Wilkes carefully laid out a series of five photos. Moreau, who’d been expecting mug shots, was surprised to see that most of them looked as if they’d been printed off of Facebook or Instagram.
He shrugged and shook his head when he recognized no one.
“All right.” Wilkes shuffled them away and set down another five.
They did this three times. On the last set, there was one person who he mulled over. “There’s something familiar about this man, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.” The photo was of a man in a red t-shirt and white pants. He had dark hair slicked back and a weasel-like, albeit handsome, face.
“You’ve met him?”
“I’m… not sure.” In all the run-ins with potential stalkers that Wilkes had helped Moreau with in the past, they’d also run into this problem. Moreau met thousands and thousands of people every year. Fans, people in the business, extras on sets, etc. It would have taken a photographic memory to keep them all straight. “Maybe many years ago? There’s something familiar about his face.”
Wilkes looked a bit triumphant as he made a note in a notebook but he didn’t say more and Moreau knew from experience that asking wouldn’t yield any results.
“Now, I have some questions about how your new professional team operates.”
“New? I’ve been with this team for a decade.”
“Since your last stalking debacle?”
Moreau frowned. It had been a decade since he’d fired half his team under Wilkes’s advice. “Right. Well. Let’s see. There’s Margo, my agent. You’ve met her. And Renee, my financial manager. Hadid, my publicist, he’s fairly new as well, but I like him very much. Then, let’s see… Ah. Nicole, my business manager. She’s got a whole team of people whose names I have written down somewhere. I’ll text them to you. Luca, my assistant, he’s new within the last five years. And he occasionally has an intern, though I’m not sure if that’s the case right now or not. I’m assuming you have all the information on my West Coast security team.”
“Former security team, I’m hoping.”
Moreau frowned. “I haven’t decided yet if I’ll fire them. I suppose whatever information your investigation yields will help me to decide.”
Wilkes nodded. “What are your interactions with fans like at this point?”
“Private meet-and-greets mostly. I will occasionally sign autographs at the set. Once in a while a fan will slip through my security at a restaurant or a hotel, I’ll take pictures. That kind of thing.”
“What about fan mail?”
“Oh. I never see that. I think Luca handles it? Or maybe it goes to my publicist. There’s a ghost address, I think. Once in a blue moon, Hadid will show me a particularly sweet letter from a kid or something like that.”
“And who manages your social media?”
“Hadid. And his thousands of minions, I think. Occasionally myself. When I’m on location and my team is limited, it’s me. But I have to run everything through them for approval first.”
“No one else is between you and your fans?”
“Well, Luca, of course. As my assistant, I assume he deals with my overzealous fans. And anything that might slip through the cracks of my publicity team.”
Wilkes wrote everything down diligently, but Moreau was certain he wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. Not only was Wilkes familiar with the lives of movie stars, the two of them had worked together before.
“Tell me about this movie you were working on at the time of the accident.”
Moreau grimaced. It pained him to think what his car accident had done to the production of the movie. Either they’d recast him or completely halt production, both of which would be very costly for Joey Brisbane, his friend who’d written and directed it. “It’s an Indie film. My friend Brisbane is the mastermind.”
“How do you know him?”
“We met on the set of Waterpark, wow, fifteen years ago now. He was a writer’s assistant. We just hit it off.”
“Fast friends?”
Moreau shrugged. He could practically feel the skepticism rolling off of Wilkes and it bothered him. Obviously Moreau was very rich and it was often hard to distinguish who was after his money and who wasn’t. But he truly felt that Joey was a friend. He’d never asked for a loan, or connections, or even a good word. They just understood one another’s sense of humor was all.
Wilkes’s questions spanned out, taking the better part of two hours. He wanted to know about everything from Moreau’s involvement in the conception of the film to everything he knew about the cast and crew. All the way down to who was hooking up with who.
By the time they were done talking, Moreau’s mouth was dry and he could use a nap. He eyed Wilkes as he packed up his messenger bag.
“You know who cut my brakes, don’t you?”
“Not definitively.”
Moreau snorted and Wilkes shrugged apologetically. “Look, I’m gonna be in New York for about a week, trying to suss out a little more information while I’m here. If you think of anything else, of course, call me.”
There was that light-as-a-feather tapping on the door to the kitchen and Moreau quickly turned, for once excited to see Val, if not just for Wilkes’s reaction to her.
“Um, Mr. Davy?” she said as she came in through the swinging door. Geo followed after her.
“Yes, Val?”
Val avoided everyone’s eyes while Wilkes looked like he was attempting to X-ray straight through her clothing.
“I spoke with Rook and he said that if it’s all right with you, Rita and I can go home now. Leary will stay one more night. If you need anything at all, please call and—”
“Val.” Moreau rose and crutched over to shake her hand. “Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me. You’ve helped me through one of the hardest times in my life.”
She blushed to the roots of her hair and her eyes bounced off his face. “Of course. No thanks are necessary.”
She didn’t know yet what kind of thanks she was going to get. Moreau made a note to talk to his assistant about sending her a bonus. A fat check and maybe a goodie bag of some kind.
“Are you packed?” Wilkes asked from behind Moreau and the tenor of his voice had Val jumping an inch in the air.
“E-excuse me?”
“If you’re ready to go, I’ll give you a ride. I have a rental car and I’m on my way out as well.”
“Oh.” Val bit her lip and looked up through her eyelashes at Wilkes.
She was much too shy for Moreau, but, as she couldn’t quite hide the genuine interest in her eyes for Wilkes, Moreau had to admit that she was very pretty.
“I’ll grab your bag from upstairs, Val,” Geo said, swallowing her smile. “You can head on down to the garage with Wilkes.”
“Okay,” she said shyly, still biting that lip.
Wilkes placed a hand on the small of her back as she preceded him out of the kitchen. As he turned back to Moreau to nod goodbye, there was a small smile on his face.
Moreau crutched himself upstairs and sat heavily in the chair at his desk. He was happy for them, whether something came of their obvious attraction or not.
In many ways, Moreau couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to just see a woman, feel an attraction, and offer to give her a ride home. Because of the fame he’d been practically born with, Moreau’s relationship to intimacy was a strange one. Any woman he’d pursued had launched herself at him the minute she got the inkling that he was pursuing her. He’d often found himself deeply tied up with a woman who he’d merely had a passing attraction to. With very little idea on how to extricate himself.
It had made him very cautious on who he expressed attraction toward, and who he made a move on.
But now he was forty years old, with very few friends, no remaining family, and half in love with a woman he barely understood.
He wondered if all men had these problems.
Moreau watched the shadows le
ngthen as he sat at his desk. He heard the team milling about in the hall. Atlas calling to Sequence, challenging him to a pull-up contest. He heard Cedric closing himself into his bedroom, on the phone with Elena.
Moreau pulled out his own phone from the desk drawer and frowned at it. He had no one to call. But even as he stared at it, it buzzed with a message from his publicist. He ignored it. He currently had 108 unread messages in his inbox from members of his professional team. They were trying not to bother him with too many things, but still, he’d been out of commission for almost three weeks. And they were all working as hard as they could to not only keep his accident under wraps, but also to salvage the wreckage of Joey’s movie.
Technically, he was allowed to look at screens again, what with his concussion fading away, but it made his head spin to look at the sheer number of messages. He clicked away, into his contacts and began scrolling through them.
His frown grew deeper as he realized that for every name he recognized in his contacts, there were four or five that he didn’t. Many of these he was sure his publicist had programmed in. But some of them were surely put in by his own hand.
“Alex from Ibiza,” he muttered to himself, reading the contact name out loud. Man or woman? He had no idea. He kept scrolling. He stopped for a moment on Riga’s name. He counted her among his few friends. She was up there with Joey. But she had a royal reputation to uphold and ever since the tabloids had started printing ridiculously fictive stories about Riga and Moreau’s “sordid love affair,” her family had asked for him to keep his distance for a while. She was a princess after all, and he would never want to destroy her political prospects, so he’d stepped back.
They’d both cried during the conversation when she’d explained it all to him. She’d begged him to call her in exactly eighteen months when all the rumors would have cooled off. They could rekindle the friendship then.
Moreau might have been irreparably hurt by her rejection of him except for the fact that Riga was someone who definitely had to choose her battles. She was third in line to be Queen. She had already told Moreau she was planning to come out as gay very soon. She’d be the first openly gay royal in her country. Moreau figured that she had enough on her plate without having to defend herself against the salacious rumors that had always swirled about the two of them.
He kept scrolling. No one. Not a single person he wanted to call and talk to right at that moment. Even though he was practically caving in with loneliness. His leg ached, he was hungry again, he was restless and tired all at once. He felt absolutely wretched.
“Dinner in five,” Geo said as she knocked assertively at his door on her way past. God, he loved how she knocked. It was so rude, so intense. He had a crush on her knock.
“Geo!” he called, and she backed up into his doorway. He didn’t pause to let himself think. He just spoke. “Can I have your phone number?”
She furrowed her brow. “My number?”
He nodded.
She furrowed her brow even further. He felt as if she were half a second away from asking him why. But then she shrugged. She recited the digits to him and he carefully inputted them into his phone, saving her as Savannah Georgia.
Then, because he couldn’t resist, he quickly shot off a text to her. It was the word Hi with an exclamation point, a blue emoji heart, and the explosion emoji.
Roughly translated: whenever I see you, my poor, cold heart explodes.
She pulled her phone from her pocket, saw the text and raised an eyebrow. “Dinner?” she prompted again.
“Yeah. Yup.” Rook crutched to the kitchen hot on Geo’s heels. The rest of the team was already there, chatting and passing around food. Atlas tugged a chair out for Moreau to make it easier to sit and then, while actively arguing with Sequence, plopped a ladleful of quinoa on Moreau’s plate.
The meal was loud and relaxed and went a long way toward calming Moreau’s nerves. His phone, however, felt clunky and apparent against his leg. He was viciously aware of having a private way to contact Geo. He had no plans to use or abuse it. But still, for the first time ever, he had options where she was concerned.
They’d finished dinner when Cedric leapt up. “Oh! I almost forgot. Elena mailed these to the bunker today. One for everyone.”
He pulled matching blue envelopes out of his back pocket and passed them out one by one.
“Wedding invitations?” Atlas guessed.
Cedric got a dopy grin on his face, his cheeks pink. “Yeah.”
Moreau was extremely pleased as Cedric reached across the table and handed one straight to him. He’d always liked Cedric and Elena, and could feel that they liked him too, but to be invited to their wedding? That was a real honor.
They each opened up the envelope and Moreau laughed at the note that was typed onto it. This paper is completely compostable. Please fill out and return it so that we can make sure to compost it!!
It was very Elena.
“Does anyone have a pen?” he asked. Sequence tossed one over to him and Moreau quickly filled out the form, RSVPing for one and handing it back over. The rest of them followed suit. RSVPing for their wives and girlfriends and, in Sequence’s case, his daughter as well. When Geo handed her card over to Cedric, Moreau couldn’t help but see that she’d only RSVP’d for one.
Hmm.
***
That night, Geo was in her bed, one hand cocked behind her head and staring into the pitch black. She loved for her room to be so dark she couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed.
She cursed when her phone lit up on her nightstand and nearly burned out her retinas.
Geo reflexively grabbed her phone and held it facedown on her chest, blotting out the light. She frowned. What the hell was her dad doing texting her at midnight? She didn’t like to think of him being awake this late. It was a bad sign. Men like him made shitty decisions at night.
She grabbed her new glasses off the nightstand and flipped over the phone to read his message and made a sound of surprise when she saw that it wasn’t from her father. It was from a California number.
Her stomach flipped when she realized the text was from Moreau.
Who was currently lying in his bed on the other side of the hallway.
Midnight snack? it read.
She blinked at it, trying like hell to correctly interpret any subtext that might be there. Slowly, anger started to swell within her. She hadn’t been sure why he’d wanted her number, but apparently it was because he wanted to be able to boss her around when she wasn’t even on duty?
Go down and get it yourself.
What a jerk! Just when she thought that she was starting to see a sweeter, softer side of him, he went and treated her like a servant. It was midnight, she could be asleep for all he knew! He could be waking her up in the middle of the night, all to do his bidding? She threw off her covers. She was about to go over there and give him a piece of her—
No, you misunderstand. I was inviting you, not ordering you.
She frowned.
Oh.
Another text came in. When have I ever ordered you around like a servant?
And another text.
I’m not a monster, Savannah.
Feeling ornery, she copied and pasted a picture of him in one of his earlier roles as a monster from an Albanian forest. The movie was terrible, but it had become a cult classic over the last decade or so. Privately, she thought it was some of his best work.
She laughed to herself as she sent it to him, knowing it would piss him off.
Was it her imagination or had she just heard a laugh from across the hall?
You hit below the belt, he texted.
How is that below the belt? she responded.
It is not fair. I have no embarrassing images of your past to send to you.
She sucked her teeth and switched positions in the bed. That’s because there is absolutely nothing embarrassing in my past.
He immediately sent her a gif of Oprah rolling
her eyes to the heavens.
That one got a genuine laugh out of Geo as she rolled to her stomach. Why are you even awake over there?
It was a long minute before he texted back. There is a question that is keeping me awake.
She frowned. What the hell did that mean? A question that was keeping him awake? Who did that happen to?
You’ve never heard of google? It answers all your questions, Davy.
There was another long pause. While Geo impatiently waited for his response, she checked her email, scrolled through some headlines and then immediately clicked into her messages when she saw he’d written back.
Google cannot answer this.
She glared at her phone. Then she turned and glared in the direction of Moreau’s room. He was trying to get her to ask him what the question was. She didn’t play that kind of ball. If he wanted to tell her, he should just freaking tell her. No song and dance required.
Sounds like a pickle. Good luck.
She moved to turn her phone off, but it vibrated again and she couldn’t help but read the text.
Is that a no to the midnight snack, then?
Geo’s heart was doing this annoying banging thing in her chest and her tank top had started sticking to her back. She kicked the covers off her even further and sat straight up in bed when she realized what was happening. She was hot and bothered! She was freaking hot and bothered! All because of a few texts from some movie star.
She’d smirked at Val when Moreau had asked her to get a cup of coffee and Val had nearly combusted on the spot. But suddenly, Geo had a rising sympathy for the poor woman. Because apparently when Moreau Davy invited you to do something, it was like getting socked in the face with a bag of rocks. But, like, in kind of a sexy way.
Jeez. She needed to get a grip. It wasn’t even like he was asking her on a date! Right? He was just inviting her downstairs to get a midnight snack. The end.
Seconds ticked past and she had absolutely no ideas on how to respond to this text. She could say yes, but that would mean she’d find herself alone, off duty, by invitation, with one of the hottest men in the history of the planet. And if her stupid, racing heart was any indication, that was actually gonna affect her.
Rook Security Complete Series Page 82