Rock Redemption (Rock Kiss, #3)(103)

“Becca.” Shocked by the vitriol, Kit came around the counter. “Why would you even say that? We’ve been hanging out just as much as always. You know I cherish my friends.”

The other woman folded her arms. “I know you used to talk to me about the stalker and your contracts and how much this house was sucking your income and all that real stuff. I was the one who helped you when the stalker first appeared. I was the one who held your hand when you made the first police report.” Becca’s cheeks were red, her breath quick and harsh. “Now you tell Noah everything and treat me like nothing.”

“That’s not fair.” Kit waved her hand in a wide gesture, accidentally hitting the small glass bowl in which she kept her keys. It went to the floor, shattered, her keys falling out. She didn’t stop to pick them up. “We spoke so much because we were together on set every day.” First on Primrose Avenue, then later on Last Flight and the superhero movie. “Of course we see less of each other now that we’re working on different projects. That doesn’t mean we’re not friends.”

Becca shrugged off her hand when Kit would’ve put it on her shoulder. “He’s a whore, Kit and you’re a whore for sleeping with him.”

Flinching, Kit stepped back. “That’s enough.” It was far beyond anything a friend should ever say. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but I think you should go before you destroy our friendship.”

“Don’t call me the next time the stalker leaves a gift in your car. Personally, I think he’s wasting elegant Florentina Chastain chocolates on a woman who thinks Noah St. John is a good catch.”

Furious, Kit was about to physically throw Becca out when her blood ran cold. No one but Kit, Noah, Butch, and the police detective handling her stalking case knew about the chocolates.

Even if she was misremembering, she knew she wouldn’t have said the name of the chocolatier to anyone—she hadn’t even opened the package at the time. It was only forty-eight hours ago that the detective had mentioned the name in a call to her. He’d been checking if maybe she’d had any contact with that particular store, or if any of the employees were familiar to her.

“How do you know about the chocolates?” she asked Becca, a sick, heavy feeling in her gut.

When Becca’s expression went white, her lips not moving, Kit lifted a hand to her mouth. “Why would you do that?” It came out a shaken whisper. “Why would you help some creep terrorize me?” The two of them had been friends forever, had trusted one another with so many of their secrets and dreams. “Why, Becca?”

Becca didn’t answer, just reached into her purse and pulled out a small, sleek gun. Kit stared at it. Of course the security guards wouldn’t have thought to search her. She was Kit’s good friend, had often come to the house… when she could’ve left a door ajar or a window open for later access. Not here, not with the alarms, but back at the town house, where the stalking had first begun.

“I don’t want to kill you,” Becca said in a voice that held anger and panic both. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

“Then why did you bring the gun?” Kit felt as if she were looking at the world through a freeze-frame, everything hanging in time. “Why are you pointing it at me?”

“The gun’s for him, for that f*cking whore who made you so cheap.” Becca’s pitch was high and sharp, but her hands didn’t tremble. “You’re my friend. Mine. He’s got no right to you.”

Kit suddenly remembered how someone had wrecked Schoolboy Choir’s dressing room a couple of years ago when they’d done a set as part of a charity concert. The guys had figured it was a drunk fellow musician, but Becca had been backstage at that concert, acting as makeup artist for a soloist.

Kit put that incident together with Cody’s slashed tires the night of the wrap party, the dog feces that had been thrown at the house of a female director with whom Kit had begun a friendship before the director moved to work on a project in Europe, as well as the way Becca was always busy when Kit invited her to join Kit, Molly, and Thea for coffee or lunch, and knew the police, everyone, they’d been wrong.

The stalking had nothing to do with sex or physical attraction. It had to do with a pathological kind of friendship on Becca’s part. If Kit was right, Becca hadn’t been helping a male partner—this was too personal. That meant the sexual part of the stalking had been window dressing meant to hide Becca’s gender and true aim: to be Kit’s one and only friend.

“Where did you get the semen to smear on my bedspread?” It had been done literally a minute before Kit walked into the house, on dark blue sheets that would’ve made the stain obvious, even if the stalker hadn’t left a card next to it.

Becca had been in the town house the day before, seen the sheets, could’ve easily broken the lock on the window through which the stalker was found to have entered. As for the timing, Becca had been texting with Kit as Kit walked home from the party she’d been at that night—a party which Becca had left earlier on some excuse Kit couldn’t now remember. Kit had told her she’d be home in five minutes if Becca wanted to drop by.

Now the smaller woman shrugged. “Saved the condom from a wannabe actor I f*cked who has a thing for you.” A small smile. “He did me because he thought it would get him close to you. I figured he’d make a good fall guy if the DNA was ever traced—the dipshit even has a poster of you on his wall. Smoking gun, right?”