After a moment, I stopped trying to guess because everything I envisioned ended with me lying facedown in a pool of my own blood.
When I opened my eyes, I was surprised to find myself in a grand, unfamiliar room. It had vaulted ceilings and acres of white carpeting, and, through a glistening wall of glass, a sweeping view of the sea and distant mountains. Some time must have elapsed, because the sun had begun to sink below the horizon. The sofa beneath me was plush and comfortable, the feather pillow under my head was thick and soft.
Where the hell was I?
“It’s Amy’s house,” said a quiet voice to my right. I turned my head to find Michael standing a few feet behind the sofa where I lay. Hands in the front pockets of his jeans, he stared pensively into the darkening sky beyond the wall of windows. “She bought it for us. I spent the happiest days of my life here.” His gaze flicked to mine. “Before.”
My head throbbed. I felt sick to my stomach. I was almost certain I’d broken something in my right ribcage area because every breath was stinging, searing misery. Trying not to breathe too deeply, I asked, “Are you going to kill me?”
His brows flew up. My bluntness had surprised him. “Are you so ready to die?”
“Just thought I’d cut to the chase. I hate drawn-out suspense; it’s so nerve-racking.”
“Sorry,” he said unremorsefully. “Prepare to be racked.”
When I tried to sit up, a spasm of pain speared my side, making me gasp. Michael watched me struggle into an upright position with a detached, faintly hungry expression, as if I were the lobster he’d chosen to be boiled for his dinner from the deli case. I noticed the only mark on him was a red rash on one side of his face, possibly the result of an airbag deploying.
He said, “Careful. I don’t want you any more bruised than you already are.”
That was even more chilling than his expression. What did he have planned for me?
Without warning, his hand shot out. He grabbed my hair and yanked my head back. I cried out, trying to twist away, my hands curled around his wrist, but I didn’t have the strength to escape. Every part of my body throbbed with pain.
“Stop!” he spat, and gave my head a firm shake.
I stilled. Breathing hard, my hands wrapped around his wrist, I looked up at him looming over me. He planted his other hand next to my head and leaned down to speak into my ear.
“At first I didn’t get it. Had I read him wrong? Had I misjudged the situation?” His pupils were dilated unnaturally large, leaving only a thin ring of blue surrounding a pool of black. Our faces were so close I saw the tiny red veins shot through the whites. His hand in my hair shook so hard my teeth rattled.
I’d seen people on drugs. If I was afraid before, now fear turned my blood to ice water.
“But then I realized I hadn’t read him wrong at all. It wasn’t him I’d misjudged.” His voice turned to a hiss. “It was you.”
He yanked me to my feet with brutal strength, using only that hand fisted in my hair. I screamed, clawing at his arm. He dragged me backward over the couch. I fell to the floor with a bone-crunching thud, the wind knocked out of me. I lay there gasping for air, curled into a ball, until Michael began to drag me across the floor by my hair. The pain was like being mauled by a tiger, from the inside. He dragged me down a long, tiled hallway and into a master bedroom, where he dumped me unceremoniously at the foot of the bed.
As my head hit the floor, something in my neck popped. Black dots danced in the edges of my vision.
Michael prowled to the opposite wall of the room, where a camera on a tripod stood, along with one of those large black umbrella halogen lights used in photo shoots. He flipped a switch, illuminating the wall in a wash of brilliant white, then turned to me.
“You told him, didn’t you Kat? You broke our deal. You lied to me, and you told him. I have to admit, I’m really disappointed.”
My fake cool from before vanished under the sudden crush of near-death adrenaline. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! I didn’t tell him anything!”
I tried to roll to one side, to get upright again, but couldn’t manage it. The pain was too much. My head was spinning. I knew I was about to pass out, and fought it, biting my tongue to keep me awake.
For the first time, I noticed how cut and bloody my hands were. One of my shoes was missing. On my left leg, the black trousers I’d borrowed from Grace had been shorn apart and a ragged gash ran the length of my inner thigh. Blood dripped down my leg in long red streams.
Michael stalked toward me. He grabbed me beneath my armpits, hauled me to the lit wall, and threw me against it. Unable to hold myself upright, I slumped sideways to the floor.
Michael sighed. He came back and propped me up carefully, arranging my limbs as you would a doll on a shelf. The room took on a dreamy, hazy quality. I moaned and let my eyelids drift shut.
“It’s no use, Kat. I know you told Nico about our little talk. And even though I’ve been listening in on all your conversations, and nothing sounded amiss, I finally realized he wouldn’t have acted the way he did afterward if you two hadn’t cooked up some silly scheme to try to throw me off. But, as you can see, I wasn’t. And now you’ve forced me to do something unpleasant. You only have yourself to blame.”
I opened my eyes. As he came into focus, I whispered, “Listening in?”
So Barney was right.
“Did you think that nighttime visit of mine was some kind of voyeuristic jerkoff?” Michael sounded insulted. “Please. I was there with a specific purpose: to ensure you’d uphold your end of the bargain I was going to propose to you. Bugging phones is just one of the many talents I’ve picked up in my travels. I’m sure you’ve figured out by now I’m pretty good with hacking computers, too.”
High, unsmiling, he stood over me looking like something the Boogeyman would run from, then stepped back, cocked his head, and stretched out his arms. With his hands, he made a frame. He looked at me through it. After a moment, he grinned.
I understood with bone-chilling clarity what was about to happen.
“You have such eloquent eyes, Kat. Like a silent movie star’s.” Michael’s tone had turned almost tender. “It’s too bad you’re short. With that face, you really could have been a model.” He dropped his arms and stared at me. “Well. At least this once, you will be.”
He went to the tripod. He looked into the camera and adjusted the lens. “Say cheese.”
A flash went off. Then another, and another. Michael was photographing me, bloodied, semiconscious, splayed against the wall in his dead sister/lover’s bedroom. He was taking the final photos of my life.
I knew who he’d be sending them to.
Well, brain, I thought frantically, now’s as good a time as any to prove your existence.
“Amy told me about you. The day we met.” My words sounded a little slurred to my own ears, but they must have been perfectly clear to Michael, because he froze, then stood ramrod straight, his eyes wide.
“What?”
I nodded, licking my lips, surreptitiously looking around the immediate area for a weapon. Any kind of weapon. “I was hired to do the makeup for the band’s video—”
“Yes, yes, I know. And?” Michael held so still he might have been a statue. His gaze on my face burned.
“Well . . . she seemed a little sad . . . so I asked her what was the matter.” Ceramic cat statue on the dresser. Lamp on the nightstand. Framed photo of Avery on the wall. In spite of my head and my pain and the direness of the situation, I had to smile. That would be a bit of poetic justice if ever it existed, smashing in Michael’s skull with a picture of his sister.
“What did she say?” prompted Michael impatiently.
I heard a noise. A creak, or a pop. Most likely it was something inside my own body. I whispered, “She said . . . ” Was that a shadow creeping down the hallway? No, my eyes were playing tricks on me. “She said . . . she said she really wanted . . . ”
Michael moved tow
ard me. He shouted, “What? What did Amy say she wanted?”
From the doorway, a deep voice snarled, “Peace.”
Michael spun around. He pulled a gun from the waistband of his jeans. A shot rang out, then another. As blood sprayed crimson against the wall above my head, Michael staggered back, cursing, but didn’t fall.
With the last remaining ounce of my strength, I lunged to the dresser, grabbed the ceramic cat statue, then smashed it against the back of Michael’s head on my way back down to the floor.
Michael crumpled to the floor beside me. He didn’t move again.
Then Nico was kneeling above me, his eyes tortured, his face red with fury. The whine of sirens rose far off in the night.
I whispered, “Glad you could make it, superstar. Hope I didn’t interrupt a hot date.”
“You said, ‘I can’t,’” growled Nico. Beautiful and fierce, he cradled my face in his hands, staring down into my eyes with so much love in his own it took away what little breath I had left.
“What?”
His words spilled out in a rush. “When I asked you to marry me, you didn’t say ‘no,’ you said, ‘I can’t.’ I didn’t realize it until later because I was too fuckin’ crushed, but then someone said they saw me walkin’ out the back door at the House of Blues when I hadn’t walked out the fuckin’ back door, and I knew it was him, and he’d gotten to you somehow, and you’d promised to do somethin’ crazy like break up with me to protect me, because that’s exactly the kind of fucked-up thing he would ask you to do, and exactly the kind of fucked-up thing you would do instead of talkin’ to me about it, and I should’ve known in the first place because you lie for shit, always have, told you that the first fuckin’ day I met you. Entire time you were tellin’ me you didn’t love me and you wanted to leave, your eyes were sayin’ you were dyin’. Been kickin’ my own ass over that for a week.”
The room above his head careened like a roller coaster. The ground beneath me lurched like a stormy sea. The pain in my body grew more intense, along with the sharp, unwelcome appearance of nausea, but I managed sarcasm in spite of it all. “You mean in between sticking your dick in every available hole?”
“Don’t be fuckin’ dense, woman,” Nico murmured, tenderly stroking my cheeks with his thumbs. “Already told you, you ruined me for anyone else. All those bitches were a cover. I thought Michael’d leave you alone and come after me when he saw his plan didn’t work. Obviously that backfired ’cause he knew me better than I thought he did, and that fuckup is one I’ll never forgive myself for. You left me for real, I woulda dug myself a ditch, crawled into it, and never crawled back out.”
Oh, wonderful feeling. What lovely, lovely relief. No dick. No holes. Just Nico trying to create a diversion and save me from his evil brother.
I whispered, “He said he’d tell everyone about what happened with your father. And that you and Amy had a thing . . . and about that photographer you made disappear. He said you’d go to prison. That’s why I did it. I wanted to keep you safe, too.”
“Oh, baby,” Nico said softly. “I didn’t make the photographer disappear. Wanted to, but Michael beat me to it. As for prison, I got some new insurance against that. Apparently Amy kept a diary her whole life. Made a video diary before she died, too, as part of her therapy in rehab. Gave it all to Kenji for safekeeping. After the funeral, he gave it to me. Guess they were a lot closer than I realized.”
So the diaries were what must have been on Kenji’s mind at Avery’s funeral. No wonder he’d been so distracted.
“Speaking of funerals, is he dead?” I tilted my chin toward Michael.
“Unfortunately, he’s still breathin’. Think I only got him in the arm. Though he’s gonna have one motherfucker of a headache when he wakes up, thanks to you.” Nico glanced back at me, and suddenly it was as if he was seeing me for the first time. He jerked away, eyes widening.
“Jesus, fuck, baby, you’re bleedin’ everywhere!” His voice broke over the last word. He tore off his leather jacket, then his T-shirt, and ripped the shirt right down the middle. He gingerly wound the piece of fabric around my upper thigh, tied it into a tourniquet, then pressed the rest of the shirt against the ragged wound.
As pain scorched through me, the room grew dim. The sirens were right outside. Someone shouted from the front of the house. Nico shouted back, “In here!” Then a dozen cops burst into the room, led by Officer Eric Cox and a very bloody and disheveled Barney, shakily gripping his gun.
I whispered, “Oh, fun, the gang’s all here,” and that’s the last thing I remember before I passed out for good.
The E! True Hollywood Special that aired two months later was the highest-rated episode in the network’s history. Nico refused an interview, but there were plenty of other people eager to tell what they knew about Amy Lynne Jameson aka Avery Kane.
Neighbors. Teachers. Friends from school. It seemed everyone in the shitty little Tennessee town the Jameson kids had fled remembered something. How the mother had abandoned them. How the two boys would show up at school bruised and silent. How pretty Amy was. How strange and wild she grew as she changed from a child to an adolescent.
How the kids had run away, and the town never heard from them again. Only the town had, but it just didn’t know it.
The network had also scored interviews with everyone from her agent, the snake-eyed Ethan Grossman, to Gloria Gentry, the head of the National Council on Child Abuse and Family Violence, who weighed in with solemn statistics about child abuse and neglect, and reminded the viewers at home of the warning signs of possible abuse.
After they played the segments of Avery’s video diary where she detailed the horrors she’d suffered at the hands of her father, Ms. Gentry answered the interviewer’s follow-up questions with tears in her eyes.
Nico and I watched it from the penthouse suite of the Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris on New Year’s Eve, silently sipping champagne together in the massive king-sized bed, until he couldn’t take it any longer and turned the television off. He set his champagne on the nightstand, took mine from my hand and did the same, then pulled me down against him to the satiny, pillowed heaven of the mattress, and buried his face in my neck.
“What did you think?” I whispered, running my fingers through his hair.
He inhaled deeply against my skin, hiding a few moments longer, then reluctantly withdrew, and propped himself up on an elbow. His gaze was solemn. “I think it’s what she wanted, or I never would have allowed it to be shown. It’s not how I wanted people to remember her.”
I kissed his bare chest.
We were both naked, having made love for the second time that night. He was still being gentle with me—much to my irritation, I’d never received that spanking he’d promised months ago in his note in the duffel bag—and touched me as if I were fragile as porcelain. Which I think I’d proven I wasn’t, considering the size of the bump I’d put on the back of Michael’s skull.
Also considering how quickly I’d bounced back after sustaining a serious concussion, breaking three ribs, fracturing the maxillary bone of my eye socket, and losing a potentially life-threatening amount of blood from the laceration on my thigh.
The scar was already kick-ass. I felt like I’d done battle with a saber-toothed tiger and won. The tour only had to be pushed back three and a half weeks before I was well enough to travel.
Naturally, pushing the tour back was Nico’s idea. “Where I go, you go,” and that was that.
I sighed, running my fingers over the new tattoo of my name inked on his chest, right above his heart. It was big, surrounded by thorns and roses, and almost as kick-ass as the scar on my leg. “I wish I could have known her better. She was brave, doing that video. Wanting to make sure she helped you if you needed it.”
“She did it for other abuse victims as much as for me. There was no way she could have predicted this shit with you, but during one of her lucid moments, she must have realized Michael would eventually snap. Mayb
e she thought he’d even do something to hurt her. Either way, her intentions were clear: she wanted the world to know what she’d gone through, and who she really was.” His voice grew soft. “I think she was just as tired of all the lies as I was.”
Don’t let something awful someone does to you make you feel like you don’t deserve love, she’d said in the video, staring straight into the camera, her blue eyes fierce with unshed tears. Don’t take that on yourself, like I did. Don’t let the bad guys win.
“So you’re not sorry the truth is finally out about who you really are?”
“I’m only sorry for all the attention it’s brought us. I know how much you hate that shit.”
I made a small noise of agreement: I did hate that shit. Newspapers and the tabloids had picked up the story long before E! aired it, and it had gone viral. On the plus side, once the general public knew I wasn’t the cause of Avery’s overdose or breakup with Nico, the death threats against me died down. There was, however, a thriving online community convinced the entire thing was a conspiracy to boost Bad Habit’s record sales and generate buzz for the tour.
Not that they needed it. The tour had sold out the day tickets had been released. Apparently people didn’t care if Nico Nyx was really Nico Jameson, or if he was from Mars. They just wanted to watch him play music.
As for the threat of Nico going to prison because of what happened that fateful night with his father when he’d taken his two younger siblings and fled town, the police had told us that Amy’s video testimony—self-defense, she said—combined with eyewitness accounts of teachers and friends from that time who vouched for the violent alcoholism of their father, were enough to convince them not to bring a case, in spite of the story Michael had been telling in prison.
Maybe Eric had something to do with that, as well. Like Barney said, it never hurts to have a cop who owes you a favor.
And, as it turns out, the word of a drug trafficker who’d been under investigation by the FBI for several years doesn’t hold much water. In addition to being extremely pissed off he’d tapped all our phones and houses with software only the NSA was supposed to have access to, the FBI had found out about the hacking of the security company’s computers and the murders of Juan Carlos and the photographer. The list of Michael’s transgressions was so long I doubted he’d ever be released from prison.
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