23
Eric disengaged his hand from Tessa’s, careful not to wake her. She’d dozed off again, and the nurse said to let her rest.
She shifted in her sleep, rolling onto her side, with her hand still cradling her abdomen. Eric pushed back his chair and stood to stretch his legs.
This isn’t how I wanted to tell you…
She’d known about the baby for weeks, and she hadn’t breathed a word. It blew his mind when he thought about it. When exactly was she planning to fill him in?
Eric crossed the room to the pastry box her mother had left. He stuffed a doughnut in his mouth, but he didn’t taste the sugary glaze. His mind was in a million other places. A baby? Fatherhood? How was he supposed to process it when he didn’t even know if the baby was alive?
He chewed slowly and forced himself to swallow. He couldn’t think about it now. Later, he vowed. For now, his mind buzzed with questions. Like whether his manager had been arrested yet…and exactly how many different forms of torture he should inflict when he next found himself and Maury face-to-face.
Eric set the doughnut back in the box, half eaten. He didn’t have the stomach for it. He needed coffee…or sleep.
Or neither, he thought with a stifled yawn. Maybe what he really needed were some answers.
He drifted toward the door and poked his head out, searching for any sign of a baby doctor or an ultrasound machine. How long did it take to get a consult? He caught sight of Mrs. Hart by the nurses’ station, with her hands on her hips. Good. Let her take charge of nagging the hospital staff. His job was to sit by Tessa’s side and hold her hand.
Eric moved to shut the door, but a different voice distracted him from the opposite direction. He recognized the familiar baritone, filtering in from somewhere down the hall.
“Is she alert? Competent to answer questions?”
Eric stepped out of the room. He eased the door closed behind him just as the two LAPD detectives turned the corner. Detective Stevens raised a hand in greeting.
“How is she?”
His suit looked less crisp than yesterday. His eyes were bloodshot, and his partner didn’t look much better. The two of them must have been up all night, putting the pieces of this tangled mess together.
“She’s sleeping,” Eric said. “You can’t talk to her now. It’s not a great time.”
Detective Stevens drew a small notebook from his breast pocket. Morales held a tablet and stylus.
Eric stuffed his hands in his pockets. Suddenly light-headed, he leaned against the wall beside Tessa’s door. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Has Maury been arrested?”
“Not yet.” The lead detective cleared his throat. “Suspects Gilroy and Darrow both fled the scene before officers arrived.”
Eric scuffed his shoe against the floor. “You have enough to charge them, right?”
“That’s why we need to speak to Tessa.” Morales took a hesitant step forward, holding out the tablet before him like a shield. “We have partial video footage of the incident, but there are still some holes.”
Video footage…
Eric swallowed. He’d almost forgotten about that part. Detective Morales pulled something up on the screen and angled it so Eric could see. “The video file was uploaded and tweeted to us last night.”
Taylor @EricThornSucks
@911LAPD Tell Tessa I love her. If they hurt her, make them pay. #KeepingWatch #GuardianAngel
The tweet was followed by the opening frame of a video, and Eric recognized the scene in black and white. His bedroom. His own four-poster bed.
He didn’t want to see it. He pushed the tablet away.
“You can’t show that to Tessa,” he said. Talk about a trigger… Blair watching while they both slept. It was enough to give Eric nightmares. He couldn’t imagine what it would do to Tessa’s head. “How did he do it? How did he have a camera in my house?”
Morales tucked the tablet away. “Your TV had a hidden camera installed in the power panel. When the TV was powered off, it fed surveillance footage to a remote location.”
“That CIA shit? From Wikileaks?” Eric could feel the color draining from his face. He’d read an article about it back in March. Laptops…TVs… He’d unplugged the microwave in his backstage dressing room, and Maury had laughed in his face.
“It’s unclear how long the device was in place or how many people had access to the feed.”
Eric made a fist and pounded it against his thigh. “I knew it. I friggin’ knew it!” He pressed his shoulder blades against the wall for support. His pulse thundered in his ears, and he felt every muscle of his body convulse. His insides loosened, while his chest clenched so tight that he thought he might implode. Was this how Tessa felt when she was panicking?
“Eric?” Detective Stevens’s voice penetrated from some far-off, foggy place. “Eric, are you listening?”
He looked up. The lead detective hovered in front of him with his head tipped to one side. “Son, do you need to sit down?”
Eric shook his head. If this was panic, then he knew what to do. He’d watched Tessa calm herself down a million times. Deep breaths. Count to five. She’d explained to him how she counted people’s names inside her head. Whose names? Did it matter? She hadn’t specified. He couldn’t worry about that now. Any names would do. Eric inhaled slowly, ticking through the mental list of people he’d like to strangle with his bare hands.
Blair one…Maury two…Clint three…
“Eric,” the detective interrupted. “The video recording cuts off after a few minutes. We need Tessa to complete her statement.”
He held a stack of papers. It rustled as he extended it in Eric’s direction. Eric took it, spreading the sheets before him like a fan. His vision blurred at the sight of the black ink swimming across the pages.
Case #75937.394.1
OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPTION OF POLICE INTERROGATION
“These are the relevant sections from the interviews conducted yesterday,” the detective explained.
Eric let the air out in a rush. It actually helped—the breathing exercise. He felt a little steadier. He let go of the wall and stood up straight.
He’d be damned before he let them talk to Tessa. Not today. Not with everything else she had on her mind right now.
He dug his heels into the floor and squared his shoulders, blocking the policemen’s path to Tessa’s door. “You’re not going in that room,” he said, meeting Detective Stevens’s eyes. “But go ahead. Ask your questions. You can talk to me.”
• • •
Blair turned sideways in his chair, presenting the stroller mom on the other side of the table with a view of his shoulder. He hated being back here in this overcrowded coffee shop. He thought he’d seen the last of this dump.
But here he was again. He’d blown every penny he possessed on a remote connection to a hacked big-screen TV—a useless piece of scrap metal that now graced the inside of a police evidence locker.
What an astronomical waste of money. Blair had actually thought he might be getting somewhere when he stumbled on that DNM posting. Dark net markets were mostly populated by lowlifes selling drugs and fake IDs—but you never knew what you might find lurking in the underbelly of the Internet. Blair had only needed to cough up the cash, and voilà! Like ordering off a menu, only the main course was a peep show into Eric Thorn’s master bedroom.
The key was to avoid spooking the guy on the other end of the transaction. Blair had made it a point to steer clear of annoying questions. Like, how did you get access to this video feed? And who installed a spy cam in that TV panel to begin with?
Blair hadn’t asked a thing when he met the seller in March. The guy claimed that Eric Thorn put the hidden camera there himself. Heck, maybe that was true. That asswipe probably used it to record all his sexcapades with his latest fangirl flavor-of-the-month.
Poor Tessa. She had no idea. Blair didn’t feel a shred of guilt for looking in on her. It was Eric’s fault if he chose to parade around his bedroom in front of a camera every night. Why should it be Blair’s responsibility to look away?
In any case, it didn’t matter now. It was all over. Blair had tipped off the police to the camera’s presence the moment he directed his first tweet at @911LAPD.
Taylor @EricThornSucks
@911LAPD Crime in progress. Send police to 83 Kirkwood Drive in Hollywood! Hurry!
He’d hesitated before he sent it. He knew he was putting his neck on the line. His finger had hovered over the tweet button, watching and waiting, until he knew with absolute certainty that Tessa was in trouble. Once they threw her on that bed and tied her up, Blair didn’t have a choice. He had to pull the trigger. He couldn’t sit there on his hands and watch the girl he loved get hurt.
The girl he loved… What a joke.
What was wrong with him anyway? Maybe he really was delusional, like she’d claimed to those cops in Texas. He probably should cut his losses. They were never getting back together, and Tessa Hart was way more trouble than she was worth. Beautiful, yes. But so incredibly messed up…
Blair’s head throbbed. He hadn’t slept last night, and he dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. He needed to let it go. Forget Tessa. Move on.
But he couldn’t do that. Not now! Not after the scene he watched unfold yesterday in real time. He still had no way of knowing how she was doing. He’d called the hospital to check, but they would only tell him that her condition was stable.
At least that meant she was alive.
Thanks to him, Blair thought. She was damned lucky she had him. Blair couldn’t really regret all the money he’d blown on the surveillance feed. If he hadn’t been keeping an eye on her, no one would have. Certainly not that self-obsessed goon she called a boyfriend. Talk about a dysfunctional romance. He was too busy prancing around in his music videos…or working on his abs.
Blair sighed. He knew he should let it go, but a part of him still clung to some tiny molecule of hope. Maybe the near-death experience would wake her up. Maybe Tessa would finally see where she belonged. Hadn’t he done enough to prove himself? Hadn’t she tortured him sufficiently? Rejected him. Hid from him. Pushed him off a deck. Gotten him thrown in jail for a week before the police dropped the charges…
Surely, she would see the truth now. She would figure out who really cared about her.
With a sniff, Blair clicked onto his camera roll and scrolled through the old photos. He stopped at random and gave a little start when he saw the picture that came up. Out of all the thousands of images, this one was one of a kind. Not Tessa by herself. She was dancing in a crowd, arm in arm with a group of friends. Happy. Full of laughter. Tessa, the night he met her—before she hid herself away.
Blair smiled.
Someday, she would dance with him again. It was only a matter of time. He needed to be patient. Let her come to him. He understood that much about her by now. The more he chased, the more she ran away.
So he wouldn’t chase any longer, he decided. Tessa knew how to find him. She’d come crawling back into his Twitter mentions one of these days. He’d saved her life after all. The least she could do was thank him.
Maybe she was tapping those words into her phone right this very instant. Blair wiggled his fingers at the thought and logged on to the Twitter account to check:
Username: EricThornSucks
Password: password
The home screen came up, and his smile faded.
No new messages. No new notifications. Nothing to do but wait.
And refresh…
And refresh…
And refresh…
A hand clapped him on the shoulder. Blair shoved the phone into his pocket. Who was bothering him now? Hadn’t anyone in this godforsaken coffee shop heard of privacy? He jerked his shoulder out of range and opened his mouth to snap at whoever had crept up behind him.
But the words died in his throat. The stroller mom in her yoga outfit gaped from the other side of the table. She grabbed her baby and scurried off, leaving the stroller behind in her haste to get away. Blair grimaced when he realized what must have freaked her out.
He turned around slowly with his hands raised in the air. Oh great, he thought. Here we go again.
“Blair Duncan, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”