The Ninja Daughter by Tori Eldridge

Author:Tori Eldridge [Pinter, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polis Books

Chapter Twenty-Nine

For the sake of speed, I called for a ride. My driver this afternoon was an athletic redhead named Kansas who worked as an intern for an architectural firm and had an uncanny resemblance to Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the star of one of my favorite box office bombs about a thrill-seeking bike messenger in New York.

“Have you seen Premium Rush?”

The randomness of my question threw her for all of two seconds before she smiled. “Were you the other one?”

I unstrapped the Merida from her car’s bike rack and glanced at the entrance to the entertainment complex. The Hollywood and Highland’s design drew from the Babylon set of DW Griffith’s 1916 epic film, Intolerance, and had a grand staircase leading to a coliseum of trendy shops, mammoth slab archways etched with hieroglyphs and griffins, and stone pachyderms perched atop the towering pillars.

“You know, if they had set the story in Los Angeles,” I said, “they could have raced across the Hollywood Walk of Fame, up those stairs, and skidded through the plaza’s sidewalk fountain.”

Kansas chuckled. “And straight to the casting couch.”

The fiberglass daybed had sat at the end of The Road to Hollywood—a mosaic path with anonymous quotes from Hollywood celebrities about how they got their start in the business. The artist had ended the path with a sobering, poignant, and, at the time, amusing symbol.

“Yeah,” I said. “The entertainment industry isn’t quite as entertaining as it used to be.”

“No shit.”

We shared a laugh. I would have gladly hung out with Kansas, whose taste in movies, sense of humor, and social opinions clearly gelled with my own. However, since Tran had already been at the Hollywood and Highland for fifty minutes, I needed to hurry. Once I secured my bike and helmet, I bolted through the coliseum like a shopper on Christmas Eve.

I found Tran on the top level in a Japanese restaurant, sitting near the back of the sushi bar. I walked past him and rounded the corner, then took the last seat at the bar, kitty-corner from Tran, against the wall by the emergency exit. From there, I could watch him diagonally across the sushi station and escape quickly if things went south.

I ordered a yellowtail roll, huddled over my phone, and pretended to text while Tran ate a plate of octopus sushi and salmon roe. Exotic choices. Anyone who looked the way he did, ate tako and ikura, and knew how to write in Korean, must have some sort of Asian in the mix. Hopefully not from Hong Kong. Tran and I already shared a fondness for knives, sushi, and secrecy; Hong Kong kinship would put me over the edge.

“You should try this,” he said, shaking me from my reverie and making me realize, much to my dismay, that I had been staring.

So much for ninja surveillance.

I forced a smile as he raised his seaweed-wrapped sushi and angled it to display the bright orange salmon eggs. “I’ve eaten ikura many times, thank you.” I meant it to sound condescending, but he took it as acceptance and requested an order for me.

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