by Chant, Zoe
Then she caught herself and stared, aghast.
But his gaze snapped to hers. “I do,” he said with that resonating timbre, and she know that he meant it. “I trust you,” he said deliberately.
Every cell in her body flashed with a kind of luminous heat that nothing to do with sex, and everything to do with a heady sense of rightness.
Dennis slid into the shotgun seat, and she fired up the engine. As she gripped the wheel, she thought, This is love.
“Hang on,” she said, hearing the unsteadiness in her voice. “It’s going to be a wild ride.”
Chapter Ten
Mindy’s voice was low and husky, “It’s going to be a wild ride.”
Dennis had one second to wonder what he’d just done, but he shook it away the way his tiger shook water off his back. Whatever happened, he wanted it to happen with her—by her side.
It just felt so right.
She pulled into a side street with quick, efficient moves. No careering, tire-screeching here, which only sheds velocity in the sloppiest way. She drove down a side street, pulling almost to a stop at the stop sign while she looked all ways, and “Ah.”
Again, no zero-to-sixty in five, though he could feel the Honda’s engine shifting with the supreme confidence of a Porsche, and it hummed with fuel-injected efficiency and power. “What did you do to this thing?”
“Hang on,” she murmured, her eyes constantly moving, though the car stayed on a smooth trajectory. Zip, zip, she jinked around a lumbering truck and a slow van full of tourists. About five cars ahead, the black Mercedes was accelerating toward the signal to turn south down the steep hill onto Highland. Smoothly Mindy sped up, catching the edge of the yellow, and riding through inches behind the car in front.
With a flick of the wheel she moved around the slower car and then back again, settling in behind a fast-moving local delivery van. The Mercedes was three cars ahead. Mindy cruised efficiently, hands at ten and two on the wheel, but not white-knuckled, and she said, “One of my friends at my favorite dance studio has a brother who modifies cars. He wanted to know how badass he could make a Honda Civic, and I told him to go for it—I lost two targets in a job the year before, one time being spotted and the other time I wasn’t fast enough. Which added a ton of time on the investigation.”
“I could see why a Civic would not be your first choice for this job.”
“There he goes, diving west on Franklin again,” she said suddenly.
Dennis had missed it—he was watching her profile.
The delivery van chose that moment to begin slowing as its driver no doubt checked his GPS, and with a quick flick Mindy whipped around him, straightened, then cut the corner of Franklin cleanly—and dropped back, as the Mercedes was now the car in front of them.
“I wasn’t driving this, but something else,” she said. “I traded it in for this one.”
“This was an improvement?” he asked, wondering how badly strapped she was.
“Yes.” She sent him a quick glance, her lips parted, her manner alert as a pointer on the hunt. “Look around us. We’re on a narrow road right now, but as soon as we reach a major boulevard, or the freeway, I bet you’ll see ten cars exactly like this.”
“Shit,” he exclaimed. “You’re right.”
“Stay well back, change lanes once in a while, and they never notice another old white Honda.”
“Damn. You’re totally right—”
“Hold on, I think he’s heading for Hollywood Blvd.”
When the Mercedes turned right, Mindy held back, then sedately made the turn. The Mercedes was several blocks ahead—and the light ahead turned red.
“Shit,” Dennis said. Then eyed the dashboard. “What did you add here?”
It looked at first glance like a typical Honda dash, except for a couple extra discreet buttons. “Fancy sound system?”
“No. Camera front, sides, back views. Sometimes I have to drive right next to the target, and the worst thing you can do is be seen peering into their car. Aside from the danger to other drivers.”
He let out a laugh that was more a release of tension then humor, and when the light changed, she was quick off the mark, but again, no tires screeching—no wasted motion. Yet she began, in tight, efficient steps, to shift in and out of traffic, climbing past the slower cars.
“There he is,” he said. “About four blocks up.”
“I see him. Unless it’s another model with somebody else in it. We’ll stick with it and see.”
All the way down Hollywood Blvd they drove. By the time it ended, she was again two cars behind the Mercedes, and he was shaking his head in amazement at her skill.
“I think I know where he’s going,” she said. “If I’m right, he’ll cut to the south here, then over, and then head for Laurel.”
And again she was right. When the Mercedes hit Laurel, it was speeding recklessly—but no worse than the regular traffic. Dennis had noticed before that the regulars did not drive safely or generously on Laurel Canyon, a narrow switchback road lined with expensive houses. But no one looked at the view—if you weren’t racing, too, they tailgated so close you could look up the angry executive’s nostrils in your rear view mirror. Which always made Dennis slow down at least ten mph.
Mindy kept the flow, cornering with such efficiency that the blocky little car handled like a low-slung racecar.
“Where did you learn to drive?”
“You mean like this?” she asked. “I took lessons from a guy who teaches police officers how to safely do high speed chases.”
“Did you go to a law enforcement training academy to train?”
“No, he’s the friend of the only step-brother I like. He’s in the air force, so I rarely get to see him. My step-brother, I mean. One Christmas, after I started doing this, I told him how I’d screwed up a couple times and lost targets. Told him my plan about the Honda, and he said I should learn to drive fast if I was going to put a fast engine in this thing. I hadn’t even thought about that! So I took his advice, and contacted the guy he recommended. It was really fun,” she added, beautifully feathering a corner.
“So you always wanted to hunt down cheating husbands?”
“Wait—” She eased back. “He’s not going to the studio—he’s turning west onto Mulholland.”
“Well that would explain ‘the house,’” Dennis said.
Mindy eased back more, and then gave a tiny nod when the Mercedes turned a sharp left. The car after kept going straight, and so when the one in front of Mindy and Dennis didn’t turn on a blinker, she threw on her blinker and eased right. The big Jaguar riding their bumper impatiently roared by, with three cars after it, then a car turned left—and Mindy efficiently cut right in behind it.
“Sorry,” she said with a quick contrite look out of those big brown eyes. “I interrupted you.”
“You go right ahead and do what you’re doing. He would have lost me somewhere down in that snarl around Hollywood Blvd,” he added. “Give me a compass and a map and I can orient, but I am shit in the city. And even if I wasn’t, I can’t drive like you.”
“I think either you’re born with a sense of direction or not,” she said. “I seem to have got it, that is, I always know where north and south are.”
“Like dogs,” Dennis said, and when her hands clenched on the wheel, he felt a shock of regret. “Mork, that didn’t come out the way I meant it to. I think dogs are cool, and beautiful, and there is no creature more loyal. Did you know that the reason dogs turn around and around before they take a dump is because they want to align themselves along the magnetic pole? At least, so a guy I met in Malaysia insisted. But I couldn’t help noticing that his lab, about the nicest animal I ever met, paid no attention whatsoever to the magnetic poles.”
Her hands had incrementally relaxed as they sped along the narrow road, with the hazy San Fernando Valley open all down the right side.
And since she had nothing to say about dogs and their pooping habits—idiot
, he thought privately, why did you bring that up?—he said, “Anyway, I wanted to know how you got into this gig.”
“Purely by accident.” Her voice was calm. “It was my dad’s second wife, who had been really nice to me when I was little. After she and my dad split, she inherited a property that turned out to be worth a lot, and she fell right into the clutches of a Haskell. My step-sister was complaining about this guy. Everyone thought he was sleazy—except her mom. Blinded by his bullshit.”
“So you did what?”
“Well, he’d started a dot com with my step-mom’s money. And, um, when I was a teenager, I learned how to dress in bland colors, and move around the perimeter of rooms, and basically hide in plain sight. Self defense. I was good at it. So I thought, hey, why not give it a try in a grownup situation—and, well, it took me two days. He’d got an apartment and everything for his new girlfriend. Paid for by the company—with my step-mom’s money.”
A pause, a flick of the wheel. “I discovered something I was finally good at, and it felt really good to catch out all his lies. I gave the evidence to my step-sister, because her mom hadn’t asked for this. Ratting out someone’s lover is seldom a win/win, which is why I always wait for them to come to me. Anyway, my step-sister confronted her mom, and I guess there was a big scene. But she couldn’t resist checking on him, and, well, busted him flat. She shitcanned his cheating ass. A month or two later, I got a call from a friend of a friend of a relative, and by then I’d been kind of studying up. He’s slowing. Is he looking for . . . no, there’s a delivery truck.”
They maneuvered around that, then she said suddenly, “It’s your turn. You said your first photo gig was the tiger cruise. Was that your first investigative report?”
“No—nothing to investigate. Tiger cruises are very what-you-see is what-you-get. My first investigation is pretty grim, so I’ll give you the Twitter version. I have an uncle who lives on a ranch. Taking in rescue animals. Noticed that they were getting a lot of dogs dumped in the desert, hurt and underfed. I was a kid—this was the year before I went into the service, a couple years after the tiger cruise report. My aunt and I did this one together, me with my camera, and she did the digging, teaching me how. She uncovered a so-called dog breeder. He’s still in jail,” Dennis finished with satisfaction.
Mindy drew in a deep breath that he could hear. “Good.” Then, in a tighter voice, “Okay, he’s slowing again.”
She slowed as well. The car between them flashed its lights impatiently at the Mercedes, which pulled over to let it pass. “Shit,” she said. “Dennis, duck down.” With her left hand, she pulled a black scarf from the side pocket of her door and threw it over her head then tucked the ends into the front of her dress as they approached the Mercedes.
Dennis grunted, squishing down as low as he could in the small space, and shoved the damn cane between the seats to the back. He noticed that Mindy didn’t glance over as she drove past the Mercedes at a steady pace. She hit the button for her side camera, and he heard a muted clicking come from inside the shotgun seat door.
Mindy kept driving. “I’ll try to find a place to turn around.” She slowed when she spotted a side road leading up to a private residence. “Gate, nowhere to safely hang a U,” she muttered, and passed on by.
They passed two more gated roads with no room for safe turning.
“Is he behind us?” Dennis asked.
“Yes, but hanging back.
“Shit. Think he made us?”
“Don’t know,” she said. “He’s not crowding our tail, at least. I’m going to edge up our speed. Stay low.”
“Right.” He grunted as he contorted his arm to reach back for his cell, then fumbled it between his knees. It was blinking with a missed call—from Mindy, just as she’d said.
He glanced sideways up at her. “I think it’s time to report in.” Which he should have thought of fifteen minutes ago—except he’d been so wrapped up in Mindy, her driving, and her actually talking about herself for once, that he’d forgotten he had a team. Well, part of a team. He hit Sloane’s number on the speed dial.
Mindy kept driving, then said, “If he keeps pace like this, then maybe the next step is to try some—oh, crap!”
Mindy slammed on the brakes, and Dennis sat up to discover two big, heavy vans blocking the road in front.
Chapter Eleven
Agent Sloane’s phone went straight to voicemail. Talking fast, Dennis gave a rundown on their situation, and ended with as close an approximation of their location as he could as he looked around.
To the right: a straight drop down a cliff. To the left, one of the private driveways. The gate was open.
Hank honked at them from behind, and turned on his left blinker. “What do we do?” Mindy asked in a small voice. “This is officially out of my wheelhouse—I’ve never been caught.”
“We still haven’t been caught,” Dennis said as he shut off his phone. “We’re just boxed, but we’ve got our phones, and our brains. We can do this.”
“Right,” she said, but still in that small voice.
“Go ahead, drive up as if this was an invitation. We’re Payton and Daniel, okay? Let’s improvise.” He shoved his phone into his pocket, hoping that out of sight, out of mind would work as long as possible.
They were on their own, but at least they still had their covers. He’d had to fast-talk out of dicey situations before. Keep cool, watch for chances, and they’d walk away from this one. Both of them.
His mind flashed back to the Hollywood location, and the satisfaction of letting his tiger rampage through the set. Where the heck had Mindy been? Hiding, of course. She had said herself that she was good at fading from notice—admittedly his rampage had been fast, but he hadn’t even been able to tease her scent from the chaos of other scents. He wondered briefly how many shots of his tiger were now all over YouTube, then a shadow at the edge of his vision caught his attention as a hawk drifted low over the drop into the valley, then winged overhead in a circle.
Damn. It had to have been following Hank from above, and noticed the Honda keeping pace—the shifter version of the traffic helicopter. It might even be the same damn shifter that had attacked Greg.
Why the hell hadn’t he thought of that? Too late now—and how could he explain? No, he wasn’t going to shock Mindy with a whole new set of problems when she was already facing enough tension. Better to sit tight and try to bull through.
All this streamed through his mind as Mindy turned up a narrow dirt road that switched back and forth a couple of times, each turn hidden by clumps of California black oak. Presently the road straightened out and widened to a circular driveway before a long, low one-story building that brought his friend JP’s mansion at home in Sanluce suddenly to mind.
Hank was right on their tail, but still Dennis saw Mindy sweeping the area for any escape route.
There wasn’t one. To one side, another sudden drop, affording a spectacular view of the mountains jutting above Malibu. Behind them the Valley stretched below. To the east, a high steel fence with points at the top. Nobody was vaulting over that—no one human, anyway. He wasn’t even sure his tiger could clear it, not that he was going anywhere without Mindy.
“Okay, Menace,” she said under her breath. “We’re Dan and Payton, but why did we follow that creep?”
“Because Haskell went ape-shit, and he’d promised we would meet the rest of the producers, now that Haskell has my check. Which I hope hasn’t bounced yet. So we followed Hank, thinking he’d lead us to the producers’ meeting.”
Mindy rolled to a stop against a big log. The Mercedes pulled in to the right, and one of the vans to the left. “So we’re pretending we didn’t get forced up here?”
“If we can give them any excuse not to escalate to threats, let’s lie like a couple of rugs, and the stupider they think we are the better,” he said.
“Got it.” Then he watched, admiration warming his core as she wriggled a little, her chin coming up. And
she hit the door handle.
Dennis hit his own and swung his cane out. As soon as he got out of the car, he spotted Hank behind them, and said, “Is this where the other producers hang out? Why didn’t Haskell let me meet them before this?”
Hank looked taken aback at this, and turned his head, a man plainly looking for orders.
Dennis was used to being among the biggest guys in any gathering, topped only by his friend Mick Volkov. But the pale-haired man who stepped leisurely out from behind one of the vans was probably four to six inches taller than Mick, and at least as broad through the chest. Like Dennis and Hank, he was dressed entirely in black. We look like a villains’ tea party, Dennis thought grimly as he watched Torvaldsen’s pale blue eyes range over Dennis then shift to Mindy.
Dennis’s hackles prickled, his tiger stirring inside him. This guy was definitely Erik Torvaldsen, anaconda shifter and a criminal with a long list of accusations from different parts of the world. So far, no one had been able to pin him down. The intel on him had pointed to the possibility that he was taking orders from Haskell, but that had apparently been wrong.
But as far as we know, Jerome Haskell is the big boss. “Who are you?” Dennis asked, looking around. “Has Jerry got here yet? I don’t know much about how to film a motion picture, but it seems to me he let things go to shit back there. Is it always like that?”
Torvaldsen said in accented English, “You are Daniel Moore?”
“That’s me,” Dennis said, putting a little extra gimp into his limp. “Newest producer on Millennium Gate, as of today, though I still haven’t seen a contract yet. But Jerry said gentleman’s agreement is the way people do things in Hollywood.”
“Come inside,” Torvaldsen said, as the van drivers flanked Dennis and Mindy.
She had pulled off her scarf and tucked it into her purse. She walked beside Dennis with a semblance of calm, but without her delightful hint of prance—reminding him of a German Shepherd pacing warily, tail down, ears flat. He noticed a big smudge of what looked like axel grease on the back of her skirt, and wondered if she’d been knocked down in the scramble. His head dropped—if she’d been hurt, if she got hurt, it would be totally on him.