“Why would they lie and say my family had hired them?”
“Whoever they’re working for, they don’t want anyone to find out.”
“This older guy—maybe he was the pocket-dial. What did he say? ‘Don’t contact me again until it’s all over’? What’s all over?”
“A divorce?”
When they returned to the car, Darnell was there, taking selfies with the group of crew. He excused himself and joined Griffin and Lana.
“I couldn’t track the number for that butt-dial,” he said, “but I did figure out where the call was made. I got a sound engineer buddy of mine to pull it apart, and in the background, you can hear someone call a doctor’s name. Plus, there was beeping—hospital call buttons, patient monitors. I looked up the doctor, and she’s an oncologist at the Beverly Grove Health Center.”
“I know it,” Griffin said. “I was born there.”
“You and half of L.A.’s rich and famous. I have an …associatethere who owes me a favor, and she got me a spreadsheet of staffand current patients.” Darnell reached into his car—another rental—pulled out several sheets of paper, and handed them to Lana.
“There are a lot of names,” she said, holding it so Griffin could see, “though we can eliminate the women, and we can start with oncology.”
“Don’t look at what’s there—look at what’s not,” Darnell said.
Lana seemed confused.
“Darnell likes to talk in catchphrases from his show.” Griffin pointed at a name on the list. “That’s a director I worked with once.”
“Franklin Ross?” Darnell asked. “Saw that. Palliative, so you can probably rule him out. You got a bunch of high-profiles there. Let me know if anything pops.” He got into the car. “Oh, and leave by the back gate—your stalker in your old Chevy is waiting out front.”
“You don’t want your car back?” Griffin called.
“Just return it to my man when you’re done. I got a few other ideas—I’ll go home and sift through them. I’m trying to track Vivien’s movements before her phone went dead.” He saluted. “The city doesn’t sleep, and neither do I.”
Griffin stared as Darnell reversed out.
“Griffin?” Lana said, touching his arm.
“The city doesn’t sleep, and neither do I.Another catchphrase from his P.I. show—the salute, too. He’s even putting on the ‘face.’”
“He did look a little different.”
“Let’s head back to mine and go through this list.”
As they reversed out, a voice cut through from among the crew. “Griffin Hart is an asshole.”
He drove past, ignoring them. Again, he felt Lana’s eyes on him.
“Did I do that thing just then?” he said. “Blank? Retract.”
“You did.”
“Huh.” He’d felt himself do it. He’d never thought about it before, not consciously.
“Isee you, Griffin. At least, I think I do.”
“You know what? I think you do too.”
Chapter 15
Lana
Lana couldn’t figure out how Griffin seemed so easy for people to hate. Easy to love, sure.Tooeasy to love, she thought as he cruised through the lot—a small town of narrow lanes and warehouses, with even its own street names. But that level of vitriol, for someone people didn’t know? And then there were the ones who adored him so much they waited outside his gate. Something to read up on—parasocial relationships alone didn’t explain it.
