Chapter Twenty-Three
Troy
By the time we arrived at the hospital, Cailin had gone to sleep on the gurney in the ambulance.
“Probably from all the shock,” Candice muttered. “Don’t worry about getting a shot of you in her hospital room. We’ll come back and do it tomorrow when she’s actually awake again. Fucking Glenn and his bullshit…”
We checked Cailin in with the help of the EMTs, and Candice filled out the appropriate paperwork. Once we were done, we met up with the small team of film crew guys that Glenn had sent after us, and we headed back to the ranch with them.
“I can’t believe after all this time, the chefs managed to screw up like that,” one of the film crew guys said from the front of the car.
“No shit,” Candice replied. “But at least she’s gonna be okay.”
As they chatted, I thought back to the awful events of the last hour or so. Something had been bothering me; playing on the back of my mind, and I finally realized what it was. The peanuts in the curry hadn’t been an accident at all. Why else would Eden have burst in like she did? She must’ve seen Blair doing something on the footage earlier, and she’d come to warn us about the food.
I’d been so caught up in all the panic earlier that none of this had occurred to me before now, and I couldn’t wait to get back and see what was going on. Hopefully, Eden had told everyone what Blair had done, and the situation was finally under control.
I soon found out that quite the opposite was true.
We pulled up outside the mansion at the ranch ten minutes later, and we saw a Marin County cop car sitting outside. I initially assumed they’d come to arrest Blair for her attempt at harming Cailin, but when we stepped inside, we realized an entirely different scenario had played out.
“Oh my god, you guys!” a petite blonde intern with a snub nose said as she approached us on our way in. “You won’t believe what happened in there.” She jerked a thumb towards the main dining room and went on. “That junior producer Eden basically tried to kill Cailin. Turns out she put peanuts in the food and stole her Epi-Pen. They found it in her trailer.”
“What?” Candice said, her eyebrows shooting up. “No way. Eden wouldn’t do that.”
The intern nodded vehemently. “She did! Crazy, right? Apparently she’s in love with Troy or something,” she said before turning to me. “She’s been the one sabotaging all the girls from the start. I guess she wanted you all to herself, huh?”
She winked at me, and I frowned and strode into the dining room without bothering to reply. Blair was in tears on one side of the room, being comforted by Hayley, and Eden was being held by one of the police officers attending the scene.
“I’m telling you, this is all a mistake!” she was saying. “You can’t arrest me!”
“Hey! What the hell is going on?” I asked in an acid tone, my hands balling into fists by my side as I stepped close to them. Glenn hurried over to me and started to explain his version of events, and I held up my hand. “No! I know what you think happened, but it’s total bullshit! Blair is fucking insane! There’s video evidence.”
One of the officers looked at me. “Mr. Ballard, please step back. There’s no video evidence. Ms. Zamora claimed there was, but…well…it’s all conveniently gone now.”
She gestured towards the floor, and I followed her line of sight to see Eden’s laptop, smashed into pieces. Great.
“Convenient for Blair, yeah. What about the CCTV stuff in the network archives?” I asked. “It shows Blair going into the kitchen on the night of the laxative incident. If she did that, then you have to admit there’s a chance she did this too.”
“Ms. Zamora said the same thing when we first got here, and we’ve just watched that video to check her story,” the other officer said. “It doesn’t prove anything. All it shows is Ms. Gilbert going into the kitchen that night.”
“I was just looking for someone to ask about the carb content of the food that night!” Blair called out, wiping a stray tear from her face. I gave her a filthy look, and she burst into a new stream of faux tears.
“Yes, and on the other hand, we have the stolen Epi-Pen and a bag of peanuts in Ms. Zamora’s trailer, not to mention the fact that she knew you and apparently dated you many years ago in high school, Mr. Ballard,” the officer continued. “It seems she never got over that and subsequently developed a bit of an obsession with you.”
I narrowed my eyes and shook my head. “This is ridiculous,” I said. “Sure, Eden and I dated, but that was a high school romance. It was years ago. She’s been nothing but a consummate professional towards me since the show started.”
I saw Eden exhale slightly with relief as I spoke. She must’ve been worried that I was going to try and save her by admitting to our current relationship, but I wasn’t going to risk that—I didn’t see how it would even help all that much, and there had to be another way of solving this problem without getting her fired for sleeping with me.
Candice put her hand on my shoulder. “Troy, let it go. Eden fooled me too, but I guess it all adds up,” she murmured. “I can hardly believe it.”
I couldn’t believe it either. Blair had spun an absurd web of lies that everyone actually seemed to believe, and even Candice was falling for her bullshit. I couldn’t stand this; couldn’t stand seeing Eden looking so sad that no one believed her. All I wanted to do was whisk her far, far away from this shitty situation and make her happy again. There was nothing better than seeing her smile—whenever she beamed with happiness, she brought so much light into the surrounding area that she could probably bring the sun out from behind a cloud, and there was truly nothing I loved more.
Wait…a cloud….
I suddenly had the flash of inspiration I needed, and I knew exactly how to help Eden. Under the stress of the situation, she had likely panicked and forgotten about it, just like me. “Hold on,” I said, holding my hands up. “I know how to sort this out. I was in the media room the other day, when it was raining, and Eden was in there with her laptop.”
“That’s true,” Candice interjected with a nod. “I was in there with them for a while.”
Glenn waved his hand. “All right, go on, Troy. What’s your point?”
I nodded. “Well, we got chatting about computers, and at one point she mentioned that her laptop automatically backs up every bit of her data to the iCloud. So even though her computer is broken, she can still log in and access her data online from any other functional device. Right?”
Eden’s face suddenly brightened. “Oh, yes, that’s right! Let me get online and show you the video. Please!”
The officer holding Eden took a step back as Candice stepped towards them and handed over her smart-phone. “Here. Log in,” she said, a suspicious look still clouding her features.
As Eden typed her credentials into the phone, Blair’s demeanor changed from fearful and teary to purely psychotic. “No!” she screamed. “Don’t! I have to stay! I want to win!”
She made a mad dash towards Eden, trying to knock the phone out of her hand. The other officer quickly grabbed her, and she flailed in his arms and continued to scream as he restrained her.
“Well, I guess that proves who the guilty party is,” Candice said, giving Blair a disdainful look before turning back to Eden. “I’m sorry, Eden. It looked pretty bad for you for a minute there.”
Eden gave her a shaky smile. “I get it. No hard feelings.”
She located the video on her online cloud storage account, and she showed it to Candice, just to prove her innocence beyond a shadow of doubt. One of the officers watched it with interest as well, and he nodded to his colleague. “Cuff her. We’re taking her in,” he said, gesturing to Blair before turning back to Eden. “Ma’am, you’re going to have to allow us access to this video. We’ll also need a statement from you at some point soon. And I apologize for restraining you while we tried to get the full story. We were just doing our job.”
Eden nodded. “I understand.”
Blair continued to scream and cry hysterically as the officers slapped handcuffs on her, read her rights to her and led her out of the room a few minutes later, and Glenn looked at the remaining film crew, who were apparently still capturing every second of the madness. He waved his hand at them.
“Show’s over, boys! Turn those cameras off,” he said. Then he looked at Eden, his eyes flashing and his voice surprisingly frosty, given that he’d been in the wrong when it came to accusing her. “Eden, I’m sorry we believed her over you. We have some other things to discuss, though, and I’d rather not say it here, so you’re going to have to come and talk with me in my office. Clean yourself up first. Your mascara is running and you look like a damn panda.”
With that, he turned and marched out of the room.
“Ooh, she’s totally gonna get fired,” a nearby lighting technician with zero filter whispered, loud enough for us to hear. Candice shushed him, and I threw him a dirty look before turning back to Eden.
Her eyes were wide, and her hands were shaking. I knew exactly what she was thinking. She was the one who’d recruited Blair as a contestant for the show, and now Glenn might hold her responsible for all the craziness which had just occurred. Like the tactless lighting crew guy had just said, there was a serious chance that she could lose her job over this, and I quietly murmured at her and handed her a tissue to wipe her tearstained face. “It’s going to be okay,” I said. “Try to stay calm.”
“I can’t. I’m pretty sure Glenn’s going to fire me,” she whispered in response.
“No matter what happens, I’ll support you,” I replied as Candice finally stepped out of earshot to admonish the lighting crew. “You know that, right?”
She nodded. “Yes. I know. But still…”
I took a step closer. “Look, I know it’s a terrible moment for me to say this for the first time, but I want you to know something. I love you, Eden.”
Her face lit up, and I grinned back at her, glad to see that beautiful smile of hers again. “I think that’s exactly what I needed to hear right now,” she replied. “I love you too, Troy. Now wish me luck…”