by Molly Joseph
“How do you feel?” he asked.
She gazed up at him through dilated eyes. “I love you.”
“Besides loving me, how do you feel? Lola, this is serious. Answer me.”
She put her hand on top of his. “My chest hurts. It burns.”
“Stay there, okay? Don’t move.” He turned to Greg. “Help me out, man. Keep her still.”
Greg got down on the floor beside her, his eyes as dark and dilated as Lola’s. Ransom muttered a curse and dug an ecstasy test kit out of the first aid bag. The tests were as ubiquitous as the drugs at these festivals. They helped identify if the tablets exchanging hands were pure and safe, or adulterated with hazardous shit like meth, BZP, or fentanyl. While Lola and Greg stared at each other and made fucked up conversation, Ransom crushed one of the tablets and added the reagents.
Shit, shit, shit. The test lit up hard for mCPP and amphetamines. He looked over at his client. Greg was still talking but Lola had gone silent.
“You okay?” he asked. She looked so fragile. She reached out to him with trembling fingers.
He knelt next to her and propped her against his side. Greg was still talking to himself, soft, gentle babbling as he caressed his own face.
“How’s your breathing?” Ransom asked.
She tried to lick him again. “You’re beautiful.”
“Fuck. Come down. Come the fuck down. How much did you fucking take?” He tapped her face as she zoned out. “How many tablets did you take, Lola?”
Her eyes darted around, seeing nothing. She wasn’t there anymore. She was somewhere else, probably thanks to the mCPP, which caused hallucinatory trips. The meth was wreaking havoc with her heart rate, and she was too small to metabolize it the way an adult male might.
“Lola Mae,” he said, shaking her. “Stay here. Come back to me.”
“Don’t.” She trembled in his grip. “I’m tired. It burns.”
He put a finger on her neck and started counting. 180 beats per minute. 200. 220. She was too small. The veins stood out in her neck as she sucked in air.
“Greg.” He kicked her useless tour manager. “Greg, go get the medics.”
He giggled and turned over. Useless.
“Greg. Fucker. Wake the fuck up.” He kicked him harder. Nothing. He picked up Lola and carried her to the door. The bus driver stood outside, smoking a cigarette.
“Are you high?” he asked.
He was an older man. He had a kind face. “I’m not high,” he said, flicking down his cigarette. He glanced at Lola. “Need something?”
“I need medical help, as quickly as possible.”
“The medical station’s right over there,” he said, gesturing to a tent about five hundred yards away.
“Help me get there. Please. Help me make my way through this crowd. It’s an emergency.”
The man nodded and set off with him toward the tent, nudging a path through the sparkling, flashing festival goers who pointed and squealed as Lady Paradise went by. Hurry, hurry, hurry.
Ransom pressed Lola to his chest to make sure she was still breathing. “It’s going to be okay,” he told her. “You have bad stuff in your system, but it’s only temporary.”
“I can’t… I can’t…”
“Don’t panic. Slow breaths.”
She rested her head on his shoulder, shuddering, panting against his neck. She was probably on a scary trip above and beyond the physical suffering. Part of him thought, well, she deserves it. Part of him thought, don’t die. He pulled her closer, rubbing her back as they neared the red and white tent.
“Breathe with me, Lola Mae.” He moved his hand up and down her spine like that might stop her heart’s dangerous acceleration. “Take deep breaths, in and out.”
“I can’t,” she gasped, a broken whisper. “I can’t feel my brain. I took—I took three.”
“When?”
“And a half.”
“Jesus Christ. When?”
“Just—Before—Help.”
He closed his eyes and rested his head against her soft pink hair, and prayed. Three and a half shitty, amphetamine-laced pills. She was a brat, but he didn’t want her to die. He knew CPR. He could keep her alive if her heart stopped, but what if they couldn’t start it again?
When he jostled her to keep her awake, she started babbling about drowning, flailing at the slack mouthed ravers they passed. He tried to keep her from hurting anyone. Whatever she’d ingested had sent her into chemical, mental breakdown.
“Breathe,” he said. “Breathe with me. You’re gonna be okay.”
The medics looked up as they barged into the tent. The bus driver explained the situation as Ransom soothed Lola through another flailing panic. They waved him through the back, to a waiting ambulance with open doors.
“I can’t breathe,” she sobbed as the medics climbed in behind them. “Can’t… Drowning… Scared… Stay…”
“I’m here.”
They had to strap her down on the gurney, and even then she kept trying to reach for him.
“H-help m-me.”
I’m trying. I’m trying to help but you fucked up this time. He told the EMTs what he knew about the drugs, and when she’d taken them. In the back of his mind, he kept thinking, I threw away the tablets Marty got her. Marty was an asshole, but he would have known enough to test the drugs he bought for her. Lola, on the other hand, must have bought from the first dealer she could find, and taken the shit without testing it first. His fault for letting her out of his sight. His fault for underestimating her craziness.
His fault for taking away her safe pills.
“Deep breaths,” he said as they struggled to start an IV in her jerking arm. He kept repeating it, like he could fix what was wrong with her. “Deep breaths, kid. Come on. Please.”
“Can’t…”
“You have to. Stay calm. Breathe in, breathe out.”
“Just wanted…fun…”
She went limp and passed out, panting even in unconsciousness. The medics said something to each other in Dutch, and Ransom didn’t ask for a translation. You could tell, in just about any language, when something wasn’t good.
CHAPTER SIX
The Money
“Illegal drugs,” said Mr. Fuckhead, CEO of MadDance Fucking Incorporated. “This is exactly what we were afraid of.”
Ransom bit his tongue rather than point out that their entire rave business was built on the backs of illegal drugs.
The MadDance contingent consisted of Mr. Fuckhead and Mr. Asshole, both of them gray-haired businessmen who cared more about money than the human being they discussed. It made Ransom furious.
His boss at Ironclad, Liam Wilder, leaned forward to address Fuckhead and Asshole in a polite but firm voice.
“I’d like to reiterate that it was your tour manager who enabled Miss Reynolds this time. My agent left her under Greg Plume’s supervision, and that was when she procured the adulterated drugs.”
Liam was in a suit like them, but he didn’t have gray hair, and he wasn’t an asshole. Unlike the other suits, he’d actually visited Lola’s hospital bed and gazed down at her sleeping figure with true concern in his eyes.
As for Greg, he was gone. The manager’s firing had been the first order of business. The rest of the “team” was huddled in a lounge down the hall from Lola’s hospital room.
The taller man, Fuckhead, frowned down at the paperwork in front of him. “You must understand our concern. We hired Mr. Gutierrez because you said he was the best. We hired him to keep our performer sober.”
“You also hired Greg Plume,” countered Liam. “If not for Mr. Gutierrez’s presence—and his sobriety—Lola might have died last night.”
Ransom suppressed a shudder. It had been so close. He’d seen death in her heaving chest and pained features. Her pulse had raced into the mid 200s. If she’d gone into cardiac arrest, he wasn’t sure they would have been able to bring her back.
He’d paced outside her room for the last t
welve hours, unable to sleep, unable to regroup. The MadDance jerkoffs had filed a complaint with Ironclad, and the CEO had flown in from London to assist him with the situation. Ransom was both horrified and relieved when Liam showed up. He was horrified because Liam Wilder was the big fucking boss, and he was here to clean up Ransom’s mess. He was relieved because he couldn’t have dealt with these assholes himself.
“Do you deny that my agent saved Lola’s life last night?” asked Liam.
Fuckhead and Asshole exchanged a look. “He may have saved her life, but we’re not impressed with his ability to keep her sober.”
“I left her with the manager,” Ransom said. That was his mistake, one that would haunt him.
“Mr. Gutierrez is one of the top agents in the world for this type of protection,” Liam said to the gray-hairs. “I’d consider long and hard before I replaced him with someone else. I don’t have anyone better.”
And Ironclad was the best security company on the planet. The math added up, but Ransom had failed. Why? Because Lola was a reckless, brainless brat? Or because he’d been distracted by an unprofessional fascination with his client? That was the root of his mental anguish. From the moment he’d seen her twerking on top of that sound console in Brussels, he’d entertained inappropriate thoughts.
He’d fantasized about what it might be like to grasp that ass in his hands and fuck her. He wanted to throw Lola Reynolds down and go feral on her body, client or not. He never got emotional or physical with clients, but he’d gotten flustered—and hard—when she climbed all over him yesterday, and not noticed her medical crisis until it was almost too late.
He looked up at the expectant pause in the conversation. They’d asked him something. His mind was a million miles away, or just down the hall, where Lola slept. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long night. Can you repeat what you just said?”
“How confident are you in your ability to keep our client safe from this point forward?” asked Liam.
“With a sober tour manager? Very confident.” He cracked his knuckles under the table. “From now on, I won’t let her out of my sight.”
Mr. Asshole piped up. “You must understand how essential it is for Lady Paradise to complete the entire tour.”
“I get it,” said Ransom. “She’s the money. Her name is Lola, by the way.”
Mr. Asshole scowled. “Do you have any idea how much we’ve invested in her?”
“Probably way less than you’ve made.”
Liam nudged his leg under the table. Ransom mashed his lips shut.
“At the end of the day, this is business,” said Mr. Fuckhead, being fuck-all honest about their mercenary interests. “There’s no one popular enough to replace Lady Paradise if she can’t perform. Without her, the monetary loss would trickle down not just to us but to all the other artists in this festival. Her absence would disappoint attendees and create bad feelings in the EDM community toward our future promotions.”
With every word, Ransom clenched his fists tighter. They didn’t give a writhing fuck about Lola, who’d almost died last night. They cared about profits and future attendance. He wanted to take the contracts spread out in front of them, set them on fire, and shove them down the men’s throats.
But that wouldn’t accomplish anything but his firing, not just from this job, but from Ironclad altogether.
“Can we have a moment, gentlemen?” asked Liam.
Thank God. He had to get out of this room. Liam gestured for Ransom to precede him into the hall. Without thinking, he turned in the direction of Lola’s room. His boss walked beside him, his tall frame almost as large as Ransom’s. Female agents swooned over Liam’s handsome features and shoulder length hair, but Ransom respected him for being a thoughtful person. Another boss would have fired him by now. Maybe Liam still would.
“I’m sorry,” Ransom said. “I just can’t stand the way they talk about her, like she’s a…a commodity.”
“They think about the money. We think about the person. What happened last night? Your people don’t usually end up in the hospital. Is she salvageable? Are we in over our heads?”
“No, she’s not a junkie. She’s not seeking out the harder stuff. She takes party drugs for fun, like ninety percent of these raver kids. She just happened to buy a batch of ecstasy with stupid levels of meth and mCPP. She hasn’t been using long enough to understand about testing for adulterants.”
“Then you’d better educate her. That’s the thing about these infant superstars. People assume they’re smart because they have money and power, but they’re really just…”
“Kids. She’s a struggling kid, and nobody cares. Those assholes back there don’t care.”
“You care.”
His boss accompanied those blunt words with an assessing gaze. Ransom shrugged, feeling heat rise in his cheeks. “Of course I care. She’s a client. I care about my job, and Ironclad’s reputation—”
“You care about her. You’re torn up about this.”
The stare deepened. Ransom felt the flush spread to his neck. “It was scary last night. I’ve never had a client code on me. I thought she was going to die in front of my eyes, and it would have been…”
Would have been so senseless. So horrific. So soul-destroying.
“It would have been a huge waste of a talent,” he finished, because every other answer seemed to skirt dangerous ground.
They stopped outside her room. The curtains were drawn, but he knew what she looked like in there. Small and defenseless. Innocent, even though she wasn’t innocent. Pathetic, for all her vaunted fame. “On stage, Liam, she’s incredible.”
“Yeah, I gather she’s good at what she does.”
More words burst out, rough with regret. “I hate that I fucked up on the job. I left her alone for ten minutes. I thought she was with the manager.”
“They’re hiring a new manager.” Liam paused. “Shall I have them hire a new bodyguard? There’s nothing wrong with saying a situation isn’t working for you.”
“No.” He didn’t even stop to think about it. “No, I want to finish the job.”
“Are you mentally up to finishing the job? I’ve never seen you rattled like this. You look like hell.”
Another quality Ransom admired in the Ironclad CEO—his directness.
“Not only that,” his boss continued, “but you’re not presenting yourself to the clients with your usual air of capability. It’s natural to hate those fuckers, hell, I abhor them and everything they stand for, but they’re paying for your services and you need to behave professionally. They need to be reassured that you’re competent. If you want to finish this job, you’ve got to pull yourself together. You made a mistake, and both of you survived it. I’m assuming a mistake like that won’t happen again.”
“It won’t.”
Liam watched him for a moment, leaning back against the wall. “How’s everything else? How are the two of you getting along?”
Ransom gave a short, bitter laugh. “She doesn’t like me that much when she’s sober.”
When she was high…well. When she was high, she licked him and begged for sex. But that had no place in this conversation. “We get along well enough for a minder and client.”
“Does she need rehab? Perhaps after the tour?”
“She needs better people around her. She needs to rest and eat well, and regain her equilibrium. Her life is crazy. She’s achieved so much, so fast.” Ransom frowned. “But I don’t think she’s happy.”
Liam looked surprised. “She sold out thirty-five shows in the U.S. last year, and slayed all of them. Twenty more shows in Europe and Asia. Why wouldn’t she be happy?”
“Fifty-five shows in a year, man. That’s a lot for someone her age.”
“She’s what? Twenty-two?”
“Twenty.”
Liam gave a low whistle. “And you’re right, she’s had too many assholes around her. With that said, I have other bodyguards I’d trust to take her on.”
&
nbsp; “No.” He wasn’t ready to give up on her yet. She needed help, and he believed he could help her, even if she was crazy and rebellious, and had pink hair. In some way, he understood her.
In some way, he saw his twenty-year-old self in her, which was the scariest thing of all.
“She doesn’t have a lick of fucking sense,” Ransom said, “but I want to see this through.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Liam patted his arm and nodded at Lola’s room. “My assistant is in there. Mem can look after her for the next few hours while I smooth things over with these producer jerks. Go back to the hotel, shower, take a nap, and get yourself back up to speed. When she wakes up, she’s going to need the fucking talk. She needs to understand that choices have repercussions.”
“I know.”
Liam Wilder was aware of Ransom’s history—the darkest parts of his history. He knew that Ransom knew.
*
Lola heard voices, deep, low voices from far away. Her arm felt sore and her head ached. She couldn’t see anything. She thought, I’ve gone blind. She heard a keening sound and realized she was the one making it. A cool hand touched her cheek.
“Shh. It’s okay.” Ransom’s voice.
“I can’t see,” she whispered.
“Open your eyes.”
Oh. She fluttered her lids, and then closed them again. Even the dim light was too much. “Ransom?”
“Yes?”
She cracked her lids. Everything looked white and sterile. A monitor beeped beside her bed. She felt overwhelming relief that he was there with her, that she wasn’t alone. “Where am I?”
“A hospital in Amsterdam. You had a life-threatening drug reaction last night.”
She opened her eyes and stared into his. He stared back, his masculine features stern and sober. Memories flashed through her disordered mind. Ransom standing by the stage stairs, the roar of the festival crowd, Rave Dave and a bag of yellow pills. Hot burning in her chest, thunder in her ears. Ransom holding her, ordering her to breathe. He’d rubbed his hand against her back as she’d struggled to draw air. Help me. Help me. She’d been sure she was going to die.
