Once a special consultant to the Philadelphia Police Department entrusted with critical, off the radar jobs, Charlie Hardie’s life went off the rails when a job went spectacularly wrong resulting in several deaths. Now Charlie spends his time moving from one house-sitting job to another. His clients are wealthy people with cushy houses in desirable locations, the latest of which belongs to a movie composer who lives in the Hollywood Hills.

He gets more than expected this time out, however, when doing a walk-thru upon arrival he finds a wild-eyed young woman hiding in the house. Apparently strung out on drugs, she keeps babbling about how “they” are trying to kill her, accusing Charlie of being one of “them.” Though he finds it a little too coincidental that the power goes out shortly after he arrives and neither of their phones can get a signal, he’s not quite ready to believe there’s a group of assassins outside on a mission to kill some junkie…though she looks sorta familiar.

Turns out there’s a reason for that. Charlie finally realizes the woman is Lane Madden, a well-known young Hollywood actress. She explains that she broke into the house after getting away from some people who ran her car off the road then injected her with drugs to try and make it look like she crashed after OD’ing. Ok, Charlie thinks, so she’s not some random junkie. She’s a cokehead, paranoid, B-List actress. And he’s still not buying that there are people outside waiting to kill her. Wanting to prove that to her, Charlie decides to go outside despite Lane’s frantic pleas that he not open the door. You know, he really should have listened to her. →