by Elise Noble
“Four girls, four weeks, four incidents. Do they have anything in common apart from Travis?”
“It wasn’t Travis! He wasn’t even in the country when Marli died.”
“Lanie, I’m not saying it was Travis. Just that he seems to be the link here.”
“If there is a link.”
Zander sighed. “Yeah, if there is a link.”
The prospect of Travis somehow being involved in the four incidents in more than a superficial way sent chills through me. No, he hadn’t been there for Marli, but he’d had the opportunity to push Reagan down the stairs, and he could’ve spiked Jae-Lin’s drink before he retreated to the stairwell with me. And Vina? He’d gone upstairs for ten minutes when we got back to the hotel yesterday. Long enough to tamper with her face cream?
No! How could I even be thinking like that? Travis had never shown the slightest inclination to harm anyone, and he had no motive for hurting Jae-Lin or Vina. Reagan, yes, but nobody liked her. If I were Travis, I’d have pushed the bitch under the damn tour bus after her sneaky nighttime tryst.
A change of subject was in order.
“I want to visit Vina in hospital tomorrow. Will you have time to come?”
Travis nodded. “I’ll make the time. We’ve got an interview with a radio station at eleven, but nothing after that until five.”
“The talk-show appearance?”
“Yeah, and it’s pre-recorded. Doesn’t air until eight thirty. Gives them plenty of time to bleep my fucks out.” He glanced sideways at Zander. “Shit.”
“Don’t worry; he swears too.”
Travis lowered his voice. “I should be better around you.”
“I like you just the way you are.”
Dove was home when we got in, and she gave me the mother of all hugs because we hadn’t seen each other for weeks. She was closer to my age than Zander’s, and she acted more like the sister I’d never had than my brother’s wife. Though our living arrangements might appear awkward to some, I’d enjoyed having another girl around for the last few months.
“It’s really true?” she asked, keeping her voice low. “You’re doing bad things with a rock star?”
I leaned close to whisper in her ear. “The worst.”
“Holy hell.” She stood on tiptoe to look over my shoulder. “I know I shouldn’t say he’s hot because I just married your brother, but he should come with a fire extinguisher.”
I smiled, remembering last night. I couldn’t help it. “He comes with a sprinkler system instead.”
Dove’s expression didn’t change for a moment, then her eyes bulged and she made a funny choking sound. “Don’t let Zander hear you say that. Not if you don’t want your hottie to get castrated.”
“My lips are sealed.”
“Liar.” Her expression grew serious. “Zander said one of Travis’s colleagues got hurt today?”
“Chemical burns on her whole face.” I shuddered. “From her face cream. It was horrible.”
“Will she be okay?”
“I don’t know. The doctors are being cagey at the moment.”
Zander heard us talking—one of his more annoying traits was that he was as nosy as me—and waved his phone.
“I forgot to say—someone from Blackwood visited Vina’s house today, and one of the neighbours said her mum went on an overseas volunteering trip. She’s building a school in Kenya, so she might not have phone reception.”
“So we can’t contact her at all?”
“Blackwood’s got an office in Nairobi, but unless Vina can give us an idea of where her mum’s staying, it’ll be like hunting for a needle in a haystack.”
“I’ll ask her tomorrow if I can.”
“Do you guys want anything to eat tonight?” Dove asked. “Or a drink?”
I shook my head. I’d nibbled on food from the catering area this evening, but mostly I’d felt too sick to eat. At least now that my secret was out, I hadn’t had to dodge Max and Bryson, and their calm presence had made me feel marginally better.
“Travis?”
“I ate earlier.”
Dammit, I hadn’t even introduced them properly. “This is Dove.”
He leaned down to kiss her on the cheek, and she turned red.
“Good to meet you. Thanks for letting me stay in your home.”
Dove gave me a wow-the-rock-star-has-manners look, then fanned herself when he turned away. Yes, I knew exactly how she felt. I may have spent the last two nights naked with the man, but I still had to pinch myself.
It felt weird leading Travis into my bedroom under a pair of watchful gazes, but the alternative—being apart—was far worse. And when the door closed behind us, I relaxed for the first time all day. At least, I did until I saw what Dove had left on the bed for us. Travis picked up the first box.
“Furry handcuffs and a blindfold?”
I turned the same colour as my soon-to-be-dead sister-in-law had. “It’s Dove’s idea of a joke.” Payback because I’d done this to her once. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go and burn it all.”
“No, no, I like this. Love eggs? Marshmallow-flavoured condoms?” He came dangerously close to choking. “A butt plug?”
“I’ll kill her.”
“Well, I’m gonna send her a thank-you note. If marshmallow doesn’t do it for you, how do you feel about pineapple?”
“This is so embarrassing.”
“Nah, blue. Embarrassing is when you realise the girl you like found some random woman handcuffed to your bed.”
Yes, but I could look back and laugh about it now.
“You really didn’t know who she was?”
“I just woke up and she was there.”
“Speaking of handcuffs…” I twirled Dove’s gift on one finger.
“Not tonight, blue. I want your arms around me.”
“R is for romance?”
“This isn’t romance. Romance is when I take you to California and we drive up into the hills with a picnic and spend the whole day eating and talking and making love. Then I bring you home and cook you dinner and we watch some chick flick because you like it, and I spend the whole night kissing every inch of you on a bed of fuckin’ rose petals.”
Holy hell. A man who could cook? “Wow. So we’re skipping R for now?”
Travis lifted the hem of my shirt, slipped his hands underneath, and peeled it off over my head. Two seconds later, my bra had disappeared and my jeans were on their way too.
“S is for slow, sweet sucking,” he said, lifting me onto the bed.
“You spelled that last word wrong.”
His throaty laugh sent shivers through me. “Never was that good at school.”
“You learned about the important things. T is for teacher, right?”
“Baby-blue, I’m gonna teach you everything.”
CHAPTER 24 - ALANA
“OMG! OHMIGOSH, OHMIGOSH, ohmigosh!”
I turned away from the sink in time to see Tessa drop the bakery bag she was carrying. A donut fell out and rolled across the kitchen floor. Dammit, that looked like a chocolate creme.
Her mouth opened and closed like a demented goldfish’s as she stared at Travis, and when he put down his coffee and smiled at her, she began fanning herself.
“I’m dreaming. Tell me I’m dreaming. Actually, don’t. I’d rather stay asleep.”
“Tessa, this is Travis.”
“I know that! You think I don’t freaking know that? Why the heck is he in your freaking kitchen?” Travis looked at me, and Tessa looked at Travis looking at me then began hyperventilating. “Holy crap. You did it? Like, it?”
“Travis, this is my friend Tessa. Sometimes she doesn’t think before she speaks.”
Travis’s grin got wider, and I knew he was trying not to laugh. “Hi, Tessa.”
“He said my name.” Tessa backed towards the door. “Excuse me. I’m just gonna go and die a happy death on the sofa.”
“Is she always like that?” Travis asked once she�
�d disappeared.
“Pretty much. She gets a little star-struck. Be thankful you’re not Rush, or we’d be giving her CPR right now.”
Dove walked in. “Is Tessa okay? Ooh, are those donuts?”
“I don’t think she was expecting to see Travis here.”
“I guess I can understand that. Zander’s still trying to come to terms with the whole thing himself.”
“He wasn’t as upset as I thought he’d be.”
“Well, he’d have to be the biggest hypocrite in the world if he complained, wouldn’t he?”
Dove stooped to pick up the bag and the stray donut as Tessa poked her head around the doorjamb.
“Travis is still here,” I told her.
He held up his mug. “Haven’t finished my coffee yet.”
“Uh, sorry I acted like an idiot. I always do that.”
“At least you didn’t faint. That’s more awkward. And you get extra points for being fully clothed.”
“Girls visit you naked?”
“More often than you’d think.”
“How about Rush?”
“Does Rush visit me naked?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, duh. Do girls visit him naked?”
“Don’t even think about it,” I warned.
She stuck her tongue out. “Spoilsport.”
“Why are you here, anyway? And how did you get in?”
“Zander let me in on his way out jogging. And I came over to talk about the thing we discussed the other night.”
“The thing?”
She cut her gaze to Travis. “You know, the thing.”
Ah, she meant the record label, but I didn’t want to tell Travis I’d been poking around in his business. Not now, not right at the beginning of our relationship.
“I see. The thing. Can we talk about the thing later?”
“Absolutely.” She picked up the bakery bag off the table. “Donut?”
“Do you two always talk in code?” Travis asked.
“Not always, just sometimes. What donuts did you bring? Tell me there’s another chocolate creme.”
“There is, but Zander reserved it.”
“Zander said he wanted a bacon roll,” Dove told us.
“Then I guess he’s super hungry.”
I bit into an apple pie donut, not so much because I craved sugar but more because I needed to get the taste of synthetic pineapple out of my mouth. A month ago, if anyone had told me I’d become a connoisseur of flavoured condoms, I’d have gotten a stitch from laughing. But as it was, Travis had allowed me a couple of hours’ sleep then woken me up early to continue my alternative education.
“Want me to cook the bacon?” Travis offered.
Tessa practically swooned, but thankfully Dove kept her head. Probably because she was still at that loved-up stage with Zander.
“If you don’t mind. You can cook?”
He shrugged.
“Do I need to go out and get extra bacon?” I asked.
“Nope. Marlene sent me home with half a pig this weekend.”
“Dare I ask?”
“She won it at poker. We’ll be eating bacon and sausages and pork chops for weeks.”
Travis did indeed know his way around a kitchen, and by the time Zander got back, the apartment smelled like a vegetarian’s worst nightmare. Good thing Courtney wasn’t there.
Except Zander didn’t sit straight down and start scoffing the way I expected. No, he wiped the sweat off his face with his T-shirt then leaned against the counter, looking sombre.
“What’s up?”
“The lab just emailed me the results of the tests on Vina’s moisturiser.”
“The police ran the sample already? I thought that usually took ages.”
More than once, Zander had interrupted an episode of CSI to tell me just how unrealistic their timescales were.
“Nah, they’ll take weeks yet. I sent a sample to our lab too.”
“The police let you do that?”
Zander just stared at me.
“Of course the police didn’t let you do that. You touched the stuff? Are you crazy? What if you’d gotten burned like Vina?”
“I just smiled nicely at one of the housekeeping ladies, and she found me a tiny jam jar and a teaspoon. Don’t worry.”
Of course she did. She’d probably have offered Zander her firstborn too if he’d asked.
“Well? What were the results?”
“That shit was full of acid.”
“Acid?” Whoa. “How? Was it made that way? Or did someone spike it?”
Zander hesitated. “There could have been a manufacturing fault.”
“But you don’t think so?”
“When Dev did his investigation last year, he tested dozens of these creams, and one of them was the same brand as Vina’s. That batch didn’t have the same crazy pH level.”
“But how would somebody do that? How would they get the stuff into Vina’s bathroom?”
“Very fucking carefully.” Zander sighed. “Unfortunately, when the police receive their own lab results, they’re gonna have questions for you since you were there.”
“You mean they’ll treat me as a suspect.”
“I’ve got some connections, and I can try to… Yes. That might happen.”
“Vina lost her room key the day before the accident,” Travis said. “What if someone took it and snuck inside?”
That got Zander’s attention. “Are you sure? She didn’t just misplace it in her handbag or a pocket?”
“We ran into her in the hotel lobby on Thursday evening, and she mentioned she’d lost her key. If she found it again, she didn’t say so.”
Zander grabbed a bottle of something green and disgusting from the fridge and took a long swallow. I’d tried that stuff once, and I had to eat a packet of gummy bears and a Twix to take the taste away.
“Let’s say someone wanted to harm Vina. That person would have to be close to her because they knew what brand of skin-lightening cream she used. Then they went into her room and swapped the jar.” Zander took another mouthful. Thought a bit. “No, that’s wrong. Maybe the key’s a red herring, because it looked more like our culprit switched the unopened box in Vina’s suitcase rather than simply decanting the acid mix into the jar in her bathroom. That could have happened any time since she joined you on tour.”
“That’s sick,” Travis said.
“Welcome to my world.”
“But how do we prove any of this?” I asked. “Fingerprints on the jar?”
“I’ll get the coppers to take a look, but any bad guy with half a brain wears gloves.” Another sigh. “I’ll shuffle things around at work and see what I can do. Have either of you seen anyone acting odd around Vina? Or her belongings?”
We both shook our heads, but then Travis opened his mouth. Closed it again. Zander waited him out.
“Something’s bugging me.”
“Go on.”
“Have you ever listened to the lyrics of the song me and Vina sing together?”
I doubted Zander had listened to any of Indigo Rain’s songs at all. And me? Probably I should have paid more attention to the words, but whenever Travis sang, I tended to zone out and focus on his ass instead.
“Can’t say I have,” Zander said.
“It’s called ‘Burn.’” Travis tapped away at his phone. “A duet. And there’s these two verses in the middle.”
He turned the screen so Zander and I could both see, and as I read, a horrible sense of foreboding sent snakebite shivers up my legs, through my spine, all the way to the tips of my fingers.
Vina
Why did you punish me so bad?
When you froze me out.
You who drove me mad,
Who sowed all the doubt.
You peeled away my skin and left me sore,
You damaged my heart and made me raw,
Like acid.
Travis
How can you look at me with hate?
When you left me cold.
You who chose our fate,
Who bought what he sold.
Your contempt burned into my skin.
Your lies ate me from the outside in.
Like acid.
“Who wrote this?” Zander asked.
“I did.”
“Based on what? Artists take inspiration from real life, right?”
“Sometimes I do, but not this time. I watched a horror movie the night before, and JD was moping around the studio because the girl he’d been fucking for the last three weeks just ditched him. So I kind of merged the two things together.”
Zander fell silent. I bit my tongue for as long as I could, but there came a point where I couldn’t wait any longer.
“What do you think?” I asked. “Is it just a coincidence?”
Instead of answering, he turned to Tessa.
“Tessa, I need you to promise you won’t write about any of this. Not with Alana mixed up in the middle of it.”
She looked disappointed, but she nodded. “Okay, I totally promise. Do you reckon Alana’s in danger, then?”
“Those lyrics… Normally, I’d say I don’t believe in coincidences like that, but if someone burned Vina’s face over a song… Man, that’s sickness taken to a whole new level.”
He wasn’t wrong there. Nausea churned in my stomach.
“So what now? What should we do?”
Zander’s mouth set in a hard line. “In an ideal world? You’d stay in your bedroom and watch Netflix for the next month or so.”
“No way.”
“Yeah, I figured you’d say that.” Zander stared at his green concoction as though tasting it for the first time. “This tastes like shit.”
“I’ve been telling you that for months, but stop changing the subject.”
“Fine. You’re gonna keep your head down and stay alert. If your stuff’s on a tour bus, the bus stays locked with a guard outside. If you’re staying in a hotel, you give them strict instructions that nobody’s to go in your room. Not housekeeping, not the manager, not anyone associated with Indigo Rain or their tour. Hell, with the entire music industry. I’ll get you plug ’n’ play miniature cameras, and we’ll monitor them at Blackwood. And you don’t mention a word of this to anyone because ninety-nine percent of the world’s population don’t know how to keep their mouths shut, and we don’t want to tip off our culprit.”