Blacklist

by Alyson Noel

  Aster screaming could only mean one thing—they weren’t as alone as they’d thought.

  When the screaming abruptly stopped, Layla feared the worst but quickened her pace. Landing at the top of the stairs, she rounded a corner and shot down the hall, where she stopped in the entry of an elaborate bedroom she guessed to be Madison’s and grabbed the first thing she saw, a large and surprisingly heavy candlestick. With the makeshift weapon clutched in her fist, she heard the muffled sound of a struggle in progress and sprang into the closet, where she froze in place, gaping in fright at the unimaginable scene unfolding before her.

  FIFTEEN

  ALL APOLOGIES

  Aster had first read about Madison’s massive walk-in closet in an InStyle magazine profile piece, where the normally cool and reserved Madison had exhibited a rare and palpable excitement as she went into great detail describing the inspiration and intricate craftsmanship behind it. At the time, Aster had gazed in envy at the pictures of the luxury dressing room/retreat. With its soft neutral tones, hand-knotted rugs, and rows of lighted shelves displaying a seemingly endless collection of designer handbags and shoes, it was every girl’s dream, and Aster, who was no stranger to luxury, had found herself practically salivating.

  Her in-person reaction was no different.

  Until Ryan Hawthorne attacked her.

  She fought hard against him, bucking, kicking, and biting at the hand he’d clasped firmly over her mouth, despite his pleas begging her to stop.

  “Let her go.”

  Layla loomed in the entry, brandishing a candlestick she clearly intended to use. Still, they were no match for Ryan. If he wanted, he could easily take them both down.

  “Seriously?” Ryan groaned at the sight of her. “This is escalating way out of control, and someone’s gonna get hurt. Put that thing down and let me explain.”

  “Let her go,” Layla repeated. She had no intention of folding, much less retreating.

  Ryan surveyed the room and considered his options. “Fine,” he relented. “But just—nobody scream, okay? Nobody do anything stupid.” He removed his hand long enough for Aster to start howling again, as Layla raced menacingly toward him. But Ryan reacted by flashing his palms in surrender and sinking onto the couch. “For the last time, ditch the candlestick, and try to convince your friend to power down.” He shot Aster a worried look.

  Aster was frantic, fumbling for her phone as she shrieked, “We need to call the police! Ryan killed Madison, and now he’s living in her house!” She kicked Ryan hard in the shin and smirked in satisfaction when he clutched his leg with both hands in a mix of surprise and pain.

  “Was that really necessary?” Ryan regarded Aster through bloodshot green eyes.

  He looked like hell, but that was nothing compared to what he’d look like when the cops were done with him. She was punching the final digit into the keypad when Layla snatched the phone from her hands.

  “Are you kidding me?” Aster glared accusingly. “Whose side are you on?”

  “Mine. I’m on my side.” Layla stuffed the phone in her pocket where Aster couldn’t get to it. “I really don’t need a B and E on my record, and neither do you.”

  “But he . . .” Aster motioned toward Ryan, who, at the moment anyway, was in no position to harm anyone. Sitting with his head in his hands, he’d clearly run out of steam. And if the scent in the room was any indication, he’d been well on his way to getting high when they’d interrupted him, which explained the bloodshot eyes.

  Ryan lifted his chin. With his tousled blond hair falling over his forehead, he was even more gorgeous than she remembered, but also weary beyond his years. “What are you going to tell them, Aster? That you broke into Madison’s house and found me in her closet, taking bong hits and listening to music that reminds me of her?”

  “I’ll tell them you killed her . . . that you . . .” She was totally out of ammo, and everyone knew it.

  “And what kind of proof will you offer?”

  He looked at them both, and in that moment, he appeared so bereft Aster wondered how she ever could’ve doubted him. His was not the face of a killer. But something inside her wouldn’t give in just yet. Maybe he hadn’t killed Madison, but he’d done other things. Things she’d been blamed for.

  “I’ll tell you what I’m guilty of. I’m guilty of fucking everything up. I’m guilty of going along with Madison’s crazy plan. I’m guilty of believing her when she claimed she had it all under control. I’m guilty of so many things, but I absolutely, one hundred percent did not harm her, and I don’t know who did.”

  “So what are you doing here then? What are you looking for? How’d you get in?” Aster fired the questions in rapid succession, hoping to rattle him into revealing something he didn’t intend to.

  “I used a key, same as you.” Ryan nodded toward the key ring Aster held clenched in her fist. “Madison gave me mine. How’d you get yours?” He quirked a questioning brow, and Aster scowled in return. “As for what I’m doing here . . .” He lifted his shoulders and casually glanced all around. “I guess you could say I’m trying to figure out what the hell happened, how my life slipped right out from under me, who the hell I’ve been dating for the last six months, and how you ended up implicated in all this. Because I’ll tell you one thing, while I wasn’t a perfect boyfriend, not by a stretch, Madison Brooks was hardly a model girlfriend. Half of what she told me is lies, and now I’m left trying to sort it all out. All I know for sure is that girl is not at all who she pretended to be. She had us all fooled.”

  When his eyes met hers, Aster averted her gaze and stole a quick glance at Layla instead, trying to determine what she made of all this. Ryan was an actor, which put everything he said under a cloud of suspicion, yet there was no mistaking the ring of truth in his words.

  Ryan lifted his hands in the universal sign of surrender. “Can we at least call a truce—even if it’s temporary? Will you at least consider trying to believe me?”

  “I believe you,” Layla said, the simple statement enough to shock Aster speechless. “Or at least I don’t think you killed her. But I do think you know more than you’re letting on. You were closer to her than anyone else. So it’s time to fess up and tell us what you know.”

  Ryan sighed and glanced between them. “Don’t believe everything you read,” he grumbled. “Truth is, our agents set us up. It was a relationship of convenience, and we played it up for the press, but we both knew the score.”

  Aster remained fuming before him. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him, but she wasn’t about to let him off the hook quite so easily. He’d have to work a lot harder than that to even begin making up for everything she suspected him of doing. “While you may have succeeded in convincing my friend,” she finally said, “unlike me, Layla has no idea the level of deceit you’re capable of.”

  “Fair enough.” Ryan shrugged and stared longingly at the bong as though he was actually considering sparking it up.

  She was losing control of the situation. Ryan’s sudden appearance had set her off balance—both literally and figuratively—and Aster needed a moment to collect herself.

  She stared at the wall reserved for displaying framed photographs of Madison, the neat rows spanning from the floor all the way to the ceiling. A mix of the magazine covers she’d graced—Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People’s “Most Beautiful” issue—along with pics of her posing beside a variety of high-profile public figures—fellow celebrities, studio heads, athletes, celebrity chefs, even the president.

  In every photo, Madison’s unknowable gaze seemed to be staring right back at the viewer. The girl had secrets. It seemed so obvious now. And Aster was convinced that the key to finding her lay in discovering just what it was Madison was so determined to hide.

  She returned her focus to Ryan. Despite what he claimed about the relationship being one of convenience, he’d still been closer to Madison than anyone else. She needed to know what he knew, though she couldn’t aff
ord to let him know just how desperate she’d become.

  “Five minutes.” She stared pointedly at her watch. “That’s all you’ve got to convince me. So why don’t you start with where you were the night Madison went missing, since, as it turns out, you went missing too.”

  Ryan froze. “I didn’t go missing.” His words were slow, halting, as though he’d carefully selected each one. “You’re the one who went missing.”

  Aster fumed. It was exactly what she’d expected him to say. Deny, deny, deny. Well, not anymore, and not on her time. “Not exactly,” she snapped, staring him down until he visibly cringed. “Try again.”

  Ryan looked to Layla as though she held the script that contained all his lines. Returning to Aster, he said, “You went to the bathroom and never came back. I polished off the rest of the champagne while waiting for you to return. I even sent one of the waitresses to check on you. It wasn’t until James told me he saw you leave and get into a car with some other guy that I took off with my friends.”

  She was as equally outraged as she was stunned. If what he said was true, then they’d never slept together. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t slept with someone else. Possibly the nameless, faceless stranger she’d supposedly left the club with?

  A wave of nausea rushed through her as everything she’d feared about that night made the leap from bad to so much worse. She felt dizzy, unsteady. Gazing longingly at the couch, she thought how nice it would be to sit for a bit until she found her footing again, but quickly ruled it out. She could not, would not, show any weakness. She’d survived a week in jail. She’d survive this too.

  “You were pretty upset.” Ryan’s tone was tentative. “I figured you just needed to blow off some steam.”

  His words were a blur as she turned to search Layla’s face, in desperate need of a second opinion, an ally, someone to translate and make some kind of sense of everything Ryan was saying.

  Ryan ran a hand through his hair, removed the earbuds that hung from his neck, and placed them on a table next to the bong and his phone. “Truth is, the breakup was staged. Mad thought she was doing us both a favor. She knew I was seeing you, knew how much I was beginning to care for you. . . .”

  Aster rolled her eyes, shook her head, and groaned in a way he couldn’t possibly miss. He might have sideswiped her a moment ago, but with that single bullshit statement, she was back in control.

  “Okay, fine.” He sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “I was attracted to you, which isn’t exactly a crime, is it? You were always so elusive, so impossible to get, it drove me crazy and made me want you even more. When I admitted as much to Madison, she didn’t hesitate to jump on it. She said she needed to get away for a bit. She had some business to handle, something personal, though she refused to divulge any details. She claimed a public breakup would provide the perfect excuse to disappear for a while.”

  “Why’d you agree to go along?”

  Ryan looked at Layla. “Because I needed the press. Even bad press would do. My show was getting axed, I had nothing lined up, and I knew Aster wanted to get noticed and I—we—Madison agreed it might help. She ended up going off script and taking it way further than planned. I guess she got caught up in the moment, or maybe she got caught up in her anger toward me for stepping out on her. All I know is I was shocked at the level of drama that ensued, and yeah, I guess I was also a little annoyed, which is why I didn’t try to check on her to see if she was okay. In my defense, I really did believe it was all part of the plan. It wasn’t until they found the blood evidence that I realized something had gone terribly wrong. Then, when Aster’s dress was linked . . . well, that’s when I knew that someone else had been pulling the strings all along.” He looked at Aster, eyes pleading.

  “Thirty seconds.” She glared in return.

  He pressed his lips together, ran a hand over his perfectly chiseled face. “I don’t think you’re guilty. I also don’t think Mad set you up. I think something far darker is happening, and that’s why I—”

  “Time.”

  Ryan hung his head. “For the record,” he said, voice broken, “I really do care what happens to you. I feel partly responsible for getting you into this mess.”

  “Yeah, like in all those interviews when you called me a mistake?”

  He shook his head. “Not a day goes by that I don’t wish I’d handled myself better and that I refused to go along with Madison’s ploy. Not that I’m blaming her, or at least not entirely. I’m sorry for everything that’s transpired, for all the horrible fallout.”

  “Fallout! You consider a first-degree murder charge fallout? Because that’s what I’m facing.”

  “I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

  “You know what I really hate?”

  He looked at her with bleary, red streaked eyes.

  “I hate when people knowingly screw you over, then say they’re sorry and assume that’s all that’s required. You want my forgiveness? Go out and earn it! Your words are worth nothing to me—your actions are your only true currency, and so far they’ve failed on every level. You said you’d be there for me, that you wouldn’t let me face this alone. Less than twenty minutes later, you disappeared from my life.”

  “You’re the one who disappeared! You left the club without me.”

  “I don’t remember any of that. I don’t remember anything after I left the Riad.”

  Ryan’s face looked troubled as he continued to study her. “I had nothing to do with that.”

  Aster’s shoulders sank. She was losing steam but was unwilling to surrender completely. “Tell me what you know about Della,” she said.

  Ryan balked, then just as quickly he collected himself. “MaryDella. It’s Madison’s real name.”

  “And her last name?” Aster quirked a brow and waited.

  Ryan sighed. “No idea. But it’s not Brooks. Her last address before LA may have been Connecticut, but that’s not where she came from.”

  “That’s a lot of info for someone who claims to know nothing.”

  “I dated her for six months. Not sure that’s a lot of info when you take that into account. Though I can tell you she was cutting deals all over town. Madison had a very extensive payroll.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Aside from the usual lawyers, managers, agents, stylists, publicists, assistants, and the like—she was also paying James—”

  “James—the bouncer at Night for Night?”

  “Whatever their arrangement, I’ve no doubt it required his discretion. She also had a fixer.” Fielding their confused looks, he said, “Someone who handled her . . . stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “The kind of stuff her team of professionals didn’t, couldn’t, or wouldn’t, I guess.”

  “So, basically, other than her first name you really don’t know anything.”

  “Listen, I’m as eager to solve this mystery as you are.”

  “Doubtful.” Aster glared. “I have a lot more at stake.”

  “I’m willing to help, if you’ll let me. Let me prove that you really can trust me.”

  Aster studied him. He seemed sincere, and there was no doubt that the more insiders they had on their side, the better. But she kept her expression as smooth as freshly poured concrete. Better to let him sweat it out until she decided.

  After a moment’s silence, she said, “We’re not friends. Not even close. We’re just trying to solve a mystery and clear my name, nothing more. And, for the record, this isn’t one of your stupid Hollywood sitcoms. We’re not some zany group of superheroes out to avenge the world of evil. My very life is at stake. Which means, if I so much as catch you not taking this seriously, I’ll make sure you regret it.”

  Ryan didn’t hesitate to offer his hand.

  After a long moment, Aster shook on the deal. Then, dropping his hand just as quickly, she settled onto the rug, looked at Layla and Ryan, and said, “So, where do we begin?”

  SIXTEEN

  MUSI
C TO WATCH BOYS TO

  There was no logical explanation for why she was feeling so grumpy. Sure, she’d barely gotten any sleep, having spent the bulk of the night at Madison’s, talking and strategizing and forming a plan with Ryan and Aster, but Layla was used to late nights, and she wasn’t much of a deep sleeper anyway. Going to bed for her was more like switching to do not disturb mode for a handful of hours while the rest of the world powered down.

  Maybe it was because she missed blogging—connecting to an audience through the stories she wrote.

  Maybe it was because she hadn’t fully adapted to life without Mateo. More than once she’d found herself in the midst of texting him after seeing something funny she knew he would like, only to remember just before she hit Send that, for the moment anyway, they were no longer friends.

  Or maybe she was still miffed at Tommy for bailing on Aster when she needed his help. And maybe, just maybe, she missed him a little bit too.

  Whatever the reason, Layla took it out on Hollywood Boulevard, swerving in and out of traffic while cursing all its tour buses and rubbernecking tourists driving their oddly colored rental cars well below the speed limit. Didn’t they realize there was nothing to see?

  Okay, maybe there were a few semi-interesting sights like Grauman’s Chinese Theater and the Walk of Fame stars, but the majority of the boulevard was an eyesore of sagging buildings, cheesy souvenir shops, and smelly costumed weirdos charging people ridiculous fees just to pose with them. Despite Ira’s bid to turn it into the new Sunset (or rather the old Sunset, seeing as how the once-legendary strip of celebrated nightclubs was giving way to swanky hotels, luxury condos, and exclusive designer boutiques), it was the same old seedy freak parade Layla had always known.

  She glared at the vanity plate before her. Was there anything dumber than a plate that announced the type of car it was attached to? Just in case you missed the insignia on the trunk, behold the very clever, phonetically spelled license plate to remind you of the type of car you are currently tailgating!