2
Eric handed the headphones back to Tessa. He stretched out on his side, with his head propped in his hand and his knee forming an upright triangle with the mattress. He recognized it as a classic underwear modeling position—a pose he’d struck so many times that it must have lodged itself permanently in his muscle memory.
He wrinkled his nose and sat up.
Tessa watched his movements, but her eyes looked blank and hollow. Had it been the wrong move, pulling out her earbuds? He could see he’d set her off by the way her face went rigid. In the month since they’d run away together, Eric had learned to recognize that tension at the corners of Tessa’s mouth whenever her anxiety level rose.
“Are you OK?” he asked, reaching for her hand. “I didn’t mean to creep up.” He’d gone out to stretch his legs under the cover of darkness, and he couldn’t have been away for more than ten minutes. He’d pulled out her earbuds without thinking—one of those playful gestures of intimacy that people do all the time when they’re in a relationship. She must have been too fixated on her phone to hear him approach.
Tessa pulled her hand away, but her face softened. She scrunched her mouth to the side, trying for a stern look. “‘Sweet pea,’ Eric? Are you still calling me that?”
Eric grinned. “That’s your name! It’s not my fault you turned out to be nonspherical.” He waved his hand with mock irritation toward the long, slender legs that lay beside him, clad in a pair of skin-tight yoga pants, with her fuzzy, pink bunny slippers covering her feet.
A reluctant smile curled her lips. “Um, that nickname sounded a lot less cheesy over DM.”
“No good?” He reached over and pinched her knee, gathering the black spandex between his thumb and index finger. “Would you prefer ‘snowflake’?”
Tessa laughed. Eric moved to draw her legs toward him, but she swatted his hand away. Her eyes returned to the cell phone in her lap. “Wait. You have to watch this!”
She tucked the headphones into the kangaroo pocket of her sweatshirt and turned up the phone’s speaker volume as high as it would go. Eric stifled a groan. What was it, YouTube? He wasn’t in the mood for social media. Not now. He finally had the only person in the world he cared about sitting by his side—close enough to reach out and touch her face.
And all she wanted to do was look at cell phone videos?
With a sigh, Eric leaned closer, struggling to make out the tinny voices. They really should have bought a second cell. They’d picked this one up on a supply run into town, but they hadn’t wanted to waste the cash on two. It wasn’t like they had anyone to call except each other.
“What is this?” Eric asked. It looked like the evening news. He took the phone from Tessa with a tiny pinprick of alarm. His face had been in and out of the cable news coverage ever since his disappearance. Had they found something new? Were they on to him?
“It’s not about you,” Tessa said, reading his thoughts. “It’s Dorian Cromwell. That video of him skiing the other day!”
Eric squinted at the screen. “That video was fake. It barely even looked like Dorian.”
She tapped his arm to shush him, and Eric strained to catch up with the broadcast. The silver-haired news anchor was yammering about solicitors and Scotland Yard.
“I’m joined now via satellite by British legal analyst Horace Killjoy. Horace, what can you tell us?”
The image cut to a middle-aged man in a business suit, fidgeting with his tie. “Anderson, from my sources at Scotland Yard, it appears we’re looking at an elaborate conspiracy involving a number of key players at DBA Records and possibly extending to one or more members of the British law enforcement community.”
It couldn’t be true, could it? Dorian’s murder…a hoax? Eric shook his head, forcing his attention back to the interview.
“—may be in a spot of legal trouble. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.”
“Could Dorian Cromwell be facing prison time?”
“Possibly.”
“Is it a crime to fake your own death?”
Eric’s spine went stiff. That part he understood—and it hit awfully close to home. It was a question that robbed him of sleep more nights than he cared to admit.
He hadn’t paused to consider the legal ins and outs that morning in Midland when the plan had first taken shape. Running away had seemed like their best option at the time. Tessa didn’t feel safe in her house anymore—not after being held hostage there by her stalker. Eric had offered to take her with him on the road, but they both knew it would never work. He was trapped in a record deal, contractually obligated to appear before crowds of people and smile pretty for the camera. If Tessa went public as his girlfriend, the scrutiny would be intense. No way could she withstand that kind of attention. Eric himself found it terrifying most of the time, even without a history of agoraphobia.
It was Tessa who’d figured out the answer. The whole plan had started as a joke. At least, he’d thought Tessa was kidding when she first brought it up. She’d sat cross-legged beside him on her bed, covered head to toe in her thick flannel pajamas, when he saw her eyes go wide with a flash of inspiration.
It’s perfect, Eric! You said so yourself. It’s only a matter of time before some copycat turns up and another celebrity winds up dead.
It had taken him a moment to catch up with her…
Don’t you get it? she’d explained, tugging at his arm. I’m the copycat! They let me walk out of that police station alone with you. No bodyguards. No security. No witnesses. Just some emotionally unstable fangirl with the object of her obsession. You know what conclusion they’ll leap to if you don’t show up for sound check in the morning!
Eric shifted uncomfortably. His eyes darted down to the tender skin of his inner elbow. The array of needle pricks had long since faded, but he could still recall the stinging pain. Tessa hadn’t been the most competent phlebotomist. She’d never performed a blood draw on her own before—only watched her mother doing them. Eric winced as he recalled the way she’d poked and prodded with her mother’s spare equipment before she finally hit a vein.
He still couldn’t believe anyone had fallen for it. Tessa Hart, a murderer? She’d taken a pint of his blood…left her house looking like a crime scene…and that final tweet she’d sent from his phone had sounded pretty damned incriminating… But the whole plot seemed ridiculously transparent to him. Could two teenagers with a phlebotomy kit really outwit the FBI?
Maybe.
The authorities didn’t know his true state of mind. They didn’t understand how trapped he felt by his old life—how badly he wanted out. His parents might have had some clue, or maybe his manager, Maury, but none of them had ever really listened to a single word Eric said.
So here they were a month later, and so far everything had played out as Tessa predicted. She had her face plastered all over the FBI Most Wanted List, and @EricThorn’s famous last words had been retweeted 11.2 million times…
But otherwise, they were safe. They were together. And most miraculous of all, they were free.
At least for now.
Eric blew out a tense breath. He returned his attention to the phone.
“—not a crime in and of itself. However, it appears that Dorian may have continued to receive royalty payments through a Swiss bank account during the time of his sequestration. He could be looking at charges of money laundering or even income tax evasion—”
That didn’t sound so good. Eric looped an arm around Tessa’s shoulders and hit the pause button. “Hold on a sec. When was this show broadcast?”
“It’s a live stream! Don’t pause it!” Tessa reached for the phone, but Eric had his hand over the screen, blocking her. “Eric, you’re going to lose the feed.”
“I don’t understand,” he said. “What makes them so sure he’s still alive?” He eyed her skeptically, his gaze flitting from her face to the phone and back again.
“I don’t know, but they’re saying it’s confirmed. Dorian’s supposed to give a statement any second. Hit Play!”
Eric handed the phone to her, but the image had gone black. Tessa tapped the play button again, and Eric’s grip tightened around her shoulders as they waited. At last, the image sprang back to life.
The scene jumped forward to a new location. The camera panned across a long table covered with microphones, all pointed in the direction of an unmistakable face. The young man seated in the center had his hair pulled back in a messy man bun, and the bottom half of his face appeared oddly pale from where he’d shaved his beard—but otherwise he looked the same as ever.
Dorian Cromwell, in the flesh. Alive and well. He cleared his throat, and the camera zoomed in close.
“Hi, guys. As you can see, the rumors of my death have been mildly exaggerated…”
“I can’t believe it,” Eric murmured, but he couldn’t deny the evidence before his eyes. Dorian Cromwell filled the screen, reading a prepared statement off a crisp, white sheet of paper.
“On behalf of myself and everyone at DBA Records, I’d like to apologize to the fans and to anyone else I may have caused undue distress…”
Eric choked. Undue distress? That was one way to put it. He’d spent the better part of a year fearing for his life because of Dorian’s murder. Ever since the story broke last summer, Eric hadn’t taken a single step without looking over his shoulder. And none of it was real. Pure smoke and mirrors…and public relations. Just like everything else in his phony, bubblegum-pop existence.
Honestly, he should have known.
Tessa must have seen his expression change. Her hand brushed against his knee. “Eric?”
He tilted back his head. Why did the van’s interior feel ten times smaller than it had a moment ago? Eric reached up and grazed the ceiling with his fingertips. “I turned my life upside down because of him. The whole reason I’m here is because of Dorian!”
Tessa pulled his elbow down and inched closer. Her hands ran up and down the length of his forearm to soothe him. “That’s not the only reason. There was other stuff too, wasn’t there? The followers? The fame?”
“Yeah, but—”
“And it was because of me,” she said. She laced her fingers through his and raised her eyes to look at him. “I mean, I thought that was part of it. You ran away with me to protect me. Didn’t you?”
Eric’s face softened as he heard the quaver in her voice. He clasped her hand firmly. It killed him every time he saw her doubts resurface. If anything good had come out of Dorian’s deception, it was the fact that it brought the beautiful girl beside him into his life. He didn’t regret for a second the way he’d spent the past four weeks.
Eric dropped his arm to her waist and pulled her toward him, pressing his mouth into her hair.
“Of course it was because of you,” he murmured. “So we could be together.”
She nuzzled her face into the crook of his neck, and Eric closed his eyes. She felt so fragile—so thin and slight. It filled him with an overwhelming urge to keep her safe.
The truth was he’d do anything to shield Tessa from the harsh light of public scrutiny. She had more to worry about than celebrity gossip and overbearing fans. Tessa still had a stalker on the loose—another unintended consequence of their decision to run away. The police had locked up Blair Duncan, but they couldn’t have held him for long. None of the charges would stick without the victim around to testify. For all Eric and Tessa knew, Blair was out there at this very moment, biding his time, waiting for Tessa to reappear.
Eric gave her shoulders another protective squeeze. His eyes drifted back to the scene unfolding on the phone. Dorian’s voice sounded flat, his face devoid of emotion, as he read the statement prepared for him by publicists and lawyers:
“I would also like to apologize to my countrymen for any alleged legal or financial wrongdoing. I remain a faithful British subject, and I would take this opportunity to beg the Crown for leniency…”
Tessa tensed in Eric’s arms. “He won’t really go to jail, will he?” she asked. “It’s all spin, right?”
Eric shook his head. “I don’t understand. What law did he break?”
“They said something about income tax evasion.” Tessa sat up straighter. “You don’t think you could get in trouble for that, do you?”
Eric laughed. “For tax evasion? Tessa, look at this place.” He gestured around the van’s cramped interior. No furniture. No running water. Not enough headroom to stand. “We’re basically living in squalor. I don’t have any income.”
“We sold your car though,” she responded. “Does that count?”
Eric dismissed her worries with another low chuckle, but he couldn’t deny a sliver of concern. They’d ditched his beloved convertible at a chop shop on the side of the road, traded in for this rusted-out camper van and a trash bag full of cash. Was that income? He’d left all his other worldly possessions behind him. Tens of millions of dollars, abandoned and untouched. The government couldn’t come after him for a measly fifty grand—a mere fraction of the Ferrari’s rightful value. Of all the worries that kept him up at night, it had never occurred to him that he could be in trouble with the IRS.
“I suppose it’s not too late,” Tessa said slowly. “It’s not April 15 yet.”
He looked at her blankly.
“Oh, come on, Eric. Tax day?” She poked him in the chest. “Even rock stars have to file their taxes by April 15.”
She did that sideways scrunchy thing with her mouth again. Eric grinned. “My job was to keep my abs tight and occasionally play a guitar. I had a manager to take care of the finances.”
“Well, maybe you need to give your manager a call before you end up sharing a prison cell with Dorian.”
Eric’s smile faded. Call Maury or go to jail for tax evasion? He wasn’t sure which option sounded worse…
For now, Eric raised a finger to his lips to hush Tessa. Dorian’s voice had grown more animated. He pushed aside his sheet of paper and leaned into the mic.
“My only excuse for my actions is that fame itself comes with an astronomical price, not measured in pounds sterling. For years, I have paid dearly. I have been hounded. I have been stalked. I have been relentlessly slandered in the press along with everyone important in my life. I know I’m not the only one who has suffered and sought refuge.”
Dorian paused and looked directly into the camera. Eric sat transfixed, his eyes locked with Dorian’s piercing gaze. He had the strangest sensation that Dorian could see him—that the other man was looking straight through the screen.
“I’m not the only one. There are others like me. I call on them to come forward and stand with me. If you’re out there somewhere, watching this broadcast, then I beg you. Please. I’m in trouble. I need your help.”
Eric slipped his hand into Tessa’s. She let out a gasp, and Eric felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck as Dorian plowed on.
“You know who you are, but I’ll name you if I must. I’m speaking, of course, of Tupac, Michael Jackson, and most recently, Eric Thorn.”