gave a curt nod. Flattery was always nice, but she had no interest in being fawned over and needed to make that clear from the start.
“Tell me—what is it you hope to get out of this?” Trena checked her side and rearview mirrors and merged into oncoming traffic. At the charity auction, Priya had been the most aggressive bidder by far, pledging a surprising amount of money to ensure she won the “Day of Mentoring with Trena Moretti” prize. So surely she had some kind of agenda in mind.
Without hesitation, Priya replied, “An offer for a full-time position as your assistant would be a good start.”
Trena took a moment to process the words. While it didn’t exactly come as a surprise, she wasn’t convinced it would work. Her last assistant had quit after less than a month, citing extreme boredom in the exit interview, and Trena couldn’t say that she blamed her. Other than sending the girl on frequent chai runs, there really wasn’t much for her to do. Or rather, there was plenty for her to do, but Trena was too much of a control freak to actually delegate anything important.
She stopped at a red light and nodded toward the billboard ahead touting Madison Brooks’s upcoming movie. Madison might be missing, but her face was just about everywhere one looked—peering out from newspapers, magazines, TV screens, movie ads, and tasteless internet memes—like a specter haunting the city. In this particular case she wore her usual impenetrable expression, her face a mask of poised professionalism that gave nothing away.
“What do you think happened to her?” Trena nodded toward the sign and watched as Priya regarded it with a long, shrewd look.
“Wherever she is, I don’t believe for a second that Aster Amirpour was involved.” Priya glanced between the picture of Madison and Trena. “I think someone’s setting her up.”
Trena held the look. The girl had a spark of fire and determination Trena could relate to, only Priya seemed a bit more composed and polished than Trena had been at her age.
“She’s too pampered, too soft, a born-and-bred Beverly Hills princess if I ever saw one.” Priya bit her lip, as though surprised she’d just said that out loud. “I just don’t believe she has it in her to go all homicidal like that.”
“Maybe not,” Trena said. “But under the right circumstances, anyone’s capable of just about anything, murder included—never forget that.” As a journalist, it was the motto Trena lived by. After a moment she added, “And yet, I also have a hard time believing Aster’s involved with whatever happened to Madison Brooks.” Her words faded into silence as they passed through the intersection.
It was just too easy, too convenient. After weeks with little to nothing to go on, the clues had just popped out of nowhere, lining up like obedient soldiers awaiting inspection. Maybe that was standard practice on TV shows where crimes were regularly committed and solved in the forty-two minutes of airtime allotted between commercial breaks, but in the real world, it was never that easy. Life was messy. Murder was messier.
When it came right down to it, the whole Aster/Madison conspiracy reeked of bullshit. One hundred percent, pure grade bullshit.
Or, this being LA, free-range, grass-fed, organic bullshit—but bullshit all the same.
Trena had a nose for bullshit, able to sniff it out like a hog on a truffle hunt. Ever since she was a kid, she’d had a sixth sense for trouble and lies. Her grandmother, Noni, claimed she’d inherited “the gift” of a long line of Moretti women, but Trena had always been practical and no-nonsense, never buying into Noni’s woo-woo beliefs. All she knew for sure was that her gut knew things well before her head had caught on, and that instinct, when she followed it, never steered her wrong.
It was what helped her survive the tough, crime-ridden neighborhood she’d grown up in.
It was what led her to the best stories back when she was first starting out as a journalist.
And more recently, it was what saved her from making the biggest mistake of her life by almost marrying her lying, cheating ex-fiancé.
While moving to LA wasn’t exactly the career path she’d planned, and while more than one colleague (mainly print snobs) had questioned whether transitioning from her reporting gig at the Washington Post to spearhead the LA Times digital division wasn’t perhaps a step down, Trena didn’t care. Step down or not, one thing was sure—it was a step in a new direction. A step away from a past she was eager to put well behind her. Not only did the job get her out of DC, but it offered a whole new life she’d never considered. And what better place to reinvent herself than in the very city that specialized in extreme makeovers?
During the five hours it had taken to fly from DC to LA, Trena had decided to make her mark at the Times by exposing the thick layer of grime hidden beneath the town’s glossy exterior. It probably wouldn’t make her the most popular journalist, but it would make her the most feared, and where there was fear there was power.
While she hated to think of Madison’s disappearance as a lucky break, there was no denying the articles she’d written about it had elevated Trena’s byline to must-read status. She was the first to question whether Madison had been murdered—the first to point out how the LAPD wasn’t doing much in the way of investigating. Though her reporting hadn’t won her any fans where local law enforcement was concerned, it had worked at spurring them into action. And it was only a short time later when evidence of foul play began to appear.
“Tell me what you know about Madison.” Trena cruised past a long line of palm trees, their fronds looking dull and burnt, slumping beneath the relentless glare of the sun. “What do you see when you look in those eyes?” She motioned toward another of Madison’s billboards, her deep violet gaze hinting at something Trena could never quite grasp.
It was the gaze of one who’d stared into the abyss and lived to tell the tale—or, in Madison’s case, bury the tale so deep even a cadaver-sniffing hound couldn’t track it.
Then again, maybe Trena was in too deep to see it objectively. Maybe a younger, fresher, less jaded perspective was just what she needed.
Priya looked thoughtful as she picked at the lid on her cup. “I see a girl with a solid grasp on her image. A girl who only reveals what she wants you to see. As for what I know . . .” She frowned. “Probably the same stuff as you. She’s an only child. Her parents were killed in a house fire when she was nine. After which she was sent to live with a nice foster family in Connecticut, only to leave home at fourteen and head for LA, where she pretty much became an overnight success.”
“Eight,” Trena interrupted. “The fire happened when Madison was eight.”
Priya cocked her head. “Really? Could’ve sworn it was nine.”
Trena ran a quick mental review of everything she’d read, everything she knew. It wasn’t the age that mattered. Trena knew she was right, and yet it also begged a question she hadn’t thought to pose until now. Her pulse quickening, she said, “Where was Madison between the fire and her foster parents? Who looked after her—where did she stay?”
“I don’t know.” Priya squinted. “I always assumed she was caught up in the system.”
It was the same thing Trena had assumed, and it left her steeped in shame. Assuming was for amateurs. It was sloppy, lazy, and Trena knew better. Perhaps she could use an assistant, after all. More than ever she was convinced that the key to discovering where Madison had gone depended on uncovering where she’d been long before she became Hollywood’s It Girl. So far, her research had gotten her nowhere, and yet one simple conversation with Priya had pointed down an alley that just might yield something good.
“It’s just that . . .” Priya paused as though organizing her thoughts. “Her bio reads more like fiction than real life. It has just the right amount of tragedy, followed by just the kind of emotional punch the audience loves. Like they called in the industry’s top screenwriters to craft the story of Madison’s rise to the top. It doesn’t ring true.”
Trena