Unfiltered & Uncensored

by Payge Galvin

  Max flew coach, because he still didn’t want to spend any more of the money in that safe deposit box than he had to. The flight was less than an hour, just enough time to thoroughly obsess over Dillon and Claire’s possible motives for their respective behaviors. Honestly, Dillon was making a lot more sense than Claire right now. What the fuck, Claire?

  Max used the prepaid Visa card he’d purchased with most of the cash he’d taken to check into his hotel. Not that anyone would bother to trace his real credit cards ... he was just getting paranoid, that was all. Random break-ins by possible drug dealers could do that to a guy.

  According to Max’s research, the hotel he’d chosen was the place everyone agreed they were housing the American Voice contestants, even though no one was supposed to have any idea where they were housing the contestants. So much for secrets. The only way to keep a secret was to make sure only one person knew it. How had the twelve of them in The Coffee Cave ever thought they could really keep this under wraps? Max didn’t just need to break his story. He needed to solve this thing before the dude who drank a steaming cup of cyanide wasn’t the only corpse on the floor.

  Max’s research had also said Dillon and the girl, Savannah, were still both serious American Voice contenders. Max headed up to his room, through a lobby thick with cigarette smoke and past banks of slot machines that screamed about making your fortune to people who didn’t even know about the be-in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time-random-drug-money option.

  He tossed his carry-on onto the bed and headed into the shower, turning the jets on full force in hopes of waking himself up and clearing his head. Only when he came out, naked and dripping wet, did he fully take in the view from the seventeenth floor. The bright lights of the Vegas strip were visible even in the midday glare, as was the strip’s plastic-coated faux opulence. Banks of windows glinted in the sunlight, while fountains sucked up the desert water as if there would always be more where that came from.

  Claire would hate this town, but she’d love this room, which was larger than either of their apartments. Max fell back onto a king-size bed heaped with fluffy pillows. Screw Claire. Or don’t screw her. Or ...

  Hell. The air conditioning raised goosebumps as it sucked the moisture from Max’s skin. He imagined Claire lying on the bed beside him, naked as well, moisture from the shower pooling in the curves of her hips and beading on her lightly muscled arms. He felt a familiar throbbing, and his hand inched south, like it had so many other nights—okay, most other nights—when he’d found himself thinking of Claire.

  “Not now, dude.” Max shook the rest of the water from his skin and got up off the bed. He was here for a reason, and besides, the problem with fantasizing was that sooner or later you had to open your eyes, and when you did you were somehow always more alone than when you’d started.

  Besides, there was no sense wasting more time and water on another shower. Someone had to think about the environment, right? With a laugh Max unzipped his bag and began digging out clothes. Button down shirt, good slacks ... his walk through the lobby had confirmed this wasn’t quite a suit-and-tie sort of place, but that it was pretty dressed up for all that. Max got dressed, then took a deep breath and headed down to find the hotel bar.

  The hotel had three bars, it turned out, separated by banks of cheerfully flashing slot machines making their false promises. Max started with the nearest one, ordered a beer, and began listening.

  He quickly learned that while Vegas was a bigger town than Rio Verde, for too many people that didn’t translate into bigger dreams. A lot of people in Vegas apparently couldn’t imagine life got any better than hours spent glazed over in front of their favorite slots, maybe with an all-you-can-eat lobster buffet to bring all that excitement to a close at the end of the day. There were a few honeymooners, too, and a lot of very drunk people, the men with beer bellies rolling over their waistbands, the women in very substantial heels and very insubstantial everything else.

  But scattered among all that there were also a few dozen folks who, like Max, hoped to catch a glimpse of the American Voice contestants.

  Apparently the show producers kept the contestants wrapped up pretty tight, but even they couldn’t stop them from leaving their rooms for the occasional drink. Max overheard someone mention a Twitter tag: #voicestalkers. Creepy, he thought, before admitting it was no more creepy than his own stalking of the contestants. He gave in and pulled up his Twitter account.

  Max spent the next few hours chasing down rumors, making his way from bar to slot machine to gift shop to bar. He caught a couple not-Dillon guys hamming it up for the karaoke machine in the sports bar, and watched a not-Savannah woman waffle over which overpriced hotel doggie sweater she wanted to bring home for her pooch, and mostly spent a lot of time drinking and making his way to places that turned out not to have any American Voice competitors at all, possibly because they were too busy, well, competing.

  He was halfway through his second beer when another text came from Claire. Max, seriously, where are you?

  He should call her. Call her and see if she answered. Get past his anger and talk to her and figure out what was going on and whether they could make this right.

  What if he lost Dillon while he did? What if he lost his story?

  How far was Max willing to go, to bring that story home?

  Max deleted the text unanswered. It’d be easier to talk to Claire once he’d proven himself with that story anyway. Once he had something of his own to bring to the table.

  He ignored the voice in his head that told him that was a little bit of a cop-out. Also the voice that told him it was a lot of one.

  He was halfway through his third beer and all the way through a fierce headache from the jangling slots when someone used the #voicestalkers hashtag to comment that the most reliable competitor sightings seemed to come from the third bar, the one near the Italian restaurant. Since that bar also served food and since Max had skipped breakfast to catch his flight, he decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to hole up there and get a late lunch to wash down the drinks. He braved the casino floor once more and headed into the bar.

  And there they were, sitting by the bar, just like that. Dillon with his brown hair and bad-boy eyes that probably melted girls for a thousand miles around, Savannah managing to look casual and dead-sexy at once. Even from a distance, Max could see the tension in both of them, and the tension in the air between them too, so thick you could cut it with a chainsaw.

  Some sort of lover’s quarrel? Every website out there agreed that they were lovers, and not just the really good friends they’d started out claiming to be. Max felt uneasy. He’d rather get Dillon alone—but the rumors also agreed that Dillon and Savannah were pretty inseparable. Max casually headed for the bar, sliding into the seat next to them while they were focused on their conversation.

  “But isn’t that what you always wanted?” Savannah was whispering as she squeezed Dillon’s hand. “Fame and fortune and everyone knowing your name?”

  Max shivered, because that sounded pretty bad. Dillon really might be part of this.

  Time to try to find out. Max leaned toward the two of them, putting on his best just-a-harmless-fanboy grin. “Hey, aren’t you Dillon and Savannah?”

  Savannah gave Max an irritated look, but a smile slid into place on Dillon’s face. “Sure. But we’re sort of in the middle of something here, so ...”

  “Oh, this won’t take a second.” Max kept smiling, too. Just one more fan, he thought, willing Dillon to believe it. Just one more fan. Definitely not someone wondering if you helped kill a man or anything like that.

  Dillon grabbed a spare napkin. If he recognized Max, he gave no sign. “Happy to give you an autograph.” He signed the napkin and handed it past Savannah to Max.

  Okay, maybe Max was acting a little too harmless. “The name’s Max,” he said. “I’m with the Verde View.” Max pulled out a notebook. “I was wondering if you two—” No getting around including Savannah here�
�� “might give a fellow Rio Verde boy an interview?”

  At the mention of Rio Verde Dillon’s face froze, like he’d tasted something bad.

  Max pressed on. “Gotta say, down at the paper we were pretty thrilled to hear there were two locals who’d made it this far.” Or the others would be, once Max told them. “That’s never happened before, has it? We’d love to have an article about two of our own making good. Not many folks who manage to make it out of that place, you know?”

  Dillon seemed to relax a little. “Sorry,” he said. “All our media contact is supposed to go through the network. We can give you that info, if it’ll help.”

  “Aw, come on, we’re just a couple of people from small-town Arizona having a drink. Off the record.” Max took a swig of his beer. His head wasn’t only buzzing with a headache now. He forced himself to stay focused. “You gotta admit, it’s pretty amazing. Two hometown kids, coming up here with nothing ... I bet it’s been quite a struggle for you guys, coming up with airfare, and hotel, and ... How’d you manage it?”

  Dillon shrugged, but something uneasy slid behind his eyes. “Same way as everyone, I guess. Beg and borrow and scrape and get by.”

  Savannah gave him a look at that. She didn’t seem irritated now. She seemed confused. She looked at Max, too, like he might have the answer to some question she hadn’t asked yet.

  Max took a deep breath. It was now or never. “You know, you look familiar. I’m sure I’ve seen you around town. I hung around a place called The Coffee Cave occasionally. Heard of it?”

  Recognition snapped into Dillon’s eyes. His shoulders stiffened, but he only said, “Yep. Used to play there sometimes.”

  Max’s hand was shaking around his glass. He steadied it—just a fan—while Savannah looked back and forth between them. “I haven’t been there since May,” Max said. Not inside the place, anyway. “You?”

  Dillon set his bottle down on the bar and looked right at Max. “Nope. Haven’t been back in Rio Verde since auditions began.” Dillon hesitated, like he wasn’t sure whether Max was there as an ordinary guy looking to sympathize over their shared bad experience at the Cave or as someone looking to make trouble. “Look, is there anything you need?” Dillon asked.

  It hit Max then that if Dillon was just an ordinary guy himself—if he wasn’t a killer—then helping him out wouldn’t hurt. And if he was a killer, well, Max had already tipped him off that he knew something anyway.

  “Listen.” Max lowered his voice. “A guy got killed after the ... incident ... over a couple keys of coke.” He leaned forward on the bar, looking for some telling reaction to that. “The baristas all took off, too.”

  “Sugar.” Dillon looked suddenly concerned. “Is she okay?”

  “No idea.” It hadn’t occurred to Max until now to wonder whether the baristas were in danger—he’d been too busy worrying about whether they were guilty, which was kind of shitty of him. “Anyone who worked there that night’s gone. Listen, you need to be careful. Someone’s looking for the money.”

  “Money?” Savannah whispered, and her eyes went huge.

  “You didn’t tell her?” Max had just assumed that Savannah knew as much as Dillon did. What kind of douchebag didn’t tell his own girlfriend that he’d watched a man die, and come into a helluva lot of money because of it? Max thought of Claire, texting him, demanding to know what was going on, and he decided he didn’t much like the answer to that question.

  Dillon sat back in his barstool and ran his fingers through his hair. “No, you dumbass. I didn’t tell anyone. Did you?”

  “I have to go.” Savannah pushed off her bar stool and wove through the bar toward the casino floor.

  Dillon was on his feet, too. “Savannah! Wait!” He glanced back at Max. “This interview is over,” he snapped, and then he was out of there, too.

  Max watched Dillon go. Not like the singer would answer any more questions now. How did you tell a good liar from an ordinary innocent guy in the wrong place at the wrong time? Max had no idea. He only knew that like Blake, Dillon didn’t look guilty. He only looked scared.

  Max carefully took Dillon’s beer bottle with him when he left. He got that much right.

  That meant he had a second set of fingerprints to take back with him, when he returned to Rio Verde the next morning. Now he just had to find someone to check if there was a criminal history to go with them.

  Chapter 10

  Max

  Max stashed the prints in his increasingly-full safe deposit box on the way home. It was beginning to feel more like a secrets deposit box, he thought, as he lugged his carry-on up the stairs.

  When he tried to open the door, his key didn’t fit the lock.

  He trudged down to the apartment manager’s office. It was closed on a Sunday afternoon, so he knocked on the manager’s own apartment door until the guy answered.

  “Oh. Yeah.” The manager rubbed at his why-stay-sober-on-weekends stubble when he saw Max there. “Claire said to give you this.” He tossed Max a couple of keys, then retreated back inside, where a game was going on the TV. Did the guy even realize Claire’s name wasn’t on the lease?

  When Max opened his door—which now featured a new-and-improved extra deadbolt—he found a note from Claire on the bed.

  Call me, was all it said.

  He texted her just three words: What The Fuck? She didn’t get to ditch him and then change the goddamned locks as if she still half-lived here.

  Max paced his way around the bedroom, checking on everything else. The webcam was still off, so there was that. Then again, he’d changed his password, so Claire wouldn’t be able to see any new pics anyway.

  Claire’s message came back before Max made it halfway around the room: Max, we need to talk. I’m coming over.

  Now she wanted to talk? After weeks of blowing him off, now she did?

  He’d known she was aware of the break-in before he left. What he hadn’t known was that she was just like everyone else, seeing him as some too-nice-for-his-own-good loser. Some too-nice-for-his-own-good-loser who couldn’t even take care of himself, but needed his girlfriend to protect him by changing the goddamned locks.

  I don’t need your help, he texted her.

  Claire didn’t answer him. But ten minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Claire’s knock—he knew it well enough.

  When Max didn’t answer, she put her own key in the door and stormed inside, hands on hips, eyes thundercloud dark. “What the hell is going on?” she demanded.

  “You’re asking me that?” Max stared at her. She’d always been hot when she was mad, but he’d never seen her mad like this. Black hair framed her face as it fell past her shoulders with an almost electric energy, and her eyes continued to smolder with heat. Max wanted to grab her, to throw her up against the wall—or to let her throw him up against it, it didn’t matter. He wanted to tear both their clothes off and roll around with her until they were both screaming for mercy.

  He reminded himself that he was mad at her, too. He remained right where he was, glaring. “You break into my apartment and change my locks—break into my apartment and change my locks after weeks of not even talking to me—and then you ask me what’s going on?”

  Claire matched him angry look for angry look. “Someone breaks into your apartment and you think you can just leave the locks unchanged? I know I’m a little paranoid about home security, but God, Max.”

  “I don’t need you to protect me,” Max snapped, but his body took a step toward her of its own accord. His growing hard-on had its own ideas of what it wanted.

  Claire stepped toward him, too, and Max could feel the heat in the air between them. Her gaze slid to the bulge in his pants, but she looked quickly away as she grabbed his shoulders, as if that were nothing to do with her. “The guy who broke into your apartment. Who was he and what the fuck was he doing here?”

  Max laughed, bitterly. “Nice to know you care. How about we talk about using my own webcam to spy on me in
stead? Because it’s not like that’s not just a little bit dysfunctional.”

  “Seriously, Max, I need to know all you know about that guy.”

  As if Max didn’t have reason enough to want to know about “that guy” himself. His arms gripped Claire’s waist. “Why do you even care? As I recall, you’re the one who walked out because I couldn’t get my act together. Or have you forgotten that? Why do you suddenly give a damn again?”

  Claire winced, as if he’d hit close to home. Good. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. “I ...” She shook her head, as if whatever she was going to say, she’d thought better of it. “I have this coworker. He’s a street cop, not like ...” She hesitated, and something like guilt crossed her face. “Not like me. This coworker, he’s working on a case, and the guy in the video looks just like one of his suspects.”

  Wait, Claire’s coworker knew more about this guy than Max did? “So let him come by and ask his own questions.” Max would welcome that. It would give him a chance to ask some questions, too.

  Claire swallowed and looked at him. She definitely looked guilty now. “And how would I explain to my coworker that I knew the suspect was in your apartment? You didn’t know the cam was running, which means it’s not admissible evidence.”

  Max looked right back at her, into those eyes, as his jeans grew uncomfortably tight. “Maybe you should have thought of that before you left the cam on without even telling me?”

  “You’re right,” Claire admitted, like the words were dragged out of her. “I know you’re right. Would it help if I admitted I did it because I missed you? But that guy, Max. I don’t know all the details of my coworker’s case, but I do know you don’t want to mess with that guy. Why was he in your apartment?”

  “How the hell would I know?” Max wanted to tell Claire he missed her, too. He wanted to tell her everything that had gone down in The Coffee Cave. He wanted to move his hands lower, down to that perfect firm ass. “Maybe the guy was feeling the student housing crunch.” Max was the one feeling guilty now. What would Claire’s coworker think, if he knew Max had witnessed a murder—a murder his suspect might have played a role in—and decided not to report it? “What’s your problem, anyway? Do you think I invited the guy in or something?”