Because of You

Billy grabs onto the neck of my T-shirt and rips it right down the middle until my black lace bra and bare stomach are exposed. He cups my breasts in his hands and squeezes them roughly until I cry out.



“Billy, STOP! What the fuck are you doing?” Finn shouts, grabbing onto his shoulder and trying to pull him away from me.



Billy takes one hand off of me, reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a gun, turning his head and pushing the barrel into Finn’s chest.



“I’m doing what I planned on doing all along. Making Layla mine,” Billy says quietly, cocking the gun and holding it steady right at Finn as he backs away with his hands in the air.



His other hand that still kneads my breast distractedly slides down the front of my body until it reaches the snap of my jeans. He yanks them open roughly, and regardless of the pain, I start to struggle against his hands.



Billy stands up and holds onto the gun with both hands.



“Be a pal and take her pants off for me,” Billy tells Finn as he nods in my direction.



Finn looks at me with terror in his eyes but doesn’t move.



A loud blast of the gun explodes through the room and Finn screams, dropping to the ground and clutching his thigh. Blood pours between his fingers as he tries to hold his hand over the wound in his leg.



“I said, take her pants off,” Billy states calmly as he stares down at Finn and cocks the gun again, loading another bullet into the chamber before pressing the nose of the barrel into the top of Finn’s head.



Finn uses one hand to pull himself over to me and refuses to look me in the eye as he does what Billy says.



“Finn, no. No, no, no, please, don’t do this,” I sob hysterically as he quickly removes my jeans with one hand, and I fight him as best I can, the pain in my leg from being kicked and the jostling as I try to struggle bringing so much agony to my arm that I start to see spots.



“I’m sorry, Lay. I’m so sorry,” Finn whispers as tears fall down his face. He stares at my feet and doesn’t meet my eyes.



Billy lifts his arm above Finn’s head and brings it down fast, the butt of the gun cracking his skull. Finn slumps to the side, unconscious and even though he was shot and going back and forth between hating me and feeling sorry for what he’d done, at least a part of me feels like he might still be on my side. He might still be able to stop all of this from going any further.



“That’s better. His voice was grating on my nerves,” Billy says, sliding the gun into the back of his pants and shoving Finn further away with the heel of his boot.



He advances on me with desire burning in his eyes as he stares up and down my body and licks his lips.



“Just kill me!” I shout at him through my tears. “Just fucking kill me!”



I’d rather die than have his hands on me again. I’d rather close my eyes and never open them again than have him on top of me, taking something that isn’t his. This will ruin me. This will be much worse than dying or having my best friend betray me or my mother take away the one person in my life who ever loved me. This will be something I’ll never be able to stop seeing, stop feeling, or stop experiencing from now until the day I really do die. No amount of happiness will be able to erase from my mind what’s about to happen.



“Oh, you don’t really mean that,” Billy says with a laugh as he stands next to me and continues to look up and down my half-naked body. “You know, I usually like it when they struggle, but you’re kind of useless in that department,” Billy says as he takes his boot and presses it down hard on my injured thigh.



I close my eyes tight and clench my lips together, refusing to scream or let him know how much it hurts.



“Fuck you!” I spit out angrily, finally opening my eyes and staring at him with hatred.



He sighs and shakes his head at me.



“We really need to do something about that mouth of yours. I think this will be better for both of us if you just shut the fuck up,” he tells me before bringing his fist down against the side of my head.



Chapter 23



“I should have known better than to tell you to stay put,” Adam tells me with a small laugh.



Austin had made it to my place in record time. I jumped in his car, turned on my portable police scanner, and quickly discovered the address the police department was searching.



Looking around the small mobile home, I curl my lip in disgust when I see the dirty dishes piled in the sink, the stains on the walls and carpet, and enough fast food wrappers to feed a small country littering every single surface.



“This is the third address we’ve found for Billy Marsh. The other two were apartments, and they were empty. The landlord for both places told us the guy hasn’t been there in months and if we see him to let him know he’s been evicted,” Adam explains as he turns and tells the fingerprint analyst to start in the back of the trailer and make his way forward. “There wasn’t anything in the other two places linking this guy to Layla, Finn, or Eve, so we’re hoping we’ll find something in here. Otherwise, we’re back to square one.”



Adam gives me a pat on the back, then walks away to talk to a detective who just came through the door after interviewing neighbors.



After Eve had confessed everything to Gwen and me, I immediately called Adam to fill him in. He knows Eve hired Ray/Billy to kill Jack, and he knows she kept the secret of Finn and Layla being siblings all these years. Adam had sent a patrol car to my house to pick Eve up and take her into the station. Surprisingly, after Eve unburdened herself of all her transgressions, she accepted responsibility for all of the things she’s done wrong and went with them willingly. She knows her life is pretty much over and there's nothing she could do about it but cooperate.



Adam comes back over to me and flips open his note pad.



“We found Finn’s vehicle. It was in a pretty bad hit and run accident just south of downtown on a side street that doesn’t get much traffic. The front end is completely smashed, and it was hit so hard that it was pushed into a telephone pole,” Adam explains as he reads the notes in his hand.



“Oh Jesus. Is Layla okay? Was she in there?” I ask frantically, hoping to God that she wasn’t hurt too bad.



Adam looks up from his pad and shakes his head.



“The vehicle was empty, Brady. There was some blood on the driver’s side and passenger side. The lab is running the samples right now just to make sure, but…”



Adam trails off and I’m glad he doesn’t continue. I know what he's about to say, and I don’t need to hear him say it out loud.



Layla was in the car when it crashed, she’s bleeding, and now who knows where the fuck she is. I know from when she was attacked outside the club that her blood doesn't clot very well, so if she’s hurt bad enough and doesn’t receive treatment, her life will be on the line. I should have never let her walk out that door. I should have told her the truth when she stormed over to me with all that passion and conviction in her voice. I should have turned around and told her I loved her instead of pushing her away and making her feel like she didn’t matter.



“Hey, Brady,” Austin calls to me from the hallway. “There’s something back here you need to take a look at.”



Stepping over trash and dirty clothes, I head down the hall behind Austin, following him into a small, cramped bedroom with Adam right on my heels.



“Oh my God,” I mutter as I look around the room.



“Holy fuck,” Adam whispers, echoing my shock.



Every single available surface is covered with pictures and news articles of Layla and Hummingbird Records. There’s a picture of her on stage at practically every venue she’s been to and pictures of her from magazine articles, photo shoots, and entirely too many candid photos taken from a distance with a telephoto lens. Layla having lunch with Finn at an outdoor café; Layla grocery shopping at Puckett’s; Layla sitting on her front porch holding onto the guitar she’d just played for me; a copy of the picture of the two of us in the truck that had been left on my front windshield.



There are articles pinned to the wall about each new recording artist that Hummingbird signed, copies of their financial reports, and print-outs of Eve’s personal brokerage and savings accounts. Her net worth and that of Hummingbird Records is plastered all over one wall and up on part of the ceiling.



“Jesus, this guy is a sick fuck,” Austin says as he bends down and looks at the picture of Layla and me. I want to tear that thing off of the wall and rip it to shreds so no one else can see it, no one else can be a part of that private moment between the two of us, but I know I can’t. It’s evidence and it needs to stay right where it is.



“Eve swore she hadn’t talked to this guy since that night she asked him to do something about Jack, right?” Austin asks. “If she’s telling the truth and she didn’t hire this guy to stalk Layla as some sort of twisted publicity stunt, who the hell did?”



I run my fingers through my hair in frustration and turn around in a circle, my eyes running over every single thing in the room.



“Finn. It has to be Finn. He lied about Billy being in custody to get her out of the house,” I reply.



“Okay, so he was pissed about the fact that they were siblings and she got all the limelight when he got diddly squat, but that doesn’t explain how the hell he even knew who this guy was or why he would do something as stupid as put her in his path,” Austin replies.



“How would you feel if one day you found out you had a rich megastar for a sister, and the mother who did everything she could to make sure your sister rose to stardom completely denied your existence?” I ask him.



“Yeah, that’s pretty messed up, and it would probably make me mad, but mad enough to form a connection with a dangerous, convicted felon who would probably stab you in the back, literally and figuratively, to get what he wants? This Billy guy is ten shades of fucked up from what his rap sheet says. Why the hell would Finn want to tangle with him?”



Glancing over at the wall that holds the only window in the room, my brow furrows as I step closer to a large blueprint that hangs on the wall to the left of it.



“Is that the layout of Hummingbird?” Austin asks, coming up behind me.



“Yeah, it is. Why the fuck would he need this?”



Austin and I study the page, but it’s just a standard blueprint. There’s nothing written on it and no notes to clue us in as to why this guy has this in his home.



“Can you say obsessed much? Maybe he’s planning on taking all of Eve’s money, taking what he thinks should be his since she basically used him and then tossed him aside,” Austin thinks aloud.



“That would explain why he has all of her financial information, but what the hell would he need this for and where does Finn fit in?” I ask, pointing to the blue-tinted engineering design that shows every emergency exit, every cubicle, every meeting room, and every storage space.



We stare at it for a few more minutes, my impatience growing with each breath I take. Every second we waste is another one where Layla is missing.



“Is Finn his kid? Eve messed around with the guy nine years ago. Who knows how long it was going on before that? Maybe the two of them hatched a plan. Father and son taking what’s rightfully theirs,” Adam states.



“Eve denied that when I asked her. She said that she knows for a fact Finn isn’t Billy’s son, and when I accused her of lying, she told me to go ahead and rerun the DNA. The father was a one-night stand. She hadn’t seen Billy for at least a year before Finn was conceived,” I explain.



“Well, there goes that idea,” Austin complains, angrily flicking his finger against the blueprint. The tack holding it to the wall comes loose, and the page flutters to the floor. It lands facedown, and I quickly pick it up when I see handwriting on the back in the lower left-hand corner.



“Soundproof basement. Access door next to conference room B. Building will be closed on Sunday, will make sure the delivery door on the south side of the building is left unlocked. I’ll make sure she’s there,” I read aloud. “This is Finn’s handwriting.”



I feel sick to my stomach as I read the words that Layla’s own brother wrote on the back of the page.



“Son of a bitch. He delivered her up like a lamb to the slaughter,” Austin curses.



Crumpling up the page in my hand, I throw it against the wall and stalk from the room, rage flowing through me as I shove people out of my way. Slamming open the door of the trailer, I pull my gun from my side holster and check the clip, making sure I have more than enough bullets to shoot through Finn’s heart when I get to that lying sack of shit.



“Brady! Hold up!” Austin yells as he jogs up to me and grabs my arm.



I fling it off and quickly turn to face him, my fear for Layla’s safety exploding out of me.



“Don’t fucking tell me to hold up! I’ve been climbing the walls this whole fucking day hoping and praying that she’s still alive,” I shout at him.



“Dude, I know. I know you’re freaked the fuck out, but you need to be smart about this. You can’t go in there alone, half-cocked or you’ll get yourself killed,” he argues.



I shove both of my hands against his chest and push him away from me. He stumbles a few times before regaining his footing.



“Do you think I give a fuck what happens to me if Layla is gone? DO YOU?” I scream.



Austin quickly advances on me and gets in my face as a few neighbors and a handful of Nashville’s finest stand around outside the trailer watching me lose my shit.



“Don’t be a fucking asshole, man! I’m here to help you, you stubborn son of a bitch! What do you think you’re going to do? Go in there with that Nancy-ass weapon and light the place up like fucking Rambo?” Austin shouts back.