Tease (39 page)

Libertina sat back down in her seat as the house lights went up for the intermission. Her throat was sore from cheering so hard. Not needing a voice any more husky than it already was, she wondered if a little liquor would ease her throat. Outside in the bar she ordered herself a Manhattan and wandered across to the gift shop. She didn’t normally go in for souvenirs but she had ten minutes to kill. There was a whole window display given over to Tiger. Libertina felt a deep yearning creep through her as she scanned the little trinkets and posters in their display cases, all bearing Tiger’s logo. Her yearning was coloured with resignation. She had always sensed there was only one person Tiger’s heart belonged to – even though Tiger didn’t know it herself. It was so obvious to anyone on the outside that she and Lewis were meant for each other.
Hell, if you work that hard for that long to keep your hands off each other then you must have something real special you want to protect. It was obvious from the way Tiger was so desperate for his approval; she simply adored him; he was always in her mind. He was clearly also a man who used a hard exterior to hide his true feelings … and not just to hide those feelings from Tiger, but from himself. Libertina had done her best to keep any romance strictly casual and non-exclusive between her and Tiger, to try and protect herself. But as with all affairs, someone always gets hurt and all she had done was to torment herself, instead. Libertina eventually selected and paid for a little silver star-shaped compact mirror, encrusted in rhinestones. A smile curled across her full lips as she decided that was exactly how Tiger had to be seen in her eyes; a beautiful, frivolous luxury.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, the show will resume in three minutes,’ boomed the tannoy. Libertina made her way back to her seat, clutching the compact in its candy-striped paper bag close to her heart.

So far so flawless, thought Lewis as he paced in the wings. He was knocked out by how much happier the Starrlets had seemed without Georgia. Her decision to leave the troupe to become a feature act in her own right under Rex’s guidance had amused Lewis, and had furthermore been a convenient development in paring down Tiger’s team and removing bad apples. Lewis suspected the kind
of ‘features’ Rex would be developing with Georgia probably weren’t suitable for the theatrical stage. He couldn’t say he was sad that Rex had resigned from the team after the exposé.

The show was unfolding beautifully, and as it fast approached the grand finale, Lewis found himself more excited than he had ever been before. He was truly enjoying watching the spectacle; and he had never felt so proud of Tiger or their achievements as he listened to the applause and cheers surging through the theatre from the audience. He would normally be out in the frontline, scrutinising Tiger, thinking
Push! Excellent! Clients! Brand! Media! Deals! Business!
Only now he was standing in the wings, he had a view from behind the scenes. He had been watching from that vantage point for some months now; and he had a glimpse of someone entirely different who he hadn’t opened his eyes to before. Sure, he knew Tiger Starr the superstar inside out, but now he was seeing Tiger the human being.

Tiger waited in the flies, shaking with adrenalin and nervous excitement as the stage crew opened up the door of the glitterball in anticipation of the grand finale. She took a deep breath and climbed in, letting Cherry and Brandy arrange her voluminous train around her before hopping onto her birdperch. Her hand gently stroked her yellow diamond roaring tiger brooch that she had pinned at her breast for luck. It looked magnificent amongst all
the diamonds of her corsetry. The band was blasting at full pelt, the audience cheering them along as they romped their way towards the grand crescendo for the finale. Tiger steadied herself with one of the velvet handles within the glitterball and gave a nod to the stage hands.

‘Knock ’em dead, girl,’ shouted Ocean excitedly over the music, blowing a last kiss. The crew got the all clear over their headsets from the stage manager before heaving the door shut. Tiger heard the automatic locks click into place and her world became muffled in her airtight glitterball.

Tiger’s heart pounded as she reminded herself this had been teched for months, and she had rehearsed this epic number countless times herself. She felt the stage hands banging on the door twice as their all clear for the prop to be lowered and submerged in the pool ready for the grand reveal. The band seemed awfully loud, even through the glitterball, Tiger thought idly. She shuffled uncomfortably and felt fabric bunched up under foot. Damn, Cherry and Brandy must have left some ruffles caught under her heels, she thought irritably. She wriggled from her perch and struggled to crouch down in her corset and rearrange her outfit. She jerked as she felt the glitterball begin its descent, and held her hands up to her padded walls to steady herself. As she crouched there, she registered a weak shaft of light emanating from the door, subtly puncturing the blackness of her velvet padded cell. Jesus. Tiger froze in disbelief, her mouth turning dry as her mind
raced frantically. How could a watertight seal let light in? As she stood her eye caught something poking out from the lining of the padded door. Her stomach churned as her fingers went straight to the rip in the padding and pulled out an envelope. Pink. Ripping it open she pulled out a wafer-thin note. Gulping, she held it up to the weak light only to decipher a spider’s scrawl upon it.

You’re not as watertight as you think you are, babe. It’s been fun. Love Always, Rex

Rex? The pink letters? Surely not Rex? How? Why? The glitterball shuddered a little as it made contact with the pool. Tiger dropped the note like a hot coal. It dissolved to nothing at her feet as freezing water began pouring and bubbling in from the door, soaking her as the glitterball steadily plunged deeper into the pool. Nobody heard Tiger’s cries for help above the deafening band. She slammed her fist onto her panic button and felt it fall from its panel, exposing cut wires. She screamed in her padded cell as the water rose higher by the second.

Rex Hunter calmly stuck his Mustang convertible into gear and pulled away at the lights. The audience should be really going nuts by now, he calculated, looking at the clock on the dashboard and smiling to himself as he cruised down the Strip amongst the flashing neon lights of uptown Vegas. Well they’d be getting a finale to end all finales
tonight. He figured Tiger would have read the final note by now, and should be getting her pretty little feet wet right about … now. It would all be over in about three minutes, and by the time she was revealed to the audience in all her lifeless glory, he’d be well on his way to the airport.

It had all been so easy. Getting into the theatre earlier that evening by posing as a bearded flower delivery guy was a masterstroke. All he had to do was to ‘get lost’ and find his way to the backstage area, climb into the flies to the prop and slash the seals on the door. With his intimate knowledge of Tiger’s shows he knew approximately when the stage manager would do his last minute check of the props. All he had to do was make sure his sabotage occurred after that. He’d also made sure to dig out the safety alert in the door and leave his special little message. He was out of there in two minutes flat. There could be no proof he was the saboteur. He had even prepared his note on rice paper – knowing it would leave nothing once it had dissolved in the water – just the empty, fingerprint-less envelope it had been delivered in.

Now he was on his way back home, happy in the knowledge he had avenged another woman who had humiliated him. Rex knew it was impossible for anyone to hold their breath underwater for several minutes, especially if precious energy was wasted struggling. Good. It was time for Tiger to go. If he couldn’t have her, no one else would.

All Rex ever wanted was a strong woman. Someone he
could respect. Tiger was the embodiment of that. Smart, independent, beautiful, sensual, passionate, she had class, she was a lady, and she took no prisoners. Ten years Rex had waited patiently for her; his goddess, his fantasy, his everything. He couldn’t quite believe it when she had jumped on him after her Savoy show, any more than he could believe it when she had brushed him off so casually. Like she was saying goodbye to the gasman. And with a watch! Like he was just another one of her adoring fans to be patronised! Oh, he pushed her after that. He watched her falling to pieces very slowly and elegantly with every threat, every letter; and just when he thought he might have finished her off, she got back in the saddle. The more she fought, and the more he pushed her, the more he found himself enjoying the game.

Rex had enjoyed watching her pain and torment burning away at her insides as she watched him with Sienna, and when he saw her begin to disintegrate, he twisted the knife even further. St Tropez had been tremendous fun. Even he hadn’t anticipated how that would turn out. He had enjoyed filling Sienna’s head with hatred for her; it hadn’t taken much to manipulate a silly young girl like that. Just the odd prod in the right direction.

Hiring Richie as his stool pigeon had been the true masterstroke of course, giving him access to blow-by-blow reports and updates on Tiger’s decline. Most satisfying. He’d briefed Richie to get close to Blue as a means to getting close to Tiger. That was until the plan backfired
and Richie went and developed real feelings for that camp bastard. Oh, then Richie had backed off the job like an Italian tank and even told Rex he had grown to like Tiger too much to continue informing. It was quite a curve ball; Rex certainly hadn’t bargained on a desperate cash-strapped ex rent-boy suddenly developing scruples. When Rex got back to London he knew he would find Richie and make him sorry for not finishing the job he had been paid good money to do. That’s after he whisked Georgia off for a filthy weekend. God, she knew a few hot tricks in bed. Rex felt a twinge in his crotch as he drove. She still wasn’t a patch on that hot bitch Tiger though, he thought with frustration.

Rex had to hand it to Tiger, she had fought her corner admirably. If only his mother had done that. The years upon years of beatings his father meted out and still his mother did nothing. Sometimes Rex swore she’d have held him down for his father if it meant she was let off a thrashing for the evening. She may as well have thrown the punches herself, the bitch, thought Rex. It used to bemuse him that everyone thought his father killed her. Nobody ever thought that angelic, downtrodden little Rex did it. Even Rex had blocked it out of his head and rewritten his own history … almost.

Only once in a while, he couldn’t keep that one memory from popping up any longer. His eyes clouded as he recalled pushing his mother down the stairs with his own hands that night, sheer anger overcoming him as she began to
assist the hundredth beating of the year. The vision of his mother falling swam in Rex’s mind as he pushed his foot down on the accelerator pedal and turned onto the freeway. Ah, the ‘fall’. It had such grace and an almost ethereal quality to it, thought Rex, replaying it in his head in slow motion as he cruised in his car. His mother had almost flown, with her arms outstretched like Jesus, her eyes bulging with shock and disbelief. Of course the stupid cow couldn’t do anything properly; she broke her neck and just lay there, clinging on, feeble and pathetic with the fingers of one hand twitching. Most unbecoming. His father had just stared at Rex in shock, like his little punch bag of a son was going to turn on him next. With adrenalin coursing through his veins, Rex had challenged him fearlessly. But his father ran. Ran down the hallway and locked himself in the bathroom, the coward. Rex had calmly walked down the stairs, and had looked at his mother lying and trembling at his feet. He knew he had to do the right thing. Put the dog out of its misery. The iron on top of the pile of freshly pressed bed linen was the closest thing to hand. He was twelve. Rex never had been able to stomach a weak woman since.

Tiger was clinging to the velvet ropes of her perch for dear life, hoisting her chin above the freezing water. She felt sick at the thought that the frogmen down in the pool had no idea what was going on literally feet away. They were there in case of mechanical malfunctions. And they
were oblivious to the impending disaster within the glitterball walls. Tiger guessed she had maybe ten seconds left before she was completely submerged. She knew she had to calm her breathing and concentrate. Once the band segued into ‘Carmina Burana’ and the tabs lifted, the glitterball would make its return journey out of the pool, as though pushed up by fountains and water jets. Tiger prayed she could make it through. Water bubbled at her nose and she took a deep breath, unsure if it would be her last, before letting her head slip under the surface.

Blue, Lewis, Ocean and Pepper were grouped together in a huddle backstage, watching spellbound as the prop disappeared from view into the pool. The animal handlers had settled the Bengal tigers onto their podiums and were hurrying back into the wings before the tabs lifted. On cue, the fountains sprang into a beautiful dance as the curtains pulled away to reveal the final scene. A gasp went up in the crowd at the aqua fantasy as the tigers reared up, roaring dramatically. The light show was exquisite, programmed in time with every choreographed spray and jet of water.

‘Crack open the champagne, Hartley! We’ve done it! We’re there!’ squealed Blue, jumping up and down as
oohs
and
ahhs
rippled through the audience.

‘Maybe we should wait …’ started Hartley.

‘Are you kidding?’ interjected Lewis, loudly. ‘This is a fucking victory!’ he bellowed, grinning from ear to ear.

Blue stepped back to look at Lewis in utter amazement. ‘Steady on, Lewis!’ he laughed.

‘Well, I just wanna toast us all when Tiger comes out of that glitterball,’ said Lewis, ‘Are we the mother of all teams or what? This finale will have everyone out of their seats alright! Listen to them all out there, it’s incredible!’

Tiger shuddered as her body fought the desperation to inhale. She thought her lungs were about to burst. Maybe this really was it. The end. She had nothing left to live for any more anyway; she had done what she set out to do, to reinvent her life, pay for her sins, make a success of herself. Except that her dream that her daughter would one day be proud of her would now never happen. Tiger knew she couldn’t manage another second. Her mouth fell open and cool water washed in. Rex’s final note flashed in front of her eyes, his face appearing before her laughing, morphing into the face of Ed Rogers, his hand over her mouth suffocating her as he raped her. Was this really the final curtain? Drowning in an eight-foot Fabergé egg-shaped glitterball? Was she really going to kick the bucket in a fucking glitterball? On stage? In front of her audience? Blackness spread through her, inviting her in. Her fingertips felt cool and light above her head. She gave herself up to the peaceful euphoria that washed over her.