Time Out of Mind (Suncoast Society #43)(59)

“I didn’t. I negotiated. We’re cool. I’ll fill you in later, but we’re good friends.” He pointed at Erique. “You, on the other hand, are going to shut the f*ck up. You signed an NDA, and you’re contracted only for the first five shows.” He turned back to Clark. “Get two guys from security and move the little shit’s shit to a different hotel.”

“What?” both Clark and Erique said.

“I don’t want him in the same hotel as the rest of us.” He glared at Pasch. “Unless you want him rooming with you?”

Pasch shot Erique an evil glare. “No. I don’t want him on the f*cking tour, much less in the same room as me. And Garth wasn’t supposed to say anything to anyone about that, either. He promised.”

Garth shrugged. “Best it comes out now, before he tries shit with anyone else. I know damn well he didn’t think Mevi could pull it together. He had visions of himself fronting the band.”

Now Bonnie and Troy were both eyeing Erique. “Listen, you little shit,” Bonnie said. “I see anything about me show up on TMZ or anywhere else, I will sue your f*cking ass so fast and bury you in so much paperwork that you’ll have to dig a mile up to reach the sewers. You will never work in the music industry again.”

Erique held his hands up. “Chill. I just wanted my shot. Watch what you say to me.”

“Get his phone,” Mevi said.

Before the guy could run, Clark blocked him while Troy and Pasch grabbed his arms. It was Bonnie who frisked him and found not one, but two phones.

“Well, look at this,” she said.

“You can’t take my f*cking phones!”

“Au contraire,” Mevi said, smugly crossing his arms over his chest. “Clark?”

“One of the clauses in your contract states we can examine, at any time, any device in your possession or control or owned by you that could be used to record and/or store audio and/or video and/or data. And confiscate them if they contain proprietary information. That includes phones, cameras, computers, tablets, or any other device.”

“What?”

“Try 0721 as his passcode,” Pasch said. “That’s his birthdate. I saw him use that before.”

She did, and sure as shit, it worked.

And both phones used the same code.

“We don’t have time to deal with those right now,” Mevi wearily said. “We need to get to work. Tell the security guys to search his stuff and confiscate his laptop and tablet when they move him,” he told Clark. “And check for thumb drives or external hard drives.”

“What if he’s uploaded to the cloud, too?” Clark said.

“Confiscate all the devices until Tilly can take a look at them for us when she gets here.”

Clark frowned. “She’s not a tech person.”

“Her husbands run a huge IT company.”

“Oh. Duh. Heh. Good thinking.”

Erique looked murderous. “You *s are going to pay for this.”

Clark smiled. “Right now, I could kick you off the tour and penalize you, including making you pay for your own lodgings and transportation. And sue you. And have your ass thrown in jail. Consider yourself lucky.”

“No,” Mevi said. “We’re going to let her deal with him. Get two security guys on him. Make them sit on him today, don’t let him leave the room, and have the driver take her there when she flies in. Oh, and search his stuff for drugs. Hold on to any you find and give them to her, too, when she arrives.”

Mevi leaned in close, so he could whisper to Clark. “When Tilly gets here, she’s going to have a ‘talk’ with him and have him sign some papers and he’ll be gone. Period.”

“I’m on it.” He took the phones from Bonnie and left the room.

Pasch and Troy released him. “You f*ckers are going to be sooo sorry.”

Mevi smiled. “Oooh, buddy, you keep thinking that. You have no idea of the world of hurt you’re in.” He leaned in. “Never f*ck with me, kid. You f*ck with me, you’re f*cking with the very best.”

Clark returned with two of their beefiest security guys, and they hustled Erique out of the room, Clark following.

Once it was just the five of them, Mevi pointed at the sheet music. “Now, back to that.”

“Hold up,” Bonnie said. “What’s going on? Who’s coming to deal with him?”

He smiled. “Don’t ask too many questions. You haven’t met her yet, you haven’t had the chance.” He hooked a thumb at the door Erique and the security guys had left through. “And he’s damn sure going to wish he never had.”





The others agreed to let Mevi perform the new acoustic set, especially in light of the recent developments. There in the dressing room, Mevi grabbed his practice acoustic guitar and played the songs for them.

At the end, he stared at them. “Well?”

The others exchanged looks and Mevi’s heart fell.

Bonnie finally spoke. “Dude,” she softly said. “Those have to go on the new album.”

Relief filled him. “You like them?”

“Yeah, but I mean like that. We engineer those, it’ll ruin them.”

Troy, who’d sat on one of the sofas to listen, slowly nodded. “Yeah. That was…that was amazing. I haven’t heard you crank out stuff like that since Plazooka.”