Model Bodyguard (Haven Investigations Book 2)

by Lissa Kasey

  “I want to talk to Joel.”

  “If he’s in an inpatient facility, that will be hard. They usually restrict access to just family. Emily should know where he is.” Ollie glanced over at me as we were stopped at a light. “I’ve got lots of ideas, but nothing solid. You?”

  “Same. Is it Emily? Does she hate him for crafting her life for her? Is it Levi, who controls all Jacob’s money and used to control his whole life? Is it Jeremiah, who thinks everything is beneath him? Joel, who is jealous of Jacob’s fame? I don’t even know where Erin fits in. And then there’s Joshua, who’s apparently connected though he’s long gone.” I folded my arms over my chest. “Something stinks in this family.”

  “Tomas has gone through hundreds of names and it’s all the same. One-night stands or parties. No hard feelings, just sex.”

  “Good to know there are so many consenting adults out there.”

  “I think it’s a conquest thing,” Ollie said. “Getting to say you had sex with someone famous somehow makes people feel more self-important than they are.”

  “Yeah?” Had people treated him the same way? I didn’t ask because I didn’t really want to know. “So it has to be someone in his family. And it’s obviously not Kisten.” I really did want to talk to Joel.

  “Tomas spoke to the other two reporters late yesterday and their sentiments were the same as the first I spoke to. Keep Jacob in the headlines any way they can. Still no response from the last guy, or the site owner. The background search makes him look pretty normal. Married with kids. Closer in age to Levi than Jacob, but seems to have no connection to the music industry at all. I don’t know how he fits as a reporter. There’s no history of him writing for anything before the articles began popping up about Jacob.”

  “Strange,” I agreed. “Maybe have Tomas call him.”

  “Sure. He can play innocent and sweet, maybe get the guy to talk.”

  “Tomas is good at getting people to talk,” I remarked. But then he also had both Ollie and Ty to learn from. What a scary thought. That kid was going to rule the world someday.

  “He comes across as nonthreatening, so people just open up to him.”

  We were headed toward the highway now. I sighed, bracing myself for the ride. “So Emily and Levi, then Joel?” I asked to try to keep my brain off how we wove through lanes of traffic at speeds only a race car driver would be comfortable with.

  “If we can get in, yes.”

  “We’ll get in.” I had to close my eyes as we rushed by a semi who honked at us for getting too close. “If we survive the trip….”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  EMILY ACTUALLY had an office. It was a bit of a shock, but not surprising that Levi worked in the same office. It was part of a high-rise building of office spaces for lease. The office was also very plain: browns everywhere, carpet, walls, desks. No pictures of Jacob or anything that would lead anyone to believe this was the office of the manager for one of the biggest names in music.

  Emily appeared seconds after we stepped inside. She smiled at us—it looked genuine enough—held out her hand, and waved us toward an office. “Come on back. We’re pretty casual here.”

  And there had been better security than any I’d encountered since starting this job. The ground floor had been filled with rent-a-cops. We were screened and had to not only show our IDs, but also stand in front of a camera, to be viewed by Emily so she could verify that we were indeed Kade Alme and Oliver Petroskovic. We’d been walked to the elevator, where a code had been entered. There were no buttons inside the box at all. Just a door to an emergency phone. Secure but also dangerous. I wondered how they got away without having Stop, Close, or Open Door buttons. Apparently hitting the Down button outside the elevator would take everyone to the ground level and that was the only option.

  Her office was just like the rest of the space: neutral and brown. There were a couple of pictures on the walls of Emily with a few big-name celebrities. Another frame sat on her desk, and surprisingly it was an old photo of what must have been her whole family as kids. There was no mistaking Jacob in the picture, even if he’d maybe been in his teens. It was also the first picture I’d seen of what had to be Joshua. He was sitting beside Emily, and the two were almost identical with the same haircut and similar clothes.

  Emily gave me a tight smile when she saw me looking at the picture. “Better times,” she said. “Life is so much simpler when you’re a kid.”

  I nodded. “For most.”

  She motioned to the chairs on the other side of her giant desk and we sat. Ollie had my top coat, leaving me with just the suit jacket to hide the shoulder holster and gun. He crossed his legs and sat comfortably. Again, at ease with Emily like he hadn’t been with any of the rest of her family. But then, that made sense now didn’t it? Jeremiah said Emily was asexual and since most everyone viewed Ollie as nothing more than sex on two legs, to have someone not look at him that way must have been refreshing.

  He reached over and grabbed my hand, his cold, so I rubbed it between mine to warm him up. “Thanks for meeting with us,” Ollie told Emily.

  “Of course. It’s been a bad few days.” She frowned. “I never expected things to get this bad. I’ve been speaking with Kisten’s family all morning, making arrangements. Jacob must be devastated. I tried calling him about an hour ago. He said he was still with the police so he couldn’t talk. Why do you think they are talking to him for so long? He would never have hurt Kisten. Those two were like peas in a pod.”

  “We’re looking into it,” I told her, being purposely vague. “The police just want to be sure they’re not missing anything. At least he’s safe with the police.”

  She nodded. “I updated his schedule. He asked not to cancel the show tonight. Insists on doing a tribute to Kisten.”

  I groaned internally. This time I would use every one of his badly trained guards to scour the place before he set one foot in the building, including all equipment testing and sound checks. “It’s better if he’s not in public,” I told her. “Safer. At least until we catch this person.”

  “I agree.” She opened her computer and turned it toward us, showing a calendar of events all canceled or rescheduled for a week from now. “I’m trying to keep his tour on track. He wants to get moving. Asked if I could move it up. But nothing’s ready. Not even his tour bus.”

  “The one where he’ll be all by himself?” I clarified, recalling that Jacob had said it was a big change for him to travel alone.

  “Yes. We could have purchased a new one, but he just wanted his old one renovated. Costwise that makes sense, since a new bus would have been over a half million, while renovations were only thirty or forty grand.”

  Ollie coughed quietly into his fist, eyes flicking in my direction. So the tour bus had special equipment already installed for Jacob’s games. That made sense. Hard to travel when you needed to carry large caches of toys everywhere. I wondered what he did when he went overseas. Was there a second bus? An airplane with a dungeon installed? I also wondered just what kind of renovations he’d requested.

  “I’d like to see the financial records,” Ollie reminded Emily. “Money is often a big motivator.”

  “Levi would have told me if something was off,” Emily said.

  That was a lie. Or maybe she didn’t know it was since she didn’t know about Jacob’s special blackmail account, which he’d told Levi was to pay for babies. “It’s a good place to start,” I assured her. “You said he’s not doing all the work himself anymore. Perhaps one of the other accountants know something that he may have missed.”

  It was true, though I didn’t think either of us believed that money was the issue this time. Yes there was the blackmail, but that seemed almost a side issue, an afterthought. Maybe a way to throw investigators off the trail. It wasn’t like they’d had to work hard to get Jacob to pay.

  “Levi is next door,” Emily told us. “Just let him know what you need and he’ll get it for you.”


  That was a change, since Levi had told me he’d need Jacob’s permission before he could hand over the information just before Jacob had been injured. Ollie got up. “I’ll be right back.” He headed out of the office.

  “Was Joel working on Jacob’s crew the day Jacob was injured?” I asked.

  She frowned. “Yes. But you have to know he’s not involved. Joel isn’t well.”

  “Like Joshua wasn’t well.”

  “No. Joel is troubled, but not as troubled as Joshua was. I didn’t know he and Kisten were so close.” Emily folded her hands in her lap and sucked in a deep breath. “He’s where he needs to be, getting help.”

  “For drug abuse?” I wanted to know. “Or mental health?”

  “Both. He has depression and anxiety. His therapist has been bouncing around the diagnosis of bipolar disorder for a few years, but we’ve kept him pretty level with medication and therapy. He’s just exposed to a lot of substances when he travels with Jacob. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been fighting to keep him home this time.” She looked thoughtful. “I’m trying to convince him to enroll in school. Take some classes in music management. It might help him focus.”

  “Who normally travels with Jacob on tour? All of you? Jeremiah made it sound like he and Erin didn’t do that much.”

  “Joel used to. I almost always do, and Levi with me. He can do his job wherever as long as he’s got a satellite linkup. Jeremiah and Erin show up for major promotional events. Tour kickoffs, major signings, radio contests, but they don’t travel with him. When we were younger, we all traveled everywhere. Now that we’re older, we don’t have that sort of time. Even I don’t make it to every one of his shows. Sometimes I’ll meet him in a completely different country a few days later just to make sure everything is going smoothly. Kisten was the only one with him all the time.” She glanced away and bit her lip. “I can’t believe he’s dead.”

  “Murdered,” I reminded her because she really needed to understand how serious this was. If she wasn’t behind this, and I really wasn’t getting a bad vibe off of her, then she could be in danger too.

  She nodded.

  “Any idea why?”

  She looked at me, confusion clear on her face. “Why would anyone kill him? I know not everyone liked him. He could be a jerk sometimes, but he did what he did to take care of Jacob. He was good at his job. The best. I never worried about Jacob being somewhere or getting something done when Kisten was around.”

  “And now that he’s not, you’ll have to hire someone else.”

  “Several someones, I’m sure. Not everyone is as devoted to their job as Kisten was.”

  Or the man. I was pretty sure at this point that Kisten hadn’t been devoted so much to being a personal assistant as he was to taking care of Jacob. In a way it was another form of control, which everyone reminded me Kisten required in spades. What better way to be top dog than to have dominion over the guy everyone else claimed was already on top? But maybe I was overthinking it and Kisten and Jacob were just good friends, not both power-hungry egomaniacs. I was sadly used to the latter when it came to celebrities.

  “And Kisten had a nondisclosure agreement, right?”

  “Of course. All employees have one.”

  “Except for the employees who happen to be family,” I pointed out.

  She frowned. “We’re his family. We wouldn’t use his secrets for monetary gain. He already takes care of us.”

  “And if he didn’t?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if he didn’t take care of you all,” I clarified. “If he didn’t provide allowances, jobs, and financial security. Would the disclosure agreement make sense then?”

  “Since he does take care of us it’s a moot point, don’t you think, Mr. Alme?” Her tone had gone icy. Apparently these agreements were a touchy subject.

  “I’m just wondering why it’s such a big deal,” I tried to soothe her. “Signing them or not. Since he takes care of his family, it would make sense that they’d take care of him. The agreement would just be a safeguard in case someone thought they weren’t being treated as fair.”

  “Jacob is very fair.”

  Jacob bent over backward for his family, but I wasn’t going to point that out right now. “Can I ask you a personal question?” I asked.

  She shrugged.

  “You’re aware of Levi’s extracurricular pursuits?”

  “Yes. Levi gets what he needs while we’re on tour with Jacob. Much like Joel and even Jeremiah, they all enjoy the wild life Jacob’s fame brings them.”

  That was interesting news. “And when Jacob is not on tour?”

  “He’s usually home with me.”

  It had been almost two years since Jacob’s last tour. I wanted to ask if she was letting him be wild at home, but couldn’t figure out how to ask without sounding like an asshole. Two years was a long time to go from double-teaming assistants to just a wife with no sex drive. Jacob still brought fans around. Maybe that’s why Emily and Levi still lived with him, so Levi could get his pick of Jacob’s leftovers.

  “And Jeremiah and Joel?”

  “Jeremiah has more lovers than Jacob. Joel is too unstable to last in a long-term relationship.”

  “What do you mean unstable? Is he dangerous to his lovers?”

  Emily shook her head. “No. He’s just very sensitive. His mood swings to the extremes. Most people can’t handle that. Ollie is a bit that way. It’s why he and Jacob never worked.”

  Ollie could be moody, but he didn’t have the swings she was implying Joel had. Plus I was pretty sure Jacob and Ollie hadn’t worked for other reasons, Ollie’s depression and anxiety aside. Maybe she was one of those people who thought her family could do no wrong. I’d met a handful of them in my time. Rose-tinted glasses permanently attached to their perception. But she’d been a master at manipulating us into working this case, so she read other people well. I wondered about her reaction at the hospital. “You didn’t seem worried when Jacob was hurt.”

  “That’s not true. I was just busy taking care of everyone. Jacob wasn’t the only one hurt. And he wouldn’t see me. Ollie said he wasn’t badly hurt. And the doctors did eventually let us in on everything. We had two crew members with head injuries. A half-dozen more who needed stitches like yourself. I may be Jacob’s manager, but that’s not all I am. Think of this as a company, and Jacob is the owner of the company, but I’m the CEO. Everything, everyone goes through me. It’s a lot of responsibility,” Emily protested.

  “But he’s your brother first.”

  She sat silent for a minute, blinking and breathing. Thinking, perhaps. Finally she said, “I guess I don’t really think that way anymore. Is that horrible to say? Yes, he’s my brother and I love him, worry about him, but he’s also my boss. I’m responsible for hundreds of people and the company as a whole.”

  “So in the ‘train full of people versus Jacob’ scenario, you’d rescue the train first.”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “Does that make me a horrible sibling?”

  I shrugged. Who was I to judge? I’d probably do the same thing if it were my blood siblings. But if it was Ollie or the train….

  Ollie reappeared in the doorway, but made no move to sit. Was something wrong? His jaw was set in a hard line and my coat was wrapped around him like a shield. Had Levi hit on him, or said something to him? I got to my feet.

  “What hospital is Joel at?” Ollie asked Emily.

  She stared at him for a moment, like she wanted to refuse. Then she picked up a Post-it note from the side of her desk and jotted down a name and address. She held it out. I took it and handed it to Ollie. He turned and headed for the elevator without a backward glance. I frowned.

  “Thanks for your time,” I told Emily. “I may call later with more questions.”

  She nodded, but was already picking up her phone. “I’m sure I’ll see you tonight at Jacob’s appearance.”

  I swallowed back a curse as I followed Ollie into t
he elevator, reminded that Jacob refused to cancel his appearance for today. The doors slid shut and down we went. Ollie stood rigid and tense, arms wrapped around himself, staring at his reflection in the door. The trip to the bottom floor took forever even though there was no stopping to pick up other passengers.

  “What did he do?” I didn’t even ask about the records because financial shit and Jacob aside, Ollie was more important.

  “Nothing.”

  Right. I waited. We got all the way to the bottom, signed out of the building, and headed toward the car before he broke. He put the keys in my hands, wrapped his arms around me, and cried. I stood frozen for a minute, not sure what had happened or how to fix it. But I held him, kissed his face, and whispered, “It’s okay. I love you. I’m right here.”

  We stood with the sun beating down on us, chill air blowing through me and into Ollie. He shivered, but I wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or whatever the voices in his head were yelling at him.

  “Talk to me, baby.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not my fault.”

  “No, it’s not.” I wasn’t even sure what it was.

  He pulled out his phone and navigated to an article that was attached to a picture of Ollie and Jacob together, headlines reading “Back Together?” It was one of a dozen. “Jilted Lover or Threesome?” read another, with my picture inserted on the side. And funny how all the articles were again written by the three reporters we’d been investigating.

  “I know this isn’t true,” I assured him.

  “This was all on the blog. There are dozens of headline ideas and pictures. Most of the pictures are old. Except this one.”

  “Huh?”

  “The picture,” Ollie said. He showed me his tablet. “I don’t even know where they got this picture. How….”

  It was Ollie helping Jacob into our SUV. “Someone was in the parking lot when we picked him up yesterday.”

  “The lot was cleared by Duke and his men,” he reminded me, because I’d been the one to insist on it.

  “Okay.”

  “Kisten took it.”