One eyebrow lifted. “The hate mail and death threats? I can eat and read at the same time.”
He opened the file on the table between them, and started leafing through the pages. The language was horrific, the threats violent and specific and gruesome. Cady dipped her sandwich in the barbecue sauce and tapped one page with her index finger. “This guy’s been around a while. He hates me because I’m part of the soulless machine that’s destroying music. He threatens most of us equally, although the guys don’t get as many rape threats as the female singers.”
“Rape is not a joke,” Conn said.
“It’s the internet,” Cady said. “You’re familiar with the internet, right? Post even the most bland essay or article and the trolls come out from under a bridge.”
“Who goes on the internet and threatens to rape someone?”
“People without lives? People with axes to grind? People who want to throw rocks at shiny things?” She shrugged. “They’re entitled to opinions. I stopped engaging. I post, interact with fans, and let the label and Chris handle the rest via a press release or a social media post.”
He stared at the pages and pages of fury, loathing, and aggression, then looked up at her, letting his disbelief show on his face. “You walk away from a fight like this.”
“All day every day and twice on Sunday,” she said. She met his gaze with an even expression. “Sometimes walking away is the only thing I can do that makes sense. I can’t win. I can absolutely lose. So I walk. Do you want something else to drink? I’ve got wine, soda, or water.”
“Water,” he said.
She got up and collected the trash in the plastic food sack, and stacked their plates. “By the way, I don’t drink caffeinated coffee, so if you have to have it, we’ll need to go out in the morning.”
He blew out his breath. He could handle a run-in with Hawthorn and Chris, administrative leave, getting assigned to guard a pop star he was insanely attracted to, but not having caffeinated coffee in the morning might kill him. “I’ll get some when we go out,” he said. “What’s the schedule for tomorrow?”
“I’m doing an interview with Hannah Rafferty at Eye Candy at four, then singing.”
“Security shouldn’t be too bad,” he said, not bothering to tell her about Eye Candy’s role in a major drug bust earlier in the summer. She knew Eve, so she’d be familiar with the details. Every cop attached to the Block knew about it, and kept an eye on the bar, especially because Eve was now one of their own. Eye Candy was one place she could go, and he wouldn’t need to be on full alert the entire time.
“Glad to hear it. I’m going to bed. Make yourself at home,” she said. She waved vaguely at the entire house, then padded through the living room, down the short hallway leading to her bedroom.
And his. God, this was going to be awkward. He heard the door close, then water rushing through the pipes. For a long, heated moment he let himself imagine her taking off the hoodie, jeans, those striped socks she was wearing with the boots. He let himself imagine her stepping into the big shower, tiled in a pale gray shot through with darker veins. He let himself imagine the steam rising around her body, her hair darkening as the water soaked it.
Mind on the job. Cady may have hired him because he knew nothing about the music industry, but no way was he doing LPD work without knowing her story. He could, and would, ask her, but wanted the basics so he felt like less of a fool.
Wikipedia had his back. Queen Maud (birth name Cady Marie Ward), was twenty-five, raised mostly by her mother, an accountant, after the family split up. Dad was a lawyer for an online brokerage. One sister, eight years younger, named Emily, who had a Wikipedia page of her own. The stage name came from a grandmother who was a singer in her own right in the sixties.
Chris was going to a Harry Linton concert with a friend in the music business when he spotted Cady, who had taken the initiative to make a few bucks singing for people walking from the elevated train in Chicago to the concert. He managed Cady’s meteoric rise, getting her songs in front of other artists, even flying her to L.A. to fill in for Harry’s opening act when the singer came down with the stomach flu. That led to appearances on a couple of Harry’s more popular songs, then to a record deal with Harry’s label. “She could sing,” Chris was quoted as saying, “but it wasn’t just her voice. It was her presence. Maud was meant to be a star.”