Time Out of Mind (Suncoast Society #43)(60)

That had been their second album, which had gone triple platinum, and to this day still brought them decent royalties.

Even Pasch sat forward. “Why didn’t you play those for us at rehearsals this week?”

“They’re…personal.”

“Those usually are the best ones,” Bonnie said. “But they have to go on the next studio album. Even you doing them solo. I don’t know if we can improve them. Maybe a little bit of vocal harmony, record backtracks of you or something. But those are fantastic. We could always do a more engineered version to go with it, but those acoustic versions are what will go top ten.”

Everyone nodded.

“Okay, but we produce the next studio album ourselves,” Mevi insisted. “This isn’t like when we first started. We can do this. We have the skills, and we can afford to do it ourselves. We can call it an unplugged album or something.”

“I like that,” Garth said. “Back to our roots.”

Bonnie smiled. “Remember that dive in Pasadena? We played there three weeks and we thought they were going to stiff us and they finally paid up when Mevi threatened to take a shotgun to him.”

“I didn’t even have a shotgun,” he said. “It was a baseball bat in a soft guitar case and a sound effect on Tom’s phone.”

“Yeah, but the son of a bitch paid us,” Garth said. “Man, you had a f*cking set of balls.”

“I was scared shitless. If Tom hadn’t been with me, I would have chickened out.”

Bonnie rested a hand on his shoulder. “You were taking care of us back then.”

He rested his hand over hers. “I wish I’d listened to you guys when you tried to take care of me and warn me to keep a close eye on David before he f*cked me over. But when Tom died…” He met her gaze. “I kind of lost my will to struggle against stuff, you know? I know he was your brother, and I don’t have a right to be more torn up over losing him than you are, but I’m no dummy. We owe a lot to him and what he did for us.”

She pulled him in for a tearful hug. “I know, Mevi. He loved you, too.”

“What’s that little f*cker going to do to me?” Pasch sounded forlorn. “I can’t lose my kid, man.”

“You won’t,” Mevi assured him. “I have a secret weapon on the way.”

“Who is she?” Bonnie asked.

Mevi smiled. “She’s Tilly. That’s all you need to know. Heh, that’s all you want to know.”





Chapter Twenty-One


It was nearly seven that evening when Tilly walked into the backstage area, escorted by their two security guys who’d taken Erique out. They were carrying two small suitcases for her, while she had a purse and laptop case slung over her shoulder.

The security guys, both of them well over six three and beefy, strong men, looked pants-shitting terrified.

Tilly wore a pleased smile.

Clark found a private room for the three of them to go to, and she handed him a manilla envelope.

“In there you’ll find a signed confession from Erique, admitting to being on drugs, a violation of your contract, I’m sure. Also, a statement that he’s resigning from the tour, effective immediately and of his own free will, because he’s going to seek medical help for his addiction. Also, you’ll find a signed confession that he drugged and sexually assaulted your drummer and extorted him, and that he attempted to drug Mevi this week during rehearsals. And there’s this.”

She held up her cell phone and first showed them several graphic pictures before she played a short snippet of video of Erique, looking stunning in nothing but a pair of satin pink panties, stiletto heels, and bright red lipstick, strutting for the camera. Then a masked Tilly had him on his knees, eagerly licking the shoes of the two security guys—whose faces were not shown—and desperately begging to be used for a wide variety of…activities.

She hit stop. “There’s more, but I won’t bore you. You can watch it yourself. The link to the videos and pics will be in your e-mail shortly. I put them up on a Tor repository so they couldn’t be traced. Oh, also, I had Lan walk me through a few things while I was there. Wiped all of the guy’s Google accounts, including photos and file storage, and changed all the passwords and emergency secondary access info before shutting down the accounts. He won’t be able to recover them. Ditto his Dropbox account, and completely wiped his iCloud account, except for copies of that video, and others, and a bunch of pictures I took with his own cell phone.

“And, just to let you know, he had a ton of pics and videos of other people it looks like he might have done the same thing to, so Pasch wasn’t his first victim. I didn’t recognize any of them, so not sure who they are. I have his laptop and other devices, and I’ll take those with me to have Lan wipe them completely and scramble data so they aren’t recoverable. When he finishes, I’ll give them to you to ship back to him.”

Clark looked shocked. “Um…do I want to know how you accomplished all of this?”

“Oh, the little * had GHB on him. So I spiked a glass of water, made him drink it, and waited a few minutes for it to kick in to get him to sign everything I’d already printed, along with making him doing the little dance you saw.”

Her smile turned chilling. “And a few other things. Let’s just say he and I had a chat and he was already highly motivated and begging before I drugged him. I might have given him the impression that I was a professional killer hired to take care of him by certain silent investors in the tour who want it to succeed. I think the black leather hood I walked in wearing, and scalpel set I showed him, is what actually made him pee himself. He was highly motivated to drink what I gave him. If you ever even hear of him again, much less hear from him, I’d be shocked. I think he had a come-to-Jesus moment and has decided music isn’t his ideal career.”