CHAPTER 5
CARTER
You need to lighten up.
Gotta admit, when I saw that note under the brownie, I thought it was directed at me. But it wasn’t my dessert. It was Emily’s. She was a serious girl. Cute but serious, and for good reason. I wanted to wipe all those reasons away and give her a reason to laugh.
But I’d never tell her to lighten up. It’s not a friendly suggestion. It’s an aggressive demand. I put the tinfoil packet on a speaker and flipped over the paper. Nothing. Just brownie crumbs and oil spots.
Were brownies oily?
I sniffed it. Cloying. Sour. Garlic. Eggs. Skunk.
I took a tiny bite of the brownie and had my suspicions confirmed. I folded the brownie away and grabbed a bottle of water to wash out the taste. I wished the story of her ex-boyfriend washed away as easily. Stalkers had a special place in my heart. The place where I kept violence and foul language.
Emily cackled from the studio area. I hadn’t heard her laugh like that in the past two weeks. I went to the sound.
She was the center of attention in the middle of the floor, laughing so hard her face was magenta. That tiny slip of a thing in her black dance clothes laughing so hard her face was red? The tears streaming down her cheeks? Now that was cute.
“What the hell are you doing, Em?” Darlene pushed past her dance team to stand in front of Emily with her arms crossed. I kneeled over Emily and held my hand up to Darlene, because she needed to shut the fuck up right now.
“Emily?”
She was gasping for breath, up on her elbows and ass, chest heaving, eyes bloodshot and slick with laughter. I wanted to lick those tears right off her. I’d seen her out of breath, and I’d seen down her shirt plenty, but I’d never seen her or anyone laugh like that. It was the sexiest thing I’d ever laid eyes on.
“Yeah?” She licked her lips.
“Thirsty?” I held my hand out for her. She took it.
“Uh-huh.”
“Hungry?”
“Yeah. And I feel weird.”
Darlene put her hand on Emily’s arm when she was close enough and looked into her eyes.
“Girl! What the fuck? You’re stoned?”
“It’s not her,” I said. “It’s . . . She ate a brownie. Do you know where they came from?”
I handed Darlene the note, but Emily swiped for it, missed, and slapped it out of my hand on the second pass. It fluttered down, and I caught it before it hit the floor.
Both women held their hands out for it. One swayed; one was steady. One woman paid my salary; the other was the owner of the note itself.
I gave it to the woman who paid my bills.
“That motherfucker,” she said, holding it up for Emily.
“Vince,” she whispered, nearly falling. I held her up, and she gripped my biceps like a vise. She looked at her hand on my suit, then made eye contact with me.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You’re not hurting me.”
She was about to start laughing when Darlene cut in.
“No, I said just no. This is not gonna work.” Darlene was a force of nature. Everything she brought to the stage and studio could be leveled against one person. I was bigger, stronger, and more able, but she was damn intimidating. She paced two steps one way, then two the other, a ball of sharp intensity.
“I’m sorry,” Emily said, cowed even while high.
“Vince Ginetti and his twisted shit are not okay.” She pointed at Emily as if she’d done something wrong. “I knew he was too quiet. Guy like that doesn’t stop wanting to hurt you just because you don’t hear from him. No, no. He’s been waiting. Biding his time. I told you he’d be back.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Emily said.
I didn’t know Emily that well, and I knew even less about her relationship with this Vince guy, but she wasn’t talking to him.
“No,” Darlene shouted. “No, you will not. He’s a stalker. He’s a classic, unoriginal ex-boyfriend stalker. He’s the guy you see on TV in some still picture with an Uzi. And everyone watching hears how he killed his ex-girlfriend’s cat before he chopped her into pieces, and they all wonder why no one did anything.”
“He really killed your cat?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Emily said.
“Yes. Yes he did. For the millionth time, yes he did.”
“I left the poinsettia out. It’s poison.”
Darlene wasn’t done. “I am not going to sit around and wait for you to turn into Genevieve Tremaine.”
My skin crawled at the mention of the dead actress. The gruesome scene of death and everything after it. Every stalker story started and ended with a comparison to that double murder. I went blank for a minute while Darlene continued.
“You will not go near him,” she was saying as I made a decision. “Because if he hits you again, I’m going to kill him, and I’m not doing jailhouse shows.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I offered. That special stalker place in my heart was getting blacker and blacker.
“No!” Emily stiffened.
“Yes. I’m assigned to the UNICEF thing tonight. I can go after.”
“Never,” Emily insisted. “How about before or after never?”
“I’m paying him to protect me.” Darlene waved over her assistant. “Which means you too.”
Emily looked at me with big, pleading brown eyes. They were really expressive. More expressive than I realized. She didn’t want me to go see her ex-boyfriend the stalker. Did she still love him? I wanted to break every bone in his body.
“I know where he lives.” Darlene took a clipboard from her assistant. “Unless his one ball sack actually dropped and he got his own place, which I doubt.” She scribbled something on her assistant’s pad and ripped the page off. “He lives in Loserdale with his fucking mother.”
The last insult stung even though it wasn’t directed at me. I took the slip of paper and pocketed it without looking at the address or Emily’s big brown eyes.