Cindy Gerard - [Bodyguards 04]

by Over the Line

  Since then, she’d added three more tattoos—all kanji, all with meanings and reasons known only to her. The one on her neck, just below her left ear, was the kanji equivalent of Naughty Girl. That one was for the paparazzi. The other two—Mad Power, two inches square, on her right biceps, and Soul, the size of a postage stamp, etched above her right breast—were for her.

  Of course, no one would take notice of any of them tonight; they’d be more interested in the interlocking silver hearts hanging from her pierced navel on a thin diamond-studded chain.

  Image, she told herself with a slow blink of her eyes, and brushed a fall of the hair she’d straightened for tonight back into the spiky nest swept up on the left side of her head. It was all about image. The more outrageous, the more attention. The more attention, the more album and concert sales.

  That’s what the industry was about these days, she thought, no longer surprised by the bitterness she sometimes felt. It sure as hell wasn’t about the music.

  “Snooks?” Max rose and walked up behind her. He moved a little slower lately. It was one of the few giveaways that he’d turned sixty-two last month.

  “Truth now,” he pushed when she remained silent. “What’s bothering you? You’ve been as jumpy as a Jack Russell pup since sound check.”

  She flinched when she felt his hands settle on her bare shoulders; her muscles tightened at his paternal touch when normally they would have relaxed.

  “Whoa, whoa. You’re shaking.” His bushy brown eyebrows drew into a scowl. “Okay. What’d that little bastard Derek do this time?”

  “Derek has nothing to do with this.” For once, that was actually true.

  “If it’s not Derek then . . . oh, hell—you’re not letting that Bible-thumper get to you.”

  Six months or so ago, popular hellfire and brimstone TV evangelist Samuel Black had begun referencing Janey and her “ilk” and her music as the downfall of American morality in his sermons. His wife, Tonya, a Tammy Faye Baker wannabe—although only God knew why—had even organized a handful of his followers to show up at Janey’s concerts recently, demonstrating against moral decay and rock and roll, and selling cookies to support their summer youth camp. Had to love it.

  Or not.

  Okay, yeah, it bothered her that Black’s group had singled her out, but then so did the paparazzi who wouldn’t give her a moment’s peace. But neither the news media nor the fundamentalist Holy Roller was at the top of her list tonight.

  “Janey?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “No, it’s not Black.”

  Hands on her shoulders, Max turned her around to face him. “You’re okay with Wilson and the new security setup, right? He came highly recommended, kiddo.”

  Actually, she had made peace with that. She’d been wrong to judge Wilson on looks alone. And he’d impressed the hell out of her when he’d made his case the night before last. And she’d been glad he’d been here for her today. Besides, it wasn’t his fault that when she looked at him the emphasis was on “body,” not “guard.” “I’m fine with it. Max. . . . Look. It’s nothing,” she lied. “Just let it go.”

  “I would, but your drawl is thicker than syrup and I only hear it these days when you’re upset.”

  The absolute bafflement and open concern in Max’s voice finally did it.

  She hadn’t wanted him to find out about this tonight. Not before the concert. She wanted to be strong. She wanted to be tough.

  So much for what she wanted. She was about to wimp out. And she hated that. Really, really hated it.

  “The police were here earlier. While you were talking to the suits at the label.”

  “Police?” The concern in Max’s tone switched to alarm.

  “She’s . . . she’s dead, Max.” Finally, Janey met his eyes. “My mom. She’s dead.”

  Shocked silence swelled into the room. Outside, the muffled rumble of the partying crowd reverberated off the walls.

  “Oh . . . oh, sweetheart.” Max folded her into his arms when he’d fully absorbed the news. “I don’t know what to say. Lord. What . . . what happened?”

  She soaked in the familiar comforting scent of him. Leather and spice and smoke. She shook her head, needing his familiar support more than she should. “There was an accident. Hit-and-run. It . . . it happened last night. It took them this long to identify the body and to locate me.”

  A chill ran through her as she thought about it—and about that indefinable something that had compelled her to call her mother the night before she died. A phone call Janey had been putting off for over a year.

  Max let out a slow, deep breath. “I am so, so sorry, kid.”

  “Yeah. Hey. Look.” She pulled abruptly away, knowing that if she let herself lean into all that caring and concern much longer, she’d fold. Worse, she’d cry. She couldn’t cry now. She had a show to do. “It’s . . . it’s okay, you know. It’s not like we were close or anything.

  “It’s okay,” Janey repeated, working her damnedest to convince both of them that she was tough. She blew it by jumping like a rabbit when a knuckle rap on her door and the anticipated cue of, “Five minutes, Ms. Perkins,” told her she was due onstage.

  “We’re canceling tonight,” Max said without hesitation. “You don’t need to do the show. Not now. Not after this news.”

  He was not your typical manager, Max Cogan. With Max, Janey came first, not the money.

  She kissed his cheek, then used her fingertips to wipe off the lipstick she had left behind. “I do. I do need to do it.”

  She pulled herself together and left her dressing room despite Max’s worried frown. Baby Blue was there waiting outside the door. Gorgeous and vigilant in full bodyguard mode with his scowl fierce and eyes watchful. Until he saw her face and watchfulness transitioned to concern.

  He took her arm. Held her gaze. “You doing okay, Ms. Perkins?”

  He really was concerned. She felt as well as saw it. Was as touched by it as she was surprised again that he would be so sensitive.

  For some reason she found herself wanting to reassure him. It was that beautiful baby face, she supposed. And maybe some deeply buried mothering instinct coming into play—which actually made her smile, because mothering was the last thought that usually came to mind when she thought about Jason Wilson.

  “Right as rain,” she assured him, and flashed him her brightest smile.

  “Glad to hear that, ma’am. How about you go on out there and knock their socks off?”

  Her mood suddenly brightened. “How about I kick a little ass instead?”

  He grinned. “That’ll work.”

  He took her arm and, along with two additional rent-a-muscle-men plus three members of the Amphitheater’s security staff, escorted her to the stage, where her band had already launched into her opening number.

  The sky was midnight dark; the crowd was on its feet, chanting her name. Electricity crackled in the air.

  It was showtime.

  And Sweet Baby Jane never missed a show.

  Later that night, after the concert

  “Do you think she liked me?”

  Derek McCoy drew deep on a hit of prime Colombian, held it in his lungs, then passed the joint to the girl. He made quick work of stripping off his clothes and lay back on the king-sized bed of the suite Her Highness, Miss Cock Tease Perkins, had sprung for.

  “Quit worrying about impressing her and start impressing me, darlin’,” he drawled, working to curb his temper as she passed the joint back to him. “Lose the threads. I promised you I’d get you backstage to meet her and I did. Now it’s time to pay up. Show me those big tits you’re so proud of. And then I want to see your head in my lap.”

  Tammy, or Tansy or Tara or whatever the hell her name was, whipped her crop top over her head, unselfconsciously displaying her firm, full teenage breasts. God, he loved his life. All the pussy and weed he wanted. All the head he could handle.

  Yeah, he thought as she went down on her knees between his
thighs and took him in her mouth.

  He fuckin’ loved his life.

  He jerked to a sitting position when she started working him over, cupped her head in his hands, and guided her in a fast and frenzied rhythm, pretending it was Janey kneeling and supplicant and kowtowing to him.

  Yeah, he loved his life. But he hated Janey Perkins with a passion.

  The bitch. She shut him down. Over and over again, she fuckin’ shut him down. Women didn’t turn Derek McCoy away. Women fought to get into his pants.

  But not Janey Perkins. Hell no. To her, he was nothing but a lapdog. Licking her feet. Scrambling for the scraps she tossed him. Begging her to throw him a bone.

  “Harder,” he growled, knotting his hands in the hair of the girl who was a poor substitute for the woman he wanted to bring to her knees.

  More. He wanted her more than on her knees. He wanted to make sure she got what she really deserved.

  As the girl finished him off, he clenched his teeth, came with a groan, and fell back on the bed.

  Yeah. He wanted Janey Perkins to get everything she deserved. And someday, someday soon, he’d be dancing on her grave when she got it.

  Thursday, July 13th, Tupelo

  “You doing all right, snooks?”

  Janey pinched out a smile to reassure Max that she was holding up, thankful as always, for his support. As of three days ago, he was the only parental figure left in her life—even if on a surrogate basis. Not that her mother had ever been stellar in the role.

  Guilt—for the bitterness she felt—settled heavy and deep. Alice Perkins was dead. She hadn’t been much of a mother, but she deserved someone to grieve for her. Janey appeared to be the only candidate. And yet her eyes were dry. Partly due to shock. Partly due to fatigue. Mostly because she’d lost her mother a long, long time ago.

  Baby Blue sat stoic and watchful in the front seat of the Lincoln Town Car that drove them from the cemetery back to the funeral home. Outside, through the Lincoln’s tinted windows, Janey caught glimpses of the press with their zoom lenses aimed at the vehicle. The Lincoln actually had to stop in the middle of the highway when a slew of photographers blocked their way.

  “Damn jackals,” Max sputtered. “Bastards can’t even let you bury your mother in private.”

  It was the cost of being who she was.

  One of the costs, anyway.

  Fanatics like Edward Grimm were another.

  And now this. The news of her mother’s death had compounded the feeling that someone was watching her. And not just the paparazzi who dogged her like a bad aftertaste. Just knowing that Grimm was on the loose had her constantly fighting the urge to look over her shoulder. The feeling had intensified since her Gulfstream had landed last night.

  Or, she thought pragmatically, maybe it was the questions that had surfaced and lingered since the hit-and-run. Neither a car nor a driver had been found. No one had confessed. No one had seen anything. Aside from the obvious horror of knowing her mother had died that way, something didn’t feel right about it.

  Janey had plucked a single red rose from her mother’s funeral spray. Or maybe, she thought, inhaling the bud’s subtle, clean fragrance, it was more of a sense of being out of sync, out of place. She was back in Mississippi. Back in Tupelo, one of the many Mississippi towns where she’d spent her childhood. And where she’d never wanted to return.

  “I called her,” she said quietly, then lifted her head when she felt Max’s concerned gaze on her face. “The night before she died . . . I . . . I don’t know why I did it. She was just . . . on my mind, you know?”

  Max squeezed her hand. “It’s good. It’s good you got to talk to her.”

  Yeah. Good to hear her mother grumble about being woken up and dress her down about her makeup and clothes.

  And now she was gone. Janey lifted a hand to finger the Celtic cross she’d found among her mother’s things that morning.

  “I’ve never seen you wear that before,” Max said.

  Janey looked down at the cross. “I gave it to her. I was thirteen or something. Saw it in Wal-Mart or Kmart or someplace like that. Fell in love with it. Just a piece of cheap discount-store jewelry, but I thought it was beautiful. I bought it for her with my babysitting money one Christmas.”

  She let go of the necklace and stared without seeing out the window. “I never saw her wear it.” The cross felt heavy and cool yet, for some reason she didn’t understand, comforting lying against her skin. “Wouldn’t have dreamed she’d kept it all these years.”

  “I’m sure it was special to her.”

  Tears stung Janey’s eyes as guilt outdistanced both the sense of displacement and the paranoia. “I should have known her better.”

  Max covered her hand with his. “She didn’t exactly make that easy for you now, did she?”

  Janey roused herself from her thoughts, tuned into what Max was saying. Comfort. He was offering comfort . . . and absolution. No. Her mother hadn’t made it easy to know her. Or to love her.

  And no matter how many times Janey told herself that alcoholism was a disease, a warring faction in her mind and heart told her that her mother had had a choice.

  She’d chosen the booze.

  And that had left a fatherless little girl wanting for a mother, too.

  Jase flanked Janey on one side, Max the other; all three of them stared in stupefied silence as they stood in the middle of Alice Perkins’s living room—or what was left of it.

  “Jesus,” Jase muttered, surveying the destruction, and watched for a sign that Janey Perkins, who had buried her mother not more than thirty minutes ago, was going down for the count.

  The entire house had been ransacked. End tables and lamps lay drunkenly across the tile floor, smashed and broken. Chairs were overturned. Cushions slashed. House-plants had been upset; the fetid scent of damp potting soil permeated the air. Even her mother’s clothes had been strewn all over the bedroom. Shards of pottery and shattered glass were scattered all over the kitchen floor.

  Her face chalk-white against the black of her funeral dress, Janey reached out, unaware that she was doing it. Jase grabbed her hand to steady her. Her fingers were ice-cold. Shock. Against her throat, below the delicate strokes of her tattoo, he could see her heartbeat knocking out of control.

  And as he had several times today, Jase resisted an unexpected urge to offer her more than a steadying hand.

  “Why would anyone do this?” Her voice was as shaky as her hand.

  “I’m afraid it’s all too frequent an occurrence, Baby—pardon me. I mean, Ms. Perkins.”

  The uniformed officer who’d been the first to respond to Max’s 911 call was a young, scrubbed-faced freshman cop. Officer Rodman of the rapidly blinking blue eyes, steel-wool cap of carrot-red hair, and nervous shoulder jerk was obviously also a fan. His face flushed as red as his hair. He smelled of gun oil and Mississippi heat.

  “You’d be surprised how many break-ins coincide with obituary listings in the newspaper,” Rodman continued.

  “That’s just sick.” Max scrubbed a hand over his face as he surveyed the damage.

  “Yes, sir,” the officer agreed with a slow southern drawl. “There’s a criminal element even here in Mississippi that preys on these types of situations. They scan the papers, know the house is empty during the funeral services, and figure they’ve got easy pickins.”

  The officer waited for that information to settle, then pulled a notebook out of the breast pocket of his uniform shirt with another jerk of his shoulder. “Can you tell me if there’s anything missing?”

  Janey hesitated, clearly still grappling with the devastation. Hell, Jase was having trouble grasping it. It looked like a lot more than a break-in. It looked like someone had been good and pissed.

  “I have no idea,” Janey said, responding to the officer. “I’ve . . . this is the first time I’ve been to my mother’s . . . to her house.”

  “Well,” Rodman said, glancing around, “it’s obvious they
weren’t going for the bigger items. TVs are still here. So’s the DVD player, the stereo system. Would she have kept cash in the house, do you think? Jewelry?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. I don’t know anything about what she might have kept in the house.”

  For that matter, it was obvious by the way she looked around, kind of lost and uncertain, that she didn’t know much of anything about the way her mother had lived. Jase found that a little sad. And he could see in Janey’s eyes that she did, too.

  “Officer Rodman,” Max intervened, steering the young policeman toward the door. “You must understand. Ms. Perkins has had a difficult day. She’s just buried her mother. And now this. Is it possible these questions could wait? Perhaps until tomorrow?”

  Rodman nodded, his face flushing red again. “Sure thing.

  “Listen,” he added with another jerk of his shoulder, “I wish I could let you stay for a while, but we need to get Forensics in here and—”

  “Just give her a minute, okay?” Jase said.

  Rodman looked uncomfortable, but finally nodded. “Just for a minute, but don’t disturb anything.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course,” Max chimed in. “We understand. Let me give you my card. You can reach Ms. Perkins through me or Wilson here, if you have more questions.”

  Jase had questions. A lot of questions. But he kept them to himself, watching, with a growing concern that he hadn’t expected to feel for a bad-girl rocker who suddenly looked as fragile and breakable as a piece of delicate handblown glass.

  4

  The sense of violation was crippling. So was the sense of doom. Janey stood in numb silence, vaguely aware of Max talking to the officer, of Baby Blue’s quiet vigilance behind her, and thought, This was where my mother lived.

  The small two-bedroom ranch was Alice’s home—but it had never been Janey’s. She’d never lived in anything remotely this nice as a child. And yet even in the shambles of the break-in, Janey could see the house was modestly furnished—just like the house itself was modest. Small.

  She didn’t understand. Given the amount of money she’d been sending her mother the last few years, Alice Perkins should have been living like a queen. Another knot of emotion Janey didn’t entirely understand balled up inside her.