Still Not Over You(61)

I feel like all the blood’s drained from my body. I’m pure ice, granite, a block of cold, rigid stone.

“What? What're you talking about?”

She glances over her shoulder at Milah, then steps closer to me, lowering her voice. “Is there somewhere we can talk? Alone?”

I want to tell her that Milah doesn’t give a damn about my personal life, but I can’t find words. My lips are numb. I just nod slowly, touch her arm, then jerk back when the contact sparks between us like static. With a grunt, I jerk my head toward the door and lead her outside, then growl at James.

“No one in, no one out. Not until I come back. Radio Skylar. Get her over here and have her watch Miss Holly. She'll be sure our client behaves.”

James nods, hiding a grin. We both know Milah is more than a little afraid of my lead, and Skylar might be the only woman on the planet who can make our pop star listen and keep her out of trouble. Or maybe my boy's just happy he doesn't have to deal with Milah himself.

Under James’ watchful eye, I lead Kenna around the corner of the hallway, past a jumble of rigging for stage lights and into a dead-end storage cubby. She trails after me in almost furtive silence, as if expecting someone to jump out at us at any moment. I don’t blame her.

It’s like those words roused the ghosts, conjured the dead, and now they're trailing after us with invisible, grasping fingers.

Once we’re alone, I turn to face Kenna, taking in her nervous, slightly too-wide eyes. Everything in me wants to comfort her, but I can’t even let myself touch her, knowing I’ll break her again. “Talk.”

She wraps her arms around herself. “Your father first, or the beach house?”

“My old man.”

“Okay.” She takes a deep breath and tucks her mussed hair back. “I know this sounds nuts, but just stay with me...remember the last time we saw him? You were standing in the doorway while he left with his crew that day?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you recognize those men?”

I frown, searching back through years of memories. “I’m not sure. It was all so fast. Maybe one or two of them. Dad came out pretty fast, brushed past me, told me to stay put.”

“But not the rest.”

“No.”

“Okay. I didn’t think so.” She exhales shakily. “Back then...I think he was being forced into the car, Landon. I think maybe you couldn’t see it past the car door, but I remember a man with a scar on the back of his hand holding his arm tight enough to bunch up his suit, and practically shoving him into that SUV.”

A man with a scar on the back of his hand? I ransack my memory.

“I don’t – fuck, no, I don’t remember anyone like that. But you’re saying you think my old man was kidnapped? That he was a victim?”

She looks up at me with those trusting, liquid eyes that seem to see the best in everyone, even me. “Don’t you think it’s possible? He had a partner, didn’t he? What if he was oblivious to everything until he stumbled on the wrong thing and had to be eliminated?”

“That’s fairy tale bullshit,” I snarl. “Too clean. Convenient. The real world doesn’t work that way, Reb. In reality, it turns out your father’s a piece of shit and there’s nothing you can do to fix it.”

“What hurts your pride more?” Kenna asks softly? “That your father was weak enough to be dirty, or unfortunate enough to be a victim?”

“Enough!” I can’t face this right now.

Can’t face the fact that five years of anger burrowing deep troughs in my heart, my flesh, my bones might've been for nothing. That all this confused hatred and loss and grief and vengeful fury might have gotten all twisted around, snarled on the wrong things.

It’s too much to sort, and I don’t have much time before I have to go back to Milah. Her show starts soon. “Tell me about the beach house.”

“I found tracks,” she blurts out. “The branches were broken in the hedge bordering the trees. I went through and found a man’s tracks in the mud, and a burnt cigarette. There’s a clear path through the trees to the service road...and I found a fresh gas can dumped behind the guard rail. Still had gas in it.”

“Bullshit! That’s too convenient, too.”

Her eyes flare with a spark of anger, red spots of furious color appearing in her cheeks. “You were the one who said it could’ve been more than an accident,” she bites off. “Don’t believe me? Look.”

She fumbles in her pocket and fishes out her phone, then swipes to the photo album and shoves it at me. I take the little phone and thumb through quickly, frowning. Fuck.

Fuck. Muddy footprints, left by what looks like a man's dress shoe. A cigarette.

And I know the area she’s talking about. I could see it, right down to the getaway down the slope and into the waiting car. An arsonist could be in and out in less than ten minutes, fire set and the culprit already miles down the road before it ever took hold.

Somebody burned down my goddamned guest house.

Somebody from Crown Security.

I don’t want to think Dallas would be fucking insane enough to have authorized it, even if he might not have been the one to light the match.

But I don’t want to believe he’s not, either.