CHAPTER 15
CARTER
Los Angeles was stuffed to the gills with beautiful women. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting the prettiest girl in her hometown or the product of two attractive actors.
Emily laughed with Darlene, who could relax at a VIP-only club. Emily wore a pure-white sleeveless dress that ended right over her knees. Her shoes were bright green. In the flashing colored lights of the club, the dress looked like a rainbow and the shoes looked black.
Speaking of beautiful women.
Even in high heels, she navigated the chaos of the party with grace. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, which admittedly was my job. Fabian, who was on Darlene for the night, made his way to me across the room. He was huge, six five, and built like a bookcase.
“Yo.” I could hear him only in the earpiece. “Gotta whiz.”
“Don’t forget to shake it.”
“Fuck you, man.”
He gave me the thumbs-up and disappeared down the hall to the men’s room. I put my eyes back on my principal, half a room away. Easiest job I ever had, until Darlene’s agent sidled up to her. Hugo Boss suit and a forty-pound pink-gold watch he wore on the same wrist with an Apple Watch. His left cuff was rolled up so it wouldn’t be missed, and when he spoke to her, he made sure to put his arm up and check the time.
She cradled her drink and moved her hips slightly to the music, as if she couldn’t help herself.
I watched as she spoke to Gene. She was special. Like I said, a million pretty girls in Los Angeles, but the tiny dancer was something else. The way she pursed her lips. The way she smiled. The way she took one hand off her glass and rubbed the fingers together to spread the condensation. Nodded. Looked up at him. Laughed a little.
Was she flirting?
He touched her shoulder. Just a fingertip. She moved away half an inch. The signals from both of them were unmistakable. She was talking, biding time. He was circling like a shark.
He took her glass away and led her to the bar.
Guy like that?
A guy like that would buy her a drink and think that entitled him to something.
I looked away. The room was full of stars and no threats. Darlene was at a table with two executives and the actress Claire Contreras. Fabian was back. Hollywood bad boy Brad Sinclair was by the bar, talking to a guy who dropped his sunglasses to ogle two German models. Emily was more beautiful than both of them put together, not that comparisons mattered. But I couldn’t help it.
Neither could Mr. Sunglasses, because he looked past the girls and right at Emily.
I knew the guy. Not personally, but security people exchanged information, and the intel on him was that he was enjoying his friend’s stardom with a hell of a lot of women.
He wouldn’t go near Emily. Not if I had anything to say about it.
I didn’t want to look back and find out how far Gene had gotten with her. The flirting shouldn’t have bothered me any more than Brad Sinclair’s roving eye. And it didn’t. She wasn’t mine to get bothered over. But Gene Testarossa was a douchebag, and Brad Sinclair was a promiscuous little shit.
So yeah, it bothered me. I couldn’t have her, but if someone was going to be with her, he wasn’t going to be an asshole. He wasn’t going to be another Vince. I didn’t want that for her.
Jealousy looked shitty on a guy, and as I watched Gene, then Brad, then Gene, then Brad, I was wearing it like a cheap suit. The movie star was really checking her out and sliding toward her. He was going to make a move. I couldn’t take my eyes off him because I wanted to find a reason to stop him.
My job was to watch her, so I forced myself to look to where she was at the bar.
She wasn’t there.
Gene was on the balcony talking to Michael Greydon.
Darlene was at the table with a suit from Overland Studios.
Claire Contreras was gone.
Emily was . . . ?
“Fabian,” I said into the mic.
“Yeah?”
“Emily? What’s her twenty?”
“Saw her head to my eleven o’clock.”
“I’ll go look.”
There was only one hall, then a choice between two, and as I cut around a corner, I heard a woman weeping before I saw her.
Emily stood in the center of the narrow hall, looking down, arms out. Red gashes slashed across her chest.
Blood. I couldn’t see anything but blood in my vision.
I was there in an instant, holding her up, mentally beating myself to a pulp with lightning one-two punches for letting her out of my sight.
“Nine-one-one,” I said to Fabian as I held her up. She was weeping, yes, but not screaming from chest wounds.
“No,” she choked out.
The blood was flat and dry.
And her dress wasn’t torn.
The red gashes were ink. Sharpie.
She pushed me away. “I don’t want you. You have to hear me. Hear me.” She wasn’t even talking to me. She was talking to whoever had attacked her thirty seconds ago.
“Fabian. Abort. No call.”
“I hear you.” I knew she wasn’t talking about me, but I had to answer her to calm her down. “Who was it? Vince?”
Her eyes cleared for an instant, and she nodded. I recalled his car and where the nearest exit led. “Fabian. Douche running out on the Venice Avenue side. Black BMW.”
“Copy,” Fabian replied into my ear. “We got particulars?”
“He did . . .” Emily looked down at the red marks on her dress. Her lashes were wet and her lips quivered. She covered the slashes of Sharpie as if they made her naked and ashamed.
“It’s okay, Emily. I’m here. What was he wearing?”
Her brows knotted. She was in some kind of shock, clutching bunches of fabric at her chest as if she’d been stabbed.
“What was he wearing, Emily? So we can chase him.”
She shook her head slowly.
“Carter, man, what do you got?” Fabian said through the earpiece.
I wasn’t going to get anything out of Emily. Not in time to chase after the only guy in the world who wanted to mark her.
She was fully clothed, but I took off my jacket and covered her. Still looking down, she crossed her arms over her chest and held the jacket closed with her thumbs.
I didn’t have to ask who had done it or how it had happened.
“Forget it,” I told Fabian.
“Everything copacetic?”
Was everything copacetic? Everything was fine. No one was hurt. He was gone. There was no immediate danger. The worst thing? The dry cleaner was going to have his work cut out for him.
Right?
My skin ran hot, and my blood thrummed through my veins like a team of horses. Every joint in my body wanted to do violence, break shit, run hard and fast until I found him, then throw him into the air until he was a speck in the sky.
A second had passed. A second too long. A second where she held my jacket closed over the gashes as if they were humiliating.
No. Nothing was copacetic.
I wasn’t supposed to touch her. I was supposed to call Darlene and the cops and go home. But I didn’t. I took her in my arms and held her so tight she couldn’t move. When the weight went from under her knees, I held her up, and when she started crying so hard her body shook, I held her together. Her mascara and lipstick were getting all over my shirt. I wished I had another shirt to give her. I would have given her my entire closet to cry on.
Fabian rounded the corner at a run and stopped short.
“What the—?”
“Did you see anything?”
“Black BMW booking. Couldn’t get a plate.”
“Don . . . Don’t . . .” Emily’s chest hitched against me.
“It’s all right.”
“Don’t tell Darlene.”
It was my job to tell Darlene. On top of that, she paid a nice salary, showed me respect, and cared about my new principal.
Emily looked up at me with glassy sludge-rimmed eyes, and I knew that the best way to protect her was to protect her from her best friend’s love.
“There’s a back exit.”
Down the stairs, around the corner, and out to the underground parking lot. She nodded a little, and goddamn if I couldn’t let her go enough to make that trip. Vince could be anywhere, but that wasn’t what I cared about. I’d get to him soon enough. Once the rage filtered out and I could think, I’d sort his ass out. But for now, I wanted to be her crutch and her cast. Her splint and tourniquet. I was going to be the bandage over her shame until she could take her hands off the red marks on her dress.
I bent down and got my right arm under her knees, lifting her into my arms. She gasped, and the jacket opened a little. She put her hands between the lapels, which made me want to rip Vince a new asshole.
“I have you,” I said.
She blinked once, hard, as if she wanted to get the last tear out.
“You don’t have to carry me.”
“I know.”
She relaxed, putting her arms around my neck and her head on my shoulder.
She didn’t weigh a thing, and carrying her calmed me. I was doing the right thing. The only thing. I was exactly where I needed to be. Protecting her.