by Lissa Kasey
“Scorned lovers?”
He glared at me. “Aren’t they all? Hell, didn’t all the articles after Ollie broke up with me say he was a scorned lover? I was cheating on him. But he knew I was taking other people to my bed.”
I shook my head. “We’re not talking about Ollie. He didn’t send you creepy gifts or demand blackmail not to publish your worst secrets.” I may not have been a player of the BDSM game, but I knew enough about it to know when someone was doing it wrong. “How about someone whose contract you violated? Either a sub or another Dom?”
Jacob looked shocked that I would even know the terms. He was quiet for a minute, then asked, “Do you have a contract with Ollie?”
“No. Ollie doesn’t play. I don’t think ever really wanted to play. That’s where you went wrong, Jacob.”
“He liked to submit,” he said quietly.
“He was young and trying to please a man he was in love with. You took advantage of that. Now enough about Ollie. You’re over. There is no more you and Ollie. Get that through your head,” I told him through clenched teeth.
Chapter Ten
THE DOOR opened and a young man entered without knocking or even saying hello. He was short, probably closer to five foot five than my six foot one. He was a twink: golden skin, perfect body in tight pants hugging a bubble butt, and a shirt outlining his thin waist. His hair was the sort of dirt brown that was popular among celebrities, short on the sides, styled up with gel to make it look like it was casually messy, only hair never did that naturally.
He glanced at me only briefly but rewarded Jacob with a winning smile. “You’re up. You want to eat before the interview?” He glanced at his watch. “I can call down for something.”
“No,” Jacob said firmly. He turned and walked into the bathroom, not bothering to close the door. A moment later I could hear him pissing. Fabulous. Classy, real classy.
I stared at the young man, who looked curiously back at me. The toilet flushed and he seemed to snap out of his stupor. He headed toward the closet and, in a few seconds, came back with an armful of clothes. “Shower,” he called toward the bathroom.
Jacob growled back a slur of curses, but a moment later the shower came on.
“You’re his assistant?” I asked as the guy moved around the room like he knew every inch of the place. He set out an outfit for Jacob from underwear to jewelry. He also arranged a mix of grooming products on the nightstand beside the bed.
He flashed me a smile. “Kisten McGowell.” He held out a hand. “Jacob’s personal assistant.”
I took his hand, and shook it. Was this the kid that Jacob had replaced Ollie with? Kisten couldn’t have been much older than Ollie. “How long have you been his PA?”
He stared off into the distance for a minute like he was thinking. “A couple years. There used to be four of us, but no one stays long.”
“Except you,” I pointed out.
He shrugged warily. “Pays well.” Not to mention the perks I was sure he got from his not-so-innocent boss. Jacob returned to the bedroom clad in only a towel. At least he was halfway covered, and he didn’t stink anymore, though I hoped they’d clean the room once we left. I hated to think I’d be spending a lot of time around Jacob, watching his every move, bathing in his stench every day. I shuddered.
Jacob slapped Kisten hard on the ass. Kisten barely acknowledged it. “Get dressed,” Kisten told him. “We need to get you into hair and makeup ASAP.” Kisten looked Jacob over. “Have you been eating?” He shook his head then. “Never mind. Just get dressed. We’ll have them cover you up with a nice jacket or something, mask the bags under your eyes, focus on your hair….”
“Love you too, Kis. Asshole,” Jacob grumbled, but he pulled on the clothes Kisten had laid out for him. I watched them interact and wondered about their relationship. There was a level of comfort there that Jacob didn’t have with Duke or anyone I’d seen him with yet. Jacob relaxed around Kisten, even seemed to be okay taking orders from him. But Kisten also treated Jacob like he was a five-year-old in need of constant guidance. The two bantered over shirts and jackets.
I sent a text to Ollie. He’d have to go over the financial statements. He’d probably hack through the account and find the owner in a few keystrokes. Case solved. And then there was the box of goodies. Kisten ignored it like he’d seen it before, and maybe he had. I sent Will a message with a question about threats and possible evidence. He responded with quick note to secure the box, but the police could do nothing if no one filed a complaint. I sighed. Maybe Kisten knew where Emily was.
“Kisten, do you happen to know where I can find Emily?” I asked. “I’d like to talk to her before we leave for Jacob’s first interview of the day.”
He shrugged. “She usually sleeps till noon. Levi was up and in his office, but stepped out right before I came in here. Emily will probably show up after the interview is over.”
What the hell? So much for being worried about her brother. Though I guess if Ollie had a personal assistant tracking his every move, I’d be a little less worried about him too. At least Jacob was finally clothed. I sighed, stuffed the pages of bank transactions in my bag, and kicked the lid of the trunk closed. This was a clusterfuck waiting to explode.
“What about you?” I asked him.
He blinked at me as though confused by my question.
I waved at the box of crap. “How much do you know?”
“Everything Jacob does, I know about. I’ve been with him most of the times he’s found things.” He pulled out his phone. “I have pictures.”
“Forward them to me,” I commanded and rattled off my phone number.
He sighed like it was a chore, and a few seconds later my phone pinged with the incoming photos. These would help. They also didn’t look as innocent as Jacob led me to believe. They were often set up like little shrines of blood, gore, and even one that looked like shit. I didn’t do more than glance at them. I’d examine them in detail later.
“This looks more serious than you’re letting on,” I told Jacob.
He shrugged.
“The limo is already waiting downstairs,” Kisten said. “We should get moving. Maybe I can grab something from the kitchen for you on the way. You need to eat.”
“I’m fine.” Jacob pulled on a pair of boots, slid his jeans down over the tops of them, and grabbed the jacket Kisten was holding out. “You know I hate to eat before a performance.”
“It’s just one song. Not even a live take, so if you need, you can stop and restart.”
But Jacob was adamant. Probably an artist thing. Still, I puzzled at their relationship and what to do about the trunk of threats. Outside the doorway Duke waited with a small legion of guards. I knew right off these were his personal picks because most stood like they had actual training, eyes scanning the hallway, shoulders pulled back, hands ready.
“Did you check the limo?” I asked Duke.
He frowned at me. “We’ve had no indication of that sort of threat.” It took some work to meet their pace on the way down the stairs. Down was almost worse than up. At least they kept Jacob and Kisten in the middle like real guards should have.
I returned his frown and grabbed Jacob’s arm before he could go out the door and get near the limo. He stopped and glared at me.
Kisten paused too. “Problem?”
I waved at his guards. “They need to search the limo.”
Duke immediately led the guards out and began to do just that, leaving two inside with us. Jacob narrowed his eyes at me. I really hoped Duke had been trained to recognize incendiary devices. Since the car was already running, I didn’t think it was attached to the ignition like most stateside bombs would be. But it was better to be safe than sorry.
“You hired me to look into this and protect you,” I told Jacob. “That’s what I’m doing. Honestly, with your status, these guys should be searching any vehicle you ever get in. What if there’s some psycho stalker fan in the backseat waiting to murde
r you?”
He paled.
“So yeah, that’s happened before?” It didn’t surprise me. “How often?”
“Every other month or so,” he admitted. “They never tried to hurt me. Just got crazy clingy, asking for autographs and stuff.”
I growled. Couldn’t stop myself. How stupid were they? All of them? Did he have a death wish? All it took was one crazy. Fuck.
Duke came back in a moment later. “There’s something on the backseat. A messed-up toy or something.”
“Don’t touch it,” I said immediately and dialed the police. After rattling off the details to dispatch, I let them go and made my way out to the car. “Stay inside,” I told Jacob and Kisten. Jacob made a move to follow anyway, but I held up my cane. “All it takes is someone with reasonable aim and a scope.”
He froze. Kisten grabbed his arm and pulled him back inside.
“And stay away from the windows.”
Outside, the guards were swarming the car, the driver standing off to the side looking confused. All the doors were open, which meant any prints on the handles would have been shot. I sighed internally. The partition between the driver and the back was up, making it unlikely that the driver had seen who put the toy in the car.
I glanced at the toy in question. It was one of those creepy windup monkeys with the cymbals. It was covered in something red, dripping with the goop, and there was a pile of the fluid pooling on the seat. It stank like a butcher shop. There was a note written across the back of the seat in the gore that read: Tick Tock. I took a few quick pictures of it with my phone. I was pretty sure the gore belonged to an animal, but wasn’t about to get any closer just in case it didn’t.
The police pulled in as I straightened. A half-dozen cars. Of course a rock star would rate that sort of response, right? But I knew a detective when I saw one and this one knew me on sight as well. San Francisco really wasn’t that big of a town after all.
I held out a hand. “Detective Rush.”
“Alme,” he said shaking my hand with that firm grip of his. Rush was older. Probably just past fifty, built a lot like Will, wide in the shoulders, still narrow through the gut. He wore a well-fitted suit, and unlike a lot of his detective brethren, he looked the part of a TV detective. But he was good, fair, and didn’t give me a lot of shit, mostly because he used to work with Nathan. “How’d you land this gig? Babysitting the rock star?”
“Ollie’s ex-boyfriend,” was all I needed to say.
Rush let out a quiet curse. “How’s that boy doing anyway? The wife said he looked good when she saw him a month or so ago.”
“Good. Really.” Until this case he’d been on an upswing. “Better every day. Still grieving, of course, but better able to focus on the now.”
Rush nodded and glanced at the car. “So catch me up.”
I ran down the little I knew so far, giving him the info on the creepy gifts but keeping the blackmail to myself. Cops didn’t have a lot of payroll hours to work on financial stuff like blackmail. Plus I was sure Jacob didn’t want to be telling the cops he liked to beat people and treat them as slaves, even if they were all consenting adults. The death threats were pretty serious, but I had a feeling I could stop the blackmail a lot faster by handing that info over to Ollie rather than the cops. At least until we had names and proof to put them away for it.
“We’ll catalog everything, but it sounds like any evidence there might have been to find this guy with has already been destroyed. It would have helped if they’d filed some complaints in the first place,” Rush told me.
“Agreed. However, in reality how much can you do? He’s an international rock star. How many man-hours can you designate to stopping someone from harassing him? So far that’s all it is. And if you spend a lot of time digging into this, how long before the press gets wind and takes you to task over spending tax dollars chasing ghosts for a rich white boy?” I knew the system pretty well, spent a lot of time reading over police procedurals to understand Will’s line of work better. There really was a strong distinction between what the cops could do and what I as a private investigator could do. They had a lot of rules, and cameras on them everywhere judging how they worked. I knew most cops were good guys, but there were plenty of bad apples in that bunch. The city needed them so much more than Jacob did. Jacob had money and resources. That’s why I was here.
Rush just nodded somberly. “Will he file a complaint this time?”
“If he won’t, I will. I would have been in that car with him today.” The cops were already moving around the limo, locking it down, bagging things for evidence, and talking to the driver. “The trunk of other goodies is upstairs in his room.” I couldn’t protect anyone like this. Not when he left himself so vulnerable. Hell, what good did the gate do if the guards barely checked who drove through it? And packages, if no one searched them, any one of them could be a bomb or some kind of sharp object to infect him with something. Nothing was black-and-white anymore when it came to hate. And whoever did this shit obviously hated Jacob.
We stepped into the entryway. Kisten and Jacob still stood there, Jacob with his arms crossed over his chest, looking annoyed, and Kisten kept glancing at his watch. “We’re going to be late,” he told me.
“Can we reschedule this?” I asked. “Talk to the police for a bit and then go in?”
“No,” Jacob said.
“No,” Kisten repeated. “It’s the first promo appearance for his new release. He has to be there. It’s been scheduled for months.”
“I don’t think either of you are taking this seriously,” I told them.
Detective Rush was shaking his head.
“It’s just some bastard kids. I’m not putting off my career while everyone plays cops and robbers.” Jacob stomped toward the door.
“Mr. Elias,” Rush began.
Jacob shook his head. “You need to talk to us that bad, it can wait until after the interview.” He glanced at Kisten, who nodded. “I’m free until late this evening.”
Rush glanced at me. I shrugged, “I can bring him down for questioning once he’s done. You’ll be here awhile anyway, right?” He nodded. I pointed to my SUV, which was still parked off to the side of the entry, mostly ignored. “I’ll take him to this thing and have him back as soon as possible. You might want to question the valet.” I glanced around, wondering where the guy had gone. “He was here when I drove up, but I don’t see him now.” I headed for the door, Jacob and Kisten following me. “You have my number. Call.”
Rush sighed, but just like me, he dealt with a lot of celebrities. They were a stubborn bunch.
Duke stood at the bottom of the steps watching some of his men being questioned. “The outside of yours is clean. It’s still locked so we couldn’t check the inside,” Duke told me.
I nodded at him and clicked the button to unlock the SUV, staying far enough away that if it happened to explode, I’d only get hit by some of the blowback and not actually obliterated. Other than the lights blinking to tell me the vehicle was unlocked, nothing happened. Next I clicked the Autostart button just in case. Again nothing. I’d check the gas and brake lines before I got in just to be sure.
“You need guards with you,” Duke told me.
“I am a guard,” I told him. “With more than fifteen years of military experience.” I patted my holstered gun and winked at him. “I can handle one rock star for a few hours.” I glanced back at Kisten. “You said it’s not a live thing, so no audience?”
“Minimal,” Kisten said. “Some radio contest winners and such, but no meet and greet. He talks to the host, answers some questions, and plays a song. They edit it into the show later.”
“These radio contest winners have no actual access to him?” I clarified.
“They will be in an audience. It’s a small room, but I’ve been told the security is tight. They check everyone in and out of the building.”
I was pretty sure Kisten had no idea what security really meant. I opened the back
side door of the SUV facing the house, checking to be sure it was empty before waving them in. The SUV wasn’t bulletproof since I wasn’t part of the Secret Service and didn’t usually guard people of international super stardom. If Jacob had been smart, he’d have had an armored SUV, with military-like guards checking for bombs and creepy toys. It was unlikely that anyone would start shooting at us with a legion of cops scattered around us, but I figured caution wasn’t a bad idea anyway.
It took another five minutes for me to personally sweep the car for any devices that could kill us. With the back door closed, the inside of the vehicle was impossible to see. I could only hope that since no one had yet fired upon us, shooting wasn’t really in this stalker’s scope. Maybe he really just wanted to make Jacob afraid. Fear was a big motivator, but I didn’t think Jacob was about to back down from making this tour happen. It sounded like he hadn’t released anything in ages and was having trouble staying relevant now. The life of a celebrity. Moments like these really helped clarify the differing levels of fame. Ollie, for the most part, could walk the streets and be unbothered other than the few who would leer at him. Recognition happened more often in high-end clothing shops since the fashion conscious knew his face well. If he’d still been dating the rock star instead of me, his situation might have been much the same as Jacob’s, unable to go anywhere without people stopping him.
I hopped up into the driver’s seat, closed the door, put the key in so the autostart wouldn’t kill the engine and locked the doors. Jacob sat in the very back, Kisten in the middle. I’d expected them to be talking, but both sat ramrod straight. Jacob stared out the window at nothing. Kisten flipped through something on his tablet.
“Where are we going?” I called back.
Kisten looked up, then listed off the address. Downtown, but at least the building had private parking underneath for its guests. I’d have to activate the full alarm when we got out. Parking garages were never fun for bodyguard work. Too many dark corners. But I had a plan.
