Read Online Hot Shot by Kevin Allman - Free Book Online Page B

of there. Go stay somewhere else.”
    â€œYou’re not listening! I can’t even go outside to get the paper, Jocelyn!”
    â€œCalm down. Try to look at the positive side. The tabloids are saying that Felina got murdered over what she intended to write. And Danziger’s decided to go ahead with the book.”
    â€œOf course he has! Everyone in this city wants the story!”
    â€œCalm down, Kieran, and listen.” Jocelyn had on her soothing voice, the aural equivalent of honey and Prozac. “There won’t be any extra money up front. He does have a signed contract, but you should do very well on the back end. But you have to work fast.”
    â€œHow can I work like this? I’m sitting on the floor right now because they’re shooting through my—”
    â€œShooting?”
    â€œNot with an Uzi. With a six-hundred-millimeter lens!”
    I crawled to the window and peeked out the blind. Sometime during the morning, my address had gotten out. Down on Fourteenth Street, three news vans were parked outside, their satellite dishes and phallic antennas outlined against the trees. Crews were sitting placidly on the curbs, like birds in a Hitchcock movie. One of the neighbors must have called the cops, because there was a Santa Monica police cruiser down there, too, making sure the news crews stayed on public property. I didn’t have much time before one of the crews would find a neighbor who would gladly take a hundred-dollar bill in exchange for letting the stalkerazzi into their living room to point a video camera at my window.
    Claudia’s call-waiting clicked in. “Ignore that, Kieran. Now listen. Get out of there any way you can, Peaches. Get a hotel room or go stay with a friend. As soon as you’re safe, call me and let me know where you are.”
    The phone started ringing again the second I broke the connection.
    *   *   *
    I tossed my duffel out the bedroom window. It landed with a squish in the still-wet ground. The drop was twelve feet or so. I breathed deeply, made sure my laptop was strapped securely to my back, relaxed my knees, and dropped after it. Ouch. I laid in the dichondra, trying to catch my breath and still my heart. Biscuit, the neighbors’ Jack Russell terrier, came over and sniffed me without any particular interest, as if I dropped into his backyard every morning.
    Claudia was waiting for me in the supermarket parking lot at Fourteenth and Wilshire. Her sunglasses hid her eyes, and I couldn’t read her face.
    â€œThanks, Claude.”
    She started the car and we merged with the noontime traffic on Wilshire. “So where are we going?”
    â€œThere’s some cheap motels over on Pico. But I need to go to the ATM first.”
    After a minute, she said, “I drove past the house. What have you stepped in, Kieran?”
    â€œA pile of Biscuit’s shit.”
    She reached over and punched a cassette into the dash, and the sad, sweet voices of Lyle Lovett and Shawn Colvin came out of the back speaker. I looked at Claudia’s hand. There was a white clayish material under the nails, and her second finger was bare.
    â€œWhere’s your ring?”
    â€œI took it off this morning when I was grouting the bathroom.”
    â€œYou could have put it back on,” I said after a moment.
    â€œI just forgot.”
    I looked out the window. A homeless crone was inching her way up the sidewalk, towing a caravan of shopping carts roped together with knotted plastic bags. “Did you really forget?”
    â€œOh, Kieran.” Claudia’s voice was exhausted. “There’s enough going on. Drop the paranoia.”
    Claudia pulled into the Wind & Sea, an anonymous little fleabag motel with a neon schooner on the roof and a battered marquee that advertised W KLY RATS • FREE L CAL CAL S • COL R TV . I sat in the car while Claudia used her Visa to book me a room for a week. She had