by Tatum West
“Okay,” James says. “His business partner, then. Your new lawyer.”
I nod. “Stephan,” I say. “Stephan Jackson.”
James still has my phone. He looks for Stephan’s number. Once he has him on the line, he’s circumspect, simply telling Stephan it’s an emergency, and I need to see him immediately.
“I know it’s Saturday evening, sir. It can’t wait,” James insists, brooking no opposition.
James is efficient and thorough, gathering details, making notes. He calls my parents to make sure they’re okay. I hadn’t even considered they might be in danger. Everyone close to me is in danger. Luckily, my folks are fine.
Before I know it, my house is filled with security people. Many are new faces I’ve never seen before, but who obviously know James, Troy, and the rest. They sweep in, creating a perimeter around my property. Soon, the man I met back when Fox first organized security for me, Christian Black, arrives. He’s dressed down in jeans and a neat polo shirt, like he was enjoying a relaxing weekend with his family when James called.
Christian Black takes a seat near me. His expression is grave. “We’re just waiting on Mr. Jackson,” he says to me, his voice soothing. “Together, the three of us will figure out what our next steps are. I’m here to make sure you make an informed decision. I know you’ll make the right one.”
Stephan Jackson arrives not long after, driving through an armed checkpoint at the end of my driveway. I watch from the big picture window in the living room as he’s frisked. At first he objects, then he seems to think better of it. He’s escorted to the steps by two beefy, armed men in blue blazers and khakis. Stephan looks bewildered when he finally makes it into the house.
“What in the hell is going on?” he asks, finding me easily because I’m the smallest, stillest, quietest thing in the busy room.
I look up at him. I have no words. I just shake my head.
Christian Black explains everything to Stephan, who listens with an intensity I hadn’t realized he was capable of. I’m so dazed, I don’t even attempt to follow their conversation. I can’t. If I try, I’ll fall apart.
When the two of them are done talking, they turn to me.
“Do you agree, Nikki?” Christian Black asks me. “It feels like the best decision.”
I have no clue what he’s asking.“What?” I ask. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“We’re going to call the FBI,” he says. “Mr. Jackson and I agree this is too risky to try to handle ourselves.”
The text said not to call the cops.
“The sooner they get to work on it, the sooner we’ll get Fox back safe,” Christian Black says. “That’s the goal; to get Fox back safe. The FBI has the resources to make sure that happens. We don’t. This guy is unpredictable, and I’m not sure he’s actually after the money.”
My gut tightens into a million tiny knots, and my body zings with the uncomfortable electricity of anxiety.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do.
“Nikki, I’ve known Fox a long time,” Stephan says, gently. “He’d want this one done by the book. I know if the situation was reversed, he wouldn’t hesitate to call in the FBI.”
If the situation was reversed? If I was tied up in a dark room somewhere instead of him. That’s how it’s supposed to be. That’s how it should be. It should be me and not Fox.
James puts a hand on my shoulder. “I know you want him to be safe, Nikki. The best thing to do is to let the pros handle it. We’re out of our depth here.”
I nod slowly, and James squeezes my shoulder.
“Yeah, okay,” I hear myself saying. “Do whatever we need to do.”
Do everything. Just make sure Fox comes home to me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
There was only one of them. I know that. I tried to fight, but the bag went over my head so fast, tightening around my neck so tight. I was suffocating. I was dying. I thought I was dead.
When I came to, the bag was still over my head, but it had been cut open so I could breath. My arms and legs were bound with heavy tape and I was in the trunk of a moving vehicle.
When the car stops, the same guy hauls me out of the trunk, dumping me on the hard ground. He smells of stale beer and bargain-brand cigarettes.
He drags me by my feet across the ground, the rough concrete snagging the fabric of my clothes. He drags me into a building. The sound changes as the space closes around me. The sound of rush hour traffic is muted, and I am suddenly cognizant of the sounds of our panting; him, from exertion, and me, from abject terror.
He’s big and strong. He grips me under my armpits, and with a noisy grunt, lifts me to my feet like he’s deadlifting a heavy bar in the gym. I’m dropped into a chair, where he secures me with more tape.
“Who are you?” I ask, unable to see anything. “What is it you want? I’m wealthy—I can pay you.” I attempt to keep my voice calm, but I waver on the last words.
“Shut up,” he snaps, jerking my feet backwards, strapping them to the chair with what sounds and feels like duct tape. “I don’t want your money. That’s not what any of this is about.”
Then what is this?
“This is personal,” he growls. “This is about Nikki. He—he—” The man’s gruff voice breaks. “He’s fucking ruined my life—” He breaks off on the last word, panting again.
I hear the man pacing, grunting with each step. I work on slowing my breathing so that my senses can be sharp, sharp enough to figure out what the hell I’m going to do. I hear footsteps followed by an eerie silence. Is he gone? I wait for a minute, then two, counting the seconds. Slowly, I try to free one numb hand, until the chair beneath me creaks, the sound echoing through the room.
I hear the man again. He’s pacing, his footsteps angry and heavy. I hear things being moved around—a bag unzipped, a chair moved.
It strikes me that this is about me. It’s about me and Nikki and the fame that surrounds Nikki like an overbearing shroud. It’s about the lights and the costumes and the wigs and the untouchable persona that is Nikki Rippon. It’s about Fox Lee breaking that fantasy. It’s about shots fired and friends injured, trust broken and messages scrawled on mirrors.
Nikki’s stalker. It has to be him.
What was his handle? DemonDontCare?
He said he’d kill me if he ever found me. And he’s found me.
The pacing stops, and I hear footsteps returning my way. The stale cherry smell of the cheap cigarettes fills my nostrils again, and my stomach turns. I taste bile in the back of my throat.
“You ruined everything, you stupid piece of shit.” The man’s voice drops into silence again, and all I hear is heavy breathing, punctuated by strained grunting and an occasional wheeze.
I take a deep breath, steadying myself, trying to float into a sea of calm.
“Look,” I say. “The thing with Nikki, it’s just a fling. It’s nothing. I know you two would be better together…”
“Shut the fuck up, asshole,” the man shouts. He walks behind me and slaps me in the back of my head. “I’m not some fucking stalker. Sal just made that shit up to keep Nikki freaked out. He paid a guy to hang around and act weird. I snatched you for ransom. I want Nikki’s money. All of it.”
Oh shit. Derek? Or one of Derek’s thugs. Or maybe all of them are in this together?
He shoves a cloth in my mouth, then pulls the bag off my head. I swing around, trying to see him, but he’s behind me. All I can see is I’m in some kind of storage space. There are boxes stacked haphazardly all around.
A second later, everything goes dark; he ties a blindfold over my eyes.
“Get some rest,” he chirps in my ear. “It’s gonna be a long weekend, and then it’ll all be over.”
Jesus. He’s going to kill me.
A door slams shut and I hear a bolt drop, then footsteps departing down a long hallway. After that, all I hear are the sounds of a building slowly, incrementally decaying around me. The floors are co
ncrete and the walls are brick. It’s damp and chilly, despite the fact that we’re in Southern California in the middle of the dry season. I detect the scent of oil; it’s sweet. Somewhere, nearby, an industrial fan blows musty air.
I’m going to die in some derelict building in the middle of nowhere. When they find my body, I’ll be unidentifiable. Nikki will never know what happened to me, why I didn’t come back. He’ll blame himself. This will break him.
I need to figure something out.
We haven’t had enough time. It took me so long to find him. I can’t let it be over this way, not this soon, not before we’ve had a life together. We haven’t had enough time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
NIKKI
SUNDAY MORNING
“This isn’t the behavior of a stalker,” Special Agent Matt Rhys states with steady certainty.
The gang's all here; me, Stephan, and Christian Black. James and Troy have joined us as well. I needed the moral support, and this is their wheelhouse. Plus, I just feel better when James is around. I don’t have siblings, but if I could pick an older brother, I’d want to have one just like him.
We’re all seated around my dining room table, with Rhys at the head, laying out for us what the FBI knows so far, and what they intend to do with it.
“Stalkers are irrational, obsessive, and rarely interested in money,” he continues. “This contact has been brief and businesslike. This guy isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he’s not acting like a man obsessed. He’s got a plan.”
“What do you mean?” Stephan asks.
Stephan got some sleep last night. He crashed in a spare bedroom about midnight and slept until morning. Christian Black has taken a couple power-naps between team updates. James and Troy have taken shifts, getting sleep while the other stays with me. I haven’t had a wink. I’m not sleepy. I’m not even tired. I’m wired.
“What do I mean about him being dumb as a bag of bricks?” Matt gives us a grin, even though his eyes are tired. “Well, he used Mr. Lee’s phone for the initial call. We were able to go to the carrier to get a GPS location for everywhere that phone has been in the last forty-eight hours. It’s offline now, probably destroyed. But we got exactly what we needed.”
Special Agent Rhys opens the top of his laptop, folding it into a tablet. There’s a video set up on screen that looks like a blurry security camera still. It is an overhead shot of a concrete parking lot between two warehouses. Rhys hits the play button.
I watch a vehicle roll into the frame, then circle, backing into a parking space very near the camera’s location. The car is an older model sedan. From this angle, it’s difficult to guess more.
The driver’s side door opens and a man steps out. He’s big, wearing a hoodie, taking loping strides toward the back of the car. That swagger looks familiar.
“We were able to pull the plate and identify the car,” Special Agent Rhys says. “It was stolen in East Hollywood the day before yesterday, so not much help there.”
The man in the video goes to the trunk of the car, popping the lid and reaching in with both meaty arms. I instantly recognize Fox, as the man rolls him roughly out of the back of the sedan, dropping him like a sack of potatoes onto the concrete.
“Jesus,” I mutter. I feel rage build and seethe inside my body. I want to hurt that man. I want him to know the terror Fox must be feeling right now.
“Stalkers don’t do this, either,” Rhys says.
I watch as the man drops to his knees by Fox, as if he’s checking him to see if he’s hurt. After a moment he stands up, then grabbing hold of Fox’s legs, he begins dragging him toward one of the buildings.
“Stalkers most often kill or seriously injure their subjects when jealousy is the driving force,” he adds. “They don’t apologize for dropping them or hold them alive. This is a classic kidnapping for profit. Mr. Lee is leverage to get their money. They’ll keep him alive and in play as long as we’re playing along. We need to get to them before they expect to get the cash. Luckily, they gave us everything we need to do just that.”
Special Agent Rhys fast-forwards the video image. When he stops it, it’s an hour after the man dragged Fox into the building. I see the man in the hoodie emerge from the building to the right. He walks past the car he arrived in, heading toward another one parked in the same lot, a few spaces away.
When he turns toward the camera to get into the car, his left hand reaches up to his right wrist, pushing the sleeve of his hoodie up his forearms. It’s then I see the tattoo.
“That’s Derek Bowman,” I say without a second’s hesitation. “The tats are unmistakable.”
Special Agent Rhys pauses the video, then backs up, stopping on the frame where the tattoos are best exposed.
“Bowman has a lengthy criminal arrest record,” Stephan says. “Not so many convictions because he knows people who know people, but his ink should be well-documented by LAPD.”
Rhys gives this information to one of the junior special agents working with him.
“Find the photographs so we can confirm a match,” he instructs. “Draft an arrest warrant on your way back.”
“How do you know this guy?” Special Agent Rhys asks me.
I swallow hard, feeling judged by association, as if every wretched thing that’s happened is a result of my bad decisions. “He was head of my security detail,” I say. “I fired him, along with my manager. They were stealing from me.”
“I’m Nikki’s attorney in the matter,” Stephan says, looking up from his cold cup of coffee. “I can back that up, and we have a list of lawsuits either already filed or pending against both Salvatore Domenico—Nikki’s former manager—and Derek Bowman. They both have plenty of motive. Revenge, money, intimidation. Take your pick.”
“How much did they take?” Rhys asks.
I grimace. “Way too fucking much,” I mutter. “Enough to make me look like a fool—”
“Nikki, stop,” James says. “This is an age-old con—”
“And what does it say about me that I fell for it? And that Fox is in danger?” My brain runs in a hundred directions all at once, none of them pleasant.
Stephan raises a hand to cut me off. “They methodically lifted somewhere between eight and twelve million from Nikki’s accounts,” Stephan says. “We’re still working on the particulars.”
“Christ on an ever-loving bike,” I moan. My stomach knots up. I’d give it all up right now if it meant Fox would come home to me okay.
“Okay, so they lost their cash cow,” Rhys says thoughtfully. He moves a few things around on his laptop and reviews the footage again. “I’m inclined to believe that Bowman may be our only perp. Call it a hunch, but I don’t think that a more experienced criminal would let him get away with the idiocy of using Fox’s phone. But we have to behave as if others are involved, and my money is on Salvatore Domenico as a co-conspirator until we have certain proof he’s not.”
“You know where they are,” I say, my voice trembling. “I don’t care about the money. Pack up a briefcase of it. Or go in there with a dozen agents and pull Fox out of this mess. Why are we just sitting here?”
Rhys nods, his eyes falling on mine. “We’re going to get him,” he says calmly. “We’re assembling an assault team as we speak. They’ll be in place in an hour. If Mr. Lee is still there, and if he’s still alive, we’ll bring him out safely.”
If… If…
How did this happen?
It happened because I wanted to be a superstar. I wanted to be lit up under spotlights. I wanted to hear the roar and applause of a crowd enthralled with me. I wanted to show all those feckless bastards who ever called me ‘faggot’ or ‘queer’ or ‘perv’ what I was capable of. I wanted to make my friends proud. I wanted my parents to feel validated for the sacrifices they made for me. I wanted to be somebody.
Look at me now. I’m definitely somebody, and the person I love most in the world is paying the price for my recklessness and ambition.
<
br /> God, if I had it all to do over again, I’d take Dr. Voorhees’ advice and go to college. Maybe I’d be smart enough to become a lawyer. Maybe Fox would have taken a fancy to me and hired me as an associate in the firm. Maybe everything could have been different.
Ifs and maybes. The world is built on ifs and maybes. All I have is what’s right in front of me, right now.
Fox is out there somewhere, scared and alone, and it’s all my fault.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
FOX
I was drifting, in and out. I wake when there’s an odd sound; a beam expanding, a pipe creaking. I drift back into the blackness of this hole I’m in. The blindfold masks all sense of time and space.
Voices. Muffled voices, a long way down the hallway.
I’ve become keen to sound, to picking it out and making sense of it.
“You have fucked up royally,” one voice says. “This is the stupidest move you could have ever made. You’re gonna get us all put away for life. You do realize that kidnapping is a federal offense?”
“It’s five million dollars,” the to the man who brought me here replies. “That little shit will pay five million for his fuck-buddy. You wait and see.”
“You wait and see if the FBI doesn’t show up with a SWAT team,” the first voice says.
That voice sounds familiar.
Sal Domenico. That’s him. The other one must be Derek.
“All we need to do is get the cash,” Derek says. “After that, it’s up to them what happens. If they come in heavy, his boyfriend in there dies. I’’ll shoot him before they can reach him. I don’t have a death wish, but if they kill me, at least it will be quick. The Russians will take their time if I don’t show up with what I owe them.”
“You do what you need to do,” Sal says. “I’m not in this. I’m going to the bar and drinking my worries away. I’ll watch the evening news to see how it turns out.”
“Fuck you, Sal. Thanks for the back-up,”
“Don’t mention it,” Sal spits back. “You know, if you hadn’t been such a sloppy asshole, fucking with the kid’s head, leaving him notes in the bathroom, bringing girls back to his place, we’d still be set. You fucked this up. Keep me the fuck out of it.”
