by Meg Collett
Wren sucked on her cheeks, thinking. Bode would be here any second; he was already almost five minutes late. Hazen’s comm wouldn’t be far behind. But when would she get a chance like this again?
Before she could talk herself out of it, she sidled around the desk, careful not to touch Hazen’s massive leather chair in case it was perfectly in position. She disturbed nothing but the pages as she picked up the hefty stack. The first page with the yellow note was blank.
She flipped through the stack as fast as her eyes could dart over the typed words that filled each page. The effort was a waste. She could only read bits and pieces. The tiny words shook and spun, but she deciphered enough of the bold titles to learn that the stack was a glorified quarterly expense report. The last three pages included a detailed breakdown of stock shares between investors and company holders. The numbers mingled, evading her, and she was ready to return the pages to their place, when she found something.
A name.
Bode’s name. Right beneath Hazen’s.
Wren closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she squinted hard at the Baffords’ names. Next to Hazen was a stock share of fifty-one percent. Wren knew enough to know that was the holding share in the company, which made sense given Hazen was the founder and CEO. But she didn’t need to squint to understand the number next to Bode’s name.
Zero.
Bode was a Bafford, the CEO’s brother, but he had no stocks in the family business.
She shuffled the pages back together, tapped them straight against the desk, and returned them to the exact place they’d been. At the door, she checked behind her once more, but everything was in order. She hit the lights and set the lock on the thumb reader inside the office before leaving.
She was sitting in a chair outside Hazen’s office when Bode ran down the hall, breathing heavily, cheeks flushed. He caught sight of her and slowed. “Thank God,” he said. “I thought I was late. Hazen hasn’t commed yet?”
“Don’t know. His office is locked.”
Bode’s stride stuttered to a stop. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” she returned, the toe of her boot bobbing up and down. “What’s wrong is that everyone is lying to me.”
“Is this about Hazen? Look, not much has changed in the South. Our family—”
“I don’t give a shit about your family. Hazen can screw whoever he likes. That’s his right. But it’s not right that you’re lying to me.”
Bode startled like she’d slapped him. “I’ve never lied to you.”
“Even that’s a lie, you asshole.” Wren surged to her feet.
He checked the hall behind them, in both directions, worried someone might overhear them. “What’s going on here?”
“Why don’t you have any controlling stocks in your brother’s company?”
She’d taken him by surprise. “I—”
“Don’t lie to me. I mean it, Bode. Does this have something to do with what happened to Sloane?”
His gaze fell to the floor. For a long moment, Wren watched him collect himself. Finally, he said, “I told you the truth when I said I was Sloane’s bodyguard and the operative assigned to her surveillance before the show.” He dragged his eyes back to Wren’s. “But I’m the reason she killed herself that night. I’m the reason she died.”
I’m the reason she died.
Wren hadn’t expected that. His mistake had played a part in that night’s events, but to be the actual reason? Did he mean because he was the Whitebirds’ insider in Sloane’s life? Had he given her the drugs to overdose on?
“How?”
“I fell in love with her.”
“You …” Wren tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry. She’d prepared herself for everything but Bode saying he was in love with Sloane Lux.
Bode paced the waiting area. “I was so caught up in her. She did that to a person. Wrapped them up tight and twisted them all up in her. She was—” He fumbled for a word, his hands waving in the air as if he was trying to grab the phrase to encompass a woman like Sloane. “She was like holding a star in your hands and trying to keep the light from leaking through your fingers. Impossible and wonderful at the same time. That evening, when she … she did it, we’d had this awful fight. I wasn’t supposed to leave her penthouse without another security detail in place, but I was so pissed off. She had this way about her, you know? Well, you wouldn’t really know, but she could seriously screw with someone’s head, and after that fight, I just had to leave. By the time I cleared my head and came back …”
Wren pictured the zero percentage beside Bode’s name, his frequent absences on set, and Sloane. He’d loved her. It changed the implications of him simply being her guard that night. It changed everything. It was a motive. “What did you fight about?”
Bode laughed. It was the kind of laugh that held no joy, only sadness. “Roman. We always fought about Roman. But this time, it was serious. They were getting back together. I was only a rebound.”
The pain in his voice was a seeping road rash of freshness.
He sank into a chair and slumped forward, his elbows braced on his knees.
“Had I been there, she wouldn’t have done it,” he continued. “None of this would have happened. VidaCorp wouldn’t be under the Whitebirds’ knife and you wouldn’t be here, living in this hell.”
“He cut you off from the company?”
“I was nearly fired after Sloane’s death. Hazen went toe to toe with the board to keep them from filing criminal charges against me. In the end, I got to keep my job, but I lost all my stocks in VidaCorp, my reputation, my brother’s respect, Sloane.” Bode’s voice broke. “All because of Roman.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know if she’d even spoken loud enough for him to hear.
Too many thoughts and emotions warred inside her, but a smaller, shrewder part of her resented Sloane. Was there one thing in this hologram-enclosed city that Sloane hadn’t touched, even in the smallest way? She was the spider spinning the glossy web Wren had found herself trapped in.
It wasn’t a trap set by the Whitebirds or VidaCorp.
It was Sloane’s.
“What are you thinking?” Bode raised his head up at her, eyes pleading. “Please, talk to me. I can’t stand when you go all quiet. I know it’s bad, and I’m sorry. I really am. I should have told you when you found out I was her guard, but I thought if I could find the Whitebird insider, I could make up for what I did, for Sloane dying, and my brother … we’ve never been like this, Wren. I think he hates me. I’m sorry you’re involved in all this. You must feel like you can’t escape her.”
Wren’s head pulsed with a growing headache. Bode had loved Sloane. Did Roman know? Had Hutton? “I’m sorry,” she ended up saying, for lack of anything better to say. She believed his guilt, his sadness. He was broken apart over Sloane’s death.
“Wren …” His eyes swept over her face, to her lips and farther down before he jerked his gaze away.
With a jolt, Wren remembered he was staring at Sloane, at the woman he’d loved. How could she have forgotten?
But that was the thing. It was easy to forget with Bode. He made her feel like Wren, not Sloane. She thought she was still the grungy slum rat from Sunshine Heights around him. He’d seen her from the first time they’d met, but she couldn’t let that distract her. The close comfort they’d formed in their war room, hunting out suspects and clues together, didn’t matter. He’d been entrenched in Sloane’s life, and he’d been there the night she died.
He’d lost everything because of it.
He had the motive to turn against his brother—against VidaCorp. Yet he spoke of bringing down the Whitebirds with conviction.
Could she do it? Could she think he was the Whitebird insider?
“I didn’t want this to be another thing you had to deal with.” He rose, taking her hands in his, and tugged her against him. She was reeling too much to keep her distance. He leaned down to rest his forehead against he
rs. His breath ruffled the fine hairs along her temples.
She shuddered. His breath hitched, and he went still. He’d taken it the wrong way.
Before she could pull away, he brought his hands to her face and wound his fingers through her hair, cupping the back of her head. He slammed his lips against hers, and she nearly drowned in his desperation. It sang through his every movement against her mouth. He was lost, adrift, and when he looked at her, he saw the only thing resembling an anchor in his world.
But kissing him was nothing like kissing Roman, and in Bode’s arms, she couldn’t breathe. A cough wedged in her throat, and for the first time since she’d collapsed in Sloane’s penthouse, Wren saw stars.
She couldn’t breathe. She was dying.
She shoved away from Bode. She was scrubbing at her lips with the back of her hand and gasping for oxygen when she saw her rejection slap him across the face.
She shifted away, weary of the gleam in his eyes.
“It’s him, isn’t it? It’s Roman.”
“No,” she lied.
“He’s wrong for you, Wren. He’s bad news. He’ll hurt you like he hurt her. Who do you think picked up the pieces? Who do you think held her when she was serking her face off because he’d left her? It was me! I did that! He broke her fucking heart!”
He paced away from her again, his hands tearing through his hair. He covered his mouth with his hands and screamed. In that moment, she saw him as the man who could be a Whitebird insider using his ex-lover’s death to hack down his brother’s company. He wanted to burn it to the ground like he’d been burned to the ground.
He spun back to face her. “He’ll do that to you. Why can’t you see that?” Though he was talking to her, he wasn’t seeing her. He only saw Sloane. He was forgetting the girl beneath the skin. “Why can’t you see that?” he yelled and took another giant step toward her.
“Don’t,” she snapped, cracking the whip of her words, “come a step closer.”
He froze. It took him a fraction too long to understand he’d lost control, but when he did, his face crumpled. “No. Wait. Wren—”
“I’m leaving, and you need to calm down. Don’t come after me. If you do, I’ll scream for help. Understand?”
“Please. I’m sorry,” he begged like a man who’d lost everything. He had. “Don’t do this to me, Wren. Not you too.”
He’d once told her he’d win her trust, and he had against her better judgment. Now, when she looked at him, she could only see VidaCorp’s name written in red on the glass in front of her face.
As she turned away, he murmured, “She always favored him too.”
29:
I’m the reason she died.
Bode’s words played on an endless loop in Wren’s mind while Daisy put the finishing touches on her party look. Wren was grateful the spunky artist maintained a constant stream-of-consciousness style conversation. It kept her mind off Bode. She would have to decide what to do soon, but not tonight. Tonight, she had to make it through Sloane’s twenty-third birthday.
A birthday party of all things. It felt crass, and Wren had never felt so uncomfortable in her new skin as she did that evening. VidaCorp, the show, and even Wren had stepped over the line of exploiting Sloane too many times to count. A birthday party left the line far behind. There was no going back.
A lot of lines had been crossed tonight. Tomorrow, everything would be different. Tomorrow, Wren would have a new suspect and a live show to deal with. If Bode was the insider—her heart fought against the thought—did he have something planned for the show? Could she stop him?
Daisy skimmed a fluffy brush over Wren’s cheek one last time and stepped back, pulling the second makeup brush from between her lips. “You’re finished! What do you think? Honestly. Don’t fib. I can take it. Do you hate it? You hate it, don’t you?”
“Hang on. Let me see the entire thing.” Wren stood from her chair and crossed to a full-length mirror to check herself out.
Her eyes were rimmed in a dark, metallic gray, making her cornflower blue eyes disconcertingly bright. Her eyelashes bore individually glued-on extensions, and her face glowed with bronze warmth. Daisy had painted Wren’s lips a pale nude that was understated enough to keep all the attention on the stars of the show—her eyes.
At least, they’d be the star of the show if people even looked at her face. Wren considered her outfit with worry. There simply wasn’t much to it. The slate-gray material wrapped around her body, leaving her shoulders bare, the neckline plunging, and a high slit running up the front of the dress. The thigh-high boots did cover more of her legs, even if she was teetering on the five-inch heels.
“Thanks, Daisy. It looks great.”
“Really?”
“I promise. I love it.”
Daisy beamed at her. “You’ll knock ’em dead!”
Wren’s smile faded. “Let’s hope not.”
“Good point. You better shake a leg or you’ll miss your own party!”
Waving goodbye, she tottered out of Makeup. The black hallways were packed with crew as everyone prepared to film the biggest episode of the season so far, but they all stopped in their tracks and moved aside as she passed. She tugged on the hem of the dress, her skin burning beneath their lingering stares. At the black hall’s stairwell, she clutched the handrail and descended to the first level.
She pushed through the pocket door onto the buzzing set. The entire living room was decorated for the party, with punch fountains, ice sculptures, overflowing mountains of flower arrangements, and waiters in fancy tuxes. Crew darted about, applying final touches. The rest of the cast was already on set, going over scenes with their handlers.
The party was surprisingly crowded, and most of the crew members who weren’t directly involved in filming or last-minute decorations were dressed for the occasion. She had no idea who the other people were.
Through the crowd, Wren spotted Roman. As if he sensed her focus, he looked up, finding her instantly. She offered him a shaky smile. He didn’t return it. On his hand, he twisted his ring.
This was hell for him.
Behind him, the Hollywood skyscape filled the windows. The clouds shifted and broke apart, bursting with dripping sunset purples and golds. A holographic lie.
“There you are! Where the hell have you been?” Hutton appeared beside Wren. A few wisps of hair had fallen loose from Hutton’s chignon, and she panted as if she’d run a marathon.
“Sorry,” Wren said and offered nothing else.
She was afraid if she kept talking, she might tell Hutton everything about the Whitebirds and Bode. The words would just roll off her tongue because she was too tired to hold them back.
What the hell was she going to do? Hey, Hazen, I think your brother is a Whitebird. Can I have my cure now?
From across the room, Maddox spotted them and hurried over. “Happy birthday!”
“Thanks.”
At Wren’s less than enthusiastic response, Maddox pulled his headset down around his neck. “You better perk up fast. We’re pulling out all the stops to bring in more viewers for the live show tomorrow.”
“How many more could we pull in?” she asked. “We’re already breaking viewing records with each new episode.”
“The episode and live show will be television’s biggest event yet, and we’re on track to break every record in the books.”
“So you rearranged my scenes? Who am I starting with?”
“Everyone.”
Warning chills tingled in Wren’s fingertips. “Why everyone? What’s happening? Did my scene cards change or something?” Her eyes darted between Maddox and Hutton.
Hutton answered, “You’re improvising today. No cards.”
Wren’s heart thumped up her throat. “What? No cards at all?”
Hutton took her elbow and guided her back to the black hall door. With a glance over his shoulder, Maddox followed. The door closed, sealing them off from the noise on set.
“Are we
sure I can do this?”
“Don’t worry,” Hutton assured her and extended her hand to Maddox. “You’ll be a natural at this.”
“Sorry,” Maddox muttered and took whatever Hutton had offered him.
Before Wren registered the slim syringe in his hand, Maddox had stabbed it into her arm.
“Wh-wh—” Wren stared down at her arm and the welling tear of blood. “I …”
Her tongue swelled in her mouth, dry as wool. Her jaw wouldn’t open right. Warmth spread up from her arm to her shoulder to her clavicle and filled her heart. It was sort of … nice.
“Not too much of the sedative, right?” he asked Hutton. “We need her walking.”
“Of course not. Stop worrying. I know what I’m doing.”
Maddox almost dropped Wren in his shock. “You serk?”
“I was Sloane’s assistant for years,” Hutton snapped at him. “Who do you think helped her hit the vein?”
The warmth had reached Wren’s head, stuffing it with fuzzy, happy cotton. She winked at Hutton—or she thought she did, but a growl came out of her mouth instead. She didn’t understand. Why would she be growling? She’d never felt so weightless.
So happy.
Hutton clapped her on the back, opened the door, and shoved her onto the set.
: : :
Something heavy sat on Wren’s chest. She groaned and tried to shove it off, but her arms wouldn’t move.
“Hey. Easy there. You’re okay.”
The voice floated over her, far up in the air above her. With a force of will, she pried her eyelids open and blinked into the glowing blue dark.
“That’s it. Feeling okay?”
Maddox’s face appeared above her, his eyes bloodshot with exhaustion. Leather crunched beneath her back as she tried to raise her head. The motion only made her dizzy, but she realized she was in Maddox’s office, on his couch.
“Wh-wha …” The words dried up in her mouth.
