Runaway Model (14 page)

"Oh yeah. Telepathy. Almost like with... twinsies..." Kyle sank down onto the cot again. His swollen eyelids snapped shut.

"Is it safe to take him back to my hotel?" Bryce asked

"Perfectly safe," Dr. Jacobsen said. "Just let him sleep for a few hours. And don't be surprised if he's forgotten all about the entire incident in the morning."

Bryce had four strong men with him—an army that seemed ridiculous now. But a couple of them would serve to carry Kyle out.

There was a noise in the halls. Footsteps. Voices.

"No!" A loud, shrill female voice just outside the door. She couldn't suspect that everyone inside had gone absolutely silent, allowing them to hear every word. "I absolutely forbid it."

"Don't be ridiculous, Pamela." A British man's silken voice, probably more educated than Kyle's. At least for Bryce it was easier to understand. "Evidently the boy runs one of my biggest fan blogs. I'm not walking out of here without making some token show of concern."

Kyle's eyes were fluttering again. Somewhere inside he'd heard. Pushing against the cot with both hands, he forced himself to sit up.

No one said anything. What could you say?

When Stoney Rockland walked into the room, you understood why he was a star. In a photo, he was just a tired-looking man in his late twenties who partied too much. Puffy eyes, greasy hair. Bryce hadn't seen the appeal.

But in person Stoney was a force of nature. It was probably his attitude more than anything. His attitude and his miles-long legs. The way he wore his painted-on jeans had clearly been a huge influence on Kyle.

And it was easy to see why, since Kyle and Stoney were two of a kind. Tall and lean, with those long guitarist's fingers. Brown hair, brown eyes.

But Stoney was a decade older, and he had a decade's worth of polish on top of his natural charisma. He smelled of cigarettes and expensive whiskey—a delicious invitation to sin. His too-long hair had been slicked off his face with gel, giving him a high forehead that made him look more intelligent than Bryce believed he really was. It put the focus on his eyes.

Born in Louisiana, working in North Dakota, Bryce had seen a thousand men in a thousand cheap cowboy bars who looked just like Stoney. And yet you knew somehow that he was special. Maybe it was the defined eyebrows and the high cheekbones that made him look like a sculptor's model. Maybe it was a kind of invisible magic you couldn't hope to explain.

"Stoney! I need a photo for me blog," Kyle said. He tried to sit straighter as he patted down his own pockets. "But I lost me mobile." Kyle's northern accent, always heavy, was heavier still when he was under the influence of a mind-altering drug.

"I'll post the photo to my Insta," Stoney said. "You can download it there when you're ready."

Bryce understood what Stoney saw—his own head of security, several guards that belonged to the venue, a competent-looking middle-aged woman in scrubs who could only be the doctor. And then some random hanger-on with no apparent reason for existing. Everybody else needed their hands free.

Before Bryce quite realized how it happened, he was holding Stoney's phone to Instagram Kyle and Stoney with their arms entwined around each other's waist. Kyle smiled happily if a bit hazily as he leaned toward the singer. A flash and a filter—Bryce picked one at random—and then the photo was posted online for all the world to see.

"Thank you, mate," Kyle said. "I'll never forget this night."

Dr. Jacobsen shot Bryce a sad smile. She figured there was almost no chance Kyle would remember it. Bryce could read it on her face.

"Sign my arm," Kyle said. "I have me marker." He pulled a black Sharpie® out of his pocket and pushed the sleeve of his shirt almost to his shoulder.

Stoney took the marker. Looked down.

Maybe at the back of his mind he'd already noticed the way the pink star sapphire twinkled in the flash. But it hadn't quite registered before. Now he was staring right at it.

The Sharpie® dropped to the floor. Bounced. No one moved.

No one even breathed.

"You." Stoney jerked away from Kyle as if he'd been burned. "I didn't recognize you with hair."

"You remember me?" Kyle was still smiling. "
You
remember
me
?"

"I remember me own fucking ring."

"Oh fuck me, mate. The ring. I can explain. I was going to give it back. But I had to wait till I was eighteen to see you again. And... and..." Kyle's voice trickled off. He'd lost the thread of what he was saying.

Not that Stoney was listening anyway. He was too busy snatching the phone from Bryce's hands and tapping at speed on the touchscreen.

Bryce didn't bother to wonder.

He knew for a stone-cold fact that Stoney was deleting the picture from Instagram.

"Keep the fucking ring," Stoney said. "I don't want it back. I don't want to ever see it again. And that goes double for you."

He was out of the room in two strides. The sound of footsteps echoed more and more softly as he walked away.

"Stoney came to see me," Kyle said. "Stoney took a new picture with me."

His eyes closed.

"Stoney loves me."

His eyelashes fluttered over slightly swollen lids.

"And I love him."

D
r. Jacobsen followed them out and watched Bryce's crew load a sleeping Kyle into the Mercedes.

"Mr. Auburn." She touched him lightly on the arm.

"Bryce."

"Bryce. Listen, the drug affects the brain. Sometimes the victim... imagines things. Says things. He doesn't really mean those things. He doesn't even know he's saying them. It's like somebody talking in his sleep. Sometimes it's real but mostly... mostly it's just a dream."

"OK. OK." He really, truly didn't want to talk about it.

But Dr. Jacobsen wouldn't go. "There's something else you need to understand. It's a side effect that's possible with any drug that interferes with memory."

"It's been a long fucking night, doctor. Whatever you're trying to tell me, just tell me." Bryce had no idea if Rockland or Daniels thought he was really Kyle's brother.

But Jacobsen knew perfectly well he wasn't.

"Sometimes when a person can't remember what happened, they imagine things about the person who's right in front of them. Do you understand me?" 

"No, Laura, not really. Please. Spell it out like I'm a stupid redneck from Lake Charles, Louisiana."

"Even if he can't remember it consciously, Kyle had a traumatic experience tonight. He came close to being abducted and possibly raped or even..."

Perhaps she had a superstitious fear of saying, "killed." She stuttered before she went on. "Sometimes the victim gets paranoid. When you can't really be sure what happened, the mind has a way of inventing stories to fill in the blanks. A missing memory sometimes becomes a false memory."

She took his arm and looked him steadily in the eye to see if he understood. Of course he did. How many times had he seen it happen to his parents?

That night his father remembered winning twenty-five hundred at dice. But didn't remember losing it all back again. A bad night. A worse morning. Bryce never knew if he should say something or if he should let his dad keep calling his best friend a thief.

He'd even started to speak up. But he was only seventeen. His dad didn't want to be accused of being in blackout by a teenager.

"I would strongly advise you to keep yourself safe tonight," the doctor was saying. "Don't be alone with Kyle. He could be very confused and angry when he wakes up for real. His mind could... invent things."

Oh, Bryce understood, all right. He didn't like the logic, but it made sense. And nobody's more vulnerable to a false accusation than a rich man in an unpopular industry.

"I'm willing to stay with you tonight," she said. "I can monitor Kyle's condition and... be a witness too."

That too made sense. And Bryce wasn't a man to turn away good talent.

"Of course. You're right, of course. Let's go."

He didn't ask her fee for making a house call. A hotel suite call, in this case. Whatever the price—and he was confident it would be exorbitant—Bryce Auburn was good for it. What's the point of being rich if you had to count pennies at a time like this?

***

B
ryce and his team had the entire penthouse floor of the downtown hotel. He could barely bring himself to look out the tall windows. Every time he did, he thought of those other windows—the floor-to-ceiling glass that gave Bryce and Kyle a view of all the lights of Vegas.

Now Kyle slept alone in his own bedroom. Dr. Jacobsen slept in the adjacent room. Bryce's bedroom, the master suite, was in the opposite wing overlooking the sunrise. His pilot, co-pilot, and two members of his private security team were sleeping in the four bedrooms in between.

The other two guards were coordinating with the hotel's security. It seemed like overkill. But it made the men feel useful. And Bryce supposed it couldn't hurt. After all, the predator who went after Kyle was still out there.

It wasn't impossible that he'd be back.

Bryce needed sleep. But it was a restless sleep. The kind where you keep waking up and telling yourself it was a nightmare.

And I love him. And I love him.

***

I
t was the crack of noon. Bryce had been up long enough to shower, shave, order a couple of pots of coffee and a selection of pastries.

"Mr. Auburn," Dr. Jacobsen said. "Kyle's awake now."

"Does he...? Is he...?"

"He doesn't seem to have any false memories."

"But?"

"But he probably doesn't have many real ones either. He's talking about Stoney Rockland."

"Yeah OK. OK."

"I'll be in the breakfast nook if you need me."

"Try the blueberry. It's excellent."

"Sure. Thanks."

Kyle was standing at the penthouse window. Red silk briefs. The pink star sapphire on his long right hand. Nothing else.

He was twisting the ring on his finger, an odd expression on his face. For once, those teasing lips weren't crooked upward in a tiny half-secret smile.

Then he saw Bryce's reflection in the glass. "Bryce." Kyle still seemed confused. "What? How? What are you doing here?"

"Where do you think you are?" Bryce asked.

"I'm, uh, I don't know. There was a doctor. She said there was an accident during the concert? But I thought... Stoney... didn't Stoney come to save me?"

Bryce sat on the mussed bedsheets. "Come sit next to me, Kyle."

Kyle did but he didn't sit quite close enough to touch. "I had a bad dream."

"No, honey. You were poisoned. A man called Nigel—"

Kyle's eyes, already large, got larger.

"The doctor believes Nigel put a rape drug in your drink. The stadium's security crew got suspicious, and they chased him off before he could abduct you. But apparently it was a pretty close escape."

Kyle blinked.

"Do you remember any of that, honey?" The southern endearment kept coming out of his mouth before Bryce could stop himself.

Kyle sat still and quiet.

"Who's Nigel, Kyle?"

"I did see Nigel," he said after a minute. "It was before the concert. Before soundcheck. We put it about online where some of us were going to meet and wait for Stoney. Get some autographs and Instas before the show. I don't know how Nigel found out. I didn't think he knew about any of me... hobbies and blogs."

"Nigel knew you from England."

"Nigel was a maths teacher at my school. It started when I was fourteen." Kyle went silent, as if those two short sentences explained everything.

Bryce waited. He felt he couldn't push. He knew some of this already from the polished words on the blog. But hearing the story raw like this, direct from Kyle's lips—

"I stopped going to school so much, innit? I got into trouble with the truant officer, and then somehow Nigel met me mother. They began to date. She thought he was a concerned teacher. I, I, I—" Kyle, usually so exuberant, seemed to keep running into blocks that kept him from finishing his sentences.

"And now he's followed you to America."

"I thought he'd forget me if I were gone. So I went. I don't know how he found me. Maybe he found me blog. I don't know. I don't post me real name on it, but there's a photo... maybe a Google image search would turn it up."

Kyle's voice trailed off. Bryce could see that he was blaming himself.
Oh, Kyle
.

"What do you remember?"

"I said I'd bring pizza to the meeting place, but there were more fans there waiting than I expected. I'd gotten messages from five or six kids but there were way more than that. So I had to go out and get another couple of pizzas. When I was walking back, I... saw him. I saw him from a distance. I knew it was him even before I saw his face."

Bryce was afraid to breathe for fear he'd break Kyle's concentration.

"I don't remember what happened to the pizzas. Maybe I dropped them. But I couldn't go back and join me group. He was twice the age of anyone there. Three times the age, really. Some of the fangirls were only thirteen or fourteen. They would believe him. Not me.

"I could see him talking to them. He's very good with girls because he always looks them dead in the eye instead of at their chest and they think it's because he thinks they're humans. Me mum was the same way. It's really because he's disgusted by bodies. Most bodies. He told me himself. He was always trying to tell me I was something special. That most bodies are clammy and wet and gross but I was different."

Kyle was crying. He didn't realize it. The after-effects of the drug, Bryce guessed. Kyle wasn't a boy who cried.

"Kyle, man, it's OK. It's OK. You're safe here."

"I don't know if they met Stoney before soundcheck or not. I couldn't wait. I had to go away and just go in with the crowd. They probably think I ran off with the pizza money. I had a dream where someone called me a thief."

Bryce could almost hear Kyle's heartbeat.

"So strange. I almost feel like I met Stoney and posed for a new Insta. It's like a dream I had that seems so real. Me phone. Where's me phone?"