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“Call nine-one-one,” I screamed. He pulled something out of his pocket as he made his way cautiously down the hill.
I looked for my phone again and then back uphill. Black Jacket Guy was flicking a cigarette lighter as he calmlyapproached. The fucker smiled at me. “You’re going to tell me where the stick is,” he yelled. He had an accent.
What stick?My heart stopped.This morning’s note on my car. I’d thought it was meant for my neighbor.
Put the USB stick under the red bush or else.
Crash, gasoline, lighter. This was not good.
Even if I knew where the stupid stick he wanted was, I’d seen enough movies to know how this ended.
I couldn’t die like this. My last words to my mom had been angry ones.
CHAPTER 2
Duke
We arrivedat Cardinelli’s in Westwood fashionably late for lunch.
I ushered my client, Ariana, and her lunch date, Missy, inside without incident. This wasthe bestwhite-tablecloth restaurant if you wanted good Italian in this part of the city.
I scanned for threats as I followed them and the maître d’ to their table.
“Sorry for the delay,” Constance said over my comms earpiece. “I’m on the way now.” Constance Collier, a new addition to our team, over from Hanson Security, was supposed to be my partner on this job. Then her doctor had called and moved up her appointment.
“Copy that. No issues here.” I’d told her to skip this and go. This was a simple lunch gig, nothing I couldn’t handle alone.
“But we want the VVIP section,” Ariana complained. The daughter of a Russian oligarch, she was the epitome of a spoiled, entitled Hollywood brat. She didn’t settle for VIP status. Everything had to be better than her competition.
Her real name was Zoya Zolotarev. Try saying that three times fast. And so, with Daddy’s money, a nose job, and a boob job, Ariana Harmony had gotten her start in Hollywood. Her big break came when her father financed a film that then cast her in the lead role. Her bouncing tits in the plentiful nude scenes did the rest. Now, she was on the reality TV showReal Models of Beverly Hills, which of course had no reality in it whatsoever.
The maître d’ gave the girls the pick of two other tables.
Ariana chose the one by the courtyard window. She didn’t seem to notice the maître d’s eye roll as he left.
I knew for a fact that there was no VVIP or even a VIP section here.
As the girls ordered drinks and looked over the menu, I scanned the room, assessing and determining threat levels. In a high-end restaurant like this, the maximum threat was usually a two on a ten-scale.
Technically, my job was to keep my client safe from kidnapping, assault, theft, and harassment. With Ariana, it usually amounted to keeping overzealous selfie-seekers at bay, regardless of how innocuous they seemed.
And then there were the paparazzi. I hated dealing with those pricks.
While the girls discussed the menu, I opened my phone and checked on Constance’s location. The icon on the map showed she had a long way to go.
“Asian chicken salad, medium rare,” Missy ordered.
The server nodded with a wry smile, knowing enough not to comment on the airhead’s apparent desire for undercooked poultry.
Ariana also ordered salad, typical fare for actresses out in public.
What the public didn’t know was that as soon as she got home, a bucket of hot and spicy Kentucky Fried Chicken wouldbe on the way. After that, she’d go into the bathroom and puke it up. Also typical Hollywood.
Having grown up with very little food on the table, I couldn’t understand it. Eating and then barfing it up didn’t compute for me.
Standing by the wall and smelling all the food I was not able to taste made this part of my job annoying, but at least I was done having to worry about roadside IEDs. Plus, I got to sleep in a bed instead of on a dirt floor in a country where I didn’t speak the language.
As boring as it could be, guarding a celebrity was a lot easier than dealing with the rock groups that came through town. Trouble sought those guys out, and they were always high, or drunk, or both. It was worse than herding cats, and my ass was on the line if trouble got past me.
