On the Record- the Complete Collection

by Lee Winter

  Ayers’s eyes fluttered open. “How close?” Her voice was thick.

  “Not far. Can you give me directions to your place?”

  Ayers sat up to get her bearings. “I’m on Oakshire Drive. You need to come off the 101 at—”

  A blast of ringtone cut her off, and Lauren blinked in surprise given the hour. She turned on her Bluetooth receiver and took the call.

  “King,” she said.

  “Lauren!”

  “Josh? Is everything okay?”

  “Honey, I hope you’re sitting down.”

  “I’m driving.”

  “Then pull over. I don’t want you rear-ending someone.”

  “Okay,” Lauren replied, unsettled. She took the next exit off Hollywood Freeway and, not liking the immediate area, drove a little bit farther, looking for a well-lit area. She saw people milling outside a squat building across the road and pulled over.

  “Stopped now,” she told him. “What is it?”

  “Where are you anyway?” Josh asked. “I thought you’d be tucked up in some cushy hotel at this time of night.”

  “Uhhm,” Lauren peered at a street sign over the road. “Studio City, I think. Some oil can place? On Ventura Boulevard.”

  She heard a sputtering noise. “Oh my god! You’re hitting that old gay club? Well, I suppose Thursdays are She-nanigans night. A little lovin’ with the ladies…”

  “Josh! Come on, I’m out with Catherine! And you’re on speakerphone.”

  He made a strangled noise, and she flushed at how bad that sounded.

  “What’s so important?” she ground out.

  “Oh right,” he said. His voice changed to anxious. “Well, someone’s broken into your place. Like, a little over half an hour ago. I saw them leaving when I was getting home. Those bruisers were big. In a neckless quarterback kind of way. I ducked out of sight, and I got a pic for you. It’s a bit blurred, but my hand was shaking on account of me being terrified they’d see me and use me for a toothpick.”

  Lauren shared a startled look with Ayers.

  “Hon, are you still there?”

  “Yeah Josh. That was brave of you. You okay?”

  “I’m being comforted by some tall, tanned, and nameless hunk. Well, okay, his name rhymes with egad.”

  Lauren winced.

  “I have to call the police,” she said.

  “Done and done. All part of the neighborly service. They had a patrol car in the area, so they’ve been and gone. They just checked it out, wrote some notes, and left. I gave them a copy of my cell phone photo, and they said they’ll want to talk to you later about what’s missing.

  “But hon, I had a peek around, and I couldn’t figure out what they took. All the expensive stuff’s still there.”

  “Can you email me a copy of the photo?”

  “Sure. Two neckless gorillas coming right up.”

  Lauren’s phone beeped. She scrolled to her emails and studied the photo. Two burly men in dark sweaters and black pants were leaving her apartment. Josh had to have been hiding in the stairwell given the angle. She examined the shadowed faces trying to work out why they looked familiar.

  She tilted the phone toward Ayers.

  “Why do I know them?” she asked, puzzled.

  “The thugs from the bus company,” Ayers said, her voice low. “They scared the driver off to Mexico.”

  Lauren flipped the phone back around and realized Ayers was right.

  “What the hell is going on?” she muttered. “Josh, I’m almost home. I just have to drop Catherine off, and I’ll be able to—”

  She felt a stilling hand on her arm.

  “Joshua, this is Catherine. Can you tell me whether you’d be able to secure Lauren’s door tonight? Prevent anyone else from accessing her apartment?”

  “Sure,” Josh said. “No problemo. Leave it to me.”

  “Excellent,” Ayers said. “I think it would be safer to stay away for now since it seems that certain people know where she lives.”

  “Gotcha. By the way, Snakepit and Duppy are really excited to help with your top secret project. Come around tomorrow morning, and I’ll introduce you to the whiz kids. Don’t mind their attitude. They’re like that with everyone.”

  “Thanks Josh, we’ll be there,” Lauren said and leaned over, about to end the call.

  “Oh hey, and hon,” Josh suddenly added urgently, “about Tad…”

  Lauren punched the End button and cut off his words.

  Ayers pricked up her ears. “Tad?”

  “We have more important things to discuss,” Lauren said quickly. “Like what were those men looking for? And where to now?”

  “We’ll go to my place,” Ayers said. “It has gated security and alarms. I also pay a security company a premium to maintain my privacy.”

  Lauren didn’t respond at first, astonished that the guarded Ayers would offer her home to Lauren. As if reading her mind, Ayers turned to look out the side window. “I’m merely protecting our story.”

  “Oh, okay,” Lauren said, feeling foolish. “’Course.” The story always comes first. Nothing else matters. Not even Ayers’s vaunted privacy, it seemed.

  “As for what those gorillas want,” Ayers continued, “it’s interesting Joshua said the break-in only just occurred. Why now?”

  “Opportunistic? I was out.”

  “Actually I suspect they thought you’d be in. I have a hunch they were well aware of our departure from Carson City and expected you to have been home an hour ago and fast asleep by now. Which you would have been if not for the flat.

  “They likely wanted to look at what you brought home with you. And, if I was them, I’d be rather afraid that whatever you had on you would leave your hands soon, so they had no choice but to move now.”

  “They wanted our notes?” Lauren asked, perplexed.

  “It could be any number of things. The Booze, Booze, Booze invoice, transcripts of our interviews, the security footage from the bus company. Or they may just be worried about what we might have.”

  Lauren nodded. “Okay. So why have they come after me and not you?”

  “You’re listed in the phone book; I’m not. Furthermore, your place has all the security of a Boy Scout tent. So, given they had a fifty-fifty choice, you were the obvious, softer target.”

  “Have they been trailing us all over Nevada? Who else is in on this?”

  “Don’t get paranoid. That’s how mistakes are made,” Ayers said. “Look, they obviously weren’t following us all the way home or they’d have known about our delay.”

  “How can we not get paranoid, because someone knew we were leaving and reported it to someone else back here.”

  “You’re missing the point. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter. We still have everything we left Nevada with, my home is secure enough to protect it, and now that we know we’re being watched, we’ll be able to plan our next steps accordingly.”

  Lauren turned that over reluctantly but couldn’t find any holes in her logic.

  “I don’t like it. I’d at least like to know which shoulder to look over.”

  “It’s mutual,” Ayers said. “But the truth always has a way of coming out.”

  Doubtful, Lauren’s gaze drifted to the other side of the road, and her amusement faded. She could see women of all shapes and sizes milling around, laughing, having left the gay club. Several pairs had linked arms and seemed happy in that comfortable way of long-term couples.

  She wondered what that would be like, having someone as a constant in your life who knew everything about you and loved you anyway. So far in her unremarkable dating history, most women had given up relatively early once they’d realized the hours she worked and her laser-like focus on moving up the career ladder into something more serious. Women who understood her ambition a
nd the hours she had to put in didn’t exactly grow on trees.

  “Lauren?”

  She turned to Ayers and saw faint concern warring with curiosity. She shook her head, annoyed her deflating mood had leaked out. “It’s nothing. Can you give me your address? I’ll put it in the GPS. We’re a little offtrack right now.”

  “3239 Oakshire Drive, Hollywood Hills.”

  Lauren tapped it in, and as she sat back up, she caught a glimpse of an idling black SUV in her side mirror and wondered at how long it had been there.

  Don’t get paranoid, Ayers said.

  Okay.

  It wasn’t moving. With a thumping heart she switched the GPS out of satellite mode to map mode, then widened the field. Then widened it again.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Better to be safe than sorry,” Lauren muttered and scanned the map, looking at any looping, winding streets. One particularly florid curve caught her eye, and she switched the view to satellite and zoomed back in. No homes right along the road. Okay, good. She dropped an electronic pin in it.

  “Just in case,” she told Ayers.

  “In case of what?”

  “Don’t worry. We probably won’t need it,” Lauren said. “But I’d tighten your seat belt.”

  She started her engine and pulled back onto Ventura and watched the vehicle idling behind. It pulled away from the curb.

  Well crap.

  “Where are you going? Oakshire Drive is behind us.”

  “Testing your theory that I’m just being paranoid,” Lauren said, keeping an eye on her wing mirror. She turned onto a side street. The SUV pulled in behind them and slowed.

  Her pulse leaped. She shot Ayers a determined look and gripped the steering wheel.

  “It seems,” she said, “we’ve picked up some friends. Hang on.”

  She punched the gas and screeched down the small street; the SUV leapt into action after them.

  “Friends?” Ayers said, craning her neck around. “As in a tail? You’ve been watching far too many…” She stopped.

  “You were saying?” Lauren grunted and yanked on the wheel to take a corner at high speed.

  “Could you not roll us?” Ayers snapped, eyes widening.

  “Hey I kept two wheels on the road,” Lauren retorted as the speed needle nudged ever higher.

  At the next intersection she did a little dogleg onto a wide side street and bit back a groan as she saw the street sign.

  “Lauren!” Ayers said anxiously. “You’re going up a one-way street the wrong way!”

  “Well aware of that,” Lauren ground out as she crunched her gears. “They still behind us?”

  “Yes,” Ayers said, swivelling in her seat. “And getting closer. Are they high beaming us now?”

  “Yeah they are. Assholes.”

  She saw oncoming headlights and sucked in a breath as the staccato beeps of a horn barked at them. At the last minute, she and the oncoming driver swerved just enough to pass each other, both mounting the edges of sidewalks. The angry honking resumed behind her, about five seconds later.

  Lauren flicked Ayers a glance. “Doing okay?”

  Ayers didn’t answer.

  “Don’t worry,” Lauren said. “I’ve got this. Dad fitted out The Beast for just this kind of thing.”

  “Your father foresaw the need for you to outrun pursuers?” Ayers said through thin lips. “I suspect our childhoods were very different.”

  “Ha,” Lauren said and whipped the wheel hard around, hauling them with a squeal of tires across the main thoroughfare of Laurel Canyon Blvd, finally back on the right side of the road. “My brothers loved racing on dirt tracks and gunning it around obstacle courses, so before I even had my licence, they showed me how to do some things that would curl your hair.”

  Lauren glanced at her GPS destination, figuring out the distances remaining.

  “Dona Lola Drive?” Ayers said, following her eyes. “Why are we going there?”

  “It has a shape that’s pretty much perfect for taking out unsuspecting drivers,” Lauren replied. “You’ll see.”

  “Taking out?” Ayers repeated. “Now why do I not like the sound of that?”

  Lauren’s eyes glinted. “Just trust me.” Her heartbeat picked up even faster as she saw the street sign she was looking for. “Ready?”

  She peeled off Laurel Canyon onto the side road leading to Dona Lola and then suddenly slammed on the brakes. “Crap! That wasn’t on the map!”

  They could see Dona Lola Drive stretching up a steep hill on the left. But it had been blocked off at the bottom end, just in front of them, with thick bushes. “Who the hell turns a road into a freaking cul-de-sac without mentioning it to map companies?” Lauren growled. “Shit!”

  She thought about her options for a split second and then, shaking her head, hit reverse. She lined Dona Lola up.

  “You are not about to do what I think you are,” Ayers said in dismay.

  “Fairly sure I am.” She focused and revved her engine, steeling herself.

  “What about your car! Those bushes will shred your paint.”

  “You said it yourself,” Lauren said through gritted teeth. “The story comes first.”

  The wash of high beam headlights hit them as their pursuers came around the bend on Laurel Canyon Blvd and spotted them idling on the side street. They turned off to follow. Lauren said a brief prayer to any deity listening, then stomped the gas pedal. The Beast leapt forward as Ayers’s breath hitched.

  The bruising, scraping, crunching, and crashing noises of metal and nature pulverizing each other made Lauren sick to her stomach, but in a heartbeat they were through and the only noise was the roar of a powerful engine flying up the hill.

  High beams hit them again.

  So the SUV would also be needing a new paint job, Lauren thought grimly. Good. Served them right.

  She angled her car on the deserted road in a way to prevent the SUV from seeing the arcing bend coming up quickly.

  “Ever heard of drifting?” she asked Ayers.

  Ayers shook her head firmly, fingers tightening on her seatbelt.

  “Okay, crash course coming right up. Hold on.”

  “Crash?”

  Lauren increased her speed as they roared up to the tight bend. The road was generously wide, but the bend was acute, almost a hairpin, meaning anyone going too fast or who was caught unawares would overshoot, hit the high, right side-rail, and fly into the potholed hillside and bushes above it.

  She throttled up, pulled the steering wheel hard left, intentionally oversteering, and felt the loss of traction from the rear wheels as they kicked out and began to drift toward the metal railing.

  The safety barrier loomed up fast but the momentum from Lauren hauling on the wheel curled them around the turn like a sling shot. But without traction on the rear, The Beast’s rear would slam into the rail.

  “Lauren!”

  She heard the fear and shock in the word but didn’t lose focus. Everything seemed to slow down. She held the turn as the vibrations thrummed through her steering wheel and up her forearms, the engine roared its protest at the unexpected G-forces, and the rear wheels continued to slide loosely. And then she sensed it—that perfect sweet spot of speed and power and timing. Like old times, she heard her brother Matthew’s voice screaming in her brain. Now, Laur, now! Punch it!

  She slammed her foot hard on the pedal, and The Beast regained its feet, gave a little ass wiggle, and shot forward, straight down the hill like a bullet.

  She could hear a wailing screech of brakes just behind her, then a shredding sound of metal on metal as the SUV smashed into the barrier. It tore through it in a furious ripping sound of twisting metal.

  She eased up on the speed and saw in the side mirror the plume of smoke and metal smouldering against the bush
y hill face. She slowed to a stop, opened her door, and leaned out to watch as two men crawled shakily from the wreckage and appeared to be shouting at each other. One pointed furiously at Lauren’s idling car.

  She grinned, closed the door, and tossed a relieved grin at Ayers, who was staring straight in front of her as though she’d just seen the second coming.

  Hell, maybe she had.

  “Takes a lot of practice to do that,” Lauren explained as they resumed their journey. “Doubt they had a clue what hit them. Now aren’t you glad we took The Beast?”

  At Ayers’s prolonged silence, Lauren realized she was white as a sheet.

  “Hey, you okay?” Lauren asked. “Want me to stop?”

  Ayers shook her head. “Just. Home. Now. Slowly.”

  “Sure,” Lauren said. She lowered her speed. “Hey, I think you should know I have done that move, like, a shit-ton of times.”

  She glanced at Ayers who didn’t seem big on speaking. Or blinking. Or breathing.

  “You were always in good hands,” she reassured her. “And it was probably safer than it looked. Okay?”

  “Probably safer?” Ayers slowly uncurled her white-knuckle grip from the seat belt and turned to look squarely at her. “Lauren,” she said in a low voice, “I just had the depressing realization that if I died, the last line of my obituary would read that I was a gossip columnist for the Daily Sentinel. So I’m only going to say this once. Thank you for not killing us tonight. And from now on, I drive.”

  Catherine Ayers’s home was, in a word, freaking spectacular. Okay, so that was two words, Lauren amended to herself as she gingerly turned into a driveway lined with low palms and thick, lush greenery that was blocked by a towering wall and gate. It had taken a lot longer to get here than it should have thanks to Ayers and her withering glares every time Lauren tried to nudge the speed anywhere north of forty.

  Ayers exhaled raggedly at the sight of her address and thumbed a small remote she’d pulled out of her bag. A wide wrought-iron gate rolled open.

  Beyond lay an elegant, two-story, cream house, lit with warm exterior lights which extended into the garden, backlighting the greenery.

  “What style is your house?” Lauren asked in awe. “I mean, that is gorgeous.”