By the time Kara entered the room, Nicola already had one of Seamus’s arms around her shoulder.
“Help me get him down the stairs,” she barked. Kara kicked off her heels and dove under Seamus’s other arm.
“Oh, thank God you’re here. I just didn’t know what to do,” Amber said, relief in her voice.
“Shut up and get out of my way or I will kill you with my bare hands.” The look in Nicola’s eyes said she meant it. Amber retreated to the balcony.
“Don’t go near the window, you fucking moron!” screamed Nicola. Amber stepped back into the room and wrapped the curtain around herself. She started to cry.
“Seamus, I need you to help me, I need you to walk,” Nicola implored. Seamus groaned and tried to stand. The momentum was enough for them to get him up and walking. When they got him to the stairs, Nicola carefully placed his hand on the banister and stood in front of him, both hands pressed against his chest.
“Okay, one at a time, O’Riordan. Don’t fucking fall on me.” He groaned again, his eyes almost open. And step by step, all sixteen of them, they made it to the living room. Seamus stumbled on the step down to the driveway, nearly pitching them all onto the trunk of the car. Kara disentangled herself from his armpit and opened the rear door. They clumsily tumbled him inside.
“Ride with him, Kara,” Nicola instructed, rushing around to the driver’s side. She heard Kara get in beside Seamus as she turned the engine.
“Slap him as hard as you can if he nods off. And call 911. Have an ambulance meet us at the gate or even on the long driveway. Google wherever the fuck the Ojai emergency room is.”
The Tercel sped off into the dusk, spitting rocks back at the house. In an upstairs window of the smaller guesthouse across the way, a photographer leaned out to catch his last shots of them pulling away.
CHAPTER 34
THE DRIVEWAY THROUGH THE OLEANDERS had never seemed this long before. Dark had fallen, and Nicola started to think she was trapped in an Alice in Wonderland maze of green leaves. The only sounds in the car were Kara talking to 911, then yelling at Seamus, and the occasional deafening slap across his face.
“Fuck,” Kara yelled suddenly.
“WHAT?” Nic glanced in the rearview mirror. Seamus’s eyes were open and moving.
“My camcorder. I left it on the counter at the guesthouse.”
“Not now, Kara,” Nicola seethed. “Not fucking now.”
Suddenly the bushes flanking the road began to flicker with red. Good, the ambulance is here already, Nicola thought as she rounded a curve in the road and the guardhouse came into view. She was wrong.
News trucks and private cars blocked the road past the guard building. Nicola’s stomach fell. The news of Seamus and his on-set photo scandal had broken. The press had arrived in full force. In the distance, she could see people scurrying and training their cameras on the Tercel.
“Kara, lay Seamus flat, now. NOW!”
Screeching to a halt at the guardhouse, Nicola yelled at the guard.
“Sir!” she called urgently. “I have Seamus in the back; we need to get him to the hospital and I need a diversion, now.”
The guard’s eyes widened as he took in the scene in the back of the car, Seamus deathly pale and barely conscious, his head in Kara’s lap. He looked hurriedly at the crowd in front of the boom.
“Okay, ma’am,” he said, and rushed back to the other side of the guardhouse. He waved his arms at the paparazzi and said, “Hey, everybody, listen: there has been an incident on set, and they’re doing a press conference right now at the main house. I’m going to open the gate here and let you all in; I’ll just need to see your driver’s licenses before I can let you in.”
There was a mad scramble as all the photogs and crews rushed back to their vehicles. The guard walked back inside, turned, and winked at Nicola, and then raised the boom over the exit lane. Nicola fishtailed the car slightly and sped past all the parked cars and trucks. She was almost past the line of cars when a black Escalade pulled in front of her, blocking the road.
She stopped inches from the SUV. A middle-aged man in camo shirt and pants got out, holding an HD camcorder on his shoulder.
“Where you headed in such a hurry, girlie?”
Nicola wound down her window.
“Move your fucking truck, asshole,” she yelled.
The guy swung the camera’s flash into her face, blinding her.
In the distance, she heard an ambulance siren getting louder and louder. She blindly swung for the video camera, aware that he was filming everything. She didn’t care. Her fingers gripped fabric and, with all her might, she hurled the photographer backward. He fell, and the video camera flew from his hands. Blinking away the blinding circles of white light in her eyes, she heard the ambulance stop in front of her before she saw it.