“What is it, crazypants?”
“Carter can’t be with me, but then he can, and then I can’t be with him, and it’s like neither one of us will just shut up and let it be what it is. I want to be free, and he won’t let me because I won’t let me. It’s about Vince, but then it’s not. At some point, it starts being about habits you pick up that keep you in a constant state of dread. The cameras remind me I’m supposed to be afraid. Then my house reminds me. Then my job is my job because I gave everything up to be afraid. Now the man I love is just a reminder that I’m scared.”
I’d said it. More than I’d wanted to. It was one thing to tell Carter. He was the object of my love. Telling Darlene made it very real.
“I want to be reminded of not being worried.” I took my best friend’s hands in mine. “When we came here, do you remember? The drive over? No money. No contacts.”
We regarded each other in the front yard, half an arm’s length away. Her hair was a wreck, and she didn’t have a stitch of makeup on. For a moment, I could imagine her next to me, driving to Los Angeles, singing the entire way. We’d had all the hope in the world. All the forward movement two talented young women could muster.
“Risky.” Her voice was lathered in suggestion. “It was damn risky.”
“It felt so good to just get in the car and go. I haven’t felt that good in forever.”
“Yeah. Me neither.” She nodded slowly, as if savoring the movement.
“I wish we could do it again.”
Darlene and I had agreed on a lot of things in the previous years, but we hadn’t had a meeting of the minds until we stood in her front drive with no one else around. The space was finally big enough to fit our friendship, and I knew we were thinking the same thing.
“We should,” she said.
“How quick can you pack?”
“Everything’s on the way to the plane. I can buy the rest.” She hopped up the steps to the front door. She disappeared inside. I was sure one of the security guys was going to come out and blow the lid off our plan. I got in the car. A few seconds later, Darlene came out in her pajamas and slippers, carrying a Prada bag. She closed the door behind her and skipped to the passenger side of my undistinguished little car.
“I love you,” she said when she got in.
“I love you too.” I put the car into drive. “Viva Las Vegas.”
We sang it all the way to the freeway.
CHAPTER 60
CARTER
I don’t panic. When there’s danger or something isn’t right, I get calm, which is why I’m a bodyguard in the first place.
What I saw when I pulled up to Emily’s house had the makings of a panic. Busted cameras. Banged-up front and side keypads. Half a Louisville Slugger on the curb.
Her car wasn’t in the driveway. Had she left already? Had she been taken away?
—Are you all right?—
I texted her before I did anything, and I was rewarded.
( . . . )
Maybe, in spite of everything I thought of myself, I had been panicking, because when the three dots appeared, I stopped adding to my mental list of protective measures.
—She’s fine—
—She’s driving. This is Darlene—
—She says why?—
Why? Was she kidding me? Her house was open to the world, her security system was busted, and she was nowhere to be found. Why was I asking?
—Because her security system is all over the street—
A black BMW parked in a dark spot down Citrus Street, too far for me to see the plate.
—She says she got sick of it—
So she’d been the one to trash it. I could live with that, and I couldn’t blame her for getting sick of it.
—Is it connected to LAPD? Because they should be here if it broke—
—She says yes—
—Where are you?—
I got behind a tree, dropping into the shadow, and turned the light down on my phone.
—She says not to tell you. IDK why. I think it’s spite—
A car door slapped closed. A man’s voice came closer, but the ambient noise from Olympic and the distance kept me from understanding what he was saying. I leaned around the tree. It was him, talking on the phone and sticking to the shadowed side of the street. With a backward baseball cap and elastic nylon shorts, Vince had come to win his woman looking as if he were meeting his buddies for a kegger.
—Tell her I deserve it. And keep her away from her house tonight—
I put the phone away when he got close. He seemed as surprised by the busted security system as I’d been, standing back and looking at the camera dangling from a wire.
“Oh man,” he muttered with real distress. “Oh shit no. No, no fucking no.” He punched numbers randomly, stepped back, walked around the corner toward Olympic with his neck craning as if he were tall enough to see over the hedges.
I followed him around Olympic. Cars whizzed by too fast to see anything amiss, even when he went to the driveway gate and pulled it open. Disabling the security system had probably unlocked it.
He didn’t open it all the way. Just enough to slip through. He closed it behind him, which meant I couldn’t follow him without announcing myself.
I took out my phone. I had to make sure she wasn’t in there. I had a message from her.
—I don’t need you to tell me what to do. I am a grown woman and I can determine where I should and shouldn’t be. I’m with my friend and we’re having a good time—
Vince is in your house.
I typed it but couldn’t send it. She’d be afraid, and I was tired of seeing her afraid. And she deserved an answer that wouldn’t drag her away from feeling like a grown woman.
Torn between getting to Vince and talking to Emily, I had the choice made for me. I could hear Vince on the other side of the hedge, talking on the phone.
“Dude, I don’t fucking know. Oh man, this is so bad.”
He sounded truly worried—caught between whining and growling. Pacing back and forth like a caged animal while above me, the gate rattled.
“If I call the cops, I have to tell them why I’m here, and she’s got that fucking paperwork . . . Don’t . . . Dude, no . . . Because I don’t like cops, that’s why. And they’ll blame me instead of that new guy.”
His voice drifted in and out of range as he paced. He was invading her space, violating her privacy even if she wasn’t there. But I’d already smashed his face, and nothing had been accomplished. He’d barely slowed down.
“Yeah . . . Kyle found out he’s one of the bodyguards.”
I froze. How much more did they know?