Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 168121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 841(@200wpm)___ 672(@250wpm)___ 560(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 168121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 841(@200wpm)___ 672(@250wpm)___ 560(@300wpm)
He nodded, facing her, and shoved a hand through his hair. Not good.
“Dennis, the spotter’s alias, isn’t answering his phone. Munt tracked down his family.” He dropped his hand. “He has a nineteen-year-old niece who went missing two nights ago.”
The night they flew back from New York. The odds sucked.
Her hand shot behind her, reaching for a bed that was too far away. Jay wrapped an arm around her waist and walked her backward until she sat on the edge. He perched beside her, heart racing.
“The message about the girl killed in Roy’s stockroom came from Dennis’ phone. Text. Not voice.”
A chill swept through him. They were being played. “You don’t think Dennis sent that message?”
Nathan shook his head. “Two bodies were found early this morning in an abandoned warehouse on the Wharf. Middle-aged man. Teenage girl. Suspected murder-suicide. An anonymous caller reported them.”
A tear streaked down her cheek. “Roy discovered Dennis. Probably knew about him for some time and waited for the right moment.” Her voice cracked. “He killed the niece. Killed Dennis. Staged the murder-suicide. An easy trick with the assistance of San Fran’s law enforcement. The letter makes more sense now.”
Jay jumped to his feet, shaking out his fists when he so badly wanted to swing them. “Why would he do that? What was the point of threatening you with it?”
She stared out of shadowed eyes at the wall behind him. “It wasn’t a threat.” Her voice sounded dusty…dead. “It was my punishment.”
71
The next three days drudged by. The bodies in the warehouse were identified, confirming their suspicions about the spotter and his niece, and Jay watched Charlee slip further inside herself. If helplessness had a taste, it would’ve been the rancid decay curdling in the back of his throat. He fed her, protected her, and loved her. But he couldn’t heal the hurt dulling her eyes.
Since Roy had proven himself unpredictable, Jay kept Charlee within the guarded walls of the estate, always in his eyeshot.
During daily band practices, she perched on the basement stairs, watching and sketching. Sometimes a smile bent her lips when the guys teased one another, but it never lingered. He doubted anyone noticed her silent grief, but he glimpsed it in the languor of her gestures and felt it when her gaze flitted from his.
Each morning, Tony brought in a martial arts practitioner to teach him basics of self-defense. Charlee watched and often participated in the drills. His flashbacks surfaced once during a weapon disarming technique under the strike of her hand. She’d coaxed him back to the present by singing a Pixies song. Her endearing, off-key rendition of Where Is My Mind shooed away the nightmare, but it cast a lasting pall over her eyes.
He knew she carried a hefty load of guilt regarding Roy’s potential threat to the band, but their lack of offensive strategy seemed to plague her most. Hell, restlessness vented from the pores of every member of the household. The estate bristled with it. The band and the staff argued over canceling the tour, how many guards to hire if they went, and how best to protect Charlee. During one of the debates in the basement studio, Faye jumped from her laptop and announced that the seventy-show tour was officially sold out.
“Maybe the Oxford prick won’t fuck with the tour now.” Laz adjusted a tuning peg on his guitar and plucked the string. “Think of the millions his new acquisition would lose if he did.”
Impatience bunched Jay’s shoulders. The tour babble had grown old an hour earlier. He had what Roy wanted, and she was right freaking there, stretched on the couch and studying the ceiling tiles. Jay wanted nothing more than to protect her, tour be damned. Trouble was, the decision affected his best friends and hundreds of thousands of fans. “Roy can’t cancel the tour. Technically, he owns our record company not our production company. He can pull our CDs from the stores and prevent radio stations from playing our songs. He can’t tamper with our performances.”
“Windsor Records owns our production company,” Laz said around the pick between his teeth, angling his head near the fingerboard of his guitar. “All of the subsidiary labels and corporations report to the same damn head.”
“And that head got away with murder.” Her voice floated from the couch, hushed and distant. She rolled to her side, pillowing her face with the bend of her arm, and looked at Jay. “He has a weakness. Use it against him.”
The challenge in her eyes boiled his blood. What the fuck was she suggesting? Use her as bait? He would never use her for anything related to Roy. The set jaws and hard faces around him indicated his friends wouldn’t have either.
That night, another band meeting sprung from an impromptu argument in the kitchen. The fifth one in three days. When it fizzled to a close with no resolution, Charlee rose to her feet and slammed her hands on the island. “Keep the tour dates, and double the protective team. Because you know what? Roy can’t do much while you’re standing in the limelight. If you cancel, you might as well break up the band and sell your home. Gonna let him win that easy?”