Once Chance had smoothed things over with Winston somewhat, reducing the volume of his protests from a deafening roar to a mere shout, Winston told him that Ilsa had a case for the team. Chance excused himself and went to find Ilsa. When he was safely out of Winston's sight, he allowed himself the broad grin that had been threatening to break out at the thought of Ames surprising an unsuspecting Winston with her new moves.

"Chance, you're looking…"

"Sweaty?" Chance said, smiling at the way Ilsa seemed to be slightly flustered by his appearance in her office.

"I was going to say 'much better', but as you brought it up, you could use a shower," she said wrinkling her nose.

"Winston said we have a case."

"Yes, we do. Of a sort. It's a straight-forward matter. More of a favour for a friend of mine than a real case. I thought it would be something to ease you back into things, and of course you'd be doing me a huge favour…"

"Cut to the chase, Ilsa. What's the job?"

Ilsa paused for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to take offence at Chance's interruption. He gave her a smile and tilted his head to one side to indicate that he was listening and she sighed. Sometimes it was hard to remain aloof when he turned on the charm like that.

"I have a friend who has just been through a nasty divorce…"

"If this is a setup Ilsa, you can stop right there. I'm not interested."

"Let me finish!" Ilsa said. "She has been through a nasty divorce and over the last few weeks she has been receiving anonymous death threats."

"From the ex?"

"It seems more than likely, yes. At first she dismissed them as nothing more than her ex-husband playing games, but over the last couple of days the threats have become much more specific."

"Has she gone to the police?"

"Yes, but aside from having a couple of plain clothes officers sitting in a car outside her building, there seems to be little they can do to help. There's nothing to tie the death threats to the ex-husband, so unless they actually catch him in the act…"

"Their hands are tied," Chance said. "You said the threats had become more specific. How so?"

"It's her birthday and her parents are throwing her a party tonight. It was supposed to be a surprise but when she received this… well it rather let the cat out of the bag."

Ilsa pushed a plain black envelope across her desk to Chance. He opened it and examined the contents. It was a black edged obituary notice for Alison Mcvey.

"Wait, your friend is Alison Mcvey? The actress?"

Ilsa nodded.

"So that would make her ex-husband…"

"Her one time co-star and former bodyguard, Joseph Seymour. Read the rest of the card."

The card had tomorrow's date printed in the corner and it was an obituary that detailed how Allison Mcvey was executed in front of the guests at her surprise birthday party. Not only did the sender of the card spell out when and where he planned to kill the actress, it also made it clear that they had detailed information about the party.

"Whoever sent this knows the time, the date, the location of the party, and almost certainly the guest list too." Chance said, placing the card back in the envelope and handing it back to Ilsa. "If her ex-husband is behind this, he'll must be familiar with the house and any security measures they have in place. The best thing to do is to cancel the party."

"I know," Ilsa sighed, "but she won't hear of it. She hasn't told her family about the threats and as far as they're concerned the party is still a surprise. Things got so ugly when the press got hold of the details of their break-up, Joseph made some terrible accusations, but her parents stood by her through it all. They've been through so much already, Alison doesn't want to take this party away from them. She's finally free of that vile man and she won't allow him to control her life like this."

"If she's really going to insist on going ahead with the party, she must at least warn her family so they can increase security."

"Alison doesn't think that will be necessary. There are going to be a number of very high-profile guests in attendance so security will already be extremely tight. Besides, they will already be on the look-out for Joseph in case he's heard about the party and is planning to gatecrash it."

"The party starts in less than three hours. What do you want me to do?"

"I promised Alison that I wouldn't tell her parents about the threats on one condition. I need you to go undercover as her date. Her parents can't know that you're there to protect her from Joseph. She wants the threat kept quiet until after the party."

"So, bottom line: you want me to get spruced up, attend a celebrity party and be the arm-candy for your seriously hot actress friend?" Chance asked with an amused little smile.

"Well yes, I suppose you could put it like that…"

"Okay, count me in," Chance said.

"I will be attending the party as a guest and Winston will accompany me." Ilsa ignored the curious look Chance gave her and pressed on. "Ames will blend in with the catering crew and Guerrero will monitor the security footage from the surveillance van. Between us we should be able to keep Alison safe, and her parents need not know."

"You got Winston on the guest list then?"

"No, he will be my date," Ilsa said, giving Chance a look that dared him to make an issue out of it.

"Okay, well I guess I'd better go get cleaned up," he said.

Ilsa wrinkled her nose again. "Please do!"

Chance couldn't deny it; Alison Mcvey was ever bit as breath-takingly beautiful in the flesh as she was on the big screen. Her trademark auburn hair was swept up in an elegant cascade of curls that exposed her delicate neck and drew attention to her slightly too round green eyes. In an industry that always had a glut of interchangeable, near-identical blonde actresses, Alison Mcvey stood out as a striking natural beauty, and despite all the gory details of her personal life being fodder for the tabloid press for months now, her star was very much on the rise. Chance could see why.

Ilsa hurriedly made the introductions in the back room of the restaurant where Alison would 'accidentally' bump into her parents who would then invite her back to their home for 'drinks'.

"Alison, this is my business associate, Christopher Chance. He will be at your side for the whole evening to ensure that if Joseph is foolish enough to try something, you will be protected at all times."

"Mr Chance, thank you so much for agreeing to help me, and at such short notice too!"

"I'm only too happy to help, Miss Mcvey," Chance said, turning on the charm and giving her a confident smile. "But I do work with a cover, so you'll need to call me Matthew King. We met at a charity event three weeks ago and this is our second date."

"Of course," Alison replied. "Matthew King. I will remember that. And what do you do for a living, Matthew King?"

"I'm in real estate," Chance said, privately amused by the way the young actress seemed to be approaching the evening's deception as an acting role.

"Is there anything else I need to know?" she asked.

"It's only our second date so no one can reasonably expect us to know each other very well just yet," Chance explained. "All you really need to know is that my team and I will keep you safe. I need to be able to see you at all times, and if anything - and I mean anything at all - seems suspicious or out of the ordinary, you must let me know immediately."

"Of course, Matthew," she replied, smiling.

"I really must leave for the party," Ilsa said, satisfied that the necessary introductions had been made. "It wouldn't do to run into your parents now, would it? I'll leave you in Mr Chance's capable hands. Or should that be Mr King's capable hands?"

"Ilsa dear, you're babbling," Alison said with an affectionate smile. "We'll see you at the party later."

Ilsa left and a waiter led them to a private table towards the rear of the restaurant. Chance guessed that the secluded table was reserved for guests like Alison Mcvey who required a little more discretion than the average customer, but it suited their needs well. No one could approach them without running the gauntlet of the busy, crowded restaurant where Alison's rather conspicuous police protective detail sat monitoring the door. Behind them was an emergency exit, which only opened from the inside, should they need a fast exit, and Guerrero was patched into the security feed from the restaurant itself as well as the traffic cameras for the surrounding area. Alison was about as safe as she could be in a public restaurant, so there was no reason why they couldn't enjoy their meal.

"How do you know Ilsa?" Chance asked.

"Well, we actually did meet at a charity event," Alison smiled. "It was at a fundraiser for an after school drama project for underprivileged kids."

"Goddamn, motherfucking useless pieces of shit!"

Chance tried to concentrate on listening to Alison explain how she had become involved with the Marshall Pucci Foundation, but the voices coming through his earpiece were becoming increasingly loud.

"Mrs Pucci, you are a vision!"

"Why thank you, Mr Winston! You are looking rather dapper yourself!"

"Stupid cock-sucker Jimmy Choo! I'm going to be fucking crippled by the end of the night!"

"Quit bitching Ames. No one asked you to wear those ridiculous things."

"Yeah, well I didn't know I was going to have to be a fucking waitress tonight, did I?"

Chance smiled politely as Alison talked, but the bickering between Guerrero and Ames in his earpiece was making it impossible to make out much of what she was saying. For a while he could get away with the odd nod and smile, but eventually there reached a point when Alison was looking at him as if she were waiting for a reply to a question he hadn't even heard her ask.

"I'm sorry Alison, will you please excuse me for a moment? I seem to be having a small technical hitch."

"Of course," she replied, looking a little bemused.

Chance turned away from her for a moment, but it was a fairly useless gesture as she could still hear him as he hissed at Guerrero through the comms link.

"Guerrero! What the hell? You guys are deafening me here!"

"Sorry bro. Having a little trouble adjusting the levels. Winston set up the comms rig tonight and it's a friggin' mess."

"Hey! Don't you blame this on me, I…"

Winston's voice cut out.

"Any better?"

"Yeah a bit. I can still hear Ames complaining about her shoes though."

"I'm working on it dude."

"Just so long as I can hear everyone when we get to the party."

"Shouldn't be a problem. And Chance?"

"What?"

"Try the lamb. It's awesome."

Guerrero leaned back in his seat and adjusted the volume levels on Chance's earpiece so that Ames' constant muttered complaints were slightly less deafening.

Guerrero knew who Alison Mcvey was, even before Ilsa dumped the case on the team at the last minute. Hell, just about everyone in the western world was familiar with her name, and when her last movie came out it was impossible not to walk past a billboard or pick up a magazine without seeing her wide-eyed and pouting face staring back. Her career had been on hiatus for a while, as she went through her divorce, but thanks to her now ex-husband's numerous kiss-and-tell stories, barely a week went by without her being on the cover of one publication or another.

The lurid stories that Joseph Seymour had fed the tabloids were just the usual Hollywood mud-slinging: drugs, diva-ish behaviour and tales of affairs, lesbian and otherwise. Guerrero neither knew nor cared how much truth there was to the ex-husbands claims, but watching the beautiful young woman demurely picking at a green leaf salad opposite Chance in the restaurant, he was inclined to believe that they were lies. He could picture her using some less-than-legal diet pills, maybe even abusing a few prescribed sleeping pills or tranquilisers, but the stories of coke fuelled orgies seemed most unlikely.

Joseph Seymour had been a nobody until the studio hired him as security and assigned him to watch over Alison when she filmed on location in Thailand. Romance had seemed to bloom between them, and they got married on their return to the States. Alison even managed to get him a part in one of her movies, but that was when their two year marriage began to fall apart. Guerrero hadn't followed the story through choice, but Ames' had followed every lurid detail, and as much as he tried to tune her out as she read aloud the latest scandals, some of the information had stuck. Eventually Guerrero managed to train her out of reading him whatever she considered to be newsworthy by simply tossing the offending material out of the nearest window, a method that only achieved partial success until the day he tossed her Kindle out of the window of the Eldo.

Guerrero was amused to see that Chance did actually order the lamb, and watching him eat was starting to make him feel hungry. He reached for his bag, never once taking his eyes off the screen, and pulled out a sandwich. He didn't really expect Seymour to make a move whilst Alison was still at the restaurant. The fake obituary had made it pretty clear that he wanted an audience when he killed his ex-wife. If the threat was genuine, and they had to assume for the client's sake that it was, Seymour was not concerned about being caught. Judging from the way he'd sold his story to anyone who'd listen, Seymour seemed hell-bent on achieving fame at any cost. Any hope of an acting career of his own had evaporated once he dragged Alison Mcvey's name through the dirt, so perhaps he was planning to kill her to at least achieve notoriety, seeing as fame had escaped his grasp.

Guerrero had killed for many reasons, well mostly for money but there had been other reasons too, but killing someone just to get noticed was not one of them. He didn't subscribe to Chance's 'nobody deserves to die' philosophy, but the idea of killing someone publicly to get the world's attention and then either go out in a hail of bullets, or worse sit around on death row milking every last bit of fame you could, was something that Guerrero found distasteful. Not to mention a waste of a smoking hot actress.

Guerrero sighed and took another bite of his sandwich. Something about Alison Mcvey just didn't ring true, and he was struggling to put his finger on exactly what that was. He could certainly appreciate Alison's soft curves and the way her simple but stylish green dress clung to them in all the right places, but something was telling him to look past her movie star looks and make sure that she and Chance didn't get too close. Chance was in his element, putting Alison at her ease whilst still discreetly monitoring their surroundings for any sign of trouble, and Guerrero had to admit that they looked good together.

Isn't this what Chance really wants? What he deserves? Guerrero thought. He should have a gorgeous woman at his side, putting a smile on his face.

But he couldn't ignore the spectre of Chance's relationship with Maria looming in the back of his mind, or the endless "will they, won't they" dance that Chance and Ilsa seemed locked into performing indefinitely. It was a sad fact that a single Chance was a much more stable and reliable Chance, but it was a fact nonetheless.

Eventually Alison's parents showed up at the restaurant and insisted that she and her date must join them for drinks. Guerrero tried to ignore the rush of relief that the part of the evening that Chance would spend alone with Alison was finally over, and quickly restored the settings of Chance's earpiece to a level at which he could hear everyone without being deafened.