I looked over my shoulder to see that the two creepy men were just a few feet away and narrowing. Where the hell could I go?
They didn’t appear to be paparazzi, so what the hell did they want? Would they dare try to accost me while here in this thick crowd?
Perhaps hold me for ransom, knowing that someone as rich as Ryan could well afford to pay? One stick of a needle filled with a knockout drug and I could find myself being carried out of here only to wake up duct-taped in the trunk of a car. Screaming wouldn’t solve anything in this loud crowd and the police would probably arrest me if I tried to rush past any of these wooden barricades.
I squeezed in between several girls, receiving hostile glances in the process. The creepy man with the bad comb-over hairstyle stared at me like a hungry tiger ready to pounce.
His squat face was pockmarked and un-shaven and was probably on the first page of France’s Most Wanted List. His tall friend with the newsboy cap was eyeing the police, nervously glancing back and forth as if he were watching a tennis match. I needed to put as much distance between us as possible.
Terror clenched my stomach as I saw him raise the black item in his hand. Panicked, I froze. I couldn’t look away. And then he aimed and started to take my picture. I shoved my sunglasses over my eyes and ducked, trying to get closer to the hotel entrance, hiding my face while contorting my body through the narrowest of human pas-sages. Come hell or high water, I was getting back inside that door.
I called Ryan’s cell, only to land in his voice mailbox. Finally someone answered my frustratingly slow international call. “Mike!
Oh thank God! I’m out front of the hotel, but they won’t let me back in.”
No sooner did I get the words out when someone touched my shoulder. “Aren’t you Taryn Mitchell?” some young woman asked in a thick French accent. I could see her getting very excited about the prospect. I didn’t know what to do.
“You are, aren’t you? Do you think I could get a photo with you?” she asked with much enthusiasm.
Several other women near her all turned their attention on me and I felt like the mouse that had just been spotted by the starving cats. “Mike! Please come get me. I’m getting—”
“May I have your autograph, s’ill vous plaît?” Pens, paper, and cameras seemed to appear from out of nowhere.
I tried to back up to get some space between me and the rising commotion, but I accidentally stepped on someone’s foot. I turned to apologize, but the girl was less than forgiving, making her angry point by spout-ing off and giving me a hard shove.I muttered a curse and without thinking, I pushed her back, defending myself. I was tired of taking random shit from his fans.
After almost a year of enduring snide comments, insults, and threats combined with all the other random bullshit from everyone else who felt I didn’t belong with Ryan, something in me snapped.
That’s when her friends got involved and the shoving match started. Three against one. The girl in the black jacket palmed my face, scraping my sunglasses off. I didn’t know what was more important—defending myself or retrieving the glasses, which were a gift from Ryan.
Someone grabbed my hair and yanked me off balance. One more hard push and gravity and inertia took over. I lost my grip on my small shopping bag.
Blunt-force pain cracked into my side as I clipped the edge of a wooden barricade, knocking a good bit of air out of my lungs. I tried to slow my fall, clawing desperately at the waist of the large male form in front of me. I felt skin tear when my arm scraped over the holster holding his gun.
Next thing I knew I was flat on my stomach with wood tangled around my legs, surrounded by men yelling in words I didn’t understand.
Someone grabbed the back of my jacket and pulled me forward.
I tried to haul myself up on my arms, only to have them fold underneath me as I was pressed flush with the street. A sharp, crushing pain that felt like two hundred pounds of mayhem made my spine crack. Someone’s knee was holding me down. Cinders scraped my cheek like jagged shards of glass when I tried to stop this horrible misunderstanding.
Panic swelled inside me and I screamed for them to stop and listen to me. Instead, a hand knotted into my hair and slammed my face back to the pavement, stunning me into silence.
The coppery taste of blood flooded into my mouth as I was dragged from the ground and placed in the backseat of a car.
Never in a million years would I have guessed that by 11 A.M. I’d be in handcuffs.
Chapter 7
Bruised I could tell that my bottom lip had been split open. It stung like hell when I drifted my tongue over it, even though a rough scab had already formed to close the wound. The ran-cid coppery taste that lingered in the back of my mouth was enough to turn my stomach.