They were almost at Darnell’s car when Lana halted. “I forgot to mention the pregnancy! You’d think that’d be the first thing on my mind. I’ll go tell her.”
Griffin grabbed her hand. “Maybe don’t.”
“Why not?” She looked up, surprised. “Everything okay, Griffin? You were quiet in there.”
“There was something she wasn’t telling us.”
“She said she couldn’t—privacy and stuff. Wouldn’t it make sense if the police knew everything we did?”
“It felt like more than that. I think there’s something bigger going on, something more sensitive.”
“The only vibe I picked up was that she should be in a hospital.”
They watched her drive away. Griffin noticed movement behind Lana. He swore, releasing her hand. “Let’s get out of here.” She started to look behind. “Don’t look, just get in the car. We’re being filmed.”
He exited the lot quickly, heading for Santa Monica Boulevard. “They’re not following,” he said, checking the mirror.
“Who was it?”
“Just some randoms, far as I can tell. Not paps. We’ll know for sure when it turns up on Where-Is-Griffin-Hart-dot-com.”
“You really have trust issues, don’t you? I mean, I can understand—stalkers, paparazzi, Big Bird…”
Griffin’s mouth tightened. She didn’t know half of it. She didn’t know a tenth of it. “I’m just a guy who tries to keep his head down.”
“While being super-famous.”
“You see my basic problem.”
“Yeah, trust issues. Wait—is that your Achilles heel?”
“You know Achilles’ heel killed him in the end? Season three plot spoiler. It wasn’t paranoia. His mom dipped him in the River Styx as a baby so he’d be invincible, but?—”
“But she held him by the heel, so she missed that part.”
“And then one day he gets an arrow through the heel. So.” He glanced in the mirror. A black SUV was following them. “Turned out he was only human after all.”
“I’m not saying there’s no basis to the risk posed by an Achilles heel.” Reading his expression, Lana turned to look behind. “Griffin? What is it?”
“Nothing. Thought it might be the goons, but it’s a mom and her kids.”
Lana planted a palm on her chest. “I feel like I’m on some fairground ride designed to spike your adrenaline at regular intervals.”
“Let’s take time out to go over all this. We can head to my place.” He realized he was already navigating in that direction. He was taking Lana home after knowing her for a day?
“Your place?”
“I’d suggest your place, but I imagine mine is more secure—it’s a gated community, with security. This is assuming you trust me.”
“I do trust you, but I’m one of these naïve, trusting types. And maybe I’m getting you mixed up with your characters—you do like to play the hero.”
“SometimesIget myself mixed up with my characters. Though I’m no Darnell there. I’d hate to think what he’d be like if he’d played a serial killer instead of a P.I.”
“‘Are you the new person drawn toward me? To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose.’”
“Whitman, again.” Griffin thought for a minute, picturing the book in the pile beside his bed. “‘Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man? Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion?’” He pulled into a turning bay and waited for a break in the traffic. “To be honest, I don’t even really choose these hero roles. I just getasked to do them, and if they sound interesting, I say yes. And I get lucky that most of my films do well, so I get asked again.”
“You call it luck, but you totally become those characters, I don’t know how. I found it hard to even walk normally when the camera was on me, and I was way off in the background.” Lana examined her palms. “It’s like my hands were no longer a natural extension of my arms, and I couldn’t remember what I usually did with them. Same with my eyes—I didn’t know where to look, and couldn’t think where I’d normally look while I was walking. Meanwhile, you have the camera in your face, and half the time you’re delivering your lines to a pole with some tape on it. What’s the tape even for?”
