“Sure. He probably did this shit . . . ,” he continued. “Right . . . she’s getting deeper and deeper with Darlene. Like that time she was up there and everyone was looking at her. Dude, I saved her from that, okay? She never appreciated it . . . Right . . . No one wants to be with someone everyone else is looking at. I don’t even know, man. Don’t even know. It’s like, not attractive, yo.”
I smiled to myself. I had no business being amused. Vince was on Emily’s property, and I was on the other side of the fence. But one aspect of Vince’s motivations became crystal clear. He didn’t want anyone looking at what he thought was his. He was turned off by it. That was why he didn’t want her onstage.
The way to get rid of him for good was inside that realization somewhere.
“And now, this?” he said. “This? It’s like, it’s all trashed. Fucking shit!” He yelled as if the broken security system was a personal affront.
Unsnapping the holster at my side and slipping out my Glock, I swung open the driveway gate. It clattered, and Vince turned to me at the sound. He put his hands up in front of him as I advanced, aiming at his head because it was scarier than aiming at his chest.
“Dude.”
“Drop the phone.”
He reached back and put it on the table, snapping his hands back up.
“Sit.” I tipped the gun to a little ledge between the path and the big tree.
He navigated to it with his hands still out, acting as if he were the one calming me down. Maybe he was. I was the guy with the gun, after all. Stepping into the light, he still had yellow bruising around his left eye. Weeks had passed. I must have done a number on him, yet here he was, persistent, stupid, possibly in the only kind of love he understood.
“I was just passing by,” he said.
“Sure.”
“Did you see this shit?” He pointed to each busted camera.
“She’s all right.”
“You break it, asshole? She piss you off?”
I wasn’t sure if he was brave or reckless, but if he called me an asshole to get a rise out of me, he had the wrong guy.
“She’s not here. And you know you’re not supposed to be. That restraining order’s real, and it’s not toothless like the last one.”
He couldn’t keep still. He kept pointing to the cameras. As if bursting, he cried, “The keypad! Did you see it?”
“Vincent—”
If you stopped and listened, you could always hear police sirens in Los Angeles. So when the whine came from far away, Vince wasn’t affected.
“No, no, this is not good. I need to talk to her.”
“She’s doing her own thing,” I said. “She’s not even the same person she was a month ago. So you can keep stepping on your own dick. Your stupid plays keep me employed. But even if you got her back, you wouldn’t like what you got.”
The sirens got closer. How long had it been since she left my house? Forty minutes? Ten to get here. Ten to trash the place. With a twenty-minute response time, she could be dead.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. This is not about you. It’s about us. Me and her.”
“Don’t come and check the block again. Don’t come in here even if there’s a neon sign with your name on it. And I swear, if anything happens to that cat, I’m going to skin you.”
“I didn’t kill Socks.” He stood up with his finger out. “That was my cat too.”
The sirens came down Olympic and stopped at the driveway. Vince’s face went blue then red then blue again.
“Stay there,” I said, holding the gun on him. I was engulfed in chaos seconds later.
“Freeze!”
Shit. I took my finger off the trigger and held up my gun, getting to my knees.
“Occupant has a restraining order against—” I had the wind knocked out of me when I was pushed down. I let them disarm me. In those few seconds, Vince took off. I didn’t see where he went because I was wrestled to the ground and cuffed.
CHAPTER 61
CARTER
They let me go once they saw I was ex-LAPD, I was licensed, and I was working as the occupant’s bodyguard. The worst part about it was that they’d focused so much on the guy holding the gun that they’d lost Vince.
Having heard some of what he said, I put together a plan to get rid of him on the short drive home. She’d avoided singing so he wouldn’t get angry with her. She’d given up ever appearing in front of people. But what if doing exactly that turned him off? What if it disgusted him so much he lost interest?
It wasn’t violent or earth-shattering, but if it turned him off to Emily, that was enough.
By the time I pulled into my driveway, I knew I had to get to Vegas to talk to her.
When I peeked into Phin’s room, he was in bed. He thrust his hand under his pillow as if he were hiding something. I went in.
“Good night, Phinnaeus.”
“Good night.”
I reached under his pillow and found the hard edges of his phone.
“Thanks. I’m done anyway,” he said as I shut it off.
I kissed his cheek and gave his ear a loving tug.
“Can I see my mother’s stuff?” he said just before I got out the door.
“It’s late.”
“I promise I’ll get up tomorrow.”
I didn’t have time for Genny’s box. I had to get to Vegas to talk to Emily and Darlene. I had to make sure Mom was going to be home with Phin, and I had to get in a few hours of sleep before I got in the car for a long drive.
But I wasn’t going to be able to sleep. I could skip that and show Phin his mother’s stuff. I hadn’t looked in that box in years, and for the first time in a while, I wanted to.
“Meet me in the living room,” I said.
Phin shot out of bed as if he’d been sleeping on a catapult.
I got the cardboard box out of the back of my closet. It was lighter than I remembered. Or maybe I was stronger.
He met me in the living room in the plaid robe I’d gotten him for his birthday. He’d insisted on a robe with a hood, which was nearly impossible to find.
I sat on the other side of the couch and put the box between us. Phin grabbed at it, ready to rip it open as if it were Christmas morning. I was suddenly afraid he’d dive in and the memory of the night his parents were killed would flood back.
“Hang on.” I put my hands over his. “One thing at a time. Okay?”
“Okay.” He folded his hands together and pressed them between his knees, but he was bouncing on the cushions in the least restrained way possible.
I opened the box.
Jesus. It smelled like my sister. Lavender everywhere. She’d loved lavender.
“First thing.” I took out a picture of Genny and George holding baby Phinnaeus. “I’ve told you this as your father. Now I’m telling you as your uncle. You were the most beautiful baby I ever saw.”
Phin held the frame in both his hands and stared at the picture. It had been taken in Mom’s apartment in Torrance with dozens of paparazzi outside. To the tabloids they had been “Georgevieve” and “G2,” but to me, and in the picture, they were normal, attractive people so happy about their baby.
“I look like my dad.”
“You have his chin.”
“Was he nice?”
“He was all right. Busy.”