Sabotage (19 page)

“How the fuck we get paid to get killed?” he finally asked.

Raylon still seethed about the whole afternoon but to accuse him of being the reason for this? Incredible. He knew he could say more than anyone else, but, frankly, that wasn’t much these days. He shook his head and didn’t make eye contact, hoping Joey would get the idea.

“Man, you remember? You remember anything? I
told
you not to do this. I
told
you this was bad news. This tha one you made me get in cash.”

Joey looked at him as if they had never laid eyes on each other before.

Raylon chuckled in disbelief. “Shit. They came to us last month. You say we don’t know them, they ain’t regular industry. I said it ain’t worth it. You said get the money in cash.”

It was obvious this didn’t register with Joey. Raylon thought he was playing dumb.

“So I met the guy. He gave me fifty in cash then, and then gave me fifty in cash two days ago. Same guy. Italian or some Mediterranean motherfucker. It’s what we went to the strip club on.”

Now Joey nodded. He remembered that. He made it rain like a tropical storm.

“Bitch ask me, you there too? He knew I saw something.’ I don’t think I saw him, but he knew I knew something.’ I sure as hell know where he live.”

Joey’s eyes got big. “You know where he live?”

“I followed him. I knew nothin’ was right.”

“Raylon, you my nigga.”

“I don’t wanna talk about it right now, man. I don’t wanna talk about it. We gots a score to settle. Tell me where we need to go.”

It was the one thing they could agree on.

M
andy relayed word to Grant. They were going to Vegas. They called Caitlin and made arrangements to meet her near the airport. Mandy made Grant place the call on speakerphone so she could hear both sides of the conversation. He could hear the trepidation in Caitlin’s voice. Grant thought Naseem was affected by the call as well, as he now appeared to be constantly frowning.

They headed to the airport. Naseem looked more perturbed than he was previously. When Mandy took a phone call, Naseem motioned to him. He needed a moment alone with him.

“Something just hit me,” he whispered while Mandy kept talking. “Check your bank account.”

Grant stared at him. “What?”

“Just do it.”

Grant was about to say something back, but he didn’t want to tip off Mandy. Naseem still hadn’t disappointed him; every bit of information was gold.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and went to his banking app. Grant put in his password and scrolled to the accounts screen. He quickly put the phone in his pocket as they navigated the tarmac and were let out to get on the jet.

He looked at Naseem as they boarded the plane. Naseem’s look said he had figured it out. He didn’t need to tell him. Grant went into the air knowing that his account had just had a deposit made just that afternoon. That morning, he had checked it. It was quite healthy, just short of six figures.

Now it held ten million dollars.

H
e marched halfway back across the room before they knew what was going on. Priscilla stood up and tried to reason with him. Jilly and Tilly sensed that wasn’t going to help, and they scattered to the corners of the room. That left him with Holly, beautiful, lithe Holly, who was now frozen in the middle of the bed, looking at him with terror, which almost did it for a minute. Could he build on that? He closed his eyes for a second and listened to her whimper. It was close to making him hard but not enough. He pulled the gun up and shot her.

Blood went wild. It covered Jilly, who was too close to the bed to avoid it. The others screamed but stood still, not knowing if it was better to run or to freeze.

Britt looked at Priscilla, who was trying to hold his gaze.

“Let’s try this again.”

B
ecky thought about it. Joey had told her that it could be dangerous for him if the world knew he was alive. But they needed to! All of her friends who had met minor rap stars like Wocka Flocka Flame and Twista would be crazy jelly if they knew her part in history! She was with the fucking Pal during all of this! What luck.

But surely she could be down, keep his secret, right?

And then it hit her. This shit could get her on TV and make her some money! Her nails didn’t French tip themselves.

She knew he’d be mad, but Joey would get over it. She was sure of this.

She pressed the on button. Then she saw it: Joey had slipped out the battery. She wondered if he had seen the picture she took.

C
aitlin soaked in the news. They were coming: Grant, Naseem, and Mandy, who had so opportunistically taken Grant’s job in the wake of the scandal. She shook her head as she realized that even now she was taking up for Grant even after all he did to her.

She remembered how perfect that summer was: seeing the man she loved mature in every way, taking those fancy trips, and finally loving her job, mainly because she was so preoccupied with everything else. It was the most magical time of her life. She got to fly to meet her future husband who was protecting the
president
, and she had gotten the romantic proposal on the beach, the exact way any girl would want it to happen. It seemed too good to be true. For three weeks, it was.

Their picture had appeared in the papers in a manner befitting the minor celebrity Grant was. She showed her ring to everyone she knew, and together they celebrated in a way that only women can do over a perfect proposal.

She floated across the ground. Nothing could touch her, or her man, or her happiness.

And then she woke up on a Saturday morning in late August. She didn’t get a warning call and had no sense of foreboding. She just turned on the television, flipped through the channels, and thought, “I know that head.”

That head belonged to her fiancé, and it was being displayed in a cell phone shot laying across a set of breasts. Both her fiancé and the owner of the breasts were naked and completely passed out. Unfortunately for everyone, the breasts’ owner was Saudi royalty.

But oh, there was more. The same intrepid photographer also had a grainy and backlit video of the pair doing the nasty in a VIP room at some Washington nightspot. You couldn’t tell it was them exactly except that it appeared to be taken at the same nightclub. The photo, though, left no doubt that Grant Miller was an asshole, creep, and philanderer.

No one had any comment. The political scene was tense, knowing how big this scandal could be. It appeared Grant Miller, FBI playboy, had just defiled one of the most famous virgins in the world and one of the few women whose sexual status could disrupt the diplomatic standing of nations.

It was everywhere. Take-no-prisoners reporters came and camped out on her lawn by late that morning. They shouted at her. When she ignored them, they shouted louder. She had no comment. They didn’t care. They kept asking questions, and she became a zombie. Grant called. She didn’t answer. She texted him and told him she would ship his stuff back to him, and she was keeping the ring. Well, she was selling the ring.

Her family tried to help, but there’s a time when you need help, and there’s a time when you don’t want anyone to touch you, or speak to you, or even acknowledge that you exist. That was what Caitlin wanted.

The reporters camped for a few days, but then they finally figured out she wasn’t going to be any fun, wasn’t going to play the jilted lover in front of their lenses. They wanted potshots at Grant, but she wasn’t going to give them that; he did enough to embarrass them both.

The first few days, this was front page news—an international incident with sex, fame, money, and privilege. But behind the scenes, the other princess, her sister, lobbied her father. She saw Grant and the princess together. She saw nothing wrong; she had actually heard Grant speak fondly of his new fiancée. She believed that the pair had been drugged.

She knew her sister well enough to know she was about as virginal as your average call girl, and she also hadn’t seen anything to indicate Grant made any advances. She made her father watch the video, which she showed him did not in any way definitively indicate it was them as participants and not someone else, and she single-handedly saved Grant’s job.

President Bush, who considered Grant almost a buddy, put in a stern call after he had cleared things with the Saudis, indicating Grant was to be placed on leave but not fired, which was tantamount to a miracle.

Grant had relayed all of this information to Caitlin in a series of long-winded e-mails. While it may not have been enough evidence to convict him in a criminal court, it was more than enough to make the woman who had let him hold her heart despise him forever.

He called once or twice a month still, two years later. He asked friends to tell her hi. He acted like the most clueless man in America or someone who was truly innocent.

She still agonized over all of this. She mourned their closeness. But she couldn’t bring herself to believe that some conspiracy theory had surrounded their relationship to tear them apart.

Caitlin headed west. She took up bad habits she had never had before but adapted to quickly. In college, she was the life of the party. She was known as a party girl, but that was all a calculated facade. She could hold her liquor, and she knew how to pretend around drunk and high people. It wasn’t hard.

Now, she drank like she was racing her liver down the drain. She dialed random phone numbers in Grant’s area code in the middle of the night. She never got the number right on purpose. She left rambling messages on random voicemails, lashing out at Grant without ever speaking to him.