen in place, Ellie stood watching the humanity close in around them as if they’d never been there. Gradually, all the shouting disappeared, and the crowd blurred into a hazy halo around her.
Because
