“Pretty girl,” Romy said. “So, do those texts have anything to do—”
I shot her a “Can it!” glare.
On the screen, Kayla reached forward and gently took Breelyn’s hand. The director cut to a close-up of Kayla, and there was real emotion on her face—not the faked concern audiences were used to seeing from talk-show hosts.
I saw that Romy was staring at me staring at Kayla.
“Hmm…guessing this might be a special friend?” she noted, dripping sarcasm. I threw a pillow at her and turned back to the TV.
“It’s not your fault,” Kayla was saying to Breelyn with feeling. “You were taken advantage of by an adult. One who was supposed to be looking out for you, not hurting you!”
“You don’t understand,” Breelyn wept. “He—he was good to me, too.”
Kayla looked down and seemed overcome for a moment. Then she leaned in closer to Breelyn.
“I do understand, Breelyn,” she said with a tremble in her voice. “Because…when I was a young girl…I was abused, too.”
“Whoa!” Romy gasped, then covered her mouth with a “Sorry!” shrug.
The camera stayed on Breelyn, whose eyes went slightly wide with surprise. She then closed them, and her body shook with her sobs. Kayla went on.
“It was by someone who I thought was good to me,” Kayla said, her voice trembling. “It took me a long time to realize that he wasn’t, that he was harming me. And it took me even longer to realize that I had nothing to blame myself for.”
Breelyn slowly reached out with her free hand and took Kayla’s so that they were joined in an intimate circle. The camera held it for a moment, then quietly faded out to a commercial.
Neither Romy nor I said anything for a moment. Then she turned to me with a sincere look, one with none of the sass that she usually gave out. “That was major. Admitting something like that on television. Do you have any idea how hard that must have been for her? Did you know about it?”
“No idea,” I said, truthfully. I hadn’t seen this coming, and felt stunned.
Romy gaped at me. “Holy shit…you actually care about this one.”
Before I could answer, there was a jarring knock on my door. I was startled because I lived in a loft space downtown, an exclusive upscale building. Security was airtight—you’d really have to jump through some hoops to get to my door unannounced.
Romy narrowed her eyes. “If that’s the feds here to bust me on a hacking charge, you are so going down with me.”
I slowly got off the bed and pulled on my jeans. The sun was just going down, so despite the soaring two-story, floor-to-ceiling windows, the light inside the loft had gone dim. I went over to the door and hesitated. No one ever came to my door—I didn’t even have a peephole. Still, although I had a bad feeling about this, my curiosity outweighed my caution.
I slowly unlocked the door and swung it open. Someone was standing a few steps back on the landing that ran along the side of the building. The sun was setting between the palm trees across the street, creating a backlight around the silhouette of a woman. She was standing very still and seemed to be staring at me.
Then, raising her arm, she shifted her position just enough to cause a break in the light that exposed her as Valentina Doyle.
She was pointing a gun at me.
And she fired.
Chapter 23
Eric Logan
The deafening blast and the terrified scream behind me seemed to happen simultaneously.
I whipped around to see Romy falling backward onto the floor. I involuntarily started to lunge toward her but then quickly threw my weight against the door to keep Valentina out.
But she must have been charging forward as she fired, because she was past the door in a flash. Her eyes were wild and the hand holding the gun was shaking as she kept it pointed at me. She stared down at Romy curiously, as if she were an expensive rug that she wasn’t quite sure she liked.
“Val!” I shouted, then quickly tried to calm my voice. “Put the gun down. Do not do this.”
She just kept staring at Romy, who was lying on her side in a small pool of blood forming under her. I knelt and gently turned her over—the wound was on her left hip, just above her panties. She moaned and then suddenly gasped as she seemed to come out of a light shock. Her hand flew to the wound and she looked up at me in panic. Without any medical knowledge, I could see that the bullet had gone through only tissue and muscle, nowhere near any organs.
“You’re okay, you’re okay,” I assured her, though my voice shook a little. “Just take a deep breath.”
Bewildered and stunned, Romy stared up at Valentina.
“You always manage to dodge the consequences of your actions, don’t you?” Valentina said to me in a trembling voice. “You never pay, you bastard. Everyone else does—even her, whoever she is—but not you.”
“Val, I know you’re upset, but I have to get her help. Put the gun—”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she screamed, tears overtaking her. “I listened to you and what did I get? Public humiliation. A police investigation! And all for the sake of your girlfriend, right? But the ratings weren’t big enough, were they? Seeing me made a fool of wasn’t enough. You had to go after my daughter, too.”
My mind was racing. How I was going to calm her down, not get shot, and get aid for Romy was beyond me.
“Val, she’s been injured. I need to call an ambu—”
“I’m all right,” Romy said hoarsely. Though she was deathly white, she still tried to pull herself up. I forced her to lie back down, then reached up for a coat that was hanging on the rack near the door and put it over her.
“No ambulance. No doctors. No police,” she said tersely under her breath with a warning look in her eye. “Just get me to the bathroom. I can clean it.”
I knew Romy’s profession required her to live “off the grid”—but I hadn’t realized how low a profile she actually needed to keep.
We both glanced up at Valentina, who now looked spent—and very sad.
“They’ve taken Breelyn from me,” she said in a dead tone. “Wayne’s sister filed for temporary guardianship. Because of those texts. Because of that interview. Because of you.”
Though I was terrified of what this madwoman would do next, there was something pitiful about her now. All her glamour was gone; she just looked beaten and played out.
“They’ve even taken Gregg from me,” she said with a bitter laugh. “Gregg’s guns—his precious, precious guns—turns out they’re all stolen. Yeah, I guess even this one is hot. Gregg had a prior conviction I never knew about. He can’t legally own guns! Isn’t that hilarious? Everybody has their little secrets.”
I couldn’t let Romy just sit there and bleed to death while Valentina did her monologue. I deliberately turned away from her and slowly lifted Romy up. Without looking back at Valentina, I started walking Romy toward the bathroom.
At the click we both froze.
I turned around to see that Valentina had the gun pressed up against her forehead.
“Maybe Wayne had the right idea,” she sobbed. “Only I’ll do him one better. I’ll have witnesses. So there won’t be any mysteries. Nothing that your Kayla can use to score big ratings.”
“Oh, my God,” Romy gasped as she clutched me.
Still holding the gun, Valentina stared at me with intense hatred.
An eternity seemed to pass.
Then the look on her face suddenly began to change. Her sagging mouth began to lift at the corners—slowly forming a very distinct, very cruel grin.
She then threw her head back and let out an exaggerated cackle.
“You think you’re such a player,” she sneered. “How’s it feel to be played for once?”
She laughed again, then shoved the gun into her coat pocket.
“You gotta admit that was good. I wish I could have had it filmed. What a great audition reel for a reality series! That’s probably the first thing you th
ought of, huh, Logan? Capitalize on any life experience—the more tragic, the better. Too bad I couldn’t give you a heads up. I wanted to surprise you with a special performance.”
She gave Romy an apologetic shrug. “It was supposed to be a private show, honey. Sorry you were collateral damage.”
Valentina did her signature brush-back of her hair and walked over to the door. She gave me a withering parting look.
“In a lot of ways you’re a sharp guy, Logan. But I’ve been in this business a long time and I know a beginner from a pro,” she said.
She slammed the door shut.
Chapter 24
Eric Logan
Success stories don’t come much sweeter than this, I thought as I rode the elevator up to the top floor of the gleaming new ten-story apartment building in the middle of Hollywood. This is what everybody comes here for but so few ever actually achieve.
I knocked on the door, and as soon as it opened I thrust the flowers forward—unfortunately directly into Zoe’s face.
“Whoops!” she cried. “I should have let Kayla open the door. Take two!”
She slammed the door shut, so I dutifully knocked again, and after a beat Kayla opened it. I bowed and put the flowers into her arms. She gave me a wary smile, so I took a risk and leaned in and gave her a soft kiss. She tensed up as usual, so I backed off and looked around. Polished cement floors, recessed lighting, gigantic TV screen built into the wall, spectacular hillside views—the works.
“Damn!” I whistled. “If the folks in Omaha could see you now…”
“Right?” Zoe all but screamed. “And Jared Leto supposedly has the penthouse suite!”
I gave Kayla a thumbs-up. She just shrugged.
“I don’t know…” she said. “It’s just so not me.”
“Well, I’ll take it!” Zoe smirked as she dashed toward the door with a bouncy wave good-bye. “But for now, I will leave you guys to it.”
I went over to Kayla. She looked tired; she’d had an insane week. Still, I couldn’t help but think that her work pressures had nothing on my last encounter with Valentina.
“Of course this is you,” I assured her. “Reporters who score their very own news shows are expected to live a certain lifestyle.”
“I still can’t believe it,” she sighed. “And…I just don’t feel like I really deserve it. Not yet, anyway. It’s all happened so quickly. Too quickly.”
I looked over at the television and saw that her interview with Breelyn Doyle was being broadcast yet again—at least the fifth time that week. Airing just three days after Valentina had stormed off the set, Kayla’s talk with Breelyn became the network’s highest-rated nonpolitical interview—and landed her an offer of a show of her own. I walked over to the television and turned up the sound.
“It was by someone who I thought was good to me,” Kayla was saying. “It took me a long time to realize that he wasn’t, that he was harming me. And it took me even longer to realize that I had nothing to blame myself for.”
Kayla quickly reached over and turned the TV off. She then walked over to her enormous living room window.
“Sorry, it’s…hard for me to watch that.”
I came up behind and slowly put my arms around her. She tightened up again, but I stayed put.
“I get it. But that was a brave thing you did,” I said. “It helped Breelyn a lot.”
Kayla turned around. “You’ve spoken with her?”
“Yesterday. I had a meeting with her and her new legal guardian, her aunt Cynthia,” I said. “She filed a motion after the police launched their investigation into Valentina and Doyle.”
Kayla looked perplexed. “But why did you meet with her?”
“Because,” I said, trying to tamp down my excitement, “you are looking at the President/CEO of Logan & Associates public relations firm. There are no associates just yet, but I do have a client: Breelyn Doyle.”
“Wait—what?”
“Because of your interview, she’s the hottest teen trending on social media. Everyone wants to sign her!” I said, beyond stoked. “And I got her a meeting with CAA this morning. She’s got the potential to be a big—no huge—star.”
Kayla pushed me away, confused and, I thought, almost repelled.
“You don’t seem very happy for me,” I said.
“No, I—I just…” she stammered, “it just seems…like you’re taking advantage of her awful experience. She’s famous because she was abused!”
“Breelyn wants this, Kayla,” I said. “I know it sounds a little crass, but in this business you don’t get too many chances to make your move. You’ve been lucky, it’s been easy for you.”
She narrowed her eyes with true anger.
“That interview wasn’t easy for me,” she said through gritted teeth. “Talking about my private pain wasn’t worth having five thousand more Facebook followers.”
I took hold of her again. She pushed away but then broke down and started crying.
“Will you do something for me?” I asked softly. “Will you let me take you away this weekend? Just the two of us, up the coast? Maybe Santa Barbara? No television, no deals, no pressures. Just us…”
She gave me a long look.
“You may as well say yes,” I said. “Remember, I always get my way.”
Chapter 25
Kayla Ross
I stared at the ceiling most of the early morning. It had started raining lightly sometime during the night, and it was a comforting sound. So much had happened to me in the last few months I just couldn’t take it all in. I’d landed my dream job, become sort of famous, moved into a totally chic apartment, and now…a boyfriend?
Somehow the last was the hardest to believe.
Logan stirred next to me and slowly opened his eyes. He rolled over to look at me.
“Something tells me you’ve been awake for a while. Wanna talk?”
I did and I didn’t. I wanted to stay in that hotel bed, and I wanted to get the hell out of there. I wanted him to hold me, and I wanted him to leave me alone.
He must have sensed how confused I was because he just ran his hand lightly, back and forth, over my arm.
“You know how you once told me you were a jerk and that I should tell you to get lost?” I asked him. “Well, I’m kind of…messed up. You might want to tell me to get lost.”
“Now she tells me,” he sighed mockingly, then pulled me into an embrace. “You aren’t any more messed up than anyone else, Kayla. We’ve all got issues.”
“But…you probably already guessed this…I haven’t been with anyone this way. Romantically, I mean,” I said. “I’ve avoided it. I put all my focus into becoming successful.”
Logan nodded. “It worked.”
“Yeah, I guess it did.”
“I’ve made some sacrifices to get where I am, too,” he said, kind of reluctantly. “I’m still finding out if they were worth it. Were yours?”
I didn’t know how to answer, so I just kissed him. I was thinking that, as terrifying as it was, to fully live I would have to start trusting people again sooner or later.
As Logan took a shower in the suite’s ridiculously ornate bathroom, I started thinking about the week ahead. I hadn’t even signed my new contract yet and I was already facing endless meetings about my show—the name, how it was going to be structured, time slot, on and on. I’d promised myself not to check my messages until we headed back that afternoon, but I couldn’t help it. I picked up my phone and found that it was dead. I’d been so nervous and uptight the night before, I’d forgotten to charge it.
I plugged it into a bedside charger and saw that Logan’s laptop was open, so I went over and logged in to my Gmail account. There were at least thirty messages, a daunting number to go through now. With the rain, our drive back to LA was going to take forever; I’d have plenty of time to go through them.
As I closed the browser window, I noticed how neatly Logan’s desktop icons were arranged. There were a zillion folders and
they were stacked in perfect rows and all clearly labeled. It made me smile. It was so him to have to have everything in place and under control. As I glanced away, one folder name jumped out at me: “bdoyle_pool.”
I’m not a snoop. I like to think I have strong values, and that I respect others’ privacy. But some impulse practically forced me to move the cursor over the folder.
I clicked before I could stop myself. The folder contained a long row of jpeg images. I didn’t know why, but my heart was beating madly.
I was suddenly terrified of what I was about to see.
Chapter 26
Eric Logan
“Kayla! You’re not going to believe this!” I yelled from the bathroom.
I’d gotten the text I was banking on. I was so excited I ran out of the bathroom still wet, with just a towel around my waist.
Kayla was furiously packing her clothes.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
She turned around. Her face was drained of blood and she was trembling. I tried to approach her, but she backed away.
“Don’t touch me!” she screamed.
“What’s the matter? What happened?”
She pointed at my laptop. One of Breelyn’s nude photos was displayed. It wasn’t one I’d have shown Kayla if given the choice.
“Oh, shit.” What else could I say?
“You—you took those?” Kayla gasped.
“No,” I said. “I did not. I took them off Tennet’s computer.”
Kayla’s eyes grew even bigger. “You hid evidence to help your client? And why didn’t you just delete it? Why’d you put it on your own computer?”
I sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. Kayla moved over to the door and stood there rigidly with her hand on the knob.
“Just calm down and listen to me,” I said. “Tennet didn’t take those photos. He never even knew they existed, let alone that they were on his computer.”
She stared at me in total confusion.
“Then who put them there?” she demanded.
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