Private L.A. (Private 6)

“Familiar faces,” Camilla Bronson said, still looking all around.

We rode the escalator to level six in a pack. Sanders spotted the children first. All three were sitting in wheelchairs, backed up against the wall beside the bustling Apple Store, directly across from the Traffic boutique. They had iPhones in their hands and stared at them like zombies.

“Malia!” Maines cried. “Jin! Miguel!”

But of the three, only Malia, the Harlows’ oldest adopted daughter, raised her head toward her parents’ personal assistant. Malia had high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes, which were bleary, red, cried out. She blinked at Maines a second, then said in a little girl’s voice, “Why are we here, Cynthia?”

“Oh, dear God,” Maines said, rushing to her, tears boiling down her cheeks. She embraced the girl. “You’re safe, Malia. You’re going to be okay. You’re all going to be okay. Jin? Miguel? I’m here. Cynthia’s here now.”

The other two children just continued to stare at the phones in their laps.

“They’ve been drugged,” Justine said.

“I agree,” said Mo-bot, and moved forward, carrying a medical kit. Over the years, she had somehow found the time to earn her EMT’s license, handy at moments like this. “We’re going to want blood samples.”

“Here?” Camilla Bronson said, horrified. “No. Get them out of—”

“Mamá?” Miguel said suddenly. The boy’s head had come up. Over the years he’d had several operations on his cleft palate, which made him look different from pictures I’d seen. He gazed around in bewilderment. “¿Dónde está mi mamá?” He began to whine, and shook his arm violently free when Mo-bot tried to touch him. “Where’s Mommy?”

Jin began to cry as well.

Up until this point, Sanders had stood off to one side, unnerved by the children’s stupor. But now he saw that patrons leaving the Apple Store were looking at the upset children in the wheelchairs.

“Camilla’s right,” he said to me through gritted teeth. “We’ve got to get them out of here before—”

“Is that them?” cried a familiar skewer-sharp voice I’d heard just the night before. “The Harlow brats?”

I turned in shock. Bobbie Newton was leading the charge off the Macy’s escalator. She had two cameramen in tight tow.

Chapter 52

“IT IS THEM!” cried Bobbie Newton. “Wheelchairs? Wheelchairs! What’s happened to them? Where are Thom and Jennifer?”

“Downstairs!” Camilla Bronson cried, moving into the gossip reporter’s way. “Thom’s buying her a huge diamond at Cartier. The kids are just playing a game, that’s all.”

Bobbie Newton was having none of it. “I’ve got Cartier’s wired. They alert me when anyone of that stature comes in. Where are they? What’s happened to those kids? Tim, you getting this?”

Seeing the cameraman aiming tight on the children, Justine stepped up beside the publicist. “They’re minors. They have the right to privacy.”

“They’re Thom and Jen Harlow’s kids,” the reporter shot back. “Which means they are de facto celebrities, whoever you are. I have every right to … what’s wrong with them? Where are the Harlows?”

In a soothing tone, Camilla Bronson said, “Bobbie, we’ll have a statement later in the—”

“They’re missing,” Cynthia Maines called out loudly. “Someone kidnapped the entire family and only just released the children.”

Bobbie Newton’s trembling free hand shot to her mouth, unable to disguise her blossoming joy. “Oh, my God!” she said in a drawl that ended in a squeal. “Is that true? It’s the story of the year! It’s the story of the century!”

“Bobbie!” Camilla Bronson said. “Bobbie, calm down. It’s nothing—”

But the gossip reporter spun around gleefully, microphone in hand, ignoring the publicist. “Three, two, one,” she snapped at the second cameraman. The other focused on the Harlow children, who were still dazed, unsure where they were.

Part of me wanted to lunge for the cameras and hurl them over the railing, but a crowd was gathering, and I have always hated seeing other people grabbing cameras and destroying them. It smacks of thugs and book burning, and I despise both. So like everyone else, I had to just stand there and listen to her. “This is Bobbie Newton, your best friend forever,” she brayed. “I’m at the scene of a shocking, shocking story that’s about to rock Hollywood to its core. Jennifer and Thom Harlow, the most powerful couple in all of film land, have been kidnapped. You heard it here first. And in a dramatic update, their children have only just been released, drugged out of their loving little minds, and they’re right behind me. Look, just look at the poor darlings!”

“You’re fired,” Camilla Bronson snarled out of the corner of her mouth at Maines.

“You can’t fire me,” the Harlows’ personal assistant shot back. “I work for Thom and Jen.”

“But I can,” Sanders said.