Everyone has some sort of hold on her. Where do I fit! Fire burns at my temples, my heartbeat crashes in my ears.
She gasps. “I know you’re not saying what it sounds like you’re saying.”
Oh, my God.
“No! Emilie, playing nurse just means taking care of people…to me, anyway. Not the rude game people talk of. To think of you caring for—sorry. I’m sorry.”
I’m a choob for making her think that and for being jealous. It’s dumb to be jealous of my mates, isn’t it? I trust all of them down to the ground. But a dead guy—how can I compete with a memory? “Nevermind. Just, good job.”
She takes a deep breath and shutters her eyelids closed, hiding the feeling there. “Basketball players jam their fingers a lot.”
“I…I hate basketball.”
Emilie nods and stares down at her lap. Aw, feck it all.
Parker scowls at me. “What was that?”
Kasen eyes Emilie; she looks everywhere but at him. His gaze follows her when she scoots away and crosses her arms over her chest.
“Julian’s just being stupid, Emilie.” Kasen glances at his watch then back at her. “Is everyone packed and ready? We’re leaving soon.”
No one answers. My mobile vibrates against my leg. Emilie finally meets my eyes, her lips pressed together. What? She shakes her head.
What the feck is going on? And who the hell is blowing up my mobile? Pulling it out, I turn and head out of the room.
“Hello?” a man says. “Is this Julian McLane?”
“Aye.”
“Excuse me?”
And I still can’t recognize the voice. “This is Julian. Who’s this and how’d you get my number?”
“I’m Will DeHaven.” He breathes into the phone. “The private investigator you hired.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I didn’t know you’d—I thought you were just talking to Doug.”
“I’ve asked to speak directly with you. The further I get in this investigation…I just wanted to tell you that, regardless of who’s paying me or how the investigation involves my client…that is you…I won’t withhold any evidence from authorities.”
My heartbeat pounds in my ears. Sweat bubbles up on my face. “What-who? Doug said we weren’t involved.”
“Now, I’m not saying anyone in your band—” In my band! “Or your entourage is responsible for all the murders. The ones in Virginia had broken necks. The boy last night was beat to death. Doug gave you the folder from the Virginia murders, right?”
“Aye, he did.” My face cools. “I get it. If you find out one of us is the killer then you’ll turn us in.”
“Do you have reason to believe one of you is the killer?” He clears his throat, and I get the feeling that it’s much better to be on the phone with him than being in the same room.
“No. Truly, I don’t know why I said that.” Och, Kasen’s no killer but I’m having a massively hard time figuring him out just now. The look he gave Emilie back in the room. It’s like he’s holding something over her. Or aligning himself with her.
And against me.
“Did you find out anything for sure on the Orlando killings?” I ask and hold my breath.
“The what? There wasn’t a victim from your Orlando performance. Could you be talking about the human trafficking? That case was already closed,” he says, sounding fussed. “I already told Doug there was no connection.”
Human trafficking? Why does it feel like real life is suddenly punching me in the gut everywhere I turn? Perhaps I’ve just been very good at ignoring the world’s problems. Stop living in a bubble, fuckwad.
“Do you have any ideas on what’s going on yet?” I ask. Because I don’t. Or maybe I do—too many ideas.
“Yeah, but none that are holding any water yet,” DeHaven says and coughs. “Keep me appraised on your end, and I’ll be calling you from now on with updates. Goodbye, Julian.”
Holding water?
He rings off just as the door hits me in the back. Parker pushes his way out while admiring Emilie’s handiwork. “Nurse Emilie. Sexy.”
I can’t tell if he’s trying to drive a point or just being stupid. “Hey, Parker?”
“Hm,” he grunts and tries to flex his fingers.
“You notice anything off with Emilie?”
He jerks his head up and scowls at me through his flopping hair. “Leave off her. Maybe she’s about to get her period. Did ya think of that? Nobody can be perfect all the time, yeah?”
With that he cuts out.
“But I never said she did anyth—”
Blam, goes the door. Emilie definitely isn’t without allies, is she?
###
“Ahead on the right,” a new minder shouts over my head and prods us through the passport control queue.
Emilie looks at him like he’s mad. He’s acting like it. Everyone is. It’s even worse than usual as they urge us along, and there aren’t even that many fans here. Less than America, at any rate. But airport security guards scowl at us as if we invited the fifty-plus squealing girls on the other side of the glass.
Parker leans into Emilie. “They’re always suspicious of Luke in customs. He looks like a skint-head terrorist. No worries. We’ll be free soon.”
“Shut your geggy.” I reach behind Emilie and skelp him on the back of the head. “You know better than to joke.”
“Who’s joking?” he says, his lips twitching.
I lean down close to her while I feel yet another hand at my back. “He is.”
His larking is explainable. But the heightened alert I see on the team’s faces hasn’t been explained yet. I clench my teeth when someone nudges my shoulder forward for the hundredth time. Something is off, and if it’s some other threat on our lives I might consider faking my own death.
The new minder comes to a stop at a tall, silver door and twists the knob. “Come on,” he says and jiggles it when it doesn’t open.
“I told you we needed a room!” Doug shouts, and even though he’s behind Kasen, who’s behind me, his bellow sets my ear to ringing.
But before the blustering Londoner has a chance to blast him back, an angular man wearing a red Heathrow hat and coat is pushing a key into the lock.
“In you go.” He waves us in and mumbles something to the first minder.
Emilie squeezes my hand and we walk through the door. The room, not quite the size of a conference room, has nothing but a single chair, a triangular table in the center, and an empty snack machine to the side. We’re truly being held-up for customs, are we?
Doug tilts his head toward the man in red. “Gathered at the check point or car park?”
“Both.”
Doug nods. His eye muscle jumps; he stares at the floor.
Kasen swings his satchel off with a sigh. Parker drops to the gray plastic chair. Am I the only one worried here? Nope, Emilie’s hand is so sweaty, it’s about to slip out of mine.
“Please don’t shut that door,” Emilie says, her eyes on Doug.
Doug’s eyes crease. He crosses his thick arms over his chest and almost fills in the door frame.
My head throbs. “Is this because of Parker’s mucking about?”
Tomo takes Luke’s arm and steers him over to the table to stand beside his brother. “Boys, we’ve bad news. I wish you didn’t have to find out like this, but the crowd outside makes it necessary.”
“We’re cut from the label,” Parker says.
“No, it’s more serious than that,” Luke says very slowly. He shakes his head, keeping his eyes on the minder. “It’s family. Mum. Where’s Mum?”
Of course he’d think of her first.
Tomo’s face, normally a red-ish tint, fades of all color. He shakes his dark head and eyes Luke and Parker. “At the hospital. I—”
“No way,” Parker says, and Luke asks, “Why?”
“She’s…” Tomo clears his throat. “Your mum was diagnosed with cancer quite a while back. She didn’t want to tell you. We thoug
ht it was a bad idea, but it was the way she wanted it.”
Was. Oh. No.
But they don’t get it yet. The lads are still looking at Tomo to finish.
“She passed less than an hour ago. She was sure she’d be able to hang on, but….”
A roar sets my other ear to ringing.
“Lie!” It’s Luke.
Emilie’s hand finally does slip from mine when she goes to Parker. He drops his head to her stomach and rocks it back and forth. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.”
Kase holds onto Luke as the crying boy falls back against the gray fabric wall. The two sink to the floor. “Fuck these rumors,” Luke says. “Fuck it all.”
Doug shakes his head and continues to stare at his feet. “Not rumors.”
No, I didn’t think so. They’d have their facts straight before telling the brothers something like this. I got a tweet once, telling me my aunt had just died in a car crash. Another time, someone tried to convince Kasen his parents’ house was on fire, but that was by text message after one of the many times his number was leaked. The minders and PAs never give us the wrong information, and always make good time clearing up any rumors.
“I can’t even,” Luke says. “But I was just talking—we could have left the tour earlier. We could—”
Parker stops rocking his head long enough to mumble, “No replay. There’s no replay.”
We always think we can go back: It’s so close…let’s go back before too much time passes and fix it.
We can’t.
Chapter 16
I switch on the cupboard light instead of the overhead, but Emilie wakes up anyway.
“You’re up early,” Emilie says, already crawling to the edge of the bed. “What is it?”
She’s ready for the next breakdown.
“It’s nothing.” I go over to her and rub her arms. “I was just getting my guitar. I couldn’t sleep.”
“I can’t blame you,” she says. “Closing your eyes means the next time they open there’ll be another piece of sad chaos to witness.”
I pull her hair back and hold it at the nape of her neck. She’s been a rock the past couple of days, and I’m not sure the lads would have survived without her. “You haven’t just stood back and witnessed anything, love.” With my lips pressed to her temple, I mumble, “you never do.”
But it’s true; we can’t close our eyes for very long around here. May as well stay up. “I’m going to get some tea.”
I’m in the kitchen, in the dark when Kasen comes in and flips the switch. I blink at the bright light. “I had that off for a reason.”
“Time to wake up.” Kason lifts his fingers, looking like he’s about to make air quotes. “We have a ‘wake’ to go to soon.”
What is wrong with him? I fight down a comeback, and instead say, “Not for five hours yet.”
He doesn’t reply.
“Kasen, what’s going on with you?” I squint at him—he won’t look at me. “Talk to me, man.”
Yeah, talk to me because I promised Emilie this would happen days ago.
Parker walks in.
“Good morning,” Kasen says with over-the-top cheer.
Parker pushes through us and says, “Sod off.”
Kasen snorts. There’s quick movements and shuffling, and then the rest happens so fast that I’m left standing without a scooby. If Kasen wasn’t holding his hands over his face, blood trickling down his wrist, I’d never ferret it out.
Parker walloped him, didn’t he?
###
The house is like a tomb even though we’re far from the funeral home, the wake was over an hour ago. That was a fecking disaster. I’m sure the paps are having a field day with those pictures. Sure, they weren’t allowed inside but once outside we were fair game. The make-up crew did what they could for Kasen’s bottom lip. You can cover up a busted lip all right, but the swelling is worse. And nothing could hide the blue stooky on Parker’s arm—it’s just our luck he needed a full-arm cast for one broken finger. One that he broke on Kason’s face.
Bad luck. Maybe we need to borrow some of Emilie’s ladybugs.
Parker reckons it’s broken from the fall he took during that interview, not slamming it into Kasen’s mouth. But the break’s further up in his hand, not where I popped his bones back into place.
I cannae sit still. I want to scream: Hey, we’re still alive. Naw, someone might punch me.
My knees are fairly vibrating, so I hop up from the couch for the millionth time and pace our beige and white living room. Kasen pulls the sliding door open and comes in from the balcony, dropping to the couch beside Emilie.
“I’m going to change.” She gets to her feet, and Kasen rolls his eyes
She stands there with her arms crossed over her chest, her pale skin showing through the black lacy dress. Her dark blue eyes stay locked on mine. What is it?
“That thing,” she whispers and reaches around to her neck.
Right. It’s some kind of weird clasp on her dress, and she cannae manage it by herself. I follow her into the passageway and give it a tug.
“Be patient, Julain.” She turns and kisses my neck. “You can’t fix them. I know you can’t stand to see them like this, but you can’t fix them. They need time.”
And she’s off to her room. Her room because she thinks it isn’t nice to rub their faces in the fact we have each other and the rest are single. I’ve agreed because of our rule, and there’s only so long I can sleep with her without sleeping with her.
I can’t fix them. She’s only reminded me of this one hundred times. If only they’d known. Their dad says he kept quiet about their mum’s cancer because that was her wish. False. He was just glad not to have to deal with his sons putting their nose in.
“I’m going home,” Luke says from his slouch in the easy chair. “Guard be damned.”
I try not to groan over Luke’s constant grumbles. Though it’s only down the road, Luke going back to his house has gotten trickier with all the press the past few days.
Luke gets to his feet, and that groan finds its way out of my mouth anyway. I know all he wants is to be alone. It would be easier if there was an available bedroom here for him to slink off too, but Emilie has the spare room. Maybe if she just shared a room with me…again, that could set Parker or Kasen off.
“Just make Tom happy, all right, Luke?” How come I didn’t follow her—get out of this dreary room? My head starts pounding all over again. “Wait for him. He won’t be long in coming.”
Luke grunts and slumps onto the brown couch cushions.
“Can somebody flip the telly on?” Parker calls out from his spot on the floor. He’s flat on his back, his blood-shot eyes focused on the ceiling as if he’s going to see a constellation or something. “Music? Anything?”
He pulls a pen from under the couch and pushes it down his blue stooky, only stopping after the pen is almost disappeared. “Ah.”
###
Lying on the couch, slowly nodding off, my eyes fly open when I hear a scuffle outside. Emilie and I jump up when the door flies open.
“If you don’t let me down, I’m file ‘sault charges,” Luke shouts, completely off his head.
Doug dumps a wiggling Luke into an armchair, but he pops right back up and puts his finger in Doug’s face. “Dis in’t over. I’ll have you sacked.”
Whoa, a bit of a rammy they’ve had, didn’t they?
I pull Luke away from Doug who looks like he’s at the end of his patience. “What’s happened, Doug?”
Luke grips his own neck. “He tried to kill me,” he says and jumps at Doug again. I get my arms around him from behind, and he arches back and tries to kick our minder. It takes all I can do not to fall backward with all his gyrations, so Luke is able to get one kick in. Almost.
Doug grabs the foot and shakes his head. “I pulled the little prat from his car so pissed he couldn’t stand.”
“Pulled me by my neck, and I only had a little to drink.” Luke trie
s to hold his finger and thumb together, but he can’t make them meet.
“I held you up by your collar,” Doug barks back.
Luke jumps at Doug again, but the lad only falls over, his face in the carpet.
“Should I get him in bed?” Doug asks.
Luke shakes his buried head.
“I guess I’ll tend to him. Doug, why didn’t you tell us he was going out? We might’ve gone too.” Not so much for fun. For support. Luke’s not been a bag of chuckles recently with everything that’s happened, but we can be there for him, can’t we?
“Wasn’t me left you behind. He didn’t tell you.” Doug scratches his head. “Tom called and said the lad just shot by him and zipped out the drive. I was a block away and tailed him.”
“Where’s Tom now?” I ask.
Doug only shakes his head and leaves, and Luke is back to shouting.
Kasen comes from the kitchen with a can of fizzy in his hand. Where the feck was he when we were trying to calm Luke down?
“Doug is sensitive about that,” Kasen says with a shrug. “It’s how his son was killed.”
“He has a son?” My ears burn. I thought I knew Doug, yet I never considered he had a family. He never talks about them, and he spends all his time with us. I’m positive he’s not married.
“Had,” Kasen says and turns to trot up the stairs.
We’ve gotten tattoos together, hit the clubs, road trips. Doug taught me the trick to a quick shave with no rash.
Minder or friend?
Friend or minder?
Another problem with having our lives in a bubble—it’s hard knowing where the lines are. I normally don’t care, but sometimes it’s obvious where others have drawn the line.
And sometimes it’s gutting.
###
My eyes burn from reading the manuscript. I’ve rubbed them so much, I see spots when I stand.
“Emilie, I’m finished,” I call out and make my way through the dining room. “There’s only one problem. No one’s ever going to believe us lads wrote it.”