by S A Sommers
“I do,” I said with a sigh, sinking into the chair. I scratched at the monitor again. “Never thought I’d have to wear one of these things.”
Jerry shrugged. “Make sure you not only wipe under it, but get some moisturizer in the skin. It’ll chafe otherwise.”
Me, Raph, and Sorcha were all staring at him. He darted his eyes to each of us. “What? Those stupid things chafe.”
“You?”
“Of course,” he said. “I did eight months on one of those for some car theft. Years ago. Third strike shit. Never steal wheels from cars that are parked in your neighbor’s yard.”
“Wow, the truth comes out.” Sorcha laughed. “Jerry is our resident thief.”
“Jerry is your resident former thief who basically got schooled that a life of crime is not for him,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “But I was guilty, and our boy here is not.”
I thumped him on the back. “Thanks, man.”
The door opened and the producers of the show walked in, chatting among themselves.
In the middle was Ed Roberts.
Jerry toss his chair back as he stood and pointed at him. “I told you not to bring him in here!” His voice roared through the conference room and halted everyone in their place. “Get out. Get out of here!”
Raph had the phone off the hook and I could see the question in his eyes. Security or police? I glanced at him and hopefully he got my message. Security.
Sorcha was around the chairs and had pressed herself up against my shoulder where I sat. I could see the fury in her eyes as well. “Get out of here.”
“He’s the sound producer—” one of the other jerks said.
“There is a restraining order on him for not less than one hundred yards!” Jerry snapped. “He has moved into the space and we could have him arrested. Get him out of here.”
A cruel look spread across Ed’s face and every ounce of hatred I’d ever had for him boiled up. I was shaking with rage. He’d done this on purpose. He wanted me rattled, he wanted me to make a stupid move. I calmly stood from the chair and looked at Jerry.
He nodded. Sorcha nodded. Even Raph nodded.
Sorcha wrapped her arms around my shoulders and guided me around the table toward the door. The security guards scooted up the hall and stopped just behind the group. They bodily shoved everyone in the door out of the way and held them back while Sorcha guided me through the door.
Ed actually had the balls to reach for me.
Sorcha grabbed his hand and twisted, pinching the bundle of nerves between his thumb and index finger bringing him to his knees with a screech.
“You were told not to come in, you were told to leave twice. You violated the rider on the contract that your company signed.” She spit the words at him. “You deserve so much worse than a pinch and kneel.”
Releasing him, she joined me with the one guard and we scrambled out of there, up the stairs into Jerry’s office and Violet nodded at us. “Good choice. The cops are on their way.”
“Who called—”
“I did,” she said. “I’m not stupid. The security guys are good, but we can get this on record, terminate the contract and not lose a penny.”
Sorcha and I stared at her, and her eyebrow lifted a moment later. “What? You think Jerry keeps me around for my effervescent personality? Hell no. I’m a hound at contract law, too.”
She pulled the door closed and smiled.
“I cannot believe he tried to grab you!”
“I can,” I said. I leaned against the door in the back and sighed. “He’s trying to get me to fuck up. And someone on his team is on his side. We have to find out who it was that Jerry talked to.”
“I told you, Menendez! I didn’t want him in here.”
Sorcha lifted her brow and stared at me “You heard that, right?”
“Yeah… What the hell?”
“You can’t tell me who on my team can come and go here. This contract is millions, Liggit. Millions. We own your ass.”
“No one owns my ass, Menendez!”
“Where is that coming from?” I hissed. “Why can we hear something going on two floors down?”
Sorcha was staring at me. Or I thought she was, but a second later realized she was staring at the door. I gasped and turned around, staring at it. I turned the knob and the door opened.
We stepped inside to find a bank of computers and displays.
They were full of all the goings on in the studios.
Sorcha shared my look, and her jaw unhinged. Lunging for the keyboard, she quickly studied the monitors and found the one with the conference room on it. She brought up a menu, and had that feed show up on the big screen.
“Oh…my God. How did we not realize this was here?” My voice was hoarse.
Sorcha stared at the equipment. “I thought this was a closet!”
“You brought in Roberts after I had it in the rider that you couldn’t without twenty-four hours notice!” Jerry was turning red with anger. “He just tried to grab my employee!”
“Your rider is ridiculous—”
“Menendez, shut up.”
I gasped at who had spoken. “Was he in there when we were?”
“No! He came in after. Holy shit,” Sorcha gasped. “Nelson fucking Powers.”
“Sir, this is—”
“I said, shut up, Menendez. I’m talking to Mister Liggit now. The rider on the contract was for…?”
“Mister Romano has a restraining order on Mister Roberts, and the rider was designed to keep both of them safe, by providing a time frame for us to make alternate arrangements for our employee. That was violated today.”
“Get Roberts out of here.”
“Sir—”
Powers started swearing… I didn’t even know what language that was at first, but eventually I realized it was freakin’ Icelandic. Quickly, he realized what he was doing and switched back to English. “Get. Him. Out.”
Menendez turned to Roberts and nodded. With an audible sniff, he turned and walked out of the room.
The wrong direction.
“Follow him…” I whispered.
Sorcha and I turned back to the massive bank of monitors and watched him walked through the halls, down the stairs, and through the studio level below the conference room. He peered into other studios, opened doors, and finally found my studio.
Roberts jimmied it open, and grinned.
“Shit, we need better security,” Sorcha whispered.
“What the hell is he doing? What is he doing in my office. Are there anymore cameras?”
Sorcha started typing like mad, and sorting through the screens she was on. She read menus as fast as she could, and yelped in triumph a moment later.
There on the big screen in front of her, appeared the inside of my studio in a fish-eye lens.
She gasped, “It’s already recording.”
“Oh, my God…” I breathed. Could they actually have the recordings of all of our interactions?
“What is he doing?” Sorcha moved closer to the screen.
I watched the scene in front of me, and saw what she was talking about. He was wiping a finger down his cheek, then pressing it to various surfaces. After about two minutes of that, he pulled something out of his pocket, and crawled under the soundboard, all the way underneath. He disappeared for about ten seconds then crawled back out. Pressing a few more oily fingers around the room, including grabbing the chair with both hands, he seemed satisfied with whatever the hell he was doing and walked back out into the corridor.
“Holy shit,” she breathed. “I’ll bet a dollar he just planted evidence.”
“Didn’t they already search my studio?”
“I don’t know…” She stared at the screen, and a second later, a grin spread across her face. “But we can find out, can’t we.” Picking up the phone, she quickly dialed a number, watching me as someone picked up on the other end. “Hey, Raph. Yeah, can you come up to Jerry’s office? We have something we need yo
ur help with…”
CHASE
KYLE AND VINCENT STOOD WITH MARCUS in the front of the courtroom, heads together chatting with each other. They were not comfortable with each other at that moment, and I wanted to laugh at Vincent.
We were here for the preliminary hearing, to see if Ed’s accusations were going forward to court. I didn’t see how they could, but discovery had brought up all the lurid details of what had happened in Boston to my boyfriend, and that looked bad.
There was new evidence, too, that the prosecutor had shared late. I’d heard Vincent curse the man out just a few minutes before and it had taken all Kyle had to pull the man off the other lawyer.
But now we were settled and waiting for the judge to get back from lunch.
I wanted this shit over with. I knew he wasn’t guilty, and they should just trust me. I sat back and harrumphed like a child, even folding my arms.
Raphael ran in just as the bailiff appeared in the door.
“Got it,” he panted and shoved two CDs at them.
“All of it? Like we asked,” Vincent said.
Raph nodded. “Just like you asked.”
“Good man, take a seat.”
“All rise for the Honorable Judge Michael Demico.” The bailiff stood at attention while the judge walked in and sat down.
“Be seated,” he called.
There was a flurry of shit I didn’t understand going on after that. Court documents, timing, reporters, transcriptions, and just all kind of things that didn’t make sense to my untrained ears.
What I did see was Marcus sitting quietly with his hands folded. For the first time since I met him, I couldn’t read him. I couldn’t tell if he was happy, sad, scared…
There was a yelp from the prosecutors table. We all turned to look and found the woman absolutely red-faced and shaking with rage as she stared at something Kyle had handed her just a few minutes before. Her manicured nails cut through the paper and she looked ready to scream.
“Your honor, may I have a ten minute recess.” She held up the paper and a CD.
“Objections?” the judge asked.
“No your honor.”
“Good.” He banged his gavel. “Pee break.” He stood, we stood, he trotted out, and the prosecutor hauled out through the back doors.
Dawn laughed lightly next to me. “I’ve never heard a judge so informal.”
“Old man bladder.” Kyle snickered. “He’s an amazing judge, but he has no duration.”
“Man needs saw palmetto,” Vincent mumbled. Kyle laughed, then caught himself and stopped it.
Oh, yeah. They had it bad.
“What did you hand the prosecutor?” Dawn asked.
“Magic,” Kyle answered, “in the form of a transcript and a CD.”
“Well, I saw that,” I said.
“It’s our ace in the hole,” Vincent said. “What we hope is going to get this whole thing dismissed right here, right now, and that stupid ankle monitor taken off.”
“It chafes,” Marcus said. “Figuratively and literally.”
“I gave you moisturizer,” Dawn said.
“Mom? It’s an ankle monitor for a criminal. It doesn’t matter how much moisturizer I put on. It’s always going to chafe. That’s kind of the point.”
“That’s kind of cruel,” Dawn said.
“They kind of don’t care,” Vincent said. “Innocent until proven guilty means nothing to some people.” He tossed a meaningful look at Kyle.
Kyle didn’t flinch, but his eyes looked hurt.
“We’re just going to sit here and wait?” Dawn asked.
“We are,” Marcus said. “The information we gave her, and is currently available for the judge to review, should be the end of it.”
I pulled out my cell phone and messed around with it, even though it earned me some dirty looks from the officers around. Tough shit—I needed to check the status of work with some of the people on my team, to make sure I didn’t have to go into work tonight.
At the nine minute mark, the prosecutor walked back in, her heels making a threatening clack on the floor with each angry step. She didn’t head to her own table on the right. Instead, she headed straight for Marcus, Vincent, and Kyle.
“Counselors. A moment?”
The three of them walked off to talk quietly in the corner, and I could see her face go from angry to resigned, and then to her professional neutral and nod once.
The door to the judge’s chambers open and the bailiff had to scramble. “All rise!”
We shuffled to our feet, and watched him sit. We sat.
“Your honor,” Vincent started. “We have some new evidence we want to present to the court. We want to put this on record.”
He nodded.
Kyle walked to the media center the courtroom had and slipped the CD in the player. The bailiff turned down the lights and the CD started playing. The logo of Kyle’s firm came up, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Vincent grouse. After that, you could have put the seal of the office of the president and I wouldn’t have cared.
Because the screen was filled with Ed Roberts.
The first clips were of all the times he tried to get Marcus alone. Next were the times he’d managed to do it, and Marcus walked right the hell out of the room. There was one time where he’d stood in front of the door so Marcus couldn’t leave. There was the antagonizing catcalls down the hall. The intentional shoves. The pushes. The ‘whoops why are you here?’ encounters.
And through all of them, Marcus was never in his space for longer than it took to get away.
The piece de resistance, though, was composed of two clips.
In the first, it was just Marcus in his studio. Sitting, working, playing with the soundboard, mixing for the images on the screen in front of us. It sped up, showing hours of work, right through 9:03 p.m. on the night of the attack. The report said he was attacked between eight and nine at night.
The other one was just as damning. Roberts, sneaking into Marcus’s studio, planting prints and evidence.
The prints and evidence that were sitting on the table in front of the judge.
The player shut off and the room was quiet for a long moment.
“What is that bullshit!?” Roberts finally roared. “Are you presenting deepfakes as evidence?”
“I have a signed affidavit that these are not deepfakes at all,” Vincent said. “They are genuine copies from the hard drive of the security system at Sonic Boom Studios. A system which had not previously been known to us.”
“Oh, isn’t that convenient!”
“Mrs. Bondano?” the judge said.
“The state withdraws all charges against Mister Marcus Romano, and release all bail holdings. No further actions will be taken against him in this matter.”
Dawn slumped against me, and I clutched my hand over my heart. I heard a little cheer go up from the back of the room, and turning to look, found all of my friends there. The judge stared at them until they shut up.
“Your honor, you can’t do this!” Roberts said. “He violated me!”
Bondano pulled him close and whispered in his ear. Roberts went white. Sheer, terrified white. She motioned to the officers at the back of the room and they marched forward, pulling out their own set of cuffs.
“Mister Roberts, you are hereby placed under arrest for planting evidence, making a false police report and misdemeanor falsification of hospital records,” the one said. “I’m sure that Mrs. Bondano has more for you, too.”
He turned and narrowed his eyes at Marcus. “You lousy asshole! Why didn’t you just die? Why couldn’t you just fucking go away forever! You’re not worth shit to anyone! You always had to be better than me! Even after I smashed your fucking hand, you had to outdo me!”
Marcus turned and stared at Roberts. “I didn’t know you from a hole in the wall, Ed. And I would have happily let you live in obscurity. You’re nothing to me, you were nothing to me, and now…you can go be someone’s bitch on Riker
s and die in obscurity.”
“I’ll fucking kill you!”
“Add that to your list?” Marcus looked at Bondano, who had to school her laugh, and managed a nod.
“Mister Romano, if you’ll see the officers in the room across the hall, we’ll get that ankle monitor off you and you can signed the paperwork for the release of bail, and to clear your records. I hope you continue on the path of a law abiding citizen and won’t be swayed by this misdirection of justice.”
“No, your honor, I’m not swayed,” Marcus said. “Thank you, sir.”
He picked up the gavel and smacked it once. “Case dismissed. Ten minute recess for the next case.”
Marcus walked around the railing, grabbed me from where I had stood after the judge walked out, and kissed me stupid. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For believing me,” he said.
I put my hand on his cheek. “I love you, dumb ass. Of course I believe you.”
Dawn suddenly had both arms around us and squeezed us tight. “My boys will be home without the man watching them tonight! We need to go out to eat somewhere fancy!”
“Can we do delicious instead?” I asked. “Because I’m thinking Eataly.”
She grabbed me away from Marcus and planted a kiss on each cheek. “You are a marvel. Yes! Italian!”
The group of us headed to the back of the room where my—our friends were waiting. Before we could get there though, something tall and dark and forbiddenly sexy stepped into our path.
Marcus and I looked up.
Nelson Powers.
“Nelson Powers…” he breathed.
“Mister Romano, I would like to apologize on behalf of my production company,” he said.
I was only able to half hear his words because Nelson Fucking Powers in gray pinstripes talking to me. To my boyfriend. Technicality.
“Mister Powers, it was nothing to do with you.”
“No, I’ve fired the sound producers,” he said, slicing into Marcus’ words. “I’ve already spoke to Jerry Liggit, but I wanted to tell you as well. They’re fired. I’d like to bring on Sonic Boom as our main sound production for this show.”
“Sir?”