Bishop's Queen

by Cristin Harber

  She laughed. “Nope. Probably not where I shop.”

  “And you do not have beer.”

  “We can both agree that’s a tragedy.”

  “Ella…?”

  “Hmm?”

  “There’s grass in your fridge.”

  “High-quality grass.”

  All right, then. Bishop shut the fridge and went to her cabinets, inspecting them more out of curiosity than anything else. Everything had a place, and it was labeled. The Container Store could show up that second and do a photo shoot. No prep time or need to bring a label maker. Eco-Ella had them beat to the punch. Everything was organized, labeled, and… hell.

  He spun, doing a slow look around her condo unit as two and two collided with such force that his stomach churned. Of course this place looked familiar. He might’ve paged through her file folder and her blog at the speed of a bullet, but this was her live studio—the home of Eco-Ella stock photos. Her condo was the basis for several pictures, backgrounds, and videos. Bishop stood in the center of Eco-Ella’s home base, and a big-ass red flag crept higher and higher as he hoped he was wrong. “Hey…”

  He checked under her sink. There were two receptacles, clearly labeled RECYCLING and LANDFILL. Inside of both, the trash and recycling had been smashed, compacted, or folded to make them as small as possible. Odd, but inconsequential.

  “Crazy,” he mumbled under his breath. “El… Do your fans know that you post pictures and do live video from your place? That this is your actual home?”

  She shifted on the couch, pulling her arm free. “Yes. Live the lifestyle. The warriors know.”

  He shut the cabinet door. The public had a blueprint of her condo. Did Parker and Rocco know that? Surely someone would’ve mentioned it. Had that FBI realized that? Had anyone actually seen what Ella was doing and realized how much information she had provided to the public? Given the level of intel he’d read, even in the file folder he’d glanced through, the answer was no. The police reports, the FBI’s take, everything was very surface level, assuming she was a potent cocktail of celebrity and activist, conjuring up angry fans and small obsessions. Nothing like what might come from this type of access. He could only assume that given this much personal information, the lines quickly blurred between reality and performance, fan and entertainer.

  Bishop pulled his phone off his hip and shot Rocco a text message. Eco-Ella shoots video from inside her home. All viewers have an all-access plan of the place. His boss could disseminate that however he saw fit.

  Finished perusing her kitchen for anything to drink or snack on, he gave up and returned to the living room. “Let’s chat about the calls. When did they start?”

  “The other day.”

  “And what did you think the source is?”

  “The voice mails said something about—”

  “Oh.” He lifted his eyebrows and gave her a look. “There are voice mails?”

  “Not stalker-related. Tara’s in uber-publicist-handling mode.”

  Why hadn’t her publicist roped in Titan or the FBI? “Again, you guys have no idea.”

  “Again, I’ve been doing this for years. You’re new to the Eco-Ella scene. It happens. It’s called crazy grassroots people. This is what Tara is paid to do.”

  Comical, her calling people crazy, but now wasn’t the time to address that. “Titan can handle the voice mails in question, and we’ll go grab a beer.”

  “I deleted them.”

  “Right.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, lavender and mint trying like all hell to come to the rescue with a little peace and calm. This time, Bishop inhaled deeply, relying on their soothing scents. He let the breath trail out. “Don’t do that anymore. Okay?”

  “Fine.” Ella petted her dog, who’d nestled at her feet instead of looking at Bishop. “Maybe there are new ones since the calls kept coming.”

  “I’ll loop Titan in, and they’ll put an end to that in addition to you changing your phone settings. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  Bishop rubbed his face. “Ella… Is there anything else that maybe you should tell me that you haven’t?”

  All of her attention was on her dog. “Not that I can think of.”

  Not an overly convincing response. “Great. Well, if something pops up, let me know. Deal?”

  She sighed, finally turning to him. The dog crawled into her lap, and the kitten used her talons to crawl up Ella’s skirt. Once both animals were nestled in her lap, she gave them a quick squeeze. “Deal.”

  The front door clicked and flew open. “Girl! You would not believe my day!”

  Bishop spun at the sound of a man’s voice and reached for his weapon. In ran two fluffy, tiny dogs that were identical to the one in Ella’s lap—and a squirrel. They were all followed by a skinny hipster kid sporting a utility belt of neon-colored dog waste bags.

  Bishop’s eyes narrowed on the squirrel, who wore a little tiny harness and leash. Free of the hipster, the rodent scampered into the room and jumped onto Ella.

  “Hi, Tiny Tyke!” she squeaked. “Hey, guys!”

  The kitten mewed, and Ella let the dogs run amok over her as she carefully petted the squirrel.

  “Uh…” If there was a circus before, this was the very definition of a shit show. There were no words for the fury spinning around him and the questionable sanity of two people who didn’t notice—one who had access to Ella’s place. And Bishop didn’t know who he was. “Hello?”

  “You must be the new muscle around here.” Hipster kid shot his hand out. “Manny, assistant to the stars, at your service.”

  “Oh, brother,” Ella mumbled, nuzzling the squirrel.

  “To the stars?” Bishop didn’t know who to focus on. Maybe Ella had an Eco-Ella camera set up to catch this craziness, and he didn’t know it. Wouldn’t her fans go nuts for this? Or would that be more reality TV?

  “Well,” Manny said, “I’m also Ella’s number one fan, and she’s my biggest star. But my clientele is growing. Would you like my card? Do you have any pets?”

  “A dog. But Brick’s good.”

  Ella beamed. “You have a dog?”

  “His name is Brick?” Manny questioned but shook Bishop’s hand. “Who names their dog Brick?”

  Surrounded by Little Kitty, Tiny Tike, and Furry Baby, Bishop could ask the same thing about names but decided not to. “There’s been other muscle?”

  Manny laughed with an amused smirk. “Jay would like to think so.”

  “The scrawny surfer guy?” Bishop asked, referring to the guy who was featured in some Eco-Ella post. “He was the muscle around here?”

  “The boyfriend,” Manny offered.

  “Ex-boyfriend and associate,” Ella piped up, focusing her attention on the squirrel. “My pets are my only significant others in my life, thank you very much. And Jay works at Eco-Ella. Let’s not forget that. He actually has a job.”

  “So this is your… squirrel, and you have more dogs too?” Bishop took in the size of the condo. It was a one-level, apartment-style home—nice, spacious, and environmentally friendly. But large enough for a zoo?

  “Nope,” Ella said.

  “They’re her neighbors’.” Manny offered the squirrel a treat. “She talked them into adopting the dogs so they wouldn’t be far apart.”

  “These cuties are obviously related,” Ella pointed out.

  “Obviously.” The place was immaculate for the number of animals that were in there. His place… maybe Brick slobbered more than her pets. How was her apartment so clean?

  She held out the rodent as it gnawed on the treat Manny had given it. “Would you like to meet Tiny Tike?”

  “I’ve met squirrels before. Thanks.” That was not in her folder. Crazy was well beyond the cat-level of nuts, seeing as she had a varmint on a leash.

  “He doesn’t understand.” Ella sat up, and finished with the treat, Tiny perched on her knee. “Just like you didn’t get the bees. Which is why I quit explaining.”

  �
��He doesn’t get the bees?” Manny repeated, looking dumbfounded.

  “You’re right. I don’t. I wouldn’t.” Bishop clapped to punctuate his agreement, but that sent the dogs whirling around him. “Easy. Okay. Stop. Down.”

  Manny stepped forward. “Down.”

  The fluffy white dogs stopped and obeyed the hipster’s one quiet word. The kitten meowed as though it was having a good laugh at him.

  Manny picked Tiny up. “We need to get going. Oh, and nice job firing everyone up over Vamanato last night. I could hear the interwebs sharpening their pitchforks.”

  What? Bishop pulled his phone out, quickly Googling to see what kind of online, riot-inducing post Ella had done to take on a corporate behemoth like Vamanato.

  VAMANATO POISONS YOUR CHILDREN. AGAIN.

  Nice headline… He clicked on the post as Manny and his animal crew made their way to the door. Ella followed, chatting about how successful last night’s post had been.

  Bishop’s screen switched to the post their conversation was about, and there was Ella, sitting on a bed, frozen in a video thumbnail, ready to talk. There were tens of thousands of likes, and hundreds of comments and shares.

  His gaze went back to the image of her sitting, almost innocently, in the middle of a king-size bed on her white comforter, surrounded by bright-turquoise pillows.

  He was feet away from that bedroom, and his eyes drifted down the hall, wondering how intimately the world knew about her private space.

  And was that when the calls had started…? Maybe she did know what she was talking about. But still, he wanted to be in the know. How could he protect her from a corporate giant if she didn’t let him?

  Bishop’s gaze fell back to his phone. Sitting on the bed, she wore another tank top and skirt, seemingly her trademark outfit, and barely a smidge of makeup. Her eyes were bright, and her face looked freshly washed and rosy. Ella looked ready for time alone at home—not ready to go live and record a video about a business giant and talk about how their corporate behavior would hurt children. The powerful imaging and headline both haunted him and promised a solution even from a thumbnail, and he wasn’t even the intended demographic. The post was masterful.

  She rounded the corner. “Still game for a beer? We could stop somewhere for a drink first, before we drop off the herbs.”

  “I can always eat too.” Nothing in her house would be considered edible, and he was hungry. “Works for me.”

  Ella pulled a bowl from a cabinet, filling it with water from a bottle. Then she whistled before placing it on the floor. “Furry Baby, water.”

  Meanwhile, Brick drank water from the tap or outside at a creek on the far side of his property. “If your kitten and dog are set—”

  “Give me one minute, and I’ll be ready.”

  “No problem. I’m going to call in, and maybe something will pop from the voice mails.” Rocco’s phone rang once as Bishop watched Ella head over to the window with a container of mint in hand. Filling his boss in and watching her simultaneously wasn’t easy. She held out her phone and announced to the world exactly what she was about to go do.

  “Hey, boss,” Bishop cut off Rocco’s response, none of which he had heard, anyway. “I gotta jump.” He ended the call and had a thousand things to worry about as he walked directly in front of Ella.

  Her gaze jumped, but she went back to the screen. Bishop cleared his throat, needing her to end what she was doing now and not wanting to cause a scene. He assumed she was livestreaming. He hated people’s need to stay connected via phone, no matter the cost. But maybe if he stared hard enough, she would realize that her topic of choice was problematic.

  “So if you’re in the area, swing on by! We’ll be there.”

  Bishop threw his arms out, mouthing, “Ella!”

  There was no way to avoid that. She saw him and wrapped up her stream. “What?”

  “Why did you do that?” he snapped.

  Her eyes were wide. “What?” She may have been flabbergasted, but more likely, she was shocked. Sweet, charismatic Ella likely didn’t have people yelling at her. Or she did, but not out of sheer aggravation.

  “I can’t believe you did that. The things you do…” Bishop snatched the phone from her. The screen showed that a few hundred people had watched the impromptu appearance live, but that number was climbing fast as people saw it in replay. He shook the phone. “With. Your. Phone. You were holding that plant. I thought you were talking about stupid—”

  “It’s not stupid,” she growled out. “And I reminded everyone to compost after dinner. I wanted them to see the mint, and I pimped the bee project in DC. If other cities took initiative like that, it’d be freaking amazing.”

  Was she getting in his face about bees? Why yes, she was. What the hell? Bees.

  She took a step closer. Her head jutted as though explaining those things were beyond driving her to the point of madness. “It’s my job, Bishop. Get over it.”

  He had to put the bees to the side because, no, just like she and Manny had pointed out, he didn’t get them. “What else did you say?”

  “That I was going out. Pics to come from my new favorite place.” She bugged her eyes. “It’s the job. It’s a lifestyle job. I lived the life on TV, and now it’s transferred to the blog. That’s how the bills get paid, Bishop. I am the job. Do you get that? Or are we going to keep rehashing this? How else do sponsorships come in? Where else do ad dollars come from?”

  “Telling people what you do and where you do it, in real time, is stupid when you have someone stalking you. And fuck yes, we will keep rehashing it.”

  “I…” She gave him a side eye, turned, and paced.

  “Go huff some herbs, babe. You’ve got to see that I’m right on this one.”

  She threw her shoulders back and ignored him, letting her skirt spin as she power walked tiny circles in the living room until the march slowed to a thoughtful crusade. Her dog followed the dizzying circles, and the kitten clung to her skirt, hanging on for the ride. Ella didn’t seem to notice either.

  She went to the window, placed her hands on the sill, and took what had to be some deep yoga-infused breaths, because the only other people that had lung power like that were deep-sea divers. Her breath drifted out as slow and long as she pulled it in. Maybe she was about to drop an “ohm” or something. Hell, he didn’t know. But the angry waves that rippled off her had lessened. For that, Bishop would give yoga a thumbs-up.

  “Fine.” Her shoulders relaxed until she balled her fists and rubbed her eyes, until she dropped her kneading knuckles. Her arms hung limp as she turned to him. “You made your point.”

  “I wasn’t trying to make a point, El.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  “Okay. Yeah. I was. But I’d rather you just realize you’re not a moron. Stupidity isn’t something you can catch. And from my point of view, what you just did was stupid as shit.”

  Her chin dropped. “Easy, killer.”

  He pulled back, recalibrating. “Not the best move, all things considered.”

  “I just talk to people. I did it when there was nobody there, and then there was one person, then two. It was me, chatting about what I hoped for and what I knew was possible. I needed a… distraction and desperately needed to focus on something that was… important to me.”

  The defeat on her face cut straight to his chest. “You’re not the girl with ten followers anymore. You’ve got, like, ten million.”

  “Boom,” she whispered, tossing her hands up. “I had some. A lot, I guess. But not that many. And then, there they were. Just kind of blew up.”

  “Under the Roof was a tipping point, maybe.” Reality TV would do that.

  She closed her eyes as though maybe her popularity was something she hadn’t come to grips with. “Talking candidly is a habit. And it’s what I do. I want to be authentic.”

  Now that was a stretch. “What’s authentic in this room?”

  Bristling, she opened her eyes and became a
fortress again. “You don’t know me anymore, Bishop. This is all me. I like everything about this place. It has order. It is where it is, how it should be.”

  Completely in control… okay, so he could appreciate that. A lack of control had, in one way or another, ruined their lives. “Fair. Being authentic, staying true to yourself? That, babe? All that won’t matter if you’re not here to keep your stuff going. There’s no Eco-Ella without Ella. Figure out how to balance the truth and your lifestyle with your reality.”

  “And what’s my reality?” she asked.

  He couldn’t tell if that was sarcastic or genuine, so he ran with it the way he needed the conversation to go. “The world is messy. Trust but verify, and when you can’t, which you can’t with millions of fans, have no faith. Zero. Zip. Zilch.”

  Her blue eyes lost their shine, and her lashes fluttered down. “That’s awful.”

  “That’s the path you’ve chosen if this is how you want to keep going.” He wished it was more black and white for her. She had such a good heart, always had.

  “I can’t look at the world that way.”

  “Ella—”

  “But… I can keep my faith. Do what I do, and you, Locke, Titan… Jared,” she said in a tone that Bishop totally could appreciate. “All of you can see humanity for what it is, and I can see it for what it can be, and desperately protect it from where we’re headed.”

  No wonder the woman had an army of followers behind her. She didn’t give up. All she needed was a level of protection. Bishop took a step closer, wondering how wild of a ride it would be to guard this eco-trailblazer. “How about this?”

  Her chin tilted up, hope flickering.

  “Put yourself on delay or be generic. If we’re headed out for a beer, that’s all you need to say. No ‘come and meet me’ or maybe ‘I’m posting it when I get back tonight.’ Just post the pictures after you’ve left.”