Close To Darkness (Kari Blackhorse #9)

PROLOGUE

Amanda Escalante had learned to hate the smell of hairspray.

She pushed through the studio door into the May afternoon, gulping fresh air like someone surfacing from deep water.

Behind her, the warehouse-turned-photography-studio still hummed with activity—assistants breaking down lights, the photographer reviewing shots on his laptop, a makeup artist repacking brushes that had touched Amanda's face a hundred times in the past four hours.

The shoot was for a local boutique's summer catalog, nothing glamorous, but it was work, and it paid, and that's what mattered.

She started walking toward the café three blocks away, her heels clicking against the sidewalk in a rhythm she'd grown accustomed to.

When she'd first arrived in L.A. eighteen months ago, fresh off a bus from Tucson with two hundred dollars and a portfolio of mall-photographer headshots, she'd imagined a different life entirely.

Glimmer had promised her rooftop parties and designer gifting suites and photographers who'd discover her unique beauty and make her a star.

Glimmer, as it turned out, was full of lies.

The reality was four-hour shoots for three hundred dollars, split with her agency.

Reality was a shared apartment in Koreatown with two other girls who worked the same circuit, trading tips about which photographers paid on time and which ones you should never be alone with.

Reality was go-sees that led nowhere and castings that wanted someone taller, shorter, thinner, curvier, blonder, more exotic, less exotic, younger, more experienced.

But Amanda was making it work. Little by little, step by step, she was building something.

Her Glimmer following had grown to forty thousand—modest by influencer standards, but respectable for a working model.

She'd been booked for her first national print ad three months ago, a small placement in the back of a fitness magazine, but still. And next week—

Next week was the audition that could change everything.

A speaking role in a streaming series. Just two lines, a waitress character in episode four, but it was union-eligible, and it was legitimate, and if she was booked for it, she'd officially be making the jump from model to actress.

Her agent—well, her manager, since she couldn't afford a real agent yet—had coached her on the sides until Amanda could deliver them in her sleep.

Can I get you anything else? And the special tonight is the salmon.

Twelve words that could open doors she'd spent eighteen months trying to kick down.

The café appeared on her right, a converted industrial space with exposed brick and Edison bulbs that catered to the creative class that had colonized this neighborhood.

Amanda ordered an iced Americano with almond milk—no sugar, she hadn't eaten sugar in six months—and found a table by the window where she could watch people pass on the sidewalk.

She pulled out her phone and scrolled through her notifications.

A few new followers, some comments on her latest post, a DM from a photographer she'd worked with last month asking if she was available for a swimwear shoot next Tuesday.

She typed a quick response—Send me the details!

—and then opened her calendar to check her schedule.

The nightclub gig would run until midnight, maybe later. Tomorrow, she had a fitting for a runway show, nothing major, just a local designer's showcase, but runway experience was runway experience. Wednesday was the audition. Thursday, she was supposed to meet Diana for coffee.

Amanda remembered their first meeting, in this very café, actually, shortly after she'd arrived in L.A.

Diana had bought her lunch and listened to her dreams without judgment or condescension.

She'd warned Amanda about the pitfalls: the predatory photographers, the agencies that took too much commission, the drugs that promised energy but delivered destruction.

She'd been a friend when Amanda desperately needed one.

They still met regularly, every few weeks, just to check in. Diana always asked the right questions, always seemed to know when Amanda was struggling even before Amanda admitted it to herself. It was nice, having someone in her corner who wasn't trying to take a percentage.

Amanda finished her coffee and checked the time.

An hour until she needed to be at the nightclub, which meant she should probably head to her car and fix her makeup in the rearview mirror.

The boutique shoot had left her looking sun-kissed and natural, which was perfect for catalog work, but wrong for a Hollywood club where the aesthetic ran toward smoky eyes and contoured cheekbones.

She gathered her things and stepped back outside, where the sun had begun its descent toward the Pacific, painting the sky in shades of pink and orange that no Glimmer filter could quite capture. The air had cooled slightly, though the heat still rose from the pavement in shimmering waves.

Her car was parked two blocks away, in a lot behind an art gallery that charged ten dollars but at least had security cameras. Amanda walked quickly, already mentally cataloging the contents of her makeup bag and deciding which products she'd need for the transformation ahead.

She didn't notice that she was being followed.

Didn't notice the car that had been parked across from the café for the past hour, its driver watching through tinted windows as Amanda sipped her coffee and scrolled her phone.

Didn't notice the careful, measured footsteps that matched her pace, maintaining a consistent distance of half a block. Close enough to observe, far enough to avoid detection.

Amanda Escalante had learned many things in eighteen months of modeling in Los Angeles.

She'd learned to survive on coffee, salad, and the occasional protein bar.

She'd learned to smile when she wanted to scream, to project confidence when she felt terrified, to pretend that every rejection rolled off her like water.

But she hadn't learned the one lesson that might have saved her life.

She hadn't learned to recognize when she was being hunted.

* * *

From behind tinted glass, eyes tracked Amanda as she disappeared around the corner toward the parking lot. A silent count to sixty. Then the engine started.

Amanda Escalante. Twenty-three years old.

Tucson, Arizona. Former community college dropout.

Current Glimmer model with delusions of Hollywood stardom.

She posted photos of herself in bikinis and evening gowns, pretending her rented apartment was a luxury condo, pretending her borrowed clothes were designer originals, pretending that the smile she wore wasn't just another costume.

As if she deserved any of this.

As if she'd earned it.

The car pulled out of its parking space and turned in the direction Amanda had gone.

The driver knew Amanda's schedule as well as Amanda did.

Better, actually, since Amanda didn't track her own patterns the way someone watching her would.

The nightclub gig tonight, then home to the Koreatown apartment around one AM.

The two roommates would both be working their own gigs, which meant Amanda would be alone.

Alone was good. Alone was necessary.

This had been done before. The driver knew how to make it look like what everyone expected.

Another tragic casualty of an industry that chewed up beautiful girls and spat them out.

The pills collected over months of careful planning.

The note drafted and redrafted, full of the kind of desperate poetry that troubled young people wrote before they gave up.

The staging that would suggest a slow spiral rather than a sudden end.

No one would question it. No one ever did.

These girls came to Los Angeles chasing dreams they didn't deserve to catch.

They had no talent, no discipline, no understanding of what it actually took to make it in this industry.

They just had pretty faces and Glimmer followers and the blind conviction that wanting something badly enough was the same as earning it.

Some people tried. God, how they tried. They did everything right. The diets, the castings, the smile that never wavered, no matter how many times the answer was not quite right. They believed in the dream with every fiber of their being, sacrificed everything for it. And what did it get them?

A breakdown. Months in a psychiatric facility. A career in ruins.

And now girls like Amanda Escalante waltzed into town and booked jobs without ever understanding what they had, without appreciating the opportunity they'd been given.

They complained about the hours and the pressure and the competition, as if they'd earned the right to complain. As if the industry owed them something.

The industry owed them nothing.

And tonight, Amanda Escalante would learn that lesson.

A glance in the mirror confirmed no one had noticed. The silver Honda Civic pulled out of the parking lot ahead and headed toward Hollywood. The car behind followed at a careful distance.

The sunset was beautiful. Blood and gold spreading across the sky, the city beneath it glittering with promise and deception in equal measure.

A fitting backdrop for what was about to happen.

The accelerator pressed down, keeping Amanda's car in sight as both vehicles disappeared into the Los Angeles night.