Chapter 13
Nearly an hour passes, none of us saying or doing much more than trying to get comfortable. Emilie leans against my arm, clutching it to her. Every once in a while I pat her leg, which is covered by my jacket since she got cold. Luke and Parker are leaning against each other’s backs at my feet. Parker plays a game on his mobile until the battery dies.
He tosses his head back and sighs. “Would you rather be locked in the men’s toilet for an hour or kicked in the bollocks?”
Luke groans.
Emilie lets out a short laugh. “Kicked in the bollocks.”
The brothers both bust out laughing. “Emilie, bollocks are balls.”
She giggles. “I’d still rather be kicked than be locked in here with you boys. Parker, did you break the cologne bottle over your head or what?”
And on we go with a most creative Would You Rather game.
“Would you rather break a mirror or run over a black cat crossing the road?” Emilie has the strangest ones. Superstitious one, she is.
“Run over the cat,” Luke says. He loves mirrors—well, as long as they’re reflecting him. “Don’t look at me like that, Emilie. No one specified where the cat was in relation to the car. In my scenario, the cat’s centered under the car, so it’s perfectly fine when it rolls over.”
“Break a mirror,” Parker and I say in unison.
A radio crackles outside our door, and Emilie jerks away from me. Luke and Parker get to their feet.
Boom, boom, boom. Fists on our door.
“Open up.”
Was that Tom or Gregory?
“What’s the safe word?” Luke calls out.
We have a safe word? Aye, but I cannae mind what it is.
“Blister,” is the response from outside.
Parker and Luke turn to me with blank faces. Och, they don’t know it either. I grab my head. Think.
“What, ah…what is…?” I flounder around before demanding, “Tell us something only you would know.”
“I said the word,” the same person says. How come only one guard?
“Not enough,” Luke says. “Give us something else.”
“Lime, blast and fash are your secret swearwords. I forget which one belongs to who, except fash is Julian’s word. Luke’s afraid of needles. Emilie misses jogging. Doug was going with her tomorrow except he got sick.”
I turn to her. “Truly?”
She shrugs. “I asked him to, but I didn’t know he was.”
Parker walks around me and unlocks the door. “Where’s Kasen?”
Gregs and Tomo stand there like soldiers. “Hopefully upstairs. Where’s your phone? He won’t answer for us.”
We all file out and head down the long hotel passageway. “Me neither.”
“Tomo, was someone really killed?” Parker asks when we get to the lift. “You saw him?”
“Yeah, a kid up the street,” Gregory says. “He had a key card on him from the hotel, so the police let us in on a few specifics, you boys being at the same hotel and everything.”
The lift dings and the door opens. We all get inside except Parker and Tom.
The minder nudges him. “Come on now. Let’s go.”
###
“Being on lockdown sucks eggs.” Luke lies on his back in front of my door, tossing a foam basketball into one of those suctioned hoops. Emilie scribbles on a hotel notepad. I go to my cupboard, pull out my guitar, and strum out a few chords.
She looks at me and I have to smile at the gleam in her eye. “Julian, that sounds awesome. For the chorus…” She points at the two lines of chorus she has so far. “There?”
“Aye, but flip the lines, don’t ya think?” I say.
“Sure thing.” She erases her words and scribbles them further down.
“And put this line ‘He’s a player, a collector of hearts’ on the last part of the chorus and repeat it.”
“That’s perfect,” she says. The notebook is crushed between us when she hugs me and kisses my neck. The smacking echoes through the room.
A chocolate biscuit hits my shoulder. “Must you kiss so loudly?” Parker asks.
Luke tosses the orange foam into the hoop. “How do we always end up in Julian’s room?”
Emilie lifts her face from my shoulder. “Because it’s cleaner.”
Now she’s done it.
Parker throws another biscuit at us. “Not for long!”
The door swings open and slams Luke’s feet into the wall behind it. “Ow!”
Kasen stands there, his gaze drifting around the room. But I don’t think he sees anything.
“What the hell, Kasen?” Luke shouts.
The dazed lad jerks his chin up, straightens his posture, and looks at us like he’s only just noticing we’re in the room.
I untangle myself from Emilie. “All right there, Kasen?”
He shakes his head. “No. I…I don’t know.”
Parker pops up. “Did you see the boy? Was it bad?”
Kasen lifts his chin. “Is that what’s going on down there? All the lights and sirens?”
Luke stands. “You wouldn’t know then. We’ve been on lockdown while you’ve been free to do what you want.”
“What I want!” Kasen clenches his fists at his sides. “When do I get what I want?”
Tom pokes his head in the door and nods at Kasen. “Dial it back a few notches,” he says and shuts the door.
Kasen stomps into the lavatory and cuts the water on. When I go in, I can’t tell if it’s tears or water on his face.
“Yesterday…Niki told me yesterday.” He gulps. “Told me she was pregnant.”
Luke heads toward the loo and leans against the doorframe. “Oh. My. God.”
“Is that where you’ve been?” Parker comes in and sits on the side of the bathtub. “With her?”
A baby. A baby. Is the band done? How can he do this, go on tour, go back to London and have a baby back in the U.S. still?
“What?” He jerks his head up; his black eyes meet Parker’s in the mirror. “Oh, yeah. I’ve been with Niki. She had—she went—miscarriage. She had a miscarriage.”
Luke sighs. “Bless.”
Kasen swivels around, his eyes narrowed to slits, the muscle in his jaw muscle ticking. I stumble backward then put my arm in front of Emilie, who’s right beside Luke. Kasen looks like he might burst into flames any moment.
His hand goes straight for Luke’s throat. “You think I wanted this!”
He pushes Luke back, and the two stumble through the room, into the dining table and then the bed.
I grab my best mate’s shoulders from behind. “Kase, stop it.”
Luke twists under him. “Get off me!”
Och! If he can talk, then Kasen isn’t squeezing. When I fall onto Kasen’s back, I notice his hands aren’t around Luke’s throat anymore. After another yank on Kasen’s shoulders, we tumble over the side of the bed. My breath comes out of me in a whoosh.
Kasen jumps to his feet and looks around at us. Parker is at the door to get a minder, I guess. I’m just getting to my knees on the floor, Luke is stunned and hasn’t moved from the bed, and Emilie—for fuck’s sake. She’s crouched beside Luke with an arm thrown over his chest while she glares up at Kasen. As if she’s going to protect him!
How come she always has to get into the middle of a ruckus?
“You think you know what’s going on?” Kasen says. “None of you know anything, and I don’t have to tell you.”
“Then don’t,” Emilie says.
“No,” Parker shouts. “Do tell. I want to know why my bandmate is all the sudden so violent. What kind of bad juju have we turned up? A dead boy tonight? And, Kasen, your…a baby. So real. How did it all get so real lately?”
I get to my feet and nod at Emilie, who’s helping Luke sit up. “Things happen, Parker.”
Aye, don’t I know it? The serial killer already burst my ignorant bubble. It’s not just that we’ve been sheltered from living a real life outside
of the industry—we have—but we also know so little about what’s going on around us. For three years, real crime and tragedy hasn’t touched us, apart from the past few weeks. And for the lads, just tonight. It’s one of the reasons I haven’t told anyone about hiring the investigator. Parker goes mental about overexcited fans; he’d flip with this sort of thing.
“I’m not staying in this room a second longer with that maniac.” Luke gets to his feet. “Damn this lockdown.” He stomps out of the door, and Parker follows.
“At least wait for security,” Parker says, and I run after them.
Any minute now, I expect a minder to come usher us all together again. But nothing. Looking back at floor headquarters at the end of the hall, I understand why. The door is shut and lights off. Then I hear Tom’s voice in the stairwell.
Luke’s bright eyes meet mine just before he slips into his room.
“All is clear,” Tom says, pushing the heavy stairwell door.
“Let’s check their balcony doors,” Gregory says, “and then we’ll let the boys—Julian, the hell you doing?”
I nod at the minders. “Check Luke and Parker’s rooms first.”
They both scowl and head to the brothers’ suites.
I turn to go back in my room. The door opens before I reach for it, and Emilie slides out. “That was bad. Don’t leave me alone with him again.”
“What? He didn’t even have a good grip on Luke, did he now? Harmless.”
“He didn’t look harmless, but that’s not what I’m talking about.” She looks away.
“Then what are you talking about?” I try to get a look at her eyes but she stares at the floor.
“Talk to Kasen,” she says.
“But I’m talking to you now. What are you talking about, talk to Kasen? I was just in there talking to him and we’ve all talked enough, don’t you th—Oh for fuck’s sake, I’ll talk to him if you like.”
She glares at me a second then drops her head to my chest with a sigh. “He’s been missing all night. Have you actually seen Niki this week? When’s she supposed to have arrived in Vegas?”
“I’ve never met Niki.” Neither has Luke or Parker but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t— “Are you trying to say she doesn’t exist?”
Just because he had a momentary flipout we’ve got to doubt him now? He has to prove he has a girlfriend? Okay, it was a big flipout but…
“No, that not what I’m saying at all, Julian.” Her shoulders rise and fall. “He just needs someone to talk to, and it can’t be me.”
He scared her. I can feel her chin trembling against my chest now. What am I missing here? Is she really that scared of Kasen? Sure he had murder in his eyes, but he wasn’t actually trying to kill Luke. He not a—
What? We don’t know if he was even here at the hotel, so to even think for a moment he killed some boy at our party is completely ridiculous. Nope.
The boy was at our party!
No way Kasen had anything to do with it.
“He loses it once and you think he’s the killer?” I wince at the look in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Emilie, but you’re way off track.”
Isn’t she? He could never kill them.
Them. All the murders suddenly drop into one slot in my head. The murdered kid the night of our concert was wearing an entry bracelet. And there just happens to be another murder on Thanksgiving night when we’re in Alexandria? It’s us. We’re the common denominator with these murders.
Emilie touches my face. “That’s not what—”
“Please.” I run my fingers through my hair. “I can’t think.”
Kasen was only thirty minutes away that night—the victim’s neck snapped less than a mile from our hotel. The detective says it was done by a person full of rage. Just like the lad in my room right now. But he was with Niki tonight, wasn’t he? Did he say that?
No, it can’t be. I talked to Kason Thanksgiving night. And he rang off quickly. Yet I never heard anyone in the background pushing Kasen to join the party or whatever was going on. One of the murders was in February, the same month Kasen’s uncle died and he flew home…Again, thirty minutes away from the murder. But was it the same time, same night? I can’t mind the date. The next date I do remember. The boy was killed the first day in August. We were on tour, so there’s no way Kasen could have been free to go to Virginia. We were performing in North Carolina. Wait.
“How far is North Carolina from Virginia?” I look away and mumble to myself, “Doesn’t matter, does it? He couldn’t have broken away from us for very long.”
“They’re right next to each other,” she says.
“No, no.” I grab my head and rock it back and forth. “He couldn’t. Sure, he’s been in a mood tonight, but he’s really very calm.”
“Julian!” Emilie grabs my hands, pulling them from my tangled curls. “I’m not saying Kasen’s a murderer. He’s going through some stuff that I have no idea how to deal with. Talk to him. You’re his best friend.”
Right. My best mate—I know him.
I shake my head, cheesed at myself for even considering the idea. Kasen’s not the murderer. He wasn’t around for the other murders, now was he? There’s no way this is all tied together.
“I’ve truly lost my head, haven’t I?” I stand like a limp puppet while she cuddles me. “I’ll be so glad to get back to London.”
She rests her head on my chest. “I think we’re all just tired. You haven’t slept well ever since Utah. Whatever happened that day really scared you, didn’t it?” She pulls back. “Your room or mine?”
I shrug.
“Okay, yours it is. I’ll be back.” She slips away and heads to her room to get what she calls comfy clothes.
“Want me to come with you?” I manage to croak.
She turns and smiles, her dark blue eyes looking softer and sweeter than ever. “I’m fine. Tom just went in to check it out.”
Love. Everything else might be so confusing that I want to shout sometimes, but one thing isn’t. I love her so much it’s scary.
Scary. My head is still swimming when I turn back to my room. And I stand on Kasen’s foot when I go back in. “Oops.”
“Sorry.” He backs away. “About everything…freaking out.”
“I’m sorry too, mate.” Yeah, I’ll apologize, but never will I tell him what was going through my head earlier. What an idiot I am.
He leans against the wall. “I’m so messed up. Niki broke up with me too.”
Aw, for fuck’s sake. How much can one bloke take?
“That sucks, Kase.” I sit on the little table across from him. “So how’s Niki doing?”
“On her way home.” He looks up at the ceiling.
“You should’ve told me. She could’ve used my air miles.”
He shakes his head. “She’s driving.”
“By herself? All the way to Maryland after having a miscarriage? Mate, come on.”
“Driving to the airport.” He rubs his eyes.
“Then why did you just say…my air miles?”
His eyes narrow to slits.
“Nevermind.” Wait a minute. I don’t know much about female problems, but Mum had a procedure done in that…region. She missed our big performance at Madison Square Garden because the doctor wouldn’t let her fly so quickly after the procedure. And that was a week after.
“Kasen, are you sure,” I start, but no. I’m done questioning him. Trust. “Are you sure you want to do the Red Nose song this year?”
Aye, good fix. We were invited to participate in the Red Nose Day fundraiser again this year.
“For the Ethiopian’s, right? Yeah.” Kasen pulls a small smile. “It’s a good cause, and those trips over are good. Keeps our feet nailed to the ground, especially you white boys.”
“Bite me.”
He snorts and straightens up when Emilie comes back in, wearing a blue sleeve-less shirt and cotton shorts.
I narrow my eyes on him. There’s only one way to fix this, mate. He li
fts his chin and heads toward her.
“Emilie?” He cups her elbow. “That was messed up. Shouldn’t have ever happened. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She looks away quickly and goes to the other side of the room, picking up her notepad from the bed.
Och! She could be a bit nicer. He did apologize.
He turns to me. “Good night, you two,” he says softly. “I’m going to talk to the boys.”
“Right. See you in the morning.”
He looks from me to Emilie. “Be careful,” he says and walks away.
I can’t help but roll my eyes.
Chapter 14
The silence hums and crackles. I fling my eyes open. Someone is hovering over me. I jerk my head around, some of Emilie’s hair still stuck to my stubble.
“Sorry,” Luke whispers loudly. “Security let me in.”
Flashes of the night before pummel my head. Did we all make it through the night? “All right there, Luke?”
He pats my head. “Yeah. Just an interview.”
I mind the craic of the day. Right. We’re meeting with that reporter this morn to make up for the interview in D.C. Then we’re off to London.
Emilie makes a soft whining sound when I ease my arm out from under her cheek. She turns over. My heart heaves a sigh while I smile hugely. Never at any point in my life have I been happier…or more worried.
Tiptoeing out of the room, I ease out of the door to face Luke whose forehead is in a thousand wrinkles his eyebrows are raised so high. “We all went back to our own rooms last night.”
“Sod off,” I say, then clear my throat. Sounds like I’ve slept for weeks. It’s easier to be energetic at midnight than eight in the morn.
He shakes his head and hands me a cup with white foam coming out the top. “A double shot—wake you up. We’re supposed to be downstairs in little more than an hour. Joe says not to wash your hair.”
Aye. My hair does better a wee bit dirty.
With a groan, I slide down the wall and cringe when I take a sip. Coffee. I prefer tea. “Sure thing.”
“You’re starting to sound like Emilie.” Luke eases down on the other side of me. “Jules, I’m really glad you found your wish girl.” He eyes me. “But she’s only seventeen. Be careful.”