“It was his choice to respond in the way he did. Everyone gets a choice. He wasn’t just taking drugs, you see, he was illegally distributing them. A felony. We gave him the choice of paying us a reasonable sum to keep it quiet, or accepting the consequences once the police and our preferred journalists suddenly came into possession of the evidence. It turned out he didn’t have the money—he’d blown it all on drugs. Can you imagine—all those millions? No, baby, he brought it on himself.”
“And all this bullshit about being my stalker?”
“Oh, I genuinely enjoyed that little act. See, I was caught that time, early on, going through your trash, and I had to make up a story. The penalty for stalking, at that ‘harmless’ level, is a slap on the hand. The penalties for extortion and dealing in stolen property are more serious. I chose the easy way out. Which also meant I had an excuse to keep a kindly eye on you, amaternaleye, while making good money selling stories. I didn’t even haveto do all the work myself. I had the brilliant idea of setting up Where-Is-Griffin-Hart-dot-com, and your fans took the bait.”
“That wasyou?”
“You should be grateful—I’ve helped keep you on the straight and narrow. A maternal figure, you might say. Too scared to even go out in public, let alone get into trouble. Which has had the added benefit of creating a greater allure around you, which in turn has driven up the price of photos and gossip. You see why it’s so hard for me to let you go? People think you have so much power. They have no idea how much I control you.”
She lifted a huge book from a side table and wiped dust off the cover. It looked like a book of spells, the kind Lana had searched for as a child. “I was an actor too, once. A good one. But I didn’t have the benefits you were born with. I didn’t have power. You have no conception of what that’s like—to be a vulnerable young woman in this industry. I thought the stories of the casting couch belonged to the era of Hitchcock and Polanski, until it happened to me. The evil bastard paid me off, warned me that if I wanted to keep working, I would keep silent. But I found myself blacklisted anyway. Cops didn’t want to know. But I was patient. I knew I wasn’t his first victim, and I wouldn’t be his last. So I waited, and I watched. And when it became obvious who his next target would be, I got to her first. Got her to take a hidden camera. She fought him off and got out of there, but I had what I needed. Only, I thought, if I take this to the cops, what if they let him off? So we blackmailed him, didn’t we, Sweetie? And we split it three ways—a third to me, a third to her, and a third to charity, anonymously, of course. That’s been our model ever since—a profit share, though our operations have become more sophisticated, and more lucrative. The Screen Equity Foundation gets a third of everything we make.”
Griffin met Lana’s eye. Screen Equity—hischarity.
Maggie dropped the book and it thudded onto the stone veneer floor. “Cleaning up Hollywood, and taking a cut for our troubles.”
Griffin wriggled in his chair, and one of the giants shoved him down and held the gun to his head. “You’re making it dirtier, profiting from its filth, and paying off your guilt.”
“There’s no better way to clean up Hollywood than by publicly exposing it. People love seeing their heroes fall almost as much as they love seeing them rise. An emotional rollercoaster, just like in the movies. We’re in the emotion business, just like you. We feed the desire to feel something. We give people the dopamine hits that make them feel alive.” From outside, a car horn blasted. “That will be your sister now,” Maggie said to Lana. Another horn blared, and then another and another, until it was a continuous cacophony. A metallic hammering echoed, like someone was attacking a garage door with a mallet.
“What the heck is going on?” Maggie said to the doctor, just as his phone rang. He walked away, answering it.
“You might want to check Where-Is-Griffin-Hart-dot-com?” Griffin said.
Maggie gestured to Sweetie, who pulled out a phone and typed something in. She stared at it, her mouth dropping open, and looked at Maggie in fear.
“What?” Maggie snapped.
Sweetie rushed up, showing her the screen. Audio trickled out—the same newscaster as before, though it was hard to hear over the banging and honking, now joined by countless indecipherable shouts—there had to be dozens of people out there.
“A dramatic twist in the strange tale of Griffin Hart. Video circulating on the internet seems to show the Hollywood A-lister being kidnapped at gunpoint in a parking garage at the eliteBeverly Grove hospital in L.A. This has just now been verified by our experts as authentic footage. Reports are coming in that Mr. Hart’s fans are gathering outside an abandoned film studio in Burbank, along with a dozen or more Hollywood stars, claiming he’s being held captive there, with multiple live streams on social media. Nothing official from police yet, but Griffin’s co-star Estelle Duman is talking to the press outside the hospital, saying that he’s being set up by a gang of extortionists?—”
“Turn it off!” Maggie said, taking a swipe at Sweetie. “You haven’t been checking the website?”
“Why would I?” Sweetie said. “He’s right here! You told us to turn off our phones so they couldn’t be tracked!”
The doctor returned, out of breath. “They’re trying to bash down the doors.”
“Jerry, go!” Maggie shouted to one of the giants, who ran.
Lana turned to Griffin. “You arranged this?” she said quietly.
One end of his mouth quirked. He did do it, somehow. She should have known, when his face hadn’t blanked. He wasn’tpanicking, he wasacting, keeping Maggie talking. Lana looked up at the heavens in relief—or at least, the studio lights. So he had found the photo she’d left for him—the one from the shredder? Maggie, with no tattoo, deep in discussion with the detective, in the Chevy.
“It’s over, Maggie,” Griffin said. “You just confessed: extortion, kidnapping, who knows what else? And just like your operations, there’s irrefutable proof now.”
Maggie looked nervously at the door. “No one will believe you.”
“Maybe not, but they’ll believe you.” With difficulty, given that his hands were bound, he pulled a phone from the waistband of his jeans. “Say hi to the internet, Momma.”
Her eyes widened.
“Yes, you took a phone from me when you kidnapped me. I made sure I was conspicuously holding it—but it was Darnell’s. It had been in my pocket since the detective gave it to me this morning. You’ve been livestreaming to Estelle Duman’s millions of followers—on a slight time delay that gave us a chance to leave the hospital, so you’d lead me to Lana.”
Maggie stalked up, snatched his phone, and hurled it into the darkness. It hit something and smashed. “You entitled rich prick,” she snarled, drawing out a gun of her own. “If I’m going down, I’m taking you with me.” She turned to Sweetie. “Tell Keisha and Ophelia to finish off the sister and Darnell Lascelles and get out of there.”
Lana leaped up. “No!” The room spun. With her feet tied, she unbalanced. Maggie leveled her gun at Griffin, and there was a flash of movement as Griffin kicked out. A gunshot boomed, the sound blasting through Lana’s brain. She hit the ground hard, crying out. Pain seared through her arm and shoulder. Her chin whacked into the discarded book, driving her teeth into her cheek. Her T-shirt was soaked with crimson. She tasted blood.
Her blown hearing muffled Maggie’s next words, but they were clear enough. “Finish her.”
