Chapter 18 #2
That was admirable, too, in a country where billionaires were constantly pushing to get more, more, more.
Jules saved the recording, and got out of the car, half to stretch his legs and half to see if Sam wanted help carrying the grocery bags.
Not because they were heavy—seventeen boxes of Cocoa Puffs just didn’t weigh that much, but they could be unwieldy, particularly in this dry, blustery SoCal wind.
But there Sam was, hustling through the crosswalk just before the light changed again. His purchases—probably more like four boxes of cereal, which was still a lot in Cocoa Puff math—fit into two bags that he carried, one in each hand.
“We get a date to talk to Ernie?” he asked Jules as he approached the car.
“Better than that,” Jules said. “It was Harper himself calling me back. He’s busy until Wednesday, so I asked him some of our more pressing questions—got his responses on tape.”
“Way to go rogue.” Sam handed one of the bags to Jules as he dug in his pocket for the car fob that would pop open the trunk.
“Yeah, I told him I was recording so it wasn’t really.
.. Anyway, he gave me some shit about an elderly parent wanting to reconcile with his only child as death approached, as to why Dead Milt would leave everything to a son who’d threatened him.
Which was pretty much bullshit since we know about Harper’s extremely recent Don’t let Milt Junior in the House or You’ll Be Fired on the Spot rule. ”
“What’d he say when you brought that up?”
“He started getting cagey and hung up before I could ask about any of the house rules,” Jules told him. “He’s hiding something—although maybe I’m just imagining it.”
“I dunno, you’ve kinda earned the right to trust your instincts,” Sam said as they stowed the groceries in the back of the car.
“And yet,” Jules pointed out. “When my instincts tell me to believe Milt Junior, you laugh in my face.”
Sam laughed. In his face. “Yeah, nope, I draw the line there. You’re absolutely wrong about that one. He flat-out lied to us.”
“Well, he certainly lied by omission about his manslaughter conviction, but that doesn’t mean he’s lying about not wanting the money. FYI, he got a five million dollar gift from his father when he got out of prison.”
“Shit,” Sam said. “Gee, thanks, Dad.”
“Harper implied that there was some kind of fraud or embezzlement involved.”
“Harper’s a dick, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong about that.” Sam checked for oncoming traffic before stepping out to access the driver’s side door. The stream in the far left lane was moving at quite a clip—the light ahead at the intersection was green.
But a vehicle had stopped just a few dozen yards behind them in the right lane, signaling to pull into a driveway, leaving him both time and space to get behind the wheel without getting his feet run over or the door ripped from the car.
“I think it was likely more from the pressures of guilt from failed fatherhood,” Jules said across the top of the car. But then... Jesus Christ! “Sam!”
Someone in the left lane—black SUV, heavily tinted windows, circling block guy?—suddenly stood on their brakes and the driver behind them in a silver Toyota swerved hard into the right lane—directly toward Sam.
Who reacted exactly like the Navy SEAL that he was as he dove up and over the hood of their rental car.
Jules reached for him, to pull him farther out of the way or to catch him—which, he wasn’t quite sure.
Whatever he was attempting, he did little more than get in Sam’s way as the bigger man somersaulted into him.
They landed together in a heap on the sidewalk as the Toyota slammed into the rental car with an ear-jarring screech of metal-on-metal.
And then it was Sam who was pulling him back even further, skittering them across the concrete on their asses as their rental car bumped up and over the curb toward them—holy shit!—before finally settling into a steaming, broken, window-shattered, never-gonna-move-again place.
No, the steam was from the Toyota that had hit them—the driver was a young woman who was horrified and out of her car, pushing aside her already deflated airbag. “Oh my God, oh my God, are you hurt?”
“I’m okay,” Sam called back to her. He turned to Jules. “You okay?”
He was going to have quite the collection of bruises—Sam probably was too—and his hands were shaking from adrenaline, but... “Yeah.”
“Are you?” Sam asked the Toyota’s driver.
“I think so. I’m so, so sorry,” she called.
It was pretty freaking miraculous, and the look on Sam’s face echoed Jules’s own bone-deep relief. “Thanks for that heads up,” he said as he helped Jules back up to his feet, as they brushed themselves off. “That could’ve been bad.”
“You think?” Bad was an understatement—it could’ve been deadly. Jules had to lean over, hands on his knees, until his lightheadedness finally started to clear.
The Toyota’s driver joined them there on the sidewalk.
She was young and Black and extremely upset.
And more than a little frightened—oh, shit, of them.
The two white men whose car she hit—one of them, Sam, whom she’d nearly killed, being both extra-large and extra-Texan.
“The car in front of me stopped short so suddenly,” she said, “and—”
“Hey, it’s all right,” Sam said soothingly, like he was talking to Haley or Ash. “We’re all okay. That’s really all that matters.”
Jules chimed in as he straightened up. “I saw exactly what happened—you had nowhere to go.” He willed his hands to stop shaking as he opened his phone and dialed Troubleshooters operative Lindsey Jenkins who was former LAPD and still had plenty of contacts here.
It would be nice to have a friendly face on the scene when filing this accident report.
“Nothing here that can’t be fixed,” Sam said as Jules stepped away slightly to give Lindsey a quick overview of the situation. “I’m Sam and this is Jules, and neither of us are mad at you, all right? You did some good driving there—no one got hurt.”
“I’m on it,” Lindsey told Jules over the phone. “I’ll see if Andre’s around—he’s a detective—last name Lennox. It’s actually good that you’re gonna meet.”
“Maybe not this way,” Jules said.
“No, you’re gonna love him. Really. Oh, I hope he’s available.
I’ll text you with his contact info, and give him yours.
He probably won’t get there before the patrol car does, but you can tell them—the uniforms—that you know him.
Or you’re about to know him. No, just say that you know him. He’ll be good with that.”
“Thank you,” Jules said, hanging up and pocketing his phone as Sam continued his attempt to calm the distressed young woman.
“Just take a breath, Denise,” Sam said. “Nice and slow, in and out. It’s really gonna be okay.”
The tears that had been brimming in her eyes overflowed as she nodded her head. But she wiped them away as she turned back to the road where the traffic was crawling past the accident that blocked the right lane.
Jules, too, looked down the street, searching for the black SUV that had surely pulled over...
“I’m pretty sure I hit them before I hit you,” Denise said, “but they just drove off like nothing happened. I swear to God, Los Angeles drivers are the worst.”
She was right.
The driver who’d caused the accident was gone. The vehicle had vanished.
“I gotta call work,” Denise said. “Let ’em know I’m gonna be late.”
As she moved off a bit to use her phone, Jules asked Sam, “You get a plate? Of the SUV that stopped short? I didn’t get a plate.”
“Hell, I didn’t get a make or model,” Sam said. “I think it might’ve been... big and black?”
“Black Ford Expedition,” Jules said, “with tinted windows.”
“That’s way more than I saw,” Sam admitted.
“You were busy,” Jules said. “And I’d marked it earlier. Either the driver was circling the block, or...”
As they both looked out at the traffic, two large black SUVs with tinted windows drove past—in both directions, east and west.
“Black SUV’s a pretty standard celebrity transport,” Sam pointed out. “I don’t think we need to worry. This was LA being LA. It was just some asshole in a hurry.”
“You think?”
“Gotta be. I mean, come on.”
As they stood there looking at the wreckage, Jules found himself thinking again about Gavin LaCrosse’s untimely—or perfectly timed—death. Plus there was something about both the security cameras and the garden at Devonshire Place that made his brain itch.
Although Sam was right: Come on. It was ridiculous—the idea that the SUV that had caused Denise to nearly kill Sam had been secretly driven by.
..who? Ernest Harper? Or Clayton Spencer, whom they’d yet to meet?
Or jeez, maybe it was Emily Johnson herself behind the wheel with Milt the Junior riding shotgun.
Jules tried to make himself laugh at his overactive imagination.
Except...
He looked at Sam, who turned back to look at him.
They both reached for their cellphones at the same time.
“I’m just gonna check in with Robin,” Jules said as Sam said, “Just wanna give Lys a quick call.”
The smile they shared was one of mutual understanding. They were both spooked—and there was no shame in that. This day could’ve ended very differently, and the need to immediately hear the voices of their significant others burned bright.
“Thanks again for the heads up,” Sam said, phone to his ear.
Jules, too, was now listening to Robin’s phone ring. “Thank you for being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”
Sam laughed. “Small car, Squidward, not a tall building. I’ve seen you do similar moves, plenty of times.”
“Oh, I absolutely would’ve gotten over the car,” Jules agreed. “But my technique would’ve been more of a panicked scramble than a move from an Olympic gold-winning gymnastics floor routine.”
“I’m six five,” Sam pointed out.
Jules was not. “I’ve been training since I was seventeen, and I’ve yet to find an instructor who can teach me how to be six foot five—”
“Why would you want to be six foot five,” Robin asked, “when you’re already perfect just the way you are?”
And just like that, everything really was okay. With Robin’s voice in his ear, saying sweet things that made him smile...
“Well, thank you,” Jules said, turning away as Sam, too, connected with Alyssa on his phone. “Sam and I are both okay, but we just had a bit of a fender bender.”
And yeah, he was lying just a teensy bit about that.
With the driver’s side door completely caved in, it was likely the car was totaled.
Next up on his to-do list was calling the rental company.
As always, he’d gotten full coverage, but dealing with the paperwork was going to be a royal pain in the ass.
Oh, to have a Laronda of their very own, who would handle it all with an “I’m on it,” including a replacement car that would magically show up before they were done talking to the police.
Robin was making oh no noises. “Are you sure you’re okay? Whiplash can really suck—”
“No, we weren’t in the car,” Jules reassured his husband. “Sam parked on the street across from the Ralph’s and someone in the left lane stopped short. Driver behind them veered too far to the right and hit us.”
“Oh, thank God,” Robin said. “But oh my God, seriously? Everyone in LA is in too much of a hurry.”
“Yeah,” Jules agreed.
Black Ford Expedition with darkly tinted windows.
His brain tossed up a replay of that moment.
The SUV’s driver was zooming toward the intersection’s green light until they suddenly stood on their brakes.
Why the hell did they stop like that? A spilled coffee?
A bee or a spider? There had been nothing in the road in front of them, no reason even to slow down.
“Hey, where are you? Are you home? Are you...” Safe, Jules was gonna ask, but reality kicked back in. This was an accident. Or, as Sam had put it, it was merely LA being LA. Of course Robin was safe.
So why were his spidey-senses still tingling?
“I just wrapped for the day,” Robin reported. “I’m still at the studio. It’s gonna take me a minute or two to decompress. I don’t want to drive while I’m still Todd.”
The character that Robin was currently playing was.
.. conflicted was a good way to put it. Jules had read the script and nasty-ass bastard was perhaps more accurate.
And while Robin loved playing a character who wasn’t unswervingly heroic, he was one of those method actors who became the character he was playing, and it was often difficult to disengage after a full day on set.
“This job will be over soon,” Jules reminded him.
“Yay,” Robin said. “Hey, when I’m done, can we... plan to talk? I’ve been offered another role, it’s in a series, so it’s kinda long term, but I want to run it past you first, although not until this project wraps for good, if that’s okay. Todd is annoyingly distracting.”
“Of course,” Jules said. “But sweetie, that’s great. I’m so glad. I mean, we knew living in Hollywood would be an asset, so it’s not a surprise, but... Hey, can you do me a favor?”
“Yeah—oh, you and Sam probably need a ride, right?”
“Yes, but no,” Jules said. “And it’s probably nothing.
I know it’s nothing, but... can you ask the studio for a car and driver to get back and forth from the set for, well, at least until you wrap for good?
For some reason this accident’s made my anxiety spike, and I’d feel better if you didn’t have to drive while you’re distracted. ”
“Consider it done.”
“Thank you,” Jules said, and now that relief was making him feel wobbly. Jesus, he was a hot mess today. “Hey the police are finally here, I gotta go. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Boy Wonder,” Sam shouted in a Cookie Monster voice, which of course made Robin laugh.
Jules hung up his phone with hands that still wouldn’t stop shaking. God damn.
And as they went to stand in solidarity on either side of Denise as the police got out of the patrol car, Jules rolled his eyes at Sam, who said, “What? I do.”