way there, then.”
I grinned a little. “I get the dollar guided tour?”
Tai smiled again. The small gesture seemed bigger on his tattooed face. “Yeah, I guess I can do that. Come on, let’s get outta here.”
6
Tai led me to a silver Lincoln Town Car in the parking lot, and after some internal debate, I tossed my luggage in the backseat and climbed into the front. I don’t do well with a chauffeur, okay? It’s just not natural.
“Excuse me.” Tai leaned over to reach for a black box under my seat. Fishing a silver key out, tiny in his large hands, he unlocked it to reveal a handgun, which he quickly slid into the holster under his arm. “Can’t take it into the airport, obviously.”
“Yeah, I get it.” Okay, coming from the land of deer hunters and gun racks, maybe I shouldn’t have been so concerned by the sight of the weapon, but really, I didn’t know anyone who openly carried a sidearm. Except my brother, the cop. He doesn’t count. “You all go armed like that?”
“No, most don’t. Bobby and I do because…well, Gretchen had some nasty stalker stuff a few years go, so now we just don’t take chances.”
I vaguely remembered hearing about that in the news. The dude went to jail, maybe? Celebrity gossip wasn’t something I kept up on really. “You been with her long?”
Tai nodded as we drove through a tunnel leading out of the airport. “Couple of years. Bobby’s been with her a little longer. We’re kinda the rarity. She goes through staff pretty quick.” He darted a glance at me. “To be honest, I’m not sure why you’re here, other than Reggie said you were coming.”
“Reggie?”
“Her agent.” Oh great. Another agent. I didn’t have a good history with agents. “So, you don’t know Reggie?”
“Guess my people talked to her people.” If this Reggie knew I was coming, that meant he knew Axel. I had to wonder if that made him another demon, or one of Axel’s demon-sworn, or maybe just Axel himself, in disguise. Should be interesting to find out.
“So…why
“I’m a specialist.”
“In what?”
“In the kind of problem that Miss Keene may or may not have.” Yeah, that sounded suitably vague. I was actually kind of proud of my evasion techniques. “Somebody asked me to come check on things, so I am.”
The bodyguard eyed me up and down. “No offense, but you don’t look like much.”
Couldn’t argue with the guy there. I mean, I was six one, yeah, but the Maori masher sitting next to me outweighed me by a good seventy-five pounds. Probably more. A heavy hitter I was not. “I’m wiry.”
Tai snorted his laugh, and shook his head in amusement. “’Kay, man, if you say so.”
The drive into L.A. wasn’t nearly as interesting as I’d hoped it would be. The sun was shining brightly, which was nice after the overcast Missouri winter. But whatever highway we were on, it seemed to be just another gray stretch of pavement looming over the streets below, like every other gray stretch of pavement I’d ever seen. What local color I could see involved a few scraggly palm trees (not nearly as many as TV would have you believe), some other spindly trees I couldn’t name, and nondescript buildings that occasionally sprouted tall enough to be seen over the sides of the guardrails. Really, it looked remarkably like Johnson County, back home, only with more lanes and fewer cows.
The only point of curiosity was the elevated train running down the middle. When I expressed interest, Tai identified it as “The green line. Rapid transit.”
Once the loops and turns of the highway got us headed in the right general direction, Tai also pointed out a gray smudge in the distance. “That’s downtown, where we’re headed.”
I squinted a little. “Is that the smog?”
“Yeah. It’s lighter in the winter. In the summer, you can’t even see the mountains.” That was light? Ugh. “Not as much traffic, this close to the holiday.” I eyed the lanes and lanes of cars streaking along beside us and decided I never wanted to see actual traffic. There seemed to be more of the iconic palm trees, but when I remarked on how pretty they were (’cause isn’t that what you’re supposed to say?), the big man next to me just wrinkled his nose.
“Giant rats live in those trees.”
“Seriously?”
“Dead serious. I saw one the size of a cat once.”
Well, isn’t that…special. I made a mental note to be on the lookout for any giant rodents, especially any of them with glowing red eyes. I didn’t trust Axel not to check up on me, and that’d be the perfect hiding spot, given his predilection for small vermin disguises. “So…any local points of interest I shouldn’t miss while I’m in town?”
Tai chuckled again. “Aside from the usual touristy stuff? Not really. I imagine we’ll get dragged to a few parties in the next week or so, hitting up the New Year’s celebrations. Might see some interesting places then.”
Mentally, I started planning how to actually guard someone’s body in a room full of Hollywood’s elite. It would be easier if I had the foggiest idea what I might be up against. And why couldn’t this be Halloween instead, when I might get away with carrying my sword in public? “She go to those kind of things a lot?”
“When she’s not on set somewhere, yeah. Usually, security’s pretty high at the big-name shindigs, so we
