I should have offered to drive. As it was, if Noel hadn’t white-knuckled the steering wheel, I think he might have shaken himself to death. He took the Port Azrael Bridge at nearly ninety miles an hour, weaving in and out of traffic.

“Will you slow down!” I shouted, bracing myself against the dashboard as he whipped back into the passing lane. A barrage of angry horns followed us.

He kept checking the rearview mirror, scared of what, I wasn’t sure. “What the hell happened back there?” I asked, peeling a lock of hair away from my face where it stuck to my forehead. I tossed the baseball cap into the backseat. It hadn’t kept that kid in the alley from recognizing me anyway. The cap was another of Noel’s increasingly stupid ideas. Or maybe I was the really stupid one for going along with it.

“Just relax,” he said. I bit my lip past the urge to remind him to take his own advice. I still didn’t quite understand what he’d done to piss off an entire biker gang in the time it took me to go to the bathroom.

“There’s nobody back there, Noel,” I said, turning my head. The most threatening thing following us was a yellow Honda. The driver flipped me the bird as we made eye contact. I shrugged and pointed to Noel before I turned and faced forward.

“I’m serious,” I said, pressing my back hard against the seat. “You’re going to get in an accident. I don’t need that kind of hassle. If I could go one week without being in some bullshit tabloid story, that would be terrific.”

Noel let up on the accelerator. When we finally left the city limits of Port Azrael, he gave an audible sigh. He took the exit into Corpus Christi and actually cracked a smile. “Don’t be so quick to stay out of the headlines, Quinn. You know what they say about there being no such thing as bad press.”

“Wake up and smell the twenty-first century, my friend. That’s complete bullshit and you know it. Especially now.”

I didn’t feel like going into this with him again. The whole reason I was even in this car or this town with Noel Ransom was to change the trajectory of my career. Though Noel himself was maybe only two steps above being a complete idiot, they were important steps. His uncle was also one of the most influential movie producers in the industry. This project was supposed to help me change my image and get important people to take me seriously.

Noel tapped his ring against the steering wheel and sucked his bottom lip. I knew what was coming next. Now that he wasn’t scared shitless he’d start expounding on his own over-inflated sense of importance.

“Did you see that big guy?” he asked. “The one with the dark eyes?”

“You mean the one who had your Adam’s apple in his fist?” I said, giving him a wry smile. I had to be careful though. Noel’s deep-seated insecurities made him quick to anger. Though he didn’t have the power to throw me off this project, he had just enough to make things exceedingly miserable while I worked on it.

“I got his picture on my phone,” Noel said. “Couldn’t you just see somebody like Lamar Brock killing it in a role like that?”

I swallowed hard. Sure, Lamar Brock was amazing at what he did. But the public saw him as an action hero, not a serious actor. Of course, I knew how hard it really was for him to pull off what he did on screen and respected the hell out of him for it. But image was everything and his was exactly the kind I was trying to move away from. I was taking my first steps behind the camera. The working title of this project was The Club. The early draft of the script was amazing. Real. Rough. A fictionalized story of an outlaw biker based in Monterrey, trying to go legitimate. It was like The Godfather but on Harleys. I’d fallen in love with it immediately.

“Sure,” I said. “But what do you mean, you took his picture?” My chest tightened as I realized with cold clarity exactly what Noel had done to nearly get his ass kicked back at Woody’s Bar.

Noel kept one hand on the steering wheel and reached into his pocket with the other, pulling out his smartphone. He waved it in front of my face while smugly biting his bottom lip and jutting out his chin. “I got ’em all,” he said. “Shots of the bar too. Great stuff. I can’t wait to send these to the set designers. This movie is going to be gritty as hell. This place is even better than I imagined.”

I let out a hard sigh. “Noel, I thought the plan was not to call attention to ourselves. Observe, don’t engage. That was really dumb, okay? I’m sorry to have to be so blunt. But those guys aren’t lions at the zoo. They’re people. Real, rough, dangerous people. No wonder they dragged you out into that alley.”

I wanted to say a hell of a lot more. Noel could thump his chest all he wanted, but there was no telling what would have happened if I hadn’t walked out of that place when I did. For once, my fame had come in handy. If that biker kid hadn’t recognized me, Noel was on track to get his face bashed in. He would have deserved it. I was used to people taking my picture without asking. It was part of the job. But those guys?

Noel went off on a rant. I stopped listening after about a minute. It wouldn’t do any good for me to interject anyway. He was already revising his memory of what happened back there. No doubt, he’d tell a story to his uncle wildly separated from fact. As he droned on, an uneasy feeling snaked through me. Noel Ransom was made up of sixty-five percent bullshit. And yet, here I was, relying on him to help me get this project off the ground.

He pulled into the valet parking circle in front of our hotel in downtown Corpus Christi. It was a beautiful, upscale high-rise overlooking the crystalline bay. Just over the water, I could make out the Port Azrael bridge on the other side of the bay. In just one evening, I got a taste of how different these two towns really were. Corpus Christi had all the glitter and glamor of a Gulf Coast tourist town. Business was thriving. But across the bay in Port Azrael, or “Port Az,” as I was learning the locals called it, things were vastly different.

Port Azrael enjoyed a recent regrowth. When we drove in off the bridge, many of the downtown buildings were covered in scaffolding. According to the Chamber of Commerce website, the town was enjoying gentrification as new businesses poured in, looking for access to the Gulf without the high rent and cost of living of Corpus Christi. Though no one would come out and say it, the Dark Saints M.C. was rumored to have something to do with all of that. My research said they ran the town. It was a true deal with the devil as far as I could tell. They were the bad boys, but they kept even worse things at bay.

“Did you hear a word I said, Quinn?” Noel asked. We stood in the lobby. Noel waved his hand in front of my face.

“What? Uh. Right. Sure. You want to do some location scouting tomorrow.”

“Sure,” he said, shaking his head. “Sleep in, if you want. I’m going to see what else I can find out about the club’s main hangouts. I might even drive by their clubhouse off the highway.”

I readjusted my purse strap on my shoulder. We were starting to draw stares from a few of the night owls heading up to their rooms. A couple near the grand staircase actually stopped and pointed. The woman’s face lit up and she whipped out her cell phone and started to walk toward us.

“Noel,” I said. “We can talk about this in the morning. I think we need to be a little more subtle. I don’t want to risk pissing those bikers off more than you already have. What do you plan on doing if they find a way to run you out of town?”

“Run me out of town?” he said, jabbing his finger into his chest. “I don’t give two shits about how tough they think they are. My family name is Ransom. I can buy and sell every one of those thugs, and their grandparents too.”

The hate in his tone dripped like oil. It shocked me. It underscored every doubt I had about Noel’s involvement in this project. He had no respect for the subject matter. It was in me to argue with him. But the couple from the lobby interrupted us. The wife had a big smile on her face. The husband at least looked a little sheepish and tried to pull her back when she reached out and grabbed my arm.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, gushing. “Are you Quinn Larsen?” She practically shouted it and my heart raced. I smiled and looked quickly around. There were a few other people near the front desk who heard her and turned to watch the scene unfold. Mercifully, they seemed to understand boundaries a little better than this woman. I knew she was harmless and again, this was part of my job. I’d been doing it since I was ten years old.

“Hi,” I said, finding a smile. They were young, mid-twenties, probably here on their honeymoon as their accents were pure mid-western and she wore a huge, shiny rock on her left hand that seemed like it was still a novelty, the way she gestured. She had a mass of dark curls gathered into a tight ponytail. Her husband wore a golf shirt and khakis. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, or tried to but his wife waved her cell phone at him.

“Do you mind?” she asked. Her husband had already raised the phone and held it horizontal, ready to snap a picture. I stifled a laugh. She hadn’t even asked if he could be in the picture too. I wanted to say no, aware of exactly what would happen in the next five minutes. She’d post the picture on social media, tagging our location. I could expect paparazzi here within the hour.

Noel looked pissed. His face turned a little purple. There was no help for any of it. I brightened my smile and touched my forehead to hers as her husband took a burst of pictures.

“Thank you so much,” she gushed and I melted a little. She was sweet. Truly. A fan. “I just loved you in Night Terrors Three. It was my absolute favorite of the franchise. They really should have given you more to do. You’re so much more talented than people give you credit for. I hope you know your true fans see that.”

I kept on smiling, used to these kinds of backhanded compliments. I just wished I hadn’t been wearing that baseball cap for the better part of the evening. Her Instagram photo of me without make-up was bound to end up on some online tabloid website, accusing me of doing drugs or having a nervous breakdown.

“Thank you,” I said. “Enjoy the rest of your vacation.”

Her husband had the good sense to grab the woman as she kept on about how underutilized I’d been in the last seven movies she’d seen me in. Noel just stood there with his hands folded.

“Come on,” I said. “I’m done for the night.” I didn’t wait for him as I headed for the V.I.P. elevators that would take me up to my penthouse suite. The studio paid for it. Noel had the suite below me. I knew it chafed him, but I was done trying to keep him happy for one night.

When the elevator doors closed, I saw him heading over to the front desk and my stomach dropped. I just prayed he wasn’t trying to set up some scheme even dumber than the one I let him drag me into at Woody’s Bar.