Chapter 9 Lana
Lana
The older woman perched on the driver’s door, peering into the dark. “Who are they, baby?”
“They’re the bad guys, Maggie.” Griffin had assumed his blank expression, though the angles seemed sharper.
“Momma!” she corrected. “Have they hurt you, baby?”
“At this point, I think they’d like to.” He lowered his voice so only Lana could hear. “Even if we leave with Maggie, they’ll come after us. I’ve driven that Chevy before—fast on a straight but a bitch on a switchback. No way can we lose a couple of late-model SUVs on that road.”
Lana grunted in agreement. The coastal road was scary enough on the lumbering bus, with its sharp turns, instant-death bluffs, and kamikaze coyotes. “Wait, is that the car from your movie—Blind Corner?”
“Yep. Maggie bought it at a charity auction. I owned it for a while, but it was too recognizable.”
“Momma!” the woman yelled. “I’m gonna be paying it off the rest of my days—but it’s worth it!”
“I have an idea,” Lana said, looking at the SUVs. “Think you could hold those guys off for a couple of minutes?”
“With a slingshot? They’re almost in tasing distance.”
“A slingshot? That all you got?” Maggie jumped to the gravel, marched to the trunk and opened it, obscuring Lana’s view of her.
There was a click, then a boom shook the ground, the echo cracking through the hills.
Lana and Griffin swore in unison. Maggie strode out from behind the trunk, wielding a shotgun.
“Which one should I take out first?” she shouted, loud enough for the goons to hear. That stopped them.
“You’re not supposed to be armed, Maggie!”
“Momma!” she said, swinging the barrel his way.
Griffin pulled Lana behind an SUV. “Don’t shoot them,” he said to Maggie in an undertone, “or us. But can you make them think you might?”
Maggie leveled the weapon at the goons and fired. Lana yelped.
“Maggie!” Griffin warned.
“Momma! Just giving them a fright, that’s all,” she said in a stage whisper. “They’re running for it! Get in!”
“Is it weird that they’re not pulling out guns?” Lana said to Griffin.
“Is anything about this not weird? I didn’t see any guns, did you?”
“I don’t think they were expecting real resistance. Their orders were to take Vivien alive.”
“You said you had an idea?”
Lana was already popping the hood of the nearest SUV. She strode to the front of the car. “Can you shine the flashlight for me?”
He joined her as she lifted and braced the hood. “What are you going to do?”
“Disable it, hopefully.”
“You know how?”
“629.287: Automobile repair. Sorry, I recite library Dewey decimal numbers when I’m stressed. It’s like counting to ten. Focuses my mind.”
“Library books have numbers? They’re not in alphabetical order?”
“That’s only fiction. And memoir, to a degree.
” She pulled the fuse box cover off, flipped it and held it to the light, searching the diagram.
The fuel pump relay was one of the chunkier plugs—she’d had to replace it once when her car wouldn’t start.
“Don’t go expecting precision mechanics, but this should work. ”
“You recited a number in the tunnels, too.”
“613.6. Survival skills. My parents begged me to take a self-defense class when I moved to L.A., but I couldn’t afford one, so I got it all from books.
You could also try 796.81 for martial arts—if you ever went into a library.
There it is.” She located the matching relay in the fuse box and wriggled it from its socket.
She also pulled out several identical plugs, so they couldn’t just replace it with the horn relay or whatever.
“Have you read every book in the library?”
“That would take more lifetimes than I have available. I can only read a few hundred a year. I can’t afford a mechanic, so I got some books out.” She tossed the relays into the Chevy’s open trunk and moved on to the next car.
“So, each book has its own number?” Griffin said, popping the hood.
She lifted it and got to work. “Are you trolling me?”
“No! I’ve never stopped to think how libraries work. I would have thought they were like bookstores—not that I’ve been in many of those.”
“It’s a hierarchical numbering convention.”
“Fascinating.” As she rolled her eyes, he added. “I’m serious!”
“Okay, we’re done.”
“Let’s go, baby!” Maggie fired into the air, blowing out Lana’s hearing.
“I’m driving, Maggie,” Griffin said forcefully.
“Only if you call me Momma!” Maggie sashayed to the car as if she were Bonnie to Griffin’s Clyde, slamming the trunk on the way.
“Oh, man,” Griffin muttered. “Momma,” he said through gritted teeth.
“That’s my boy!”
He jumped in the driver’s seat and thrummed the engine to life while Lana clambered into the back. At a gesture from Maggie, the redhead climbed over the seats to the spot beside Lana, smiling shyly at Griffin.
“Hi,” Lana ventured. It didn’t seem to register.
“She’s not all there upstairs.” Maggie slid into the shotgun seat and fired another round toward base camp. “ARE YOU, SWEETIE? That’s her name, Sweetie. At least, she seems to answer to it. Who are those idiots, anyway?”
“I don’t even know.” Griffin spun the car into reverse, peppering the SUVs with gravel.
“You must have some idea, baby?”
“None at all.”
Maggie swung to face Lana, forcing Griffin to jerk away to avoid getting smacked by the shotgun.
“Maggie, put that thing down. And buckle up.”
“And who are you?” Maggie demanded of Lana, as Griffin accelerated.
“Lana.”
“Lana who?”
Griffin answered. “Let’s keep this to first names.”
Maggie glared at him. “How do you know my boy?” she asked Lana cloyingly.
“Uh, I don’t. We both got left behind on set, that’s all.”
Maggie leaned in, coquettish. “Oh, go on, looks to me you know him better than that. You can tell Momma. Who would I tell?” She grimaced. “Who would believe me?”
“I honestly never spoke to Griffin until today—yesterday,” Lana corrected, since it was well past midnight.
“You’re not a stalker, are you?” Maggie’s head lurched toward Griffin. “Is she a stalker?”
Griffin grunted. “I really hope not, Maggie.”
“Momma!”
Griffin groaned.
“If there’s nothing going on, why were you two flirting back there? ‘In libraries there’s a hierarchical numbering convention,’” Maggie said, mimicking Lana, before moving on to Griffin. “‘Ooh, fascinating.’”
Griffin blasted the horn as they slowed to a halt at the security gate.
The barrier arm was up, and the guard shack was dark—the power had to be off.
After a delay, the guard they’d spotted earlier slid a long window open.
Her bleary eyes focused on Griffin, and she snapped straight, clutching the sill.
“Mr. Hart?” She looked at Maggie, her eyes bugging. “Are you being kidnapped?”
“I hope not. You guys got a sat phone?”
She nodded.
“Call the cops. Tell them we have trespassers on set. Sit tight until they arrive—could be you were drugged.”
“Not by me, this time!” Maggie proclaimed.
“This time?” Griffin said.
“Nothing harmful! Tried it on myself first. Best sleep of my life.”
“That time you snuck onto my street and dug through my trash? You drugged the guards?”
“I had some cupcakes delivered to them. Everyone’s a sucker for cupcakes—all pretty icing and tied up with ribbons in a cute box. Little thank-you note from the boss for all the hard work. You should be grateful I found the glitch in the system! It could have been someone fishy!”
“Imagine that,” Griffin deadpanned.
“I couldn’t get inside your house though, so credit where it’s due. You know what, Sweetie? We should go into business testing celebrity defenses! How much would someone pay for that? ‘We stalk you so your stalkers can’t!’”
The security guard rubbed her forehead, looking around the office. “The cameras are down.” She grabbed something and tossed it into a corner. “Hey, losers, wake up!”
They left the guards making calls and hit the coastal road, Lana trying to zone out Maggie’s excited chatter.
She wished she’d worn extra layers, with the salty wind whipping them.
She took out her ponytail and tied her hair in a messy bun.
Griffin also ignored Maggie, though she didn’t seem to notice. Sweetie gazed at him adoringly.
Lana rubbed the side of her belly. It stung like a burn.
Wait—it was a burn, from the Taser! There was another on her arm—and her left hip was sore from the fall.
She’d been tased! And a vicious taste of hell it was—her body on fire, every muscle seizing.
The kind of pain where you dropped into a different existence for …
how long was it? Only seconds? And then the cool wash of relief at the pain ebbing and the sensation of being lifted and carried away. She’d felt irrationally safe.
As they reached Fitch’s dark, sleepy main street, pain bit into her scalp. “Ow!” Beside her, Sweetie held up several strands of her hair, smiling.
“What’s going on back there? Sweetie, you leave her alone!
” To Lana, she said, “She’s jealous—she can sense the chemistry!
” Maggie held a finger in the air between Lana and Griffin and pretended to get an electric shock.
“Ouch! You see? You’ve done well to keep things a secret.
But then, you’re not his usual type.” She smacked Griffin lightly on the shoulder, and he recoiled.
“Clever of you, baby, dating someone like that. Everyone will figure she’s your assistant or your cleaner.
She could stand right next to you and no one would even see her! ”
“Like I said, we only met yesterday.”
“Don’t even bother, Lana,” Griffin said coolly.
They pulled up beside Lana’s white hatchback, parked under a streetlamp outside the hostel. “Yeah, they won’t be looking for me in that,” Griffin said wryly, as he and Lana climbed out of Maggie’s car.
“It’s reliable and economical,” Lana said in mock defense. “Like me.”