Chapter 4 Lana
Lana
“I’m sorry, run that by me again.” Griffin Hart crossed his arms and tilted his head—a pose straight out of his movie Shadow Cop.
Lana smacked into a reality check. Griffin Hart—the Griffin Hart, Mr. Hart, Achilles himself—was standing in front of her.
Talking to her. And yes, she hadn’t known he existed until a week ago, but she was very aware of him now.
It was like her subconscious and her body believed they knew him from all their one-on-one time—him on the screen, her watching.
As if she had a memory of what it was like to run a finger down the side of his face, navigating the skin and the stubble.
And now she was starting to understand the walking forward/walking backward. The parasocial relationship was real.
Focus, Lana. You’re not here for this. And he’s not Ann Patchett.
“My sister, Vivien Fleming. I’ve filed a missing person report, but the police are like…
” Lana shrugged. “They think she’s a flake.
As do most people who don’t know her well, but…
” Lana blurted out a rundown of events to date.
It wasn’t coherent, but she’d been holding it in all week, and anything was better than him thinking she was a stalker, especially because she wasn’t totally sure she wasn’t, given the effect he had on her.
“I’m sorry, none of that makes sense, does it? ”
“No, I get it. I haven’t heard anything on set about a missing woman. There was a cop up here the other day. Was that related? I assumed it was local PR.”
“That was the cop I spoke to last week. Pretty sure he didn’t find anything. Pretty sure he didn’t look. Like I say, they’ve written her off.”
“But you haven’t.”
“I know her better than anyone. Something’s happened.”
He pointed at the phone. “Is this why you were stalking my trailer?”
“I wasn’t stalking.” Lana’s cheeks fired hot, as if they’d learned muscle memory from the incident. “I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’m the only one looking for her, and I’m running out of ideas, so…”
“I get a lot of people approaching me. Plus, I’d just found out that a stalker masquerading as a plumber tried to get access to my home—with a bunch of spy camera gear. I was a little on edge.”
“Sure, I get it,” she said, as if it were a scenario she totally related to. “Also, that’s messed up.”
“Right? So. I’m Griffin.” He extended a hand.
She started to laugh, but realized he meant it genuinely. A second take on their conversation. As if they didn’t both know she knew who he was. As if the whole of America didn’t know, except the Amish and her parents and their off-grid buddies.
“Lana.” She took his hand, trying to act cool and not like she was touching a mega-celebrity she might have a crush on. Given that he was dressed in little more than a loincloth, it was hard to know where to look without seeming inappropriate, so she pinned her focus on his face.
“Lana,” he repeated quietly, like he was committing her name to memory—possibly to add it to the rogues’ gallery at the Fitch police station. “Does your sister’s disappearance have something to do with you missing the bus?”
Lana screwed up her face. “Yeah.” He waited for more.
She sighed. “I signed up as an extra because I had this stupid idea that I could find out what happened to her. Ask around, whatever.” Ask him.
Rock up and chat to him like he was any old person.
No wonder the cop had laughed at her. Griffin Hart occupied a parallel universe that didn’t connect with hers.
And yet, here they were, occupying the same patch of dirt, as if they were regular humans on the same timeline. “Turns out I’m no Cordelia Gray.”
“Who?”
“Private investigator. P.D. James? Not one of her better-known characters.”
“If you’re thinking your sister’s disappearance has something to do with the show—an accident—I would know about that. There’s a reporting process. Contractual agreements, legalities.”
Lana rubbed her lips together. She’d asked plenty of innocent questions about health and safety protocols.
“That’s only if it was reported, right? Thing is, Vivien and I have this location-sharing app on our phones.
The last location I have for her is the day after that photo was taken with you, up on the wilderness trail.
It’s cordoned off, so it’s possible no one’s been up there since.
I don’t have a lot else to go on. I thought, among other things, I would go for a walk while I was here, see what’s out there, but I couldn’t sneak out. So, yeah, I hid.”
“You think you might find her phone?”
“Maybe. Or possibly nothing. Probably nothing.” She closed her eyes tightly. She couldn’t bring herself to voice her real fear. When she opened them, Griffin Hart was looking at her so intently she gasped. He’d clearly followed her thoughts to the same grim place.
“Probably nothing.” His tone was the audio equivalent of a gentle hug. He stepped forward as if to give her an actual hug, then stopped, but not before an expectant heat flooded her body. His expression returned to its resting blank face.
“Is there any chance you could, mmm, not tell security I’m here? Pretend you never saw me?”
He studied her a long while. Was he contractually obligated to report her? She had an hour until sunset. She’d packed a flashlight but she’d rather not be up there in the dark—if she got there at all, now.
“That’s the least I can do.” His words had a quiet intensity, like a line from a movie. If only he were a real action hero, and could stride in and fix everything—track down Vivien and carry her to safety as he had with Estelle Duman.
Lana stepped back, collecting herself. “Thank you. Well, it was nice to meet you, Mr—uh—Griffin.” It took some effort to stop short of adding his surname. Griffin Hart, Mr. Hart for short. Like Neil deGrasse Tyson. No one called him Neil. Not people like her.
“You too, Lana. I hope you find your sister. I hope she’s okay.” He opened his mouth as if to add something, but shut it and gave an abrupt business-concluded nod. “I’d better start walking.”
“You’re not going to put some clothes on?”
He shrugged. “It’s still warm, and this is more comfortable than it looks. They had to make it so I could fight in it, so it’s kinda like walking around naked.”
“Yeah, it is,” she said, with a little too much conviction.
She was indeed feeling very warm as she watched his retreating back, his muscles shuffling as if fighting each other for room under his skin.
(306.73: Culturally Typical Patterns of Sexual Relationships and Behavior.) A griffin: half lion, half eagle.
The king of beasts meets the king of the sky.
He wasn’t what she’d have expected. Not an arrogant asshole at all, except for his initial assumption that she was obsessed with him.
And to be fair, she kind of was. A lot of people were.
Though assholes did tend to hide their assholeness when it suited them.
That was part of what made them assholes.
She kept staring long after he rounded the dark corner, then shook herself. Close encounter of the celebrity kind over. Time to do what she’d come here to do.
She opened the map on her phone. Vivien’s phone had last registered near a small footbridge over a gully—close enough to the set to be in wi-fi range, evidently—but it might take some time to search the scrubby terrain.
If someone’s buried a body up there, that’s gonna take some finding.
She shoved her phone in her pants pocket and tightened her backpack straps.
If there was a body, she’d do what she always did.
She would step in and be the big little sister and sort it out.
Same as Vivien had done for her countless times when they were kids.
She’d cover the body, perhaps with the sleeping bag stuffed in her backpack, walk to the security gate and alert the guards.
She should also take photos of the scene so the police would believe her.
Her chest tightened and she rubbed the center of it with the heel of her palm.
She’d have to call the police in Cedarwood Falls and get them to alert her parents. Or would the LAPD arrange that?
“Stop it,” she whispered. Having a plan was helpful; accepting the worst-case scenario as the likely outcome was not. She reflexively reached for her necklace, then remembered it was in her bag. She dug it out and clipped it on. Already, Vivien seemed closer.
As she left the TV set behind and followed the sandy trail to the hills, their last conversation replayed in her head. I give up! Solve your own problems, for a change! In all the years she’d depended on Vivien, her sister had never once spoken to her like that, never once rejected her.
It’d been an awful day—a kid had run into the library bleeding from a stab wound.
Couldn’t have been older than thirteen. He was followed by three older teens who started to stalk the aisles.
The police were called, the staff sheltered in place, the boy ran off, the bad guys were charged with something minor.
She never found out what became of the kid, but his terrified face had lodged in her brain.
At his age, she’d also found sanctuary in a library, but the worst she’d had to worry about was a school bully.
When she’d snapped at Vivien, it was fear talking. Fear that something would happen to her, out there in The Scary World Outside The Library. If she hadn’t snapped, maybe Vivien would have told her about the breakup and whatever else was troubling her, and none of this would have happened.
The trail narrowed as it climbed, encroached upon by a fat carpet of tiny yellow flowers and spikes of purple lupine that swayed in the breeze.
A bird shot out of the undergrowth and took flight, a chattering flash of gray.
The salty air gave way to a minty, camphor scent that Lana decided was coming from a flowering black sage brushing her pant legs.
She crested the slope, and the footbridge came into view.
As she neared it, she realized the gully was deeper than it looked in the satellite image.
A yawning crack in the earth. She lowered her backpack onto a sandstone platform next to the bridge.
A circling gull cawed, but otherwise the valley was quiet, sheltered from the onshore wind, the ocean a muted, rhythmic rush.
At each end, the footbridge was anchored into concrete platforms laid over sandstone, supported by steel cables.
Lana had a good look around, but nothing seemed out of place.
She walked to the middle of the bridge. As the gully walls descended, the beige sandstone fused into darker, weathered granite.
A stream trickled along the seam at the bottom, surrounded by thick foliage—ferns and blackberries huddled under maples and laurels.
She shivered, her blood cold and prickly.
She’d dressed appropriately and worn sturdy shoes, but she hadn’t planned on the kind of climbing that would get her to the bottom of a gully and—crucially—up again.
Her dad would come in handy about now. He might be nervous about navigating the Metro, but he knew his way around the wilderness.
He’d tried to teach her, but she was always impatient to get back to her books.
Something touched the back of her neck, and she flinched. Nothing there but her own clammy skin.
A scraping noise sounded on the path behind her—a footstep, then another. She spun. A cluster of scrubby trees blocked her sightline. Security guard? Vivien’s killer? She backed away across the bridge. A man walked into view, spotting her right away.
Griffin Hart. Griffin Hart was standing there, still in costume, a coiled rope over his shoulder. He gave a one-sided shrug, almost apologetically.
“I know something about losing a person who’s close to you.”