“Yeah,” Lennon said. “It was early days for you and her, right?”
“It was. Well, I asked Sam to help us figure out who it was. He said he called the arena and security had told him there was no camera coverage of where we were standing.”
“It feels like there’s going to be a but in there somewhere,” Lennon said.
“There is. I called the head of security at the arena,” Dred replied. “He was very obliging once I convinced him who I was.”
Jordan cracked his knuckles. “Let me guess. Sam never called.”
“Not according to security. He’s reviewing the footage now.”
Nikan pushed away from the wall. “Shit.”
Dred’s phone buzzed in his hand. John Ferica.
“Hey, John. What’s up?”
“Your call bothered me. I wanted to know what the deal is with Sam. One of my guys found out he is doing the rounds with publishers, touting a book about you guys.”
He didn’t want to know. Really didn’t want to confirm what he was already suspecting. “What kind of book?” Expectant eyes were on him.
“A tell-all exposé. You guys got some big secrets we need to know about?”
Dred looked around the room. Secrets. They had more secrets than the Catholic Church, the CIA, and every episode of The X-Files combined. They were fucked. He looked at Jordan and Lennon, who’d had the biggest psychological issues to overcome; he looked at Elliott, who at some level or another had to fight his compulsions every day. Then at Nikan, who was never more than a step away from his next drink. His own secrets were nothing compared to those. They’d been broken. Unwanted. For all that to be printed on a page was unfathomable.
“It’ll get messy,” was all Dred could think of.
“Okay. Call me back at one. I’ll get the full team in. PR and legal, especially. See if we can figure this out. You need to cease all contact with Sam. Want us to do that for you?”
“No. We got it.”
Dred hung up. All eyes were on him. It was up to him to get them through this. “Whatever I say after this,” he told them, “just remember we have made it through worse.”
Something like this wasn’t going to break them apart. “We need to fire Sam. He’s trying to sell a book about us. An exposé.”
If he’d had to predict their responses to the news, he would have been correct. Lennon got up and kicked the stool across the studio. Jordan didn’t move. Nikan cursed and paced. Elliott looked him straight in the eye.
“We need to think about what we’ve told him over the years. Like what does he actually know?” Dred explained. “We have to assume he knows everything about the last decade, but before that?”
They spent the next couple of hours going through what Sam knew. It was a helpful exercise. And while Sam didn’t know as much as they feared, he still knew enough to lay them wide open and bleeding to their fans. But Dred was more concerned with the personal cost. It sickened him that people might find out their personal histories. The effects could be destructive.
Dred’s phone pinged.
Easy to find. Four minutes past midnight. Let me know if you need anything else.
The head of security had attached a short video clip. There in the shadows of the arena, pointing his phone directly toward where Pixie and Dred were kissing, was Sam.
While they geared up for the one o’clock conference call with John, Dred excused himself to call Pix. She needed to know what was going on. As much as he hated dumping more shit on her, they’d promised to always share the good and the bad. He stepped outside the studio for some privacy and fresh air. He considered quickly running over to the condo. The studio they’d rented was only a block away, but he wasn’t sure if she was out for one of her walks with Petal. There was a message on his phone from her.
Hey Daddy, it’s Pixie and Petal. Can you say hi to Daddy?
He smiled as Petal started to join in on the call with her favorite ooh-ooh sound. She’d found her voice over the last week.
We miss you, Daddy. Have fun making songs for us to dance to. Pixie is making me a new dress.
Petal joined in again, as if motivated by Pixie. It was exactly what he needed to hear after everything he’d learned that morning. He made a decision to keep the news to himself until he got home that evening when he could tell Pixie in person. While he couldn’t think of a reason that Sam would include anything about Pixie in a tell-all, there would be blowback on them as a family. He heard a knock at the apartment door through the phone.
Okay, Daddy, we’re getting the door. We’ll speak to you tonight.
He heard her undo the locks.
Bye Daddy. Say bye-bye Petal. Let’s look and see who it is.
Then the door opened. . . .
Look, Petal, Sam came to see . . . Oh my God, Arnie.
Chapter Seventeen