Hushed

by Joanne Macgregor

  A hunted look comes over Logan’s face.

  “I’m guessing you want to avoid that lot?” I check.

  He nods.

  “Okay, then. Find another poncho and put it on. Pull the hood up to cover your face. I’ll try to land us around the other side.”

  Obediently he reaches under the seat, extracts another of the coverings, and wrangles its flapping shape over his head. I slow the boat down and steer us away from the pier and concrete slipway, and around the back of the marina’s jetties where dozens of yachts and motor boats are moored.

  At the far side, a small stretch of sand forms a natural inlet between scrubby overgrown bushes and small trees. Locals know the spot and often use it to launch their canoes, but tonight it’s dark and secluded, and the gaggle of girls probably wouldn’t know of its existence. It’s also right below the place where I’ve parked my car, so it’s ideal for a quick getaway.

  “Hold on tight,” I say and give the dinghy a last burst of speed.

  Chapter 5

  Chased

  I cut the dinghy’s outboard engine and then flip it up as we speed onto the small beach and lurch to a stop. Together we drag the inflatable as high onto the sand as we can, and I tie it to the base of one of the stunted trees growing on the shore.

  “Look — penguins!”

  Logan is crouched down on his haunches, pointing at two African penguins nesting in a hollow under a low bush. One of them — more curious, or perhaps more eager than its mate to defend their spot — steps out and shakes its head fiercely at us.

  I love these knee-high birds which nest all over Simon’s Town, sometimes even in people’s gardens. With their white chests, sharp black beaks, and white-rimmed eyes, they’re the most dapper of the sea creatures I treasure, so I can understand Logan’s fascination at seeing one up-close for the first time. But they’re not pets, so when he reaches out as if to pat it, I quickly push his hand away.

  “Don’t touch! They’re cute, but they’re wild. And they draw blood when they peck.”

  As if on cue, the penguin flaps its wings, stretches its throat, opens its beak wide, and lets out a series of loud braying calls, sending Logan toppling back onto his rump in surprise.

  He laughs, and his laugh is as wonderful as his smile.

  “It sounds like a donkey!” he says.

  “That’s why they’re sometimes called jackass penguins. Come on, this way.” I tug him in the direction of the small rise beyond the line of bushes, aware that I keep finding excuses to touch his hand.

  “But what about my shoes?”

  “What is it with you and those damned shoes? Forget about them! They are gone. They are no more. They have ceased to exist.”

  I lead us towards the spot where my car is parked. Logan trails behind, emitting little hisses of pain every time he steps on a sharp stone or twig. Truly, he must be a very good actor, because in real life — from what I’ve seen so far — he’s nothing at all like the brave macho man he portrays on-screen.

  When we reach my small hatchback, I hoist my surfboard onto the roof rack.

  “There’s a towel in the boot,” I tell Logan, tossing him the car keys and turning back to strap the board securely in position.

  “What boot?”

  He’s turning around in a circle, peering intently at the ground, searching for footwear. Again.

  “The trunk — of the car,” I translate.

  “Ah.”

  While he dries his face, I reach behind my back for the zipper of my wetsuit. No doubt a million girls have fantasized about taking off their clothes in the presence of Logan Rush, but I feel self-conscious rather than excited. If I’d had the choice of what I could’ve looked like when I met him, I would have chosen to look a little bit more like those goddesses on the yacht — elegantly dressed, my shoulder-length, chestnut-brown hair bouncing in sleek, shiny curls, my oval face subtly but expertly made up to maximise my lips, which I know are nicely full, and to emphasize my eyes, which are a pretty enough shade of golden brown.

  Instead, here I stand in the unflattering wetsuit, my wet hair hanging like dripping rats’ tails and my face bare of even a swipe of mascara. At least the light in the parking lot is dim, hiding the details of my appearance.

  In his bare feet, wet tuxedo, and the limp plastic poncho, Logan looks goofy. Goofy and adorable.

  When I start peeling off my wetsuit, he gives me a wary look.

  “Um …” He rubs at his hair with the towel, letting its ends drop over his face.

  I realise he might think I’m stripping. I’ve read reports of girls, naked as jaybirds, waylaying him in the men’s restrooms of restaurants and hotels, or lifting their shirts for him to sign their bare chests as he walks the red carpet. Perhaps he thinks I’m planning to get nude and then jump his bones.

  “It’s okay, I’ve got a bikini on underneath, see?” I reassure him, freeing myself from the clinging black wetsuit.

  “I do.”

  He gives a slow, appreciative smile at the sight of me. Hoping the dim light of the parking lot hides the blush I can feel warming my cheeks, I turn to retrieve my clothes from my bag in the car.

  “You planning on keeping that poncho on?” I ask him, tying my hair up into a rough bun.

  “Oh!” He seems surprised to find he’s still wearing it.

  By the time he’s wrestled his way out of its damp folds, I’ve pulled my jeans on over my bikini bottoms and slipped into a T-shirt.

  “Sharks do it with their fins,” he reads the logo on the front of it

  “We should go now.”

  “You like sharks?”

  “I do.”

  “I’m a shark — in my movie.”

  “I know you are. And we need to get you back to your hotel, so that tomorrow you can carry on making your movie.” I crouch down to fasten my sneakers.

  “You have shoes,” he says in a piteous tone.

  “So where is it?”

  The Cape Peninsula is stuffed to the gills with the sort of luxurious hotels stars like Logan Rush would stay in.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know where they are. One minute they were there, the next — gone! Vanished.”

  “Who were?” I ask, completely confused.

  “My shoes.”

  “Oh for the love of fudge! Get in the car,” I order, but he’s leaning back against it for support with one foot raised in the air, and seems set to argue.

  “What about my —”

  A high-pitched screaming noise pierces the stillness of the night. The hairs on my arms stand up at the other-worldly sound, and Logan freezes, foot up, like some Kung Fu master poised to deal a killer kick.

  The sound grows louder. Closer.

  “Help.” Logan’s voice is a soft, pleading moan. He stares, eyes round with horror, at something over my shoulder.

  I glance back. The pack of girls is running through the parking lot, straight towards us. Their faces are contorted in feral glee. Their wordless shrieks are the battle cry of an advancing army of crazed marauders. In less than a minute, Logan will be surrounded.

  “Help me, please,” he whimpers. “They’ll tear me to pieces.”

  “Get inside!”

  I slam the boot shut, run around the car, and slide into the driver’s seat. As soon as Logan’s inside, I lock the doors. Just in time. The wave of fans surges up against the car, swirling around and drowning us in a sea of writhing, squealing Rushers.

  They press their phones and cameras up against the windows, and blind me with flashes of bright, white light. Someone tries to open the door on Logan’s side. Tears stream down the cheeks of a middle-aged woman who has her face jammed up against his window. Around her, and on my side of the car, too, girls — and a couple of guys, too, I now see —jostle for a glimpse of him. Some hold out paper or photographs with marker pens.

  Even though Logan has thrown the towel over his head and can’t see a thing, several fans hold up signs for him to read.

&
nbsp; I U, Chase!

  Be my Beast!

  I’m a Chaser and a Rusher

  Bite me — I know it hurts!

  One girl in shorts and a skimpy pink top, and carrying a handwritten sign, climbs onto the front of my car.

  “Hey!” I shout, pressing hard on the hooter and waving a finger at her.

  But she has eyes only for Logan. She leopard-crawls up the hood in front of him and swings her leg around in front of her. Clamped on her foot are the sharp teeth of a very realistic-looking replica of an animal trap. At least, I assume it’s a replica — and that the blood oozing from her ankle is fake. She slams her sign against the glass in front of Logan.

  I jump at the bang and he looks up. The towel slips behind his head, exposing his face, and the screams kick up to fever pitch. His lips move silently as he reads the sign.

  I want your cubs!!!

  The girl points dramatically at the sign, then at her foot, and then at Logan.

  He swears violently and puts his hands over his face.

  “Let’s go — now! Please!” he begs.

  I fumble in a compartment of the dashboard to grab the glasses I need to wear for driving and slip them on. My hands are shaking. It takes another few moments to get the key into the ignition, and the fans start rocking the car in time to chants of “Lo-gan, Lo-gan, Lo-gan.”

  I start the engine and begin inching forward as slowly and carefully as I can. It’ll be a miracle if we get out of this without squishing a few of them. The girl on the hood stretches out her arms, trying to hang on to the car as we start moving. I turn on the windscreen wipers to move the sign off the glass, hoot again, and roll forward a bit more. The Rushers sense our imminent escape, and the hysterical squealing reaches an ear-splitting crescendo.

  Some fans peel away from the car and sprint off in different directions across the parking lot, no doubt headed for their own cars. As we turn into the road, the girl on the car finally slides off, landing in a pile of litter on the pavement. I glance back in my rear-view mirror as we pull away to see her standing, holding the chain of her trap out after Logan in a melodramatic, supplicating gesture.

  “Right,” I say when we hit the main road heading out of Simon’s Town. “Where are you staying?”

  “Hotel,” he replies, yawning widely.

  “Yeah, I guessed that much. Which one?”

  He shrugs. “Dunno what it’s called. They drop me there every night and collect me every morning.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “Cape Town.”

  “That narrows it down.” To a few hundred.

  I head for Cape Town, taking the back road which cuts through the Cape Point nature reserve. I usually steer clear of this route after dark — the winding roads which hug the precipitous cliffs jutting out over the ocean offer spectacular views in the daytime, but at night they can be treacherous, especially if baboons come scampering into the road.

  I hope the drive will dissuade the fans because, as expected, a long crocodile of cars follows us in hot pursuit. We lose a few as we pass the last of the houses and resorts built on the coastline, but seven or eight persistent Rushers keep tailing us. Worse, unless Logan also has a niche fan-following of middle-aged men with expensive-looking photographic equipment, I fear the car directly behind us belongs not to fans, but to paparazzi.

  “This is like a car chase,” I say. “Only, it’s kind of slow. And no one’s shooting, or crashing.”

  “Yet,” Logan says ominously.

  He burrows down in the seat to get more comfortable, using the bundled towel as a makeshift pillow behind his head, and yawns widely.

  “Hang on, you can’t fall asleep,” I protest, lowering Logan’s window to give him a blast of the cool, fresh evening air, pungent with the astringent, herby scent of mountain fynbos. “I don’t know which hotel to take you to. Can’t you describe it for me?”

  “Very nice rooms. Big.”

  “Nice and big? That’s as specific as you can get?”

  “The bathroom has a massive shower and neat little bottles of shampoo and gel made from diffren’ kinds of wine. Like Chianti conditioner and Burgundy body wash,” he says, apparently trying to be helpful. “Great minibar in the room, too … It has British candy.” His eyes close and he speaks softly and slowly. “You eat British chocolate over here?”

  I sigh in frustration. I wonder if he’s still buzzed. I hope he is, because otherwise he’s dead stupid, and that’ll kill my crush.

  “Logan, I don’t know what the inside of luxury suites in five-star hotels look like. Can you describe the outside of the hotel, or the lobby, or something I might ever have seen?”

  No reply.

  “Logan?” I glance across and see that he’s fast asleep. Oh, that’s just perfect.

  I drive on into the darkness, the lead car in a procession of vehicles all headed in the same direction, with one of the most famous men in the world sitting next to me — all long limbs, tousled hair, and soft snores in the passenger seat.

  Chapter 6

  Hot pursuit

  I have no idea where I should take my comatose passenger.

  It’s about half an hour since we left the marina — surely by now the partying celebs will have discovered that their guest of honour has gone AWOL? I hope like heck they also discovered his note and haven’t initiated an official search and rescue for him. If they check on shore, they’ll surely hear all about the commotion of fans and how Logan Rush was driven off by a young woman. Will they think I’ve kidnapped him?

  Trying to get away from the cars following us, I take a series of turns and wind up in an unfamiliar and derelict industrial area on the outskirts of Cape Town. The one-way road is three lanes wide, lit by the sulphurous yellow of streetlights, and mostly deserted. Two homeless men argue drunkenly at an intersection, and I hurry on. In a quiz with the question “By whom would you prefer to be accosted, late at night, on a deserted street? (a) Two intoxicated hobos, (b) An armed car hijacker, or (c) A pack of rabid Rushers,” I would choose (d) None of the above.

  I’ve got to find a safe place to park until Logan wakes up and is sober enough to give me a clue as to where I should take him. Plus, I need to shake off our tail of fans and paparazzi before we pick up even more in the city. A glance in the rear-view mirror confirms that another couple of cars have already joined the procession.

  One of Zeb’s favourite sayings is, “We only chase the ones that run.”

  Are the fans and photogs only following because we’re trying to escape? If I give them a proper chance to see Logan and calmly take pictures of him, maybe they’ll behave politely and then go on their way and leave us be.

  Yeah, and maybe pigs will grow wings and fly.

  The traffic lights ahead turn amber. I’ll have to stop. Is there any way I can turn the tables on my pursuers?

  I speed up to the lights, now red, and wrench the wheel around to park us sideways across the road’s three lanes with my door facing our oncoming entourage. I yank up the handbrake and, with the engine still running, get out of the car to face them, closing the door behind me and raising my hands in a stop gesture. The other cars pull up to a halt, and expectant faces stick out of windows.

  “Come see,” I call loudly, beckoning them closer.

  One photographer and a couple of fans climb out of their cars.

  “Come on, quick! He’s asleep in the car. You can take some pictures.”

  As soon as the first few race over towards us, phones and cameras held at the ready, the rest scramble out of their cars to follow suit. Just as I hoped, now that they’ve been given permission to intrude, they drop all the hysterics and walk over quietly to stand clustered at my side of the car. The lead girl bends down to peep in through the window of my closed door and asks politely, “May we? May we take pictures?”

  “Yes, of course. Can everyone see? Is everyone close enough?”

  They’re all out of their cars now, clustered close by and chatt
ering excitedly.

  “He’s there — in the car!”

  “It’s really him!”

  “She’s going to let us take pics.”

  “Aww, my battery’s flat!”

  The traffic lights change to green. A bald, gum-chewing paparazzo with a narrow, ferret face steps right up to me.

  “We can’t see through metal, lady. Or through you.”

  “Of course,” I say with what I hope is a disarming smile. “I’m sorry. Here, let me get the door for you.”

  I turn to open the car door and, in the same movement, fling myself into my seat, release the brake, and screech off down the intersecting road.

  “Go, go, go!” I yell at my car, slamming my foot down flat on the accelerator.

  The engine whines a loud protest, but the crowd isn’t on my tail. Yet. The red light probably won’t stop them, but they’ll still have to run back to their cars, get inside, and start their engines. If I can just find a good side road, somewhere … somewhere — there!

  I careen into a dark street which curves out of sight of the main road, and turn up the first open driveway I see, speeding past gates dangling off broken hinges and down the dark driveway beyond. The ghostly white of my headlights illuminates tall Cypress trees growing on either side. Fifty metres in, I cut the engine, switch off the lights, slide down in my seat and sit still, panting as hard as though I’ve just outrun a chainsaw-wielding maniac.

  Beside me, Logan still sleeps as deeply as a dead man. My crazy stunt-woman driving must have flung him around some, but it hasn’t woken him. He looks so peaceful that I poke him in the ribs to check he’s still alive, and relax when he grunts then hiccups. I feast my eyes on his face. No two ways about it, the boy is a looker — despite the purple lump now visible on the top of his forehead.

  Incredibly, impossibly, he’s even more attractive in person than on the screen. He’s the real-life embodiment of everything I’ve ever learned about him. And I have learned pretty much all there is to know about him.