True Fiction (Ian Ludlow Thrillers #1)(16)
“You knew you were a target, but instead of going to the police, or hiding in a cave in Malibu, you came up here and let me take you around, knowing it would put me in the line of fire. That makes you a bona fide, self-centered asshole.”
“I can see why you’d feel that way, but—”
“Asshole!” She shoved him hard and marched away.
Ian nearly fell, managed to regain his balance, and then rushed to catch up with her again. “You have it all wrong. I didn’t know that anybody wanted me dead until yesterday.”
She kept walking without looking at him. “What happened yesterday?”
“A plane crashed in Honolulu.”
“Yeah, I know. Everybody does. What does that have to do with anything?”
He took a deep breath. He was about to take a big risk. Once she heard his story, there was a fifty-fifty chance that she’d walk out on him. If that happened, he was afraid there was a 100 percent chance that she’d be killed. But he had no choice. He had to tell her.
“It was my idea.”
“Plane crashes happen all the time. It’s not exactly an original idea.”
Her flippant dismissal of his revelation was not the reaction he was expecting and it irritated him.
“Yes, so I’ve been told, but this crash is different. I know how it was done. It was one of the terrorism scenarios I came up with three years ago for the CIA.”
“You’re a writer,” she said. “Why would the CIA want terrorism ideas from you?”
“I had the same question,” he said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Malibu, California. Three Years Ago.
Ian Ludlow’s Spanish-style hacienda was nestled in the Santa Monica Mountains on a curving, secluded stretch of Mulholland Highway. It was a modest house, draped in bougainvillea and shaded by oaks.
The home was built and owned for decades by Dillon Harper, who starred in the TV series Saddlesore for its entire twenty-year run. That was one of the big reasons why Ian bought the house. He grew up watching Harper as the nameless bounty hunter who wandered the West, relentlessly hunting wanted men. By the time the show ended, Harper was as weather-beaten as a wooden barn and inseparable from the character he’d played. The actor, forever typecast as a Western hero, hardly worked after that. Harper’s family eventually moved the senile, widowed old actor into a bungalow at the Motion Picture & Television Country Home in Woodland Hills and sold the house to Ian.
Living in a house once occupied by a television icon made Ian feel like he was part of Hollywood history himself, which was important to him, since he was sure he’d never earn a place in it based on his TV writing. He’d made money in Hollywood, but not a lasting mark.
Every so often, Dillon Harper would slip away from the retirement home, wander around the San Fernando Valley, and convince somebody to drive him to his hacienda on Mulholland. Ian would open his front door and Harper, wearing his cowboy hat, would stroll right in and head for the wet bar, believing that he still lived there. They’d always end up spending a few pleasant hours drinking Johnnie Walker Black Label and talking about Saddlesore. Then Ian would remind Harper that it was time to get to the studio and take him back to the retirement home.
So Ian’s first thought when a black Suburban unexpectedly pulled up in front of his house that afternoon was that Harper was back again. It was perfect timing, too. Just moments before, Ian had been sitting in his office, struggling with the first paragraph of his new book and getting nowhere. In his misery, his gaze had drifted from his computer screen to his wall of framed TV screen credits, and then to his shelf of Clint Straker novels, for reassurance that he was actually capable of writing. Then he looked out his window and saw the Suburban arrive. He was delighted. It was the perfect excuse to spend the rest of the day drinking scotch with Harper and listening to his stories instead of trying to write one himself.
But Harper didn’t step out of the Suburban. Instead, it was two guys in suits wearing those single earbuds that were common fashion accessories for cops, federal agents, and bodyguards on the job. Ian was intrigued. The men glanced around for threats, then opened the back door for their passenger, a man in his sixties wearing an Italian suit tailored to add some blunt edges to his roundish body. Ian decided the two guys were bodyguards and that the passenger was their boss. What kind of boss? His first thought was a mob boss, but he quickly dismissed it as the product of an overactive imagination. But it was a relief to know that he still had one.
One bodyguard remained standing outside the Suburban while the other one escorted their boss to Ian’s door and knocked on it for him. This bodyguard was so thorough, Ian thought, he also protected his boss’s tender knuckles.
Ian slipped his bare feet into the pair of sheepskin Uggs that were under his desk and, in his T-shirt and sweatpants, went to greet his mysterious guest. He opened the door to a big, friendly smile from the older man and a cold stare from the stony-faced bodyguard who stood behind him.
“Hello there,” Ian said. “I don’t suppose you’re Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
“No, I’m not, Mr. Ludlow,” the smiling man said. “Do you get a lot of them up here?”
“About as often as I get unexpected guests with bodyguards.”
“I’d rather not travel with them but I’m afraid they’re a requirement for a man in my position.”