Chapter 7 Lana #3
Griffin rubbed his face. “I don’t know if we’re gonna find much more.”
“Her address is a start.” Lana googled the address and loaded the street view. “Whoa, that’s a dump.” It was a single-level clapboard house with peeling paint, long weeds, and several crappy cars crammed into the driveway. “I wish there was a way to know for sure who tossed the phone.”
“The security footage!” Griffin opened a fresh browser window.
“It’s kept on cloud storage. I had to identify a stalker once, and we had to trawl back a few weeks.
” He found the web portal for the security site.
“Jackpot—the password’s saved in the keychain.
We can search by date. If we pick the camera outside the citadel’s north gate, we can fast-forward through the footage on the day the phone was tossed. ”
The gate wasn’t as busy as the others, so it didn’t take long to zap through, pausing when they spotted movement.
As they got to the late afternoon’s footage, Lana grabbed Griffin’s forearm.
“Stop, stop! That’s her.” He froze the screen.
Vivien was speaking on her phone, looking around.
“She looks nervous.” Griffin pressed play, and Vivien wandered out of shot. He set it to fast-forward again.
“So she snuck out to make a call?” he said.
An hour of footage flicked by. Griffin smacked the keyboard to pause the feed, making Lana jump. “There she is, coming back. No phone. We should be able to track her path from that point on the other cameras.”
They found footage of Vivien collecting her bag from a crew tent, then boarding a bus. She walked quickly, head down, talking to no one. “She looks scared,” Lana said. “But that’s proof that if something happened, it wasn’t on set.”
Griffin returned to the carpooling spreadsheet. “According to this, she got a ride home with…” He pointed at a woman’s name. “I know her—she’s a sound mixer. There’s a number here.” He pulled out his phone, then hesitated.
“Use mine,” Lana said, offering it. “I’m not so bothered if someone sells my number.”
“Thanks.”
Griffin made the call, on speakerphone. After a minute of confusion, in which the sound mixer assumed it was a prank, he managed to confirm that she’d dropped Vivien home without incident.
“She was unusually quiet,” the woman said.
“Jumpy, you know? That was Friday, and it was her turn to drive on the next Monday, but she never showed, and we couldn’t reach her.
I heard later she quit. Hey, listen, I’ve got some friends over—they will flat-out spin if you say hello. ”
Griffin grimaced. “Just quickly, okay?” As he was passed around the group, he became more curt—retracting audibly as well as physically.
Eventually, he made his excuses and ended the call.
“How about we get some sleep?” he said to Lana.
“We can catch the guards in the morning, then I can rent us a car to get back to L.A.”
“My car is parked in Fitch.” She imagined Griffin Hart in her little hatchback and snorted. He looked at her curiously. “It might not be what you’re accustomed to.”
“I’ll cope.” He pushed his chair away and stood, scooping their trash into the shopping bag. “Coming?” He held up his trailer key. Her throat dried. “You can take Estelle’s trailer, next to mine,” he said—a hasty clarification. “I’ve already messed it up today, so she can blame me.”
“You have?”
“Not like that. I crashed in the wrong trailer. She’d already left. They’re identical, and I was … anyway…”
He grabbed Lana’s backpack, and she followed him to the row of lead-actor trailers.
Estelle’s trailer was unlocked, and he showed Lana in.
It was a cross between a first-class cabin in a plane and a fancy walk-in closet.
Her flashlight beam caught a row of framed photos on a vanity.
She paused on one of Estelle and Griffin, in tux and shimmering gown.
His arm was around her, his palm resting on her hip.
Clearly together. “Wow, where was this taken?”
“Emmys? Globes?” He stepped in beside her. “No, Oscars.”
“You two dated?”
“We were together for an awards season. November to February. That’s a lot of photos in black tie per day actually spent together. But if you read the gossip, you’d think we were on the brink of marriage and I dumped her and broke her heart.”
“She’s still into you.”
“And you know that how?”
“From the way she reacted after you filmed the kissing scene. She looked…”
“You’re blushing again.” He touched Lana under the chin with a single finger, coaxing her to face him. She fought to steady her breath. The lightest of touches and he might as well be stripping her naked and ravishing her, for the effect it was having.
“You’re teasing me,” she managed to say.
“Am I?” He seemed genuinely uncertain. “How did Estelle look?”
“Turned on,” Lana declared, defiantly. “She looked turned on.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I could tell.” He shrugged, removing his finger but not stepping away. “It worked for the scene. She told me not to feel like I had to hold back.”
“So, did you dump her?”
“Only after she gave me an ultimatum—all or nothing. Does that make it her choice or mine or both?”
“You weren’t into her?”
“Oh, I was into her—she’s an incredible woman—but not in the way she wanted.”
“What did she want?” Why was Lana even going there, teasing him out as she might do with some guy she thought she had a chance with? As if Lana could fill a void that Estelle Duman couldn’t.
“I don’t really open up. Girlfriends generally want you to open up.”
“We’re annoying like that—women, I mean, in general. Why don’t you open up?”
“Because then my secrets are no longer secrets. If I tell people things, next I know, I see them in headlines.”
“I would have thought another celebrity would be good at keeping secrets.”
“I would have thought that too. Not that Estelle broke any confidences.”
“Must be impossible to have a relationship if you can’t open up.”
“That could be why I’ve never had one. Nothing serious.”
“You haven’t?”
“I know. I’m thirty-four and I’ve never been in love. I’m a freak, as previously established.”
“Neither have I,” Lana squeaked.
“Seriously?” He seemed genuinely shocked, which she couldn’t help but find flattering.
“I’ve dated. I’ve tried. I’ve had boyfriends.
But no one who gets me. If there’s someone out there for me, I haven’t found him yet.
” She wasn’t prepared to disclose the deeper, messier reason—that whenever she started dating someone, she always came across all clingy and terrified of being dumped.
She didn’t even know why—it was something Vivien had pointed out: You always say you don’t need people, but maybe it’s not that.
Maybe you’re scared of needing people. But even when Lana could see the dark place she was heading to, in a relationship, she couldn’t stop herself from acting weird and insecure.
So, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, and any chance of a relationship withered under the awkwardness, bringing immense relief to both parties.
Instead of sharing all that with Griffin, Lana took the simpler route out.
“It’s not easy to meet people when you’re an alien hermit, let alone get to know them. ”
“I thought that stuff would be easier for a normal person no one is interested in.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh man, that came out wrong. Sorry, my brain’s checked out.
I mean, someone the media isn’t constantly reporting on, someone who’s not being watched.
I might go on five dates in an entire year, but most of them end up in the tabloids, so of course I look like some heartless playboy.
But I can say for certain that many, many guys would be interested in you—if you got your nose out of your book and your butt out of your house.
Online dating, speed dating, go to a bar.
Whatever it is regular people do to get dates. ”
“Never! Well, yeah, bars, occasionally, if someone invites me. And Vivi loves trying to set me up. But you—you could have almost any woman you wanted.”
“I suspect the number of women who would want to be with me for who I am, minus the fame and money and other bullshit, would be very small. Not to mention that I’m an asshole.”
“I would disagree on that point. But if you don’t let people in, how is any woman supposed to get to know the real you?”
“You see? I’m doomed. My agent does sometimes set me up.”
“With another famous person?”
“Never works out. Mostly, women are put off by how boring I am. It’s a numbers game, and I’m not getting the numbers, so…”
“A numbers game?”
“Sure. There would be tens of thousands of people out there we could be attracted to.” He dropped his gaze down her body and up again—a subconscious move rather than a deliberate one.
“You don’t believe in fate?” For instance, she added to herself, the wacky glitch in the programming of the universe that would strand a librarian with a movie star.
“It’s illogical that of the eight billion people on Earth, we would happen to meet our one soulmate in the tiny part of the world we circulate in.
” He said “one soulmate” with an emphasis she hated herself for noticing, while pinning her with his gaze.
Was he even aware what he was doing—what he was doing to her?
“I do believe there’s a tiny minority we are capable of truly connecting with, on both a physical level and a deeper one.
But even so, your chances of finding one of those people among the masses who aren’t right for you are low. You see? Numbers game.”
“And if you don’t play the game…”
“Right? Maybe that minority is like one percent of the people we meet. With odds like that…”
“Why bother with the mess and heartache of trying?” she finished.
“Exactly. And now that we have love all figured out—or not—it’s time we went to bed.”
“Time we … what?”
He grinned. “I’ll be in my trailer.”
“You’re teasing me again! You’re awful! No wonder you have this terrible reputation.”
He narrowed his eyes, looking tired and human for a split second before the neutral expression set in. “Good night, Lana.”
As he left, Lana swore quietly. One of the most deliciously sexy moments of her life—which was pathetic considering he’d touched her with a single fingertip—and she’d ruined it.
He’d been letting her in gradually for hours, and she’d defaulted to judging him by the public persona he clearly hated. What a dork.
With so much to process, Lana slept fitfully, her dreams twisted and confused, most involving some apparition of Griffin. Sometime in the night she awoke to a whisper—Griffin, crouching beside her, saying her name. She blinked repeatedly.
“Lana, wake up. There’s someone here.”
“The guards?”
“No. These guys are searching for something. Or someone. We gotta get out of here.”