by Lissa Kasey
She nodded. “They think it’s normal fan stuff. Except all of these notes were found in areas that can’t be reached by fans. Inside the limo, at home on his bed, in his private bathroom on the tour bus. It’s not just something shoved in a mailbox and left to be found.”
“So they really want his attention,” I told her. “He didn’t say anything about these yesterday. Just the articles.”
“The articles are a nuisance. We threaten lawsuits and some of them come down. More go up. He gets a lot of cameras shoved in his face asking about this stuff. He’s started responding with violence because it’s so often.” She hesitated a moment. “He’s really been struggling the past few months. Anger issues are getting in the way of his career.”
“Yeah, that sounds like Jacob,” I remarked, handing her the folder back and headed toward my office. I opened the door and waved her and Ollie in.
“I’ll put Mrs. Louiton in the conference room when she arrives,” Tomas said.
I nodded to him and shut the door to study Ollie and the woman Emily for a moment. He wasn’t at all stiff or tense around her, not like he had been with Jacob. And she didn’t discount him. But that didn’t mean we’d be taking Jacob’s case.
“Jacob has hired other investigators,” Ollie said. He motioned at Emily to sit. I remained leaning against the door just in case there was going to be an egocentric rock star plowing through it any second. “These seem to be a long-running issue.”
“Yes. It all began not long after Joshua….”
Ollie paled. Who was Joshua? I ticked off his past boyfriends in my head, and since he didn’t have many it was easy. However, none of them were named Joshua.
“The trouble stops for a while,” she continued. She set the folder on the desk and then waved at it. “This is new. Started a few weeks ago.” She pulled another envelope out of her bag and set it on the stack. “This one came late yesterday.”
Ollie freed the paper from the envelope and read it. He paled. I was across the room in two strides to rip the page from his hand.
Don’t think your little princess whore is going to save you. We’re nearing the end of our game. You killed him. It’s time to pay.
Game, what game? Little princess whore? Who was that supposed to be? I glanced at Ollie, who wouldn’t meet my gaze. Ollie? Did this son of a bitch just call Ollie a whore? A princess maybe. But never a whore.
I sat down and began digging through the pile of notes trying to figure out just what game this guy was talking about. Many of them were talking about time ticking away. That it was coming. Whatever it was. There was nowhere to hide. He would have to pay. For what?
“And you have no idea what it’s about?” I glanced through the articles Ollie had loaded onto our server from Jacob’s stash. Most of his stuff was underage sex. He seemed to really like them young. “Did he abuse someone’s kid?”
Emily shook her head. “No. Despite what the articles say, he’s never had sex with a minor. We’re very careful about that. No one gets to see him backstage unless they are either of age or accompanied by a parent. There’s always guards, one of his family, and several of the promoters with him. We document everything.”
“And the time that’s coming to an end? Something big is happening soon?”
“He hasn’t released a new album in almost two years,” Ollie pointed out. “Not since before we broke up. I know he’s had a new song on the radio that’s been getting good play.”
“He has a brand-new album that is releasing in less than a month. He’s starting a world tour right here in San Francisco. Three shows completely sold out. His first show will be globally televised before kicking off the tour. One hundred twenty cities all over the world. First world tour in almost four years.”
“So he’s got a huge tour, a new album, and an international TV event all happening at once. That sounds like a pretty big event to me.” I frowned at the folder. “This latest one says he killed someone. Who?”
Emily shrugged. “That’s why I want to hire you. Not just to investigate. But as personal bodyguards.”
“He has a legion of bodyguards,” Ollie protested. “He doesn’t need us.”
“Thugs,” I said. “Willing to slash car tires. What else do they do? Maybe the stories aren’t so much about Jacob, as they are about his chosen staff?”
“That’s just the point. They are paid muscle. Pay them a little more, get them in on a little scandal, and how hard would it be to sway them? That’s why I want you guys.” She smiled at Ollie. “I know you’re pretty and good at acting like you’re nothing special, but I’ve seen you take down guys twice your size. I know you,” she looked at me, “are ex-Marine special ops. I’d trust both of you any day over his entire batch of meatheads.”
“Except that I’d be thrilled to kick the shit out of him,” I told her honestly. “Do you know what he did to Ollie?”
“Kade,” Ollie protested.
I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “No, it’s not right. Or fair. And you shouldn’t have to deal with him again. Do you understand that he was an abusive boyfriend, Ollie? It’s like asking you to go back to a man who beat you and pretend everything is normal.”
Ollie paled and looked down at his lap. Shit. Was that it? “Did Jacob actually hit you?”
His refusal to answer was answer enough. I leapt out of my seat, cursing. Ollie flinched.
“Jacob is known for having a bit of a kink,” Emily said quietly.
Ollie snorted. “Kink is putting it mildly.”
“This isn’t funny,” I told them both. “Did he kill someone during one of his kink things?” I demanded of Emily.
“No. Never,” she promised me. “No one around him has died. He’s very careful with his playmates. It’s all consensual. We’ve never had anyone die.”
“Joshua,” Ollie reminded her.
She swallowed hard and looked away. “Jacob had nothing to do with that. Josh never even knew of Jacob’s kink.”
Beating people wasn’t a kink. Only it was. I growled at the idea of anyone hurting Ollie in any way. He didn’t like to be restrained at all. Now it made so much sense why. The verbal abuse had been bad enough. How had Nathan not known about physical abuse too? What about bruises? Ollie was a model. How the fuck did Jacob pull off hurting him and getting away with it?
“He fucking hurt you. Like, put his hands on you and hurt you. God damn it.” And I saw red. Wanted to rush out of the office, find that fucker, and tear him apart.
“I consented,” Ollie finally said, refusing to look at me. “I always said yes.”
To please a man who was unpleasable. I groaned and sat down in my chair. “Ms. Elias?” I asked unsure of Emily’s full name.
“Bassen,” she said. “Elias is a stage name for Jacob. Bassen is my married name.”
I nodded. Of course. Was anything about that bastard real? “Ms. Bassen. If you could give us some time to discuss the case…. Is there a number I can reach you at?”
She handed me a card. “The tour starts in less than a month.” She looked at Ollie. “I know you’re mad. You can hate him. I get it. But please, we can’t lose him. You were there when we lost Josh. You’ve lost your own brother. You experienced firsthand how distraught Jacob became. He buried himself in his recreation. Which is why he fucked up with you. He didn’t realize how good you were for him until you were gone because he pushed you too far.”
“And they aren’t getting back together,” I assured her.
“I agree. Ollie was good for Jacob, but Jacob was not good for Ollie.” She let out a long sigh and reached out to squeeze Ollie’s hand. “You know how hard… painful it is. I’m hoping you’ll help us end this so we can all move on like you have.”
Ollie flinched again. Fuck. Talk about a low blow.
“I understand your haste,” I got up and led her to the door needing to get rid of her and the disaster she’d just thrown into our lives. Tomas waved to the conference room so I knew Mrs. Louiton was waiting. “I promise
to let you know this evening. Is that okay?”
“Sure.” She glanced back to where Ollie was sitting, staring at the floor, unmoving. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re not the one who should be sorry,” I assured her, irritated she wanted to bring pain back into Ollie’s life.
“Still. I am sorry.” She left with that and I wanted to punch something. Funny, since I wasn’t a guy who normally led with my fists.
“Be right back,” I told Tomas, and returned to my office and shut the door.
Ollie glanced up and frowned before looking back down. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I let out a long breath and closed my eyes, focusing on calming myself and gathering strength. Ollie didn’t need an angry boyfriend. He’d had enough of that in his life, obviously. Anger always made him retreat. I’d patched him back together, but one good hit and he’d shatter again. Finally I said, “I don’t see you any differently.”
His gaze flicked upward to study my face.
“You’re still Ollie. My Ollie. My beautiful Ollie. Nothing he did to you, or convinced you that it was okay to do, makes you less. Not less of a man, not less of a person, not less of Ollie. I still love you.”
Tears made his green-gold gaze sparkle and he swallowed hard. “I love you too,” he whispered.
“You’re beautiful,” I told him.
He shook his head and looked down again. Drops landed on his sweater and he sniffled. This was beyond my scope. None of this had ever come out during therapy, and it needed to. He hadn’t healed. He’d just buried his pain. “Can we talk to Jolanda about this?”
He stiffened. She was our therapist, but did she know? I couldn’t imagine Ollie sharing this with her.
“Baby?” I prompted.
He still didn’t respond.
I sank down into my chair and pulled him into my lap, wrapping my arms around him. He curled up there like a child who’d longed forever to be held and sobbed. It didn’t matter that he tugged my shirt into disarray, or wiped his nose on my jacket. “I love you,” I whispered to him. “You can’t keep this in anymore. It’s not healthy. Do you understand that? What he did to you, even if you consented, if it made you uncomfortable, it was wrong. It’s not your fault. It doesn’t make you some sort of deviant, or dirty, or whatever else you might be thinking. Do you understand?”
He nodded faintly. “He hurt me,” Ollie finally whispered. “Not just my heart. But that was the worst part. I don’t understand why I still care. Why I look at him and think I should help. And then I look at Emily and know there’s good in him. He saved her. Tried to save Joshua. Jacob’s not a monster. Even if sometimes I want to believe he is.”
“Baby, what he does for other people doesn’t allow him to treat you like shit.”
“I know. I know. That’s why I left.” He sighed and let his head rest on my shoulder. “You should go meet with your other client.”
“Not until I know you’re okay.”
“I’m okay,” he mumbled. “I’m always okay. I can’t be anything but okay.”
But he wasn’t. We’d worked hard to make him okay, and Jacob was ripping that away from us. “You can be anything you want. Not okay. Okay. Sad. Angry. Happy. Hell, you can be an astronaut. I’ll find a way to get you to Mars.”
He snorted again. I loved that sound. “You’re so weird.”
“Mad,” I reminded him. “We’re all mad here.”
He sighed. “We’re going to help, right? We can’t let someone murder him.”
I didn’t point out that we didn’t know if someone was planning to murder Jacob. Though he might be on my list if I could find a way to get away with it. “I think we should walk away. Refer them to another agency.”
“We’re better. You know we’re better.”
“Yeah, but does he deserve better?”
“Emily is only one of his siblings. Joshua was her twin. He committed suicide while Jacob and I were dating. It was horrible.” He was silent for a minute. “I thought I understood their pain at the time. But I didn’t. He wasn’t my brother. But Nathan was.” He sucked in a deep breath. “They all work with Jacob. I can’t help but think what I’d do if I were them and it was Nathan I was trying to save. Losing Nathan almost killed me. I know losing Joshua did the same to Emily. I know Jacob suffered. I tried to be there for them. I just didn’t understand how horrible it really was. Nathan wasn’t perfect, but he was my brother. Emily loves Jacob the same way.”
“Nathan was never that much of an asshole,” I said. Only sometimes he was. When it came to his little brother, Nathan could be a real fucker. He’d said some pretty choice things to me the last time we’d talked on the phone and I’d tried to pry more information out of him about Ollie. He never liked anyone in Ollie’s life. No one was good enough, until there was no one left. I sighed and kissed Ollie’s forehead. “Why don’t you go check on your cat while I talk to Mrs. Louiton and reassure her her husband isn’t cheating. You said someone’s coming to install a cat tower? When do we have to be home for that?”
“Six thirty.” Ollie let me up, but wasn’t quite willing to let me go yet. He wrapped his arms around my waist. “Don’t leave me, Kade. You promised you’d stay and now I don’t know if I could live without you.”
I blinked at him. “I’ve been telling you for months I’m not going anywhere. And we now have a cat to raise together. A cat who likes you better than me.”
“He likes you,” Ollie assured me.
“Sure.” I gave him a little push toward the door and we made our way out. Tomas put a toiletry bag on the desk beside him for Ollie to grab and clean up his face. The cat now sat on the desk beside Tomas’s computer, tail wagging in a long rope of contentment. Tomas reached over occasionally to scratch the damn thing between the ears. Newt responded with soothing eye blinks, soft purrs, and more tail wagging. So that’s how it was, eh? I glared at the cat, who paid me no mind.
“I’ll be out in a few,” I told Tomas and Ollie.
Ollie took the bag and vanished into the bathroom, and Tomas threw me a worried glance.
“He’s okay,” I promised. Though I didn’t feel that secure. We’d be helping Jacob. Not because we wanted to save Jacob. But because Ollie couldn’t bear for a family to go through losing another sibling like he had. It was nothing at all alike. Nathan had been ill with PTSD. There was a possibility that his death had been foul play, but I had yet to find something more than a written note from Nathan suspecting as much. I’d pored over autopsy reports, gave myself memories I could have lived without, just to discover nothing out of sorts with a suicide. Nathan had gunpowder residue on his hands. The spray had been at the correct angle for a self-inflicted wound. I suppose someone could have held his hands to the gun and put the gun under his chin. But that seemed sort of a hard thing to do when Nathan was a trained soldier and not exactly a pushover. Still, dead was dead. And it had almost killed Ollie too. I knew he’d do just about anything to spare someone else that pain.
Maybe it would have been possible to say no if Ollie didn’t know Emily. I wondered how close he was to the other siblings. He hinted at knowing the other brother before his suicide. A lot of people lost someone that way. Why did Jacob have to be one of them? Dammit. The last thing I wanted to do was to save that bastard’s sorry ass.
I groaned and made my way into my meeting, vowing to stay away from cheating spouse cases for a while. Sadly, they seemed like less stress than bodyguarding these days.
Chapter Seven
MRS. LOUITON had been more than a little irritated when I told her her husband wasn’t cheating on her, but instead trying to better himself. It didn’t matter to her when I gave her a list of his classes and his school schedule; she insisted he was cheating. Since she obviously wanted out of the relationship, I very politely gave her Ollie’s prepared reference sheet of therapists and divorce lawyers. Which, of course, set her off on a firestorm of threats of lawsuits and the like. I pointed to the disclosure statements
she’d signed when I’d taken her case and walked her out so she couldn’t bother Tomas or Ollie. I couldn’t understand why anyone would stay in a relationship that made them so unhappy or why she needed an excuse to leave, but it wasn’t my place to pry. However, it did make me less willing to take more cheating spouse cases in the future. I’d make a point to mention that fact to Tomas privately tomorrow so he could turn down inquiries.
I made an avocado-vegetable salad for dinner. The veggies were steamed and still crunchy, with fresh cilantro and mashed avocado mixed in, with lime juice over the top to add flavor. It was one of my favorites and Ollie loved anything with avocado.
The new pet tower was actually installed by guys from a local company that specialized in cat supplies. It was a huge combination of wall shelves, towers, scratching posts, and finally a cat door that would let Newt into Ollie’s upstairs bedroom. They added a small chip to Newt’s collar that the door would recognize and allow him in. Anything else trying to use the tiny opening in the door would have to break the door down.
At first I’d scoffed at the idea. It was very techy and that was the sort of thing that Ollie loved. But cats were finicky creatures by nature. I totally expected Newt to ignore the expensive tower structure set up throughout the lower floor, and avoid the mechanical opening on Ollie’s door. However, Newt found his way to the topmost shelf the minute the installers were done putting it up. He also disappeared upstairs when Ollie went up to change. Whether Ollie let him in or the cat used the cat door, I had yet to discover.
The installers complimented the house and the renovations so far. Most everything I’d scraped, sanded, and painted or stained. The kitchen had been professionally redone, leaving it with a white cottage feel, a giant center island, and stainless steel appliances. The furniture in the lower floor had all been chosen by Britney. She’d sat at the table with Ollie and me months earlier showing us 3-D graphics on her tablet of possible room designs. They had all looked a little too formal for me. And Ollie didn’t care at all about the lower floor, so he’d left it all to her. His space upstairs was truly his sanctuary. He’d removed the little fridge and microwave from the sitting room and replaced them with an extra-wide chaise. It was a good place for naps.