Hollywood Secrets

by Gemma Halliday

  Anna looked up. “What?”

  “Where did you move from?”

  Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t get personal.

  Anna looked away, turning her eyes to Lenny, still circling the detergent box.

  “Oh, I’ve lived all over. I’m a bit of a nomad. What about you? Local?”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m just visiting a friend in town. Thinking of relocating, though. It’s a fun city. You lived here long?”

  Anna shrugged. “Long enough, I guess.”

  “Long enough to know a place for good Chinese?” He took a step toward her.

  Without meaning to, she took one backward.

  “In San Francisco? You’d have a hard time finding bad Chinese.”

  He laughed, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Come on, you must have a favorite?”

  “Okay, if I had to pick one, I’d say the Shaolin Palace. Down the street a couple blocks. They deliver twenty-four hours.”

  “Oh, definitely my kind of place.”

  A dryer dinged behind him, signaling the end of the cycle.

  “Well, I guess I’ll let you get back to your laundry,” Anna said. She dropped the towel on the counter and tugged Lenny toward the door. Having ascertained the detergent box didn’t contain anything edible, he complied.

  “Wait,” Nick said, taking a step forward. “Are you busy tomorrow night? Maybe you could walk me through the Shaolin Palace’s menu, huh?”

  Anna chewed on her cheek again.

  Don’t get personal.

  “Sorry, I have plans tomorrow. With my boyfriend.”

  “Oh.” His smile faded. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Yeah, well, goodnight,” she said quickly, pulling Lenny toward the door.

  “I guess I’ll see you around, Anna Smith.”

  She raised a hand in a wave, then pushed out into the sheeting rain again. It hit her like ice after the warm, sticky air of the laundromat. Giving up altogether on the umbrella, Anna crossed the street, ducking her head against the torrent as she ran up the walkway.

  He’s watching you.

  She stole a quick glance over her shoulder. He had his back turned to the windows, pulling clothes from the dryer and dropping them into his plastic basket.

  She shook her head. He was just a nice guy trying to get a date. The foul weather was making her paranoid.

  “Come on, Lenny. Let’s go dry off.” She slipped her key in the lock and let herself into the lobby, Lenny barking gleefully beside her. She tugged off her wet shoes before leading him up the two flights of stairs. For all the good it did. Her feet still made a trail of wet footprints on the worn, wooden steps. Not to mention Lenny’s muddy contribution. She’d be catching hell in the morning.

  Two apartments shared the third floor. Mrs. Olivia, a seventy-three year old widow and sudoku addict, lived in the one on the right. Anna was on the left.

  She shoved her key into the lock and let Lenny bound into the room ahead of her, skidding to a stop at his food bowl and lapping up the crumbs. Anna shook her head as she keyed her PIN into the security system. That dog had a one-track mind. We should all have such a simple life.

  She shut the door behind her and locked it, then secured the chain, deadbolt, and armed the alarm system again before stripping off her wet clothes and leaving them in a pile by the door. A long, hot shower sounded like heaven.

  She padded into the kitchen, throwing a cupful of dog chow into Lenny’s bowl, then crossed the small studio apartment, pausing briefly at the front window. She pulled the edge of the curtain back and peeked out.

  He was still there, folding towels at one of the counters, his head bent over his work, his hands moving in quick, practiced movements. She had a fleeting vision of laughing over a plate of chicken chow mein with him. His eyes crinkling at the corners, mouth twisting up in a warm smile.

  But before it could go any further, she quickly shut the curtain.

  She’d been in San Francisco too long. She was getting too comfortable here. It was time to move on. Maybe somewhere in the Southwest. It had been awhile since she’d been to the desert.

  She stepped into the bathroom and turned on the shower, letting the hot water fill the tiny room with steam.

  * * *

  Liar.

  Dade watched her disappear from the window, her silhouette crossing the apartment. He knew for a fact she didn’t have a boyfriend. As far as he could tell, she didn’t have any friends. Which didn’t surprise him. From everything he’d read, she wasn’t exactly the social type.

  He grabbed the last of his clean towels from the dryer, folding them end over end as he kept one eye on the window of the third floor. She wouldn’t go out again tonight. She’d feed the dog, take a shower, then sit on her sofa watching TV. At midnight, she’d turn out the lights, throw on an old T-shirt, set her alarm, and go to bed.

  He’d watch until then, until he was sure she was down, then catch a few hours himself before setting up camp outside her work in the morning. An animal shelter near the park. He found it ironic that she spent her days saving cats and dogs from the needle considering her former life.

  He tucked a pile of towels into his laundry basket. The same pile he’d been washing every night this week. Though, tomorrow he’d have to find something new to occupy his time, thanks to her damn dog.

  He shook his head. Dade hadn’t intended any contact. He didn’t like contact. He liked things clean and simple. He did his surveillance thoroughly, chose his weapons carefully, and did his job quickly, unseen, without any complications. Contact with the target made things complicated.

  Not that he’d really anticipated this one being simple. For one thing, she was a woman. Dade didn’t normally take on women. Women and children were civilians as far as he was concerned. But once he’d read the file on Anya Danielovich, he’d decided to make an exception.

  She’d been one of the go-to agents of the KOS, the former Yugoslavian intelligence agency, in the years leading up to the Kosovo conflict. Years that were particularly bloody in the country’s history. Factions breaking off from one another, allies becoming enemies. One day you worked for the good guys, the next they were the bad guys. Politics and race relations thrown together in a stew that resulted in military units without leaders, guerilla factions acting under whomever had the funds to feed them, and power being wielded by those who had no one’s best interest at heart but their own. When all the dust had settled, the country had splintered and the KOS was no more.

  Officially, that is.

  From the file Dade’s client had provided, Anya had never served in the military, and there was no record of her formal training. In fact, there was no record of her at all up until her first job where she’d taken out a wealthy Serbian businessman whose funds were being funneled to the wrong people. During the next four years she’d neutralized a total of twenty-four men. Most clean hits, none ever officially investigated. All before her twenty-first birthday.

  Dade glanced across the street. She was out of the shower. He watched her bare silhouette slip a shirt over her head and pad across to the next bank of windows where she pulled a glass from a cupboard, filling it at the sink.

  He had to admit, he had a hard time reconciling the woman he’d just met with information in the file. She’d seemed too… normal. Human. If he’d met her under different circumstances, he wouldn’t have thought she was anything but your average girl. A little on the skinny side, maybe, but friendly enough not to raise suspicions.

  But there’d been no mistaking her. Even with her blonde curls dyed black and fifteen years between her and the baby-faced assassin in his file, there was no doubt in his mind. It was the same pair of huge blue eyes, the same full, pouty, lips. The same high cheekbones, round hips and long legs she’d worked to her advantage across Eastern Europe. She’d done a good job eradicating any hint of an accent from her voice, but he figured she’d had time to work on it. And if she were half as good as the file said,
she would have. She wasn’t stupid. She’d known what was at stake when she left Kosovo.

  He wondered if she knew what was at stake now?

  Officially, Anya Danielovich had died in a car accident fifteen years ago. She’d been a twenty-year old student out partying too late, drinking too much, and wrapped her car around a tree along a deserted stretch of the highway. A maintenance worker had found her the next morning, her car burned out, her remains charred to a crisp.

  Unofficially, the file said she had died in a car bombing outside the compound of General Federov, a man later intelligence reports proved was working all sides of the conflict to his own profit. What she was doing outside his compound was a question no one asked. Though Federov hadn’t survived the night either.

  But in reality…

  Dade looked up at the window, watching her form cross the room, sink down on the sofa and flip on the television, casting a blue glow throughout the apartment.

  In reality, Anya was his latest contract. And he’d never been fooled by a pair of sexy legs and pouty lips before. Dade knew that evil came in all sorts of packages.

  This time, Anya Danielovich would stay dead.

  Chapter Two

  It was too early for the Beatles. Anna groaned, rolling over to face the red glowing numbers of her alarm clock. 6:15. She threw an arm over her eyes and fumbled in the semi-darkness until her fingers connected with the snooze bar, ceasing John Lennon’s thoughts on world peace. She rubbed at her eyes, making the slow transition from sleep to reality as she threw her legs over the edge of the bed and into a pair of fuzzy, red slippers.

  Lenny perked up immediately from his makeshift bed by the door and barked out a greeting, loping across the room, stopping just short of knocking her over.

  “Hey, buddy” she said, rubbing the stubby, soft fur on his head. “Hungry?”

  He barked in response. Then again, Dogzilla barked in response to just about anything.

  “All right, breakfast is coming right up,” Anna said around a yawn, padding to the kitchen. She filled his bowl again, then flipped the switch on her coffee pot, glancing out the window as she waited for it to brew.

  The streetlights were still on, dim spots of light dotting the fog as the sunrise struggled to break through. Though the rain had stopped, the streets below still glistened with the evening’s downpour. A jogger made his way down the block, his warm breath making visible puffs in front of him as he hurried past her building. The market across the street was opening, the owner pulling back the heavy iron gates to reveal glass windows full of half-priced noodles and canned soup three for a dollar. And the laundromat’s ‘open’ sign still hung on the door, though Anna could see it was empty inside now.

  Forget him.

  The coffee pot hissed, signaling the end of the cycle, and Anna grabbed a mug from the overhead cupboard. She poured the dark, aromatic liquid into her cup, sipping as steam rose to warm her cheeks.

  No doubt about it, it was time to move on.

  “What do think of Tucson, Lenny? Or maybe Sedona. Lots of wide open space to run in Arizona.”

  He answered with a loud slurp, finishing the last of his breakfast, and lumbered to the front door, his nails clacking along the hardwood floor. He sat by the door and made a pathetic whine in the back of his throat.

  “Oh no, pal. After what you put me through last night, you can wait until I’ve had a shower first.” Anna set her cup down on the counter and headed toward the bathroom.

  She wasn’t sure, but she could swear Lenny gave her a dirty look as she closed the door.

  * * *

  The Golden Gate Animal Shelter was located two blocks south of the park, in the Sunset district. It was a nondescript, square building squatting between a hardware store and a dry cleaners near the end of the block. Glass windows spanned the front while a hand painted yellow sign sporting a cartoon dog in lederhosen informed passersby that they were open.

  Originally the shelter had been created to handle overflow from the county facilities when they’d instituted their ‘no kill’ policy, putting down only the sickest of animals or ones deemed too dangerous to be adopted out. With just fifteen kennels in the back, they were a small shelter by city standards, but it was clean and close to public transportation, so it had suited Anna perfectly when she’d first moved to the city.

  A small pang of regret hit her stomach as she pushed through the front door that she’d soon be leaving it behind. An overhead bell jangled in the small lobby to signal her presence.

  “It’s just me,” she called out.

  A slim redhead in jeans and a Giants sweatshirt poked her head out from the back room.

  “Hey, you’re late,” she commented, wiping her hands on the seat of her pants.

  Shelli Cooper had been hired on as office manager at the shelter a couple months after Anna had started there and ran the place like clockwork. At just over five feet she was a petite little firecracker with enough perk to single handedly solve the nation’s energy crisis. She had a tendency to talk with her hands and was perpetually bouncing on the balls of her feet. Her red hair was worn long and loose around her face, hippie style, with a pair of green eyes set in skin so pale she reminded Anna of a china doll. A dusting of freckles along Shelli’s upturned nose gave her a perpetually youthful look, though Anna put her age somewhere in her early thirties, close to Anna’s own.

  “Sorry,” Anna said, setting her shoulder bag down on the counter. “Long night.”

  “Oh yeah?” Shelli asked, leaning in. “You get some?”

  “Ha. No, stubborn boxer. Rain. Mud. Not fun.” She picked up a pile of mail and thumbed through it. Mostly bills and bulk mailers from other local businesses.

  “Yeah, it really came down last night, didn’t it? My power flickered a couple times during the debates. I was sure it was going to cut out. Did you watch?”

  Anna shook her head. “No. I never get into politics.”

  “You didn’t miss much. Republicans crying bleeding heart, Democrats crying big oil. Same old tune. They say Jonathan Braxton’s ahead in the polls, though. Not sure how I feel about having a governor younger than I am, but there you have it. Oh, hey,” she said, switching gears, “we got a newcomer last night after you left.” Shelli navigated around the front counter to grab a clipboard from the desk behind.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Terrier mix. Tiny little thing, freaked half out of his mind. No ID or tags. A homeless guy brought him in just as I was closing up. He was afraid the church wouldn’t let him in for the night if he had a dog with him.”

  “Is he in the back?”

  “Number fifteen.” Shelli handed her a clipboard with the terrier’s paperwork, before taking a seat behind the counter and jiggling her computer screen to life. “He’s all yours, Annie.”

  “I’m on it.”

  The shelter’s kennels consisted of one large room with concrete floors where fifteen smaller cages were set up. Three quarters were full, which was less than most shelters in the area, often overflowing, sometimes even illegally housing animals in the offices and storage rooms. It was hard enough finding cute little puppies homes, never mind older animals that had been abused, neglected, or, worse, grown up feral, fending for themselves. While Anna did her best to clean them up and make them look attractive for potential new homes, it was often a race against time to get the adoptable ones out to make room for the never ceasing influx of new animals.

  She stopped at the last cage and squatted down next to their newest boarder. He was small, even for a terrier, his fur a shaggy gray color, matted with something dark and sticky along the back. He yipped warily at the cage door, bouncing up and down on all fours.

  “Hey there, fella,” Anna said, trying to make her voice as low and soothing as she could. “Don’t you worry, we’ll clean you up.”

  He yipped again, clearly not convinced.

  She slowly opened the cage door, talking in soft tones to the animal as she reached out a ha
nd and let his wet little nose run along her palm. Once his nostrils had gotten their fill, she scooped him up from the floor, running her hand gently along his back as she carried him to the sink. He shivered in her hands, and she could feel his ribs jutting beneath his skin. Sadly, he looked like he’d been on the streets for a while.

  “It’s okay. No one’s going to hurt you. Trust me, you’ll feel so much better after a nice, hot bath.”

  She turned on the water, letting it warm up a bit before setting the dog down in the deep, metal basin. He circled a few times, sniffing at the drain as she turned on the handheld showerhead and ran it along his fur. Immediately the water turned brown, rinsing away God knows what. She lathered him in shampoo as he tried to bite the bubbles rising from his coat, then rinsed him again until the water ran clear and his fur was at least two shades lighter.

  The next step was to scan for ID. Even though he’d come in tagless, more and more pet owners were being urged to have ID chips implanted in their animals. Anna looked for the tell tale bulge along his neckline. Nothing. But just for good measure, she scanned the hand held machine over his fur. As suspected, nothing showed up.

  “I guess you’re Fido Doe, now,” Anna informed him.

  He looked up at her and licked her chin.

  “Oh, you like that name, do you?” she laughed.

  She scratched behind his ears as she carried him out into the front room where Shelli would take his picture to broadcast via internet for a potential new home.

  “Ready for his close up,” Anna said.

  Shelli’s head popped up from her email. “Oh, isn’t he cute! He looks so much better. He’s gonna go right away.”

  “Let’s hope.”

  “Okay, hold him up.” Shelli pulled a digital camera from the top desk drawer and aimed it at the terrier. “Hmm… wait. He needs something.”

  She leaned down and rummaged in her desk again.

  Fido wiggled in Anna’s arms, his little nose twitching, just dying to explore the new room.