Indigo Rain

by Elise Noble

  “See? We’re perfectly in tune with each other.” Travis flopped down onto the bed beside me, arms flung wide. “Saddle up, blue.”

  Neither of us got any sleep that night, and I discovered I wasn’t quite as averse to drugs as I might once have thought. Legal ones, at any rate. One tiny tablet led to hours of sweet sin, and by the time the sun appeared through the gap in the curtains, I could barely stagger to the bathroom. Travis suffered no such problems as he held me up in the shower.

  “I love you, Alana.” He trailed his tongue along my jaw. “Once, my ambition was to be a rock star, but now I’ve got a new goal. I want to be able to say those three little words to you in person every morning.”

  “Two years, Travis, and I love you too.”

  “Will you wait?”

  “For you? I’d wait forever.”

  “Patience sucks,” he said.

  “Not as well as you do. I’m gonna miss your dirty mouth.”

  “Y is for you, blue. I’m gonna miss everything about you.”

  “What’s Z?”

  “The Zs I need to get on the plane.” He yawned, and I couldn’t help following suit. “You wore out my cock.”

  “I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not.”

  “Me neither.” Travis pulled me close for one last soaking-wet kiss before grabbing my towel. “Not one bit.”

  Two hours later, it was over, at least temporarily. My relationship with rock’s hottest star had officially gone long-distance. Following Rock Fest, for the next two weeks at least, Travis would be working in the studio in LA, recording tracks for one of the two albums they owed Red Cat.

  The worst part was not being able to say a proper goodbye. I had to give him the same hug I gave to Rush, Dex, JD, and the rest of their entourage in case curious eyes were watching, and then take an Uber from the hotel to the train station while the others went to Manchester Airport. I got a single message from Travis before he boarded the plane, taken in a toilet stall by the looks of it. No, not a dick pic. A short video of him blowing me a kiss, and then, because he was Travis, making a lewd gesture with his tongue. But that only made me laugh, because like he said before, he was my asshole.

  Everyone on the tour was going home. They all lived in California, except for Jeanne, who came from Nevada and would be camping out on Courtney’s sofa-bed until she could find her own place. And now it was time for me to go home too.

  I couldn’t do much on the train to London, not when the nosy woman next to me kept trying to peer at my phone, but I quickly mouthed, “I love you,” and sent the clip back.

  Then I fell asleep, and I didn’t wake up until the train pulled into Euston Station.

  CHAPTER 30 - ZANDER

  “HERE. YOU LOOK like you need this.”

  Zander Graves dumped a McDonald’s bag on the table in front of his sister, and the delicious smell of a bacon-and-egg McMuffin drifted out. For a moment, he was tempted to jog back and buy one for himself too, but that would kind of negate the five miles he’d just run.

  “My hero.” Lanie shoved her bowl of soggy muesli away. “Are you working this weekend?”

  “Yeah, on your case.”

  Unfortunately. After a fifty-hour week, he dreaded the thought of going to the office again, but he also hated seeing Lanie miserable. And if some asshole of a singer made her smile, Zander had to do what he could to help them out, even if he absolutely hated the prospect of his little sister moving halfway across the world to shack up with the guy. He still didn’t trust Travis Thorne. Max had seen him with groupies, snorting coke, drinking until he passed out… The list went on. But when Zander had discussed his concerns with Dove, she’d reminded him of his own past, which could best be described as colourful.

  Had he tried drugs? Once or twice. Had he ever fucked a different girl every day of the week? Yes, and he couldn’t even remember their names. Had he got carried away and drunk too much? More times than he could count.

  Would he do any of those things now that he’d married Dove? No way.

  Zander would be a hypocrite if he didn’t give Thorne the benefit of the doubt, but the man got one chance. One chance. And if he blew it…

  “Sorry,” Lanie said. “I wish you didn’t have to work. Can I do anything to help?”

  As it happened… “You can come to the office and help me to review CCTV tapes.”

  The world’s most boring job. Mathis had sent footage from the Hotel Nova in Paris, Zander had obtained the video from the hotel where Vina got burned, and there had been a camera in the hallway outside the suite where Jae-Lin went into anaphylactic shock. The hotel’s security office had been about to erase that footage, but Blackwood had stopped them just in time. Somebody needed to review all the film for common faces, and Zander was especially interested in Peyton Priestly.

  She’d flown back to California right after the show in Camden, and she was one of the few leads they had right now. Twenty-three years old, the daughter of a high-flying management consultant and a cosmetic dentist, she didn’t appear to have a job and spent most of her time flitting between one party or another. Thankfully, she posted all about it on social media.

  Investigating incidents that might not even be crimes, cases where little to no evidence had been collected at the time and memories were hazy, was as difficult as Zander’s job got. The police had ruled out Vina’s competitor on the reality TV show—she’d been on a club tour in Ibiza for the whole of that month with hundreds of witnesses to prove it—and the only other suspect they had was Vina’s ex. He worked as a lab technician in a high school, and the cops liked him because he had access to chemicals, but it didn’t feel right. He had no motive. When Zander spoke to him, the man had been suitably sympathetic about Vina’s plight, but more concerned with getting home to his new, pregnant girlfriend.

  And Zander didn’t want to push the connection angle too hard with the police. Why? Because if any investigator stepped back and thought about who the logical suspect was, there was only going to be one person at the top of that list.

  Lanie.

  Somebody had systematically removed the women most closely associated with Travis Thorne from the picture. Lanie had wanted him, and now she had him. She’d had the most to gain from their elimination. Zander knew she hadn’t done it, but the last thing he wanted was for the police in two countries to rake through her life. Their lives. Their pasts…

  So who else shared that motive? Peyton, possibly. The other women on the tour—Courtney, Meredith, and Verity. Or even Vina. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had injured themselves in an effort to cover up other crimes.

  Then there was option number two: jealousy. Yes, men suffered from it too. Had Travis upset somebody enough that they’d retaliated in the sickest way possible? That opened up the suspect pool a lot wider—the other members of Indigo Rain, the crew, and Gary Dorfman. From what Max and Bry said, Dorfman didn’t have much luck with the opposite sex, striking out more often than he hit a home run, and when Zander spoke to Vina, she’d said Gary had asked her out to dinner and she made an excuse. A business dinner, he’d said, but she hadn’t been convinced his intentions were quite so innocent.

  Clues were few and far between. The skin-lightening cream could be bought under the counter from any number of stores in London, and since they weren’t supposed to be selling it, they tended to be cagey about its existence. The acid was readily available—over the internet and from most builders’ merchants, since one of its purposes was to clean patios and brickwork. Another use was in drain cleaner, which meant it could even have been stolen from one of the hotels or a show venue. How often did cleaning cupboards get left unlocked?

  Yes, Lanie had gifted him one hell of a case. Solving it promised to be trickier than catching smoke in a gale-force wind, but Zander had little choice. He had to give it his best shot.

  “Let’s start again from the beginning,” he said to his sister. “Tell me about the day you met Travis.”

  Six
o’clock in the evening, and Zander was still at his desk. Lanie had gone home to watch a movie with Tessa, but Zander had stuck around to call Jason, a pal in the Metropolitan Police. Turned out they were as stumped as he was about Vina’s case. No third-party fingerprints had been found on either the jar or the box, which was suspicious in itself since somebody must have touched it during the purchase process, and nobody had spotted the boyfriend—their prime suspect—anywhere near Vina in the time frame they were dealing with.

  Lanie had sifted through hours of CCTV footage, but she hadn’t spotted Peyton. Nor had any new likely suspects popped up. The one interesting snippet of information came during their discussion of the party where Lanie injected Jae-Lin with the EpiPen, and Zander wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. Apparently, Jae-Lin had taken ill in a locked bathroom, and Verity had been the one who suggested breaking the door down. Why? Pure dumb luck? Or remorse over what she’d done? If she’d just stayed quiet, Jae-Lin would’ve died, and the fact that Verity had had a hand in saving the girl moved her down the suspect list a notch.

  “Are we working you too hard?”

  Zander took his head out of his hands as Emmy Black pulled up a chair beside him.

  “No, this is personal.”

  “Something to do with the Indigo Rain thing?”

  Of course, one of Blackwood’s directors had needed to sign off on his request for extra resources the previous week.

  “Maybe.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  Did he? Emmy’s question was genuine, not some bullshit attempt at chit-chat. She may have been a world-class bitch, but she cared in her own strange way. And she had good instincts. Zander laid out the basic facts to see what she’d make of them.

  “Well, there’s one obvious suspect, isn’t there? At least for the last three ‘accidents.’” She used her fingers to make little air quotes.

  “Alana.”

  “Yup.”

  “Don’t even go there.”

  “I’m not. On paper she looks good, but her motive’s flawed. Let’s say victim one was a genuine accident. That leaves three girls. Jae-Lin got taken out on Lanie’s second day with the band, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hardly time to build up an obsession, is it? She wasn’t a fan of the band beforehand?”

  “Never mentioned them, never listened to their music.”

  “And Alana had no reason to compete with Reagan or Vina. Travis was into her, not the other way around, at least to start with.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I saw them together. She didn’t tell you?”

  “Where? In London?”

  “LA. They flew there for the funeral of the first dead girl.” Emmy told Zander a tale that made him want to shake the full story out of his sister. Didn’t she understand he needed to know every damn thing that had happened, no matter how unimportant it may have seemed? “My take on it? They were both fighting the attraction at that point. If I was a betting woman, which I am, I’d put money on there being an interesting reason for Travis taking Reagan to that awards show.”

  “A cover-up? He didn’t want to admit to his feelings for Alana?”

  “Nah. He’d have gone stag rather than risk hurting her. The dude took a sex doll on a date once, remember? He knows he can get women whenever he wants, and he doesn’t feel the need to prove it every time someone rolls out a red carpet.” Emmy scrunched her lips to the side, thinking. “Travis Thorne is oddly secure in his own skin, and he doesn’t like pretending to be who he’s not. But he’s also under the thumb of his record label. The whole band is. I don’t know a huge amount about the music business, nor do I have any idea whether it’s connected to the whole mess that’s landed in your lap, but it struck me as abnormal.”

  “I kind of wish I’d kept my mouth shut now.”

  Emmy shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “This is one of the strangest cases I’ve worked on. At best, it’s a crime against Vina plus a whole series of nasty coincidences. At worst? We’ve got a would-be serial killer on the loose.”

  “And we might not be able to conclude on which unless another body turns up.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Emmy’s phone buzzed, and she glanced at the screen. “Gotta go. Call me if you need manpower in LA, yeah? I’ll sort something out.”

  “Thanks.”

  Give and take. There was always give and take in Emmy’s world.

  “And good luck.”

  She glided silently out the door, leaving Zander alone with troubled thoughts and a hope that Emmy was wrong for once. He didn’t want the body count to rise, not with his sister so closely involved in the case.

  CHAPTER 31 - ALANA

  “ALANA, WE NEED to talk.”

  My brother walked through the door two minutes after Tessa left. She’d offered to stay, but tonight was her godmother’s birthday dinner and I couldn’t ask her to miss that. I’d be fine, I assured her, even though I’d crossed my fingers under the table. How could I possibly be fine after the news she’d just given me? I’d been about to start on the wine, which let’s face it, I desperately needed, when Zander came back all serious. And he didn’t sound happy.

  “Talk? What about?”

  He rolled his eyes. “What do you think? You haven’t told me everything, have you?”

  Perhaps not every single detail. “Uh…”

  “Your little jaunt to LA with Travis?” Zander prompted.

  “Oh. That.” How did he find out? “You talked to Emmy?”

  “Yes, I talked to Emmy. Lanie, I’m trying to investigate two possible murders and two attempted murders here. ‘Trying’ being the operative word. If you hold back on the details, a difficult job becomes impossible.”

  “We were only there for a few hours. I didn’t think it was important.”

  “Do me a favour and let me be the judge of that. You’ve been around Travis for the last five weeks, and I haven’t. I need a complete picture of what happened during that time. Every interaction, every trip, every conversation you can recall. We’ve got suspects coming out of our ears, but the only good suspect right now is you.”

  What?

  “Me? But—”

  “I know it wasn’t you. But I’m just telling you how a third party’s going to look at it. Now, you’ve got thirty seconds while I get a beer, then you’d better start spilling. Where’s Dove?”

  “Out for dinner with Olivia.”

  I guess until that point, I hadn’t truly understood what a predicament Travis and I were in. Coupled with Tessa’s revelations, Zander’s words broke something inside me, and as he headed to the kitchen, silent tears rolled down my cheeks. This should have been the happiest time of my life—finding the man I wanted to be with—but Red Cat Records, some psychopathic asshole, and the whole damn universe were conspiring against Travis and me.

  The hiss of a beer can opening was followed by Zander’s muttered curse.

  “Oh, fuck. Don’t cry, Lanie.”

  It was like being fourteen again when he wrapped me up in his arms. Those first weeks after we moved in together, I’d spent hours sobbing against his shoulder.

  “I’m s-s-sorry.”

  “We’ll fix this, Lanie. Don’t I always fix everything for you?”

  “Y-y-yes.”

  Listen to me. Twenty-one, and I’d regressed into a snivelling idiot. Love and loss had destroyed all the self-control I’d spent the last seven years building.

  “Just talk to me.”

  So I did. Sitting at the counter in the kitchen, I told Zander everything, starting at the beginning with Tessa’s message to Rush on Instagram and ending with her visit tonight. Five minutes in, Zander grabbed a notepad and started scribbling, and when I got to the part about Reagan and what she’d done to Travis, he gripped the pen so hard I thought it would snap.

  “So you’re saying she sexually assaulted him and he felt he had no choice but to stay quiet?”
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  “Yes.”

  “He didn’t tell anyone?”

  “At the time? Just his bandmates.”

  “That gives any one of them a motive for—”

  “For Reagan, I know.”

  “Four accidents is a lot, too many to be a coincidence, but we have to consider the possibility that there’s more than one perpetrator.” Zander rubbed his temples, something he only did when he got really stressed. “You don’t make my life easy, do you? And then there’s this contract shit…”

  Indigo Rain’s contract with the record label had also been the subject of Tessa’s news, which had added a new layer of quicksand to the mire we were currently drowning in. One of the many ex-musicians she’d emailed had finally agreed to give her a few hints, off the record of course. And what he’d said made me hope Gary Dorfman would be our mysterious culprit’s next victim. If anyone deserved to fall down a mineshaft, it was him.

  “I don’t know what to tell Travis.”

  “For the moment, you don’t tell him anything. His contract might not be the same. Is he sending you a copy?”

  “He said he would, but I haven’t got it yet.”

  As if Travis could hear the conversation we were having, my phone pinged, and an email notification flashed up.

  Here’s war and fucking peace.

  I tapped at the screen, and a behemoth of a document appeared, reams and reams of tiny text, scanned in so it was a bit blurry. Travis hadn’t been kidding about the length. It went on for almost four hundred pages. I tried reading the first few paragraphs, but it might as well have been written in another language. Legalese wasn’t something I understood, and even if I did, I’d have fallen asleep before the end of the definitions.

  Zander peered over my shoulder. “This is why I never wanted to be a lawyer.”

  “That and the fact you’d have had to actually go to your lectures at university. And pass exams.”

  “Yeah, that too.”

  “So what do we do now? Tessa’s source mentioned two problem clauses, but I’m not sure I’d ever find them in that lot.”