by Tess Oliver
“Tough week and most of it had to do with my not so terrific fairy tale.”
“Want to talk about it?”
I threw back a shot and smacked the glass down on the counter. “Nah, it’s not all that interesting.” I threw back the second shot and looked back at the girl in the booth. I was not imagining her silent invitation to join her. I picked up the beer.
“Did I mention she came in with that angry looking guy over there?” Cheryl asked as I handed her some money.
“Yeah, well I guess we’ll see who she wants to go home with.” Even knowing that none of this would turn out great, it didn’t stop me from sliding into the booth.
The girl made it clear a few seconds later that she was happy for the company. “My how my luck has changed. A few minutes ago I was sitting here completely lonely and,” she leaned closer to me and ran her hand up my leg, “completely horny. And now, here you are.” She ran her tongue across her bottom lip and then looked across the room.
“Is that your boyfriend?” I asked.
“Nope, just a friend.” She pushed her tits against my arm and her hand continued on its long, slow journey up my leg. There was something sketchy and tentative about her flirting, as if she wasn’t completely sure of herself. She looked back at the guy again.
“Hey, if your friend is going to be pissed then I’ll get up.”
Her hand found my cock and she rubbed her palm against the front of my jeans. “No, don’t go. I’m going to get another drink, and because you saved me from a boring night I’m going to bring you another beer.” She moved out of the booth and made sure to wiggle her bottom at me as she leaned over the counter. I watched her with about as much interest as I might have watching a tree grow. I’d talked myself into wanting this only to realize that it was the farthest thing from my mind right now.
The girl whose name I hadn’t even bothered to ask for was texting someone. I glanced over and, sure enough, the guy she’d come in with was reading a text. I would pay her for the beer and take off.
For some reason she hung out at the bar and threw back her drink before sashaying back to the booth. She put the beer down in front of me. I pulled out my wallet and she didn’t turn down the money. “You know I think I’m going to take off.”
Her eyes widened. “I thought we might finish these drinks and then head out to my car.” She leaned against me again. “I am desperate for some action tonight.”
I lifted the beer. “I’ll finish this with you, but I think you’re going to have to pry your friend away from the pool table if you want any action tonight.”
She pushed the beer toward me, and her hand went back to my leg. I dropped the beer back faster than usual. With all of her attempts to seduce me, I couldn’t work up the slightest interest. My head was feeling heavy from the tequila, and, suddenly, face down in my bed seemed like the best place to be.
“On another day, I would have taken you up on your invitation, but I’m heading home for the night.”
She pushed her bottom lip out in disappointment. I stood up from the booth and braced my hand on the table to steady myself.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yeah, just too much tequila.” The room seemed to stretch as I headed toward the door. The lines of the windows and floorboards became wavy, and my focus was out of whack. I glanced back at the girl and just that slight movement made the room spin wildly. The girl was still watching me, and a faint thought went through my foggy head. There was something in that beer.
The fresh air cleared my mind but only for a second. The cars seemed to be vibrating as I walked through the parking lot. My arms and legs felt as if they were moving through tar. The bitch had drugged me, and I had no idea why.
I reached the sidewalk, but the walk home seemed impossible. The screen and numbers on my phone were a blur, and I couldn’t dial. I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, a task that required my focus.
Seconds later, I sat down hard on the curb to keep myself from falling face first onto the cement. I was only vaguely aware of my surroundings, but I sensed that a car had pulled up in front of me. My eyelids drifted shut just as someone seized my arm. I flailed my fists, but it was useless. My head smacked the window of a car as I was being pushed into the backseat. Then everything went black.
CHAPTER 23
Finley
The second I heard the whir of the giant security gates, I flew down the stairs, tapped the bottom banister three times and raced to the front entrance. The limo driver opened the door and Dad stepped out, completely alone, no body guard, no manager, no girlfriend. Just Dad. A tiny scream burst from my lips, and I jumped down the steps and straight into his arms. The familiar comforting scent of his cologne filled my senses.
“Finley, you’re still up. It’s two in the morning.”
I peered up at him. Every tour seemed to age him just a bit more. As much as he always complained about the new lines and wrinkles, I secretly loved them. They made him look more like a dad and less like a rock star. “There was no way I could sleep knowing you were on your way home.”
Voices from down below floated through the canopy of jacarandas. Dad looked down toward the street where the press had been camped out since the news broke. “There are only a half dozen or so hard core reporters who apparently think this story could still break badly for me. Otherwise, it looks like I’ve missed most of the chaos, eh?”
“You don’t know the half of it. Although, I’m sure it was mild compared to the chaos you went through.” I turned my body so that I was tucked beneath his arm. I placed my hand on his stomach as we walked toward the house. “You’re too damn skinny, Dad. We need to fatten you up and get you a beer belly like other dads.”
“I look forward to a beer belly, Fin.” Butch and Sundance, two dogs who could rarely be moved to show any excitement or energy, came bounding into the entry when they heard my dad’s voice echo off the marble floors.
“Hey, boys,” he stopped to give them hearty pats. “I take it Some Pig is in bed?”
“He tried to stay up with me, but it was just too late”.
“Great, you ask about the pig before you ask about Cole and me?” Jude walked into the entry.
He hugged Dad. “Good to see you home, Dad.”
“Bloody hell, Jude, what a wild ride. Where are Cole and Eden?”
“Cole fell asleep on the couch, and Eden thought she should give us a chance to see you first.”
“Let’s go in and wake Cole. I can’t tell you how good it is to be home with all of you.”
We sat in the family room, and I held tightly to Dad’s arm.
“What a nightmare,” Dad sighed. “It’s all such a blur, but I think this little episode will haunt me forever.”
“What the hell happened, Dad?” Jude asked.
Dad released a long breath. “I haven’t heard all the details of the confession, but there was some blackmail and some other shit going on. I’d had too much to drink . . and other stuff. Finley has told me again and again to stop partying like a bloody madman,” he kissed the top of my head, “and I think it’s about time I listened to my kid.” He laughed and it had a nervous edge to it. “I was so out of it I thought I was having a bloody stroke. And the whole time I kept thinking, Finley is going to have my head for not taking better care of myself.”
I squeezed his arm tighter. “That’s because you know I’m right.”
“True. I’ve taken a lot of things into my system, chemicals that have no right to be floating around in a human’s blood stream. The older I get the harder it gets to recover from the long nights of partying. Reggie was at the party but I never paid him much attention. He must have been keeping an eye on me though. Apparently he was waiting for me to reach that perfect level of inebriation where I’d be too out of it to know that a dead girl was being tucked in with me. I passed out on my bed and the bloody bastard snuck her in when everyone else had gone to sleep.” He fell silent for a mom
ent, and the only sound in the room was the clicking of the clock on the wall. “I will never forget waking up to that poor girl’s pale, cold face staring at me across the pillow.”
I shut my eyes against the agony in his voice. He seemed to sense my distress and kissed my head again. “Enough about that.” He forced some lightness into his tone. “I’ve seen a few pictures floating around the internet.” His remark was directed at me. Jude and Cole looked at me too.
“What?” I asked.
“So tell me about this bloke who keeps whipping you out of the press’s path? Is that the boy you mentioned when you told me you’d found something you wanted?”
“That was him, but it’s over.”
“There’ll be others, and none of them will be good enough for you. I just have to accept that someday I won’t be number one in your life. I must tell you, though, that several of my producer friends have called to ask if the boy has an agent to contact.”
“He’s not a boy, Dad. He’s a man, and he isn’t an actor. And I don’t think he has any intention of becoming one.”
“Don’t blame him. This life style has its obvious perks and its obvious pitfalls.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder. “I’ll say. I mean how many people have to worry about being framed for murder?”
“Speaking of producer friends,” Cole said, “Jude said the new production company is taking off.”
“Sure as hell is, and it’s well-timed too.” Dad leaned back against the couch and relaxed. “Only the band and you guys will know this, but in a year, I’m planning to retire completely from music. I’ve got enough other businesses and side gigs and residuals coming in that I just don’t need to kill myself on these tours anymore.”
“I can’t tell you how happy that makes me,” I said.
The familiar tapping of tiny hooves sounded on the hardwood floor.
“Is that the sound of my favorite trotters?” Dad looked back over the couch.
Some Pig snorted and hurried around to the front of the couch. He pushed his snout against Dad’s legs. Dad leaned down to pet him. “Yes, I’m even glad to see you, Some Pig. How is the cow doing?” He looked at Cole. “And the barn?”
“We put the barn on hold when the shit was hitting the fan, as they say,” Cole said. “But the men are coming back tomorrow. Lilly Belle should have her house by the end of next week.”
“Good to hear. And you, Finley? How it the volunteer job at the barn going?”
“I couldn’t be happier.” I used this as my opportunity to slip in my future dream. Sometimes with my dad, it was easier to build on a notion brick by brick. “I might even start my own rescue barn one day.”
He didn’t respond, but seemed to actually be mulling it over for a second. “As long as it’s not here. I think the neighbors might start complaining.”
“No, it wouldn’t be here,” I said quickly, and dropped the subject. One piece of dream at a time was enough. It was an idea that was so firmly planted in my head now, I couldn’t blow it by getting emotional or pushy about it. I had to have everything in place first. I stretched with a long yawn. “Well, Dad,” I leaned over and kissed him. “I’m so happy you’re home. I’ll see you tomorrow.” It had been a roller coaster week, and in between it all, my heart had been broken. But overall, I’d done a pretty good job of handling everything. If only the black hole in my heart didn’t feel so bottomless.
CHAPTER 24
Rett
I was not in a stranger’s bed, and the pain in my head and the bumpy road assured me it wasn’t a bad dream. I went to move my arms, but they were tied behind my back with something thin, sharp and seemingly unbreakable. Two heads were having a heated conversation in the front seat of the car and then remnants of the night came back to me. It took all my strength just to stay conscious. My head felt as if it had floated off of my body. Aside from the binding cutting into the skin on my wrists, I could hardly feel my limbs.
I tried to straighten my legs, but the short back seat kept me curled into a ball.
“Kidnapping?” the woman asked, and I remembered the girl at the pool hall, the one who had given me the drugged beer. “Are you crazy? This started as a simple mugging. And who knows how attached he is to the King family. I was sure he’d at least be rich if he moved in her circles.”
“His wallet was as dry as a homeless person’s. Maybe we’ve got the wrong guy,” the male voice said. “If he’s Finley King’s boyfriend then he would have to be some Beverly Hills type.”
My open wallet laid next to me on the seat. Their conversation was slightly muffled by the drugs still swirling through my head, but the motive of the girl slipping drugs into my drink became fairly clear. My unwanted minutes of fame had made me a target, and these fools had assumed that I had to be rich to know Finley. Her name drifted through my heavy head, and even bound and crumpled in the back seat of car with no idea what would happen next, I wondered what she was up to and if she missed me at all.
Dizziness swept through me and waves of nausea seized my gut. I sat up and puked all over the floor of the car.
The girl grabbed the seat and twisted back to look at me. “Shit,” she said, her face twisted in disgust.
“Hey, mother fuckers.” My throat burned as I spoke. “Looks like you’ve got yourselves a mess to clean up.”
She sat back in disgust. “Damnit.”
“You didn’t give him enough,” the guy sounded far less confident now that he realized I was waking up in the backseat.
“I gave him enough to drop a damn horse. He’s just a giant.” The girl was obviously irritated that this whole thing wasn’t working out the way she’d planned.
I sat up and my head spun as if I’d been on a carnival ride. The moon was high in the sky. The lack of lighting along the freeway told me we were far from any city. I squinted through the window. The barren landscape looked somewhat familiar. We were on Highway Ten heading toward the desert.
I stared hard at the driver in the rear view and fear filled his expression. I saw him hand something to the girl across the center console. She smiled and propped a gun on the back of the seat. “If you puke on my backseat again, I’ll blow your brains out.”
I blinked at her. My lids felt as if they had weights attached. I really hated this chick. “Yeah, because bits of exploded skull and brain are much easier to clean than puke. As you’ve already discovered, I am poor, as goofball here put it so well, as a homeless person. I have no connection to the King family, so don’t bother with the kidnapping idea. There’s no one to pay a ransom.”
“Let’s just dump this asshole out here in the desert,” the man said.
“Best idea I’ve heard yet,” I said.
The girl who had looked somewhat tempting back in the pool hall now reminded me more of a witch, a witch with a gun aimed at me. “It’s too bad you’re so pretty,” she said. “It’s a shame to have to kill you.”
Her partner looked at her. From the look on his face, murder hadn’t really been part of his game plan. Unfortunately, the girl seemed to be running the fiasco. She shrugged nonchalantly. “He’s seen us and especially me,” she said.
“Believe me, Bitch,” I said coldly, “there’s nothing memorable about your face. Just dump me in the desert, and your mug will be nothing but a faint, ugly memory the second you drive off.” Jimmy had warned me about my complete disregard for mortality, and this was probably one of those moments when I should have taken his warning to heart. But sometimes rage trumped common sense. And my words had burned the girl with the gun just fine. Her face contorted into a mean scowl as she fingered the trigger on the gun. I held my breath while she seemed to be contemplating my death.
“You’re right. Don’t want to clean up brain bits.” Then she lifted a long finger and pointed through the windshield. “Pull off there. We can drive out behind those trees.”
I moved my hands back and forth in the bindings. It had to be wire. My wrists were wet with blood, and I�
�d made no progress.
The guy followed her command and yanked the car off onto the dry dirt. A cloud of gray dust kicked up around us as we drove toward a small group of trees. I’d faced death in that crummy jail in Mexico, but Dray had been with me and somehow the thought of dying with a friend had made it easier to accept. And when a rogue wave had nearly swept me over the rail of the crab fishing boat I’d been working on, I was sure I was going to meet my end at the bottom of the icy ocean. But even though I was scared shitless in those bizarre seconds while my body was picked up by freezing ocean water and hurled toward the side of the boat, I kept thinking that at least it was a cool, adrenaline rush way to die. But out in the middle of the desert and at the hands of two complete imbeciles, I couldn’t think of anything that made it seem the least bit cool or easy to accept.
The guy pulled the car to an abrupt stop. The door opened and I pushed my wallet out onto the ground. It was basically empty except for my license, but I figured if I had to die alone out here, I at least wanted to make it easy for the police to identify my body. The girl held the gun at me and her reluctant partner reached in through the open door for my foot. My legs shot out and I nailed him in the jaw. He staggered back cussing and spitting blood.
The girl rolled her eyes at him and then the pistol was in my face. “Get out,” she snarled.
I scooted out and stood in front of her. Bound hands left me with few possibilities except making a run for it. Dry desert winds pushed the leaves of the trees behind us. It was the only noise in an otherwise eerily quiet landscape. I stared down at her. “Like I said, I won’t remember that face once you leave, so you might as well take off and leave me here.”
She motioned with her finger for me to turn around. Her friend had recuperated, and he was plenty pissed. Before I could take another breath, he plowed his fist into my stomach. I doubled over and it took me a few seconds get my wind back. The drugs were still not out of my system, and as I straightened the desert spun around me. As I shut my eyes to regain my balance, a fist slammed into my face. I hadn’t taken notice of his ring, but I felt it slice my cheek open. Warm blood trickled down my chin and onto my shirt.
