by Lissa Kasey
“Take it like a man,” I teased him, earning myself a snarl from Jacob as Duke arrived with the first guard of the night. I picked up a chair and moved it beside the door. “No one in or out without clearing them.”
The guy glanced at Duke, who nodded.
Jacob was already settling down, his eyes narrowing into sleepy bedroom eyes that probably appealed to most of his lovers. Ollie tucked away his famous oil. “Let’s go talk to Kisten.”
We stepped out of the room, closing the door behind us. “Where can we find Kisten?” I asked Duke. Did he live here too? Rush said he’d come back to the house after being bailed out.
Duke pointed to the opposite end of the hall. “He’s the only one allowed on Jacob’s floor.”
Funny how he hadn’t come down to greet Jacob earlier. “Thanks,” I told Duke. “Sorry to be a bother.”
“No bother. Call if you need me.” He vanished downstairs, leaving the upper hall empty and quiet. Since we were three floors up, Jacob shouldn’t have needed guards on the door in his own home, but someone close to him—likely someone here right now—wanted to either hurt Jacob, end his career, or maybe even kill him.
Ollie was already at Kisten’s door, knocking. “I can talk to Erin next,” he told me. “The brothers always hit on me.”
I frowned at him. “Is anyone straight in this family?”
“They’re sort of a take-whatever-you-can-get type of people. I used to like it about them because they never bitched about me. That was all the media calling me the girl in Jacob’s life. His family didn’t care that I have a dick. Jacob always implied he liked the media’s misperception.”
“Because they were trying to get into your pants?” I supplied.
“Jacob is known for sharing.”
“Any of them get pushy when you turned them down?”
“Jeremiah did once.”
“Yeah?” I looked him over, making a mental list that I would be speaking to Jeremiah alone.
Ollie just shrugged. He frowned at the door and knocked again.
Nothing. No sound. No answering call.
“Maybe he’s asleep?” I suggested.
“At 7:00 p.m.?” He reached for the knob and it turned under his grip. “Let’s see if we can wake him, shall we?”
“Maybe he’s taken cannabis oil too.”
“You’re the only one I know who drops like a stone from cannabis oil. It’s relaxing, but doesn’t make most people sleep.” He tiptoed into the room with me behind him. It was dark enough that I reached for the light and flicked it on, totally expecting to be greeted with a newly roused Kisten, who’d bitch because we woke him. Only the bed was empty, still done up like no one had touched it.
“Weird,” Ollie said. “Kisten?”
No answer. “The bathroom door is partially closed. Maybe he fell asleep in the bath?”
“Who does that?”
No one that I knew of, but I also didn’t know many of the rich and famous or the personal assistants for the rich and famous at least.
Ollie hesitated at the door. “Last time I opened a bathroom door when someone didn’t answer, it ended badly.”
I remembered the dead porn star hanging from a shower rod in a sleazy apartment. It had been one of the more gruesome things I’d seen in my life, even counting my time overseas. But somehow people missing pieces was less icky than a guy with all his pieces bulging in the wrong places. “You stay here. I’ll go in.”
His eyes were wide but he shook his head. Instead, he plastered himself to my back as I carefully pushed the door open. The room was huge, bigger even than our renovated bath. The color was gray, a cold, pale slate that would have been featured in a home improvement magazine, but lacked the warmth of our new bath at home. It had a separate glass-enclosed shower area that took up one wall of the room, a small toilet with a sink not far from the door, and on the opposite side of from the toilet was a giant Jacuzzi-style bathtub.
At first it really did look like he’d fallen asleep in the tub. “Kisten?” Ollie called and took a few steps toward the stairs that led up to where Jacob’s personal assistant lay slumped toward the back wall.
But he wasn’t moving. Like, at all. I rushed forward, pushing Ollie back a step, and reached for Kisten’s neck, searching for a pulse. Ollie crouched beside me. He hissed at the water, which was pink and bubbling around Kisten like he was some sort of stew, and if we left him there he would be.
“I’ve got nothing,” I told Ollie. “Shit. Call an ambulance.” Ollie immediately hit the button on his earpiece and began speaking to the emergency operator.
Kisten was still warm. From the tub, or had his heart just stopped? Maybe we could still help. I struggled to drag Kisten out of the tub onto the level ground of the floor to begin CPR. Ollie grabbed his legs, laying him carefully down and covering the man’s genitals with a towel. I began chest compressions and breathing air into him. Since his head hadn’t been submerged, I didn’t think there was water in his lungs.
Ollie touched Kisten’s face. “An ambulance is on the way. Breathe, you jerk,” he grumbled at Kisten. “If you die, who’s gonna take care of Jacob?” He stumbled toward the doorway and screamed, “Help!” Ollie had taken first aid and CPR classes to gain certification after Nathan’s death. He offered to take over, but I was beginning to think no amount of breathing into Kisten or pounding his chest was going to bring him back. Both of his arms were a mess of raw skin. Slashes in a dozen directions. The flesh was flushed pink only from the warmth of the water and quickly fading to a bluish-white. Not a trickle of blood oozed from the cuts anymore. His elbow was a little stiff. So he hadn’t been gone long enough for much rigor to set in. I stopped the CPR and held a hand up to Ollie to keep him from taking my place as Duke appeared in the bathroom doorway out of breath, gun drawn. A half-dozen guards filed in behind him.
“Shit,” he said.
No kidding. “I think he’s been gone awhile,” I told Duke and Ollie as I pulled my phone out of my pocket, speed-dialing Rush. The wailing siren of the ambulance barely penetrated the thick walls, but I heard it just the same.
Ollie had his hands to his face and he was trembling. This was so not what he needed right now. If Kisten was going to off himself, the least he could have done was wait until after we finished the case. Did that mean it really was him planting the notes, stories, and threats? Would it all end now? Somehow it seemed far too simple a resolution.
Ollie sat down on the base of the stairs looking shocked and a little horrified.
“Hey Rush,” I said when the detective answered. “Looks like our prime suspect is out of the picture.”
“What?”
“Kisten is dead.”
Rush swore. I agreed.
Chapter Nineteen
THE ENDLESS stream of medics and police that followed sent me into a sort of meditative state. I could half focus on their movement and sort of doze. We’d been questioned, and commanded to stay out of the fucking way. Every guard and servant in the house would be questioned. Procedure. The medics declared him DOA. It was hard to tell the time of death since he was sitting in hot water, but they estimated he’d been gone a couple hours at least.
“Not suicide,” I told Ollie after I watched them lay Kisten’s body on the bag they’d be zipping him into. They’d drag the tub for clues, I was sure. Once again I was thankful to not be a cop. The little nitpick shit wasn’t my job.
“How do you know?” Ollie whispered. He’d stayed though I’d tried to get him to go back to Jacob’s room for a while. He was pale, but handling it okay. Kisten didn’t really look dead. Just sleeping—so long as you didn’t look at his wrists. They were a mess of so much meat, cut to the bone in some places.
“Once he cut one wrist that badly, he wouldn’t have had the strength or the mental capacity to do the same to the other. Pain is pain. His wrists are a mess. I think someone tried to make it look like he committed suicide, but they should have stopped at one wrist, then. Plus
a dozen deep cuts? He would have hit bone and tendons. No one does that. Not while trying to kill themselves.”
Ollie shivered and buried his face in my neck. “Don’t think about those things.”
“What things?” I was confused for a minute. “Oh. Suicide. Yeah, no, baby. Not planning it. Just observing a murder scene.” I wondered if Kisten had been drugged. He didn’t appear to have any signs of a struggle. Just the wrists all cut up. I couldn’t imagine him sitting there docile and willing as someone cut into his flesh. And where was the whatever he’d been slashed with? There was no razor on the tub edge. Maybe in the water? That would be sure to wash away any prints. I sighed.
Ollie shuddered, clinging to me as though his legs were going to give out any moment, and it was time for him to go. There was no reason for him to be seeing dead people on a regular basis. Not everyone could handle it. When I’d taken over the active work at Haven, all that pressure was to fall to me. And it happened sometimes. Out late following perps through alleys or to seedy motels. Sometimes I stumbled over someone who’d passed. Homeless sometimes. Other times the perp would find himself on the wrong end of someone’s aggression. I never told Ollie about those. Will knew. He experienced it himself enough to know there was no way to do the jobs we did and not have it happen a time or two. He was just thrilled I kept Ollie out of it. Until now. His second dead body in less than year. I really sucked at protecting him from some of the saddest things in this world.
I edged us out of the room, telling the cops on the door and wandering the halls where we would be with words and hand gestures. We weren’t going far. Inside Jacob’s room, the guard stood, waiting. A Jacob-sized lump lay on the bed, and I hoped he was sleeping. I dismissed the guard, directing him to wait his turn to be questioned, before planting Ollie on the bed in the tiny closet room, then checking to make sure Jacob was alive.
He was. Out cold, it seemed. Maybe cannabis oil worked the same way on him. I needed to pack some shit for him. He wasn’t staying here. It wasn’t safe. And I sure as hell wasn’t letting Ollie hang around this house filled with possible murderers. However, Ollie was beginning to fall apart. The few seconds I’d left him to check on Jacob had him trembling and wheezing like an elephant sat on his chest. Panic attack.
“Breathe, baby, breathe. I’m right here.” I pulled him into my arms. Five solids, I knew. If I could get him to focus on his senses—real, tangible things—I could pull him out of this spiral. “What color are my eyes?” I asked him.
He struggled, but looked up at me, eyes searching my face like he couldn’t really see me for a minute, and maybe he couldn’t. The panic attacks sometimes blocked out his world with weird colors and memories. “Brown,” he finally said.
“Smell?” I prompted, hoping there was something on me he could pick up instead of the lingering scent of blood and soap that stung my nose.
“Obsession.” My cologne. Good. He was starting to calm.
“Hear?” The room was almost dead silent, the movement from the hall faint. Apparently Jacob had good soundproofing. Another reason for him not to stay, since no one would hear him scream if he was attacked here.
“Your heartbeat.”
I smiled. “Good. Still racing a bit, yeah?”
He rested his palm on my chest over my heart, sucking in a deep breath, finally getting air.
“Feel it pounding for you, baby?”
He nodded. I pressed my forehead to his, centering his focus on me instead of his anxiety. His trembling was easing, and while his own heart galloped like a horse out of control, I knew he was reining it in. I held him, let myself calm in his arms, while I gave him quiet instructions on breath and body relaxation. Months of memorization and practice meant I didn’t need to say the words, but sometimes Ollie needed to hear them. Finally I rewarded him with a soft kiss. He wrapped his arms around my neck and pulled me closer, hugging me hard enough it almost hurt.
“Sorry,” he whispered after a few minutes. “I’m not good at this. This dead people thing.”
“Good thing you’re not a mortician, right?” I teased as I rubbed his back in big circles, enjoying the weight of him in my arms. “Nothing to be sorry for. We just have to pack up some of Jacob’s things and we can go home. You’ll sleep better in our bed with your cat beside you.”
“Home?” He pulled back far enough to stare at me in the dim light of the single lamp of the small room. “With Jacob?”
“Someone in his family is trying to kill him. Would you rather he go to a hotel with his bodyguards?” A hotel was the second-best option, but that meant I’d be there too until this thing was solved. “I’m his bodyguard right now.”
Ollie growled.
I frowned at him. “What’s that for?”
“You promised you weren’t interested in him.”
How did he get that from me trying to ensure Jacob didn’t bite it? “Baby?”
He didn’t answer. Just glared at me.
“I’m not interested in Jacob Elias.”
He folded his arms across his chest and gave me the stink eye. I couldn’t help but laugh, which only made him look more irritated at me. “Seriously.”
“Jacob told me you told him you fantasize about him.”
Now I growled. “He’s pushing your buttons. I do fantasize about him. About hitting him.”
Ollie was silent for a minute, brows furrowed. God, he was so fucking beautiful. Like an angry angel who’d just come down to scold me for staring too long into the sun. I couldn’t stop from running my thumb over his plump bottom lip as it jutted out. He blinked at me. Long lashes feathered over his cheeks like the wings of some exotic butterfly. He didn’t see what I saw. I knew that. Both his therapist and his nutritionist reminded me of that often. Always when I complimented his beauty, I was to talk about things in a more abstract or generally viewed than anything solid. A focused compliment like loving the way his ass was so round and firm could send him into a compulsion over the body part. Even small bits like his lashes or lips would have him searching out the nearest mirror, looking for flaws that were all in his head.
Finally he said, “Can we go home?”
“Are we taking Jacob with us or do I have to find a hotel for him?” Once again his guards were going to be tied up talking to the police. The fact was, I was all Jacob had right now. If he’d been awake, he would have been pissed. “I can call Ty and Tomas to come stay with you if you don’t want Jacob in our house. Or maybe drop you and Newt off at Britney’s.” I didn’t like the idea of him home alone right now. Not because I thought whoever was after Jacob would attack Ollie, but because Ollie had a tendency to dissolve when left too long alone with his thoughts.
“Home. I want to go home. I want my things, and Newt, and your pillow under my head.” He yawned. Obviously he hadn’t really slept last night when I’d been passed out. He’d probably been too worried about rolling over and hurting me to actually sleep. “He can’t stay in your room, or my room.”
The only other room with a bed was the room with all Nathan’s stuff in it. I was pretty sure there was a clear path to a small double daybed. Otherwise the room was filled with boxes and trash bags filled with all the things Ollie couldn’t yet bear to sort through.
“Maybe he can sleep on the couch,” I said. Britney had chosen the living room couch from the same line that Ollie had gotten his chaise, so I knew it was supposed to be comfortable. As much as any couch could be comfortable.
Ollie pulled free of my arms, rising to his feet with a newfound steel in his back. He headed into Jacob’s room and moved around it like a pro, pulling out a smaller suitcase and beginning to fill it with clothes. Jacob didn’t stir. I wondered if we should wake him to tell him about Kisten, but knowing he hadn’t been sleeping and that he was healing, I decided we’d try to get him to my house with as little prodding as possible. He was tolerable when sleeping because his mouth was shut and he couldn’t leer at Ollie.
There was a quiet knock at the door.
I opened it to find Rush. He frowned at me, but let me wave him into the room and shut out the noise. “Going somewhere?”
“I’m taking Jacob back to our house.”
“Is that really going to be safer than staying in the mega mansion surrounded by guards?”
“Apparently,” I said. “Since his assistant was just murdered right down the hall while said guards were all wandering the halls.”
Rush let out a long sigh. “The ME suspects he’s been gone three to four hours. So not long after one of our units followed him to the gate here.”
“Someone was waiting for him.”
“Possibly.”
“Are you going to announce that you’re looking for someone or play it off as a suicide?” I had to ask.
“You mean make our guy think he got away with it?”
I nodded.
“Revealing the murder could make him screw up.”
“Or run,” I pointed out. “Or go nuts on Jacob.”
Ollie wheeled the completed bag to my side, then returned to the bed, apparently to rouse Jacob enough to move him. He was serious about wanting to go home.
“We’re going to list it as suspicious. Not officially one way or the other yet. There’s already press gathering outside the gate. We’ve got almost fifty people to question. That’s a lot of people in the house when he died. A lot of suspects.” He glared at me. “Only reason you, your boy, and the rock star aren’t on the list is because I know where you were all day.”
I grinned at him. “I’ve found having appointments and keeping receipts very helpful.” Not only as an alibi, but for tracking people down too. “Find whatever he was slashed with?”
“Straight razor. Was in the tub.”
Which was exactly what the cuts had looked like. “He didn’t seem the type to be shaving with a straight razor. More a rechargeable kind of guy,” I pointed out.
“His electric razor was on the counter of the sink,” Rush agreed.
“So you’ll need to be tracking where the razor came from.”