“—is still happening!” Ivy yelled, only projecting the last half of her statement as the door slammed behind her so violently the room shook a little.
I could only imagine what the hell had happened since she’d left to get her hair done just four hours ago. Security had been with her the whole time, and I’d even checked in halfway through the process to make sure all was going well.
“What?” I asked, standing up from my spot on the couch. Her laptop was on the coffee table in front of me, and I’d been drafting an email to Jeremy.
He’d called and texted several times too, but Ivy and I had agreed not to get into any real details right now about timing or plans with anyone—even best friends.
We didn’t have a strategy for our next move yet, and we wanted to make one together rather than being influenced by other people. Of course, that left my communication topics pretty sparse, and all I’d actually managed so far was a Hey Jer, what’s shakin’? I imagined if Ivy’s grand entrance hadn’t interrupted me, I would have finished it off with an award-winning inquisition like How are the girls?
“What’s going on?” I questioned, rounding the couch to take in Ivy from head to toe. Her hair was greatly improved, even if the bags under her eyes were deepening by the day, and the spitting anger had put a little rose in her cheeks. All in all, she looked better than I’d seen her since the night everything happened.
With her showing no visible signs of injury, I’d have to rely on her storytelling ability to fill me in on the actual reasoning for her freak-out. These days, the cause could be nearly anything. “Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not okay! Mariah showed up!”
My brows drew together. “Where?”
“What do you mean, where?” she shouted with a stomp of her foot. “At the salon!”
My body instantly on alert, the line of my frame snapped straight and rigid. “How the hell did she know where you were?” And why the fuck hadn’t security told me about it?
“Apparently, she tracked my phone,” Ivy replied, tossing her hands in the air.
Any careful left in me fled with a vengeance.
“What the fuck?” I growled.
Ivy’s sister had just been killed by a crazy stalker, and now her publicist was tracking her phone? No fucking way.
And how in the fuck was that even possible?
“I’m calling the cops.” I rounded the couch again, headed back to the coffee table for my phone when Ivy stopped me with a tight grip around my bicep.
“No, no,” she insisted quickly and with seriousness meant to get my attention. “I made that up. I don’t know how she found me.”
“For fuck’s sake, Ivy,” I snapped, losing my cool a little bit. “You can’t just say shit like that.”
It was slander at the very least and a whole fuckton of cans of worms at the worst. When it came to Ivy, I wasn’t taking any fucking chances anymore, and any threat had to be treated with credibility on a large-scale level. One thing I’d never do again was trust her safety to just me. I was a trained professional, but quantity was important. I wanted several lines of defense all lined up in a row, and I’d be the last.
I made a mental note to have Baylor and Hampton start trying to figure out how the fuck Mariah had actually found her.
“Would you listen to the important part?” Ivy railed, throwing herself onto the couch and tossing her bag to the floor at the side. “Jesus!”
I clenched my jaw and reminded myself I’d pledged to let Ivy use me however she needed to feel better. And right now, she needed me to shut up and listen. It went against a whole lot of biological markers not to engage when someone argued with me, but for Ivy, I could find the self-control.
At least until she was back in fighting form.
“All right. What’s the important part?”
“The movie! Mariah says it’s in editing. They’re going through with it.”
I gentled my voice and kept her devastation in mind. I’d never thought they would shelve the project for fucking anything, but she’d obviously thought they would. “I suspected they would, baby.”
“Why? Camilla was… That fucking psycho was a producer. They’re still giving him credit!”
Logic and reason weren’t exactly the best weapons in a talk with someone in the middle of a vent, but they were all I had to use. That, and my love. “Legally, they probably have to.”
“Why on earth wouldn’t they drop this thing? My sister died! You want to talk about legal? Where’s the legal entanglement with that?”
“Baby,” I started gently, advancing slowly to her place on the couch and dropping to my knees to take her face in my hands. “The studio has a lot of money wrapped up in this project. Contracts to fulfill.”
“Who would even want to see it after all this?” Her voice shook with the evidence of vivid mental details. “Knowing what he fucking did to her?”
“A lot of people.” The truth was, people were morbidly curious. Death and the events around it always attracted attention. If they didn’t, the project never would have gotten to filming in the first place. “Truthfully, the studio likely knows the attention will bring in even more money.”
Racked with disbelief and unwilling to accept it, Ivy jumped from the couch, her voice rising right along with her body. I moved enough to let her go but hovered close as she moved to the side of the couch and bent low to her bag, all the while yelling, “We have to do something! We can’t let them do this!”
She dug her phone from her purse and started calling numbers. She glared as she waited, dropping the bag back to the floor and tripping on the strap as she started to pace. I jumped forward and freed her foot, and she kept walking like nothing had happened.
“Mariah!” she yelled into the phone when the ringing reached its culmination. She was a flurry of motion as she circled the room manically.
“Yeah, sorry for yelling at you before. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
A brief pause I wasn’t convinced actually allowed for any talking on the other end observed, she dove right back in.
“Listen, I need you to get me a meeting.”
She shook her head and snorted, but what she didn’t do was cry.
She’d found purpose, apparently, in stopping the film from making it all the way to theaters.
I just hoped the fall wouldn’t be too bad when the reality of almost certain disappointment set in.
“Yep,” she confirmed. “Stan Feilding. Head of the studio. Just as soon as you can get it.”