He hadn’t been stranded alone with a stalker since a fourteen-year-old girl scaled the fence around his Malibu beach house, stripped naked, dived into his pool and made a point of floating there, smiling at him. He locked himself in the gardener’s shed and called the cops, but someone leaked it—someone within the police, he suspected. They contacted his manager, generously offering to stay silent on the matter in exchange for a stupid amount of money. Some people in his position would pay the blackmail and be done with it, but he had a problem with letting the bad guys win, so he told them to get screwed. So the headlines appeared.Griffin Hart Found With Naked Underage Girl In His Pool. Police Probing Griffin Hart Incident With Naked Child. Police Called To Griffin Hart’s Mansion After Incident With Nude Underage Girl. The girl was charged with trespass, but those kinds of headlines never completely went away.Did Griffin Hart Pay Off Nude Underage Girl? Griffin Hart and The Underage Naked Girl in his Pool: What Is He Hiding?Since then, he’d moved back into his parents’ gated community and beefed up his security. Though sometimes you felt like you were the one in the zoo, building walls to keep yourself inside. Not to mention that it was uncool to be living with your parents in your thirties.
Barely clothed or not, he didn’t like being face-to-face with potential stalkers or blackmailers, even if this woman seemed more cynical than most. She wasn’t fawning over him, so that was a positive. Sure, he was twice her size, especially since he’d beefed up for the role, but a bullet or blade could pierce his flesh as easily as anyone’s.
“How about I leave the phone here?” She crouched, placing it on the stone floor between them. “And step back, and then you can…” She gestured that he should pick it up, keeping her movements smooth as if he were a skittish horse.
A photo filled the screen—and the people in it did appear to be clothed. He approached it, and she took the same number of steps back, playing the little game his subconscious had invented even while biting her lip like she was trying not to smile. He picked up the phone. It was a selfie of him with a woman.
“This is your sister? And you’re showing this to me because…?”
“Do you know her?” He couldn’t figure out whether her tone was accusatory or hopeful.
“She looks a little familiar.”
“A little familiar? You’ve got your arm around her!”
“I do not. I’m not even touching her. She’s touching me, but…”
“You’re not?” She took a step, then halted. “Permission to approach?” There was a note of sarcasm in her voice.
“Knock yourself out.” He held out the phone. “I get asked all the time for selfies from random people. I make sure my hands are in shot—and not attached to anyone’s body parts. I don’t want to get accused of anything.”
She took the phone and checked the picture. “Huh,” she said, surprised to see he was telling the truth.
“The studio threw a party when we started filming season two. I went along for like thirty minutes. Contractual obligation. Must have been in selfies with a hundred people, then I left. Sometimes it’s good to give them what they want right away so they bug you less.”
“So, you didn’t have a romantic relationship.”
“Definitely not. Is your sister working on set?”
“She was then, as a production assistant, but not for a month. That’s the last photo I have of her, the last time I know for sure where she was and who she was with. She’s missing, and I know something’s happened, something’s wrong. I need to find her.”
Her voice cracked. This time, she wasn’t lying.
Chapter 4
Lana
“I’m sorry, run that by me again.” Griffin Hart crossed his arms and tilted his head—a pose straight out of his movieShadow Cop.
Lana smacked into a reality check. Griffin Hart—theGriffin Hart, Mr. Hart, Achilles himself—was standing in front of her. Talking to her. And yes, she hadn’t known he existed until a week ago, but she was very aware of him now. It was like her subconscious and her body believed they knew him from all their one-on-one time—him on the screen, her watching. As if she had a memory of what it was like to run a finger down the side of his face, navigating the skin and the stubble.
And now she was starting to understand the walking forward/walking backward. The parasocial relationship was real.
Focus,Lana.You’re not here for this. And he’s not Ann Patchett.
“My sister, Vivien Fleming. I’ve filed a missing person report, but the police are like…” Lana shrugged. “They think she’s a flake. As do most people who don’t know her well, but…” Lana blurted out a rundown of events to date. It wasn’t coherent, butshe’d been holding it in all week, and anything was better than him thinking she was a stalker, especially because she wasn’t totally sure shewasn’t, given the effect he had on her. “I’m sorry, none of that makes sense, does it?”
“No, I get it. I haven’t heard anything on set about a missing woman. There was a cop up here the other day. Was that related? I assumed it was local PR.”
“That was the cop I spoke to last week. Pretty sure he didn’t find anything. Pretty sure he didn’t look. Like I say, they’ve written her off.”
“But you haven’t.”
“I know her better than anyone. Something’s happened.”
He pointed at the phone. “Is this why you were stalking my trailer?”
“I wasn’t stalking.” Lana’s cheeks fired hot, as if they’d learned muscle memory from the incident. “I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’m the only one looking for her, and I’m running out of ideas, so…”
