Chapter 4 Glass Houses

Lena had always believed there were only two kinds of night in Los Angeles: the fever‑bright haze that clung to Sunset Boulevard and the hush that settled over the hills after midnight, like a sheet pulled over a restless body. Tonight felt like neither. Tonight was sharp-an exposed wire humming with current, waiting for someone to touch it and scream.

They left the hotel through the service corridor, Callum's hand wrapped around Lena's wrist with a firmness that wasn't quite gentle but wasn't possession either. It was urgency turned physical. The overnight concierge, paid for silence, watched them pass without acknowledgment. A loading dock door yawned open, revealing a rear alley where the city's neon dissolved into a single, flickering security lamp.

A matte‑black SUV idled there, engine whispering. The driver-a woman in a charcoal bomber jacket, hair scraped into a silver‑streaked bun-stepped out. Lena recognized her voice from Callum's earlier call: the British fixer, Eleanor Shaw. There was something hawkish in Eleanor's gaze, like she existed on a diet of secrets and caffeine.

"You said two bags," she greeted, accent clipped, eyes sweeping for tails. "I count three."

Callum lifted the duffel in his free hand. "Equipment. Not clothes."

"Cameras or guns?" Eleanor asked.

"Both," he said.

Lena stiffened. She hadn't known about guns.

Eleanor nodded once, unimpressed. "Fine. Get in."

They slid into the back seat. Blackout curtains velcroed over the windows reduced the outside world to murky silhouettes. Eleanor drove without headlights for half a block before merging onto an access road that paralleled the 101. The SUV's cabin smelled faintly of gun oil and peppermint gum.

Lena exhaled only when downtown's spires receded in the rear view.

Callum's voice, low: "We'll reach the safehouse in forty minutes. Make calls if you need to, but keep them under ninety seconds. Burner only."

She held her phone but didn't dial. There was no one she trusted on the other end of any line-only contracts, agencies, and hollow friendships curated for red carpets. Her mother would panic. Her agent would leak. Silence felt safer, if lonelier.

Outside, sodium lights strobed across concrete walls, painting their faces in slices of amber and shadow. Lena studied Callum's profile: the tightness along his jaw, the shallow cut on his knuckles from punching a wall earlier. He looked like a man preparing to sacrifice something important and unsure whether it would be enough.

"Where's the safehouse?" she asked.

"Topanga Canyon. Belonged to a stunt coordinator I worked with-he died on set, no family. Deed's in a shell company."

"A ghost house," she murmured.

"Exactly," Eleanor said from the front. "No utilities in your names, no Wi‑Fi, no cameras-except ours. Perimeter's thermal‑wired, satellite uplink is one‑way, and the nearest neighbor breeds alpacas and hates people."

"Charming," Lena whispered.

They sank into silence. The road curved, climbing into the dark shoulders of the Santa Monica Mountains. Cell service blinked out. Somewhere below, the city glittered like broken glass.

Lena's thoughts drifted back to Room 1212: Owen's half‑lit face, the chill in his smile, the word patient. She pressed her palm to the side window, the glass cooler than her skin. For years she had cultivated detachment-an armor stitched from runways and retouched magazine spreads. But Owen hadn't bothered with seduction; he'd gone straight for nerve and marrow. Now every reflex fired at once: fight, flight, freeze. None felt adequate.

Eleanor cleared her throat. "You two have about thirty hours before the tabloids get tomorrow's hook. Someone spotted a figure on your penthouse balcony snapping photos with a long lens. LAPD took a statement from the hotel. Pap leaked the incident report."

"That's impossible," Callum muttered. "We would've seen him."

"Or he was never on the balcony." Eleanor changed lanes. "Could be a plant. Could be Owen. Either way, you're trending again in three... two... one." She tapped the dashboard screen and Lena's Instagram feed opened: a photo from six months earlier-Lena in a Paris café, sunlight spilling across her shoulders-overlayed with red text: Found the Girl Who Broke Maddox. Below, comments multiplied like maggots.

Lena's stomach knotted. She shut her eyes. "They'll eat me alive."

Callum reached for her hand. "Not if we control the frame."

She pulled away gently. "Control requires credibility. We have none."

The SUV turned onto a gravel drive flanked by chaparral. Moonlight silvered the scrub. A wrought‑iron gate opened via remote, revealing a low, modern house half buried in hillside, windows banded with blackout film. Eleanor killed the engine.

"Welcome to obscurity," she said. "Let's get you inside."

They entered through a side door into a mudroom stocked with tactical gear: drones, portable jammers, EMP grenades packaged like lunchboxes. Lena's pulse kicked. She'd stepped out of glamour and into clandestine warfare.

Eleanor guided them to a sunken living room where floor‑to‑ceiling glass framed a view of absolute darkness. She tossed Callum a tablet. "Live feeds. I have two operatives en route to sweep for transmitters."

"Any sign of Owen since Lisbon?" Callum asked.

"Nothing digital. He's gone analog-letter drops, burner SIMs, physical tails. Difficult but not impossible to trace."

Lena perched on the arm of a leather couch, rubbing her temples. "He wants us to react. Every panic move we make is content for him."

Eleanor's gaze softened a degree. "True. So we act without panic." She turned to Callum. "I'll need the original contracts-proof you severed financial ties with Owen. Also the hush‑money files."

Callum's shoulders tightened. "They're secured offshore."

"Retrieve them. If we publish before he does, we dictate narrative. Full confession, full atonement. Public loves a martyr more than a mystery."

Lena stood. "You want him to confess to everything?"

"No," Eleanor said evenly. "I want you to confess. You two release the footage yourselves-unedited. Frame it as survival, not scandal. Then we file a restraining order and request an FBI threat assessment. That forces law enforcement to act. Owen loses leverage."

Lena felt the room tilt. "You're talking about detonating our lives."

"I'm talking about living," Eleanor countered. "Exposure is inevitable. Better it be surgical than explosive."

Callum scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Give us an hour."

Eleanor nodded, retreating to the hallway.

When they were alone, Lena let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. "She's right."

He looked at her, exhausted. "I know."

A silence thick with unspoken fears settled between them. Finally she walked to the panoramic glass, staring into the void beyond. Her reflection hovered like a second self-eyes too wide, posture too brittle.

"I used to dream about this," she said softly.

"About what?"

"Hiding in a place nobody could touch me." She traced a fingertip down the cool pane. "But hiding turns you into glass. Transparent. Breakable."

Callum approached, stopping just short of her reflection. "We don't hide anymore."

She turned, tears unshed. "Then we burn?"

"If that's what keeps you alive." He touched her cheek. "I should've stopped him years ago."

"You thought buying his silence was mercy."

"It was cowardice."

"Cowardice would've been letting the world see me as just another scandal." She leaned her forehead to his. "You gave me a choice. Now we make another."

He kissed her-slow, deliberate, a vow sealed by breath. When they parted, the tension in her chest loosened, but the fear remained-a caged animal pacing the perimeter of her mind.

Thunder rumbled, distant yet ominous. Storms were rare in June, but tonight the sky felt unpredictable.

Callum moved to the dining table, opening the duffel. Inside were two compact pistols, an SLR camera body modified with infrared sensors, and a stack of prepaid phones. He handed one to Lena.

"Keep this on you. Memorize the number; don't store it."

She pocketed it. "If he comes here, will you really use those?" Her glance flicked to the guns.

"I hope not," he said. "But hope hasn't been a great bodyguard lately."

Footsteps approached; Eleanor returned, holding an envelope. "This arrived at the front gate thirty seconds ago." She placed it on the table.

No postage, no name-just a wax seal broken in transit. Callum opened it carefully.

Inside: a single Polaroid.

Lena felt her skin crawl before she even saw it.

The image showed the safehouse from the hill above-an aerial perspective captured minutes ago. In the foreground, a silhouette held a camera. The figure's face was obscured, but the posture was familiar.

On the border of the Polaroid, scrawled in blue ink:

Nice choice of glass walls.

I can still see you.

The room went utterly silent. Even the storm seemed to pause.

Eleanor snatched the photo, scanning it with a handheld device. "Recent chemical processing. Fifty‑fifty silver chloride. Developed within last hour."

"How the hell did he find us?" Callum muttered.

"Satellite tail," Eleanor said. "Or he's planted physical trackers on one of you."

Lena's breath hitched. She remembered brushing against Owen in the hotel room doorway-barely a graze. Had he slipped something into her jacket? Into her hair? She clawed at the collar of her sweater, panic spiraling.

Callum caught her wrists gently. "We'll sweep you. Head to toe."

Eleanor keyed her comm. "ETA three minutes on the operatives. Notify them perimeter is compromised."

Lena looked toward the black windows. Each pane reflected her fear back at her, multiplied. Glass walls indeed. She thought of goldfish in bowls: watched, admired, helpless.

"Eleanor," she whispered, "what if going public doesn't stop him? What if he wants the spectacle more than the leverage?"

Eleanor's reply was colder than night rain. "Then we remove the audience."

Lightning flashed, illuminating the canyon and, for a split second, the shape of a man on the ridge-camera raised, lens winking like a predatory eye. When darkness fell again, he was gone, or hidden, or maybe never there at all.

But the threat felt closer than breath.

Callum wrapped an arm around Lena's shoulders. "We'll outlast him."

She wished she could believe that. But survival stories weren't fairy tales; they were scars and sleepless nights, bargaining with nightmares. Outlasting Owen might mean becoming shadows of themselves.

Eleanor's phone buzzed. She read the message, face tightening. "Operatives spotted motion sensors tripped on the northern path. We have minutes."

She drew a compact pistol, checked the chamber. "Time to decide: fight or flight?"

Callum's answer was immediate. "We fight."

Lena swallowed, adrenaline replacing fear with stark clarity. She nodded once. "Then we fight smart."

The storm broke overhead, wind lashing the glass with furious drops. The safehouse lights flickered. Somewhere outside, gravel crunched-a footstep, deliberate.

In that suspended instant, Lena understood the reality of glass houses: eventually, something always breaks.

And tonight, it might be them-or the man who'd spent years watching, waiting, believing they were fragile enough to shatter.