The Bad Boys of Summer (39 page)

O
nce I got
my travel plans cleared through the magazine, nothing was left except to see Noah and tell him I would be gone a few days. It was a conversation I was not looking forward to; I couldn’t shake the dread that clung to me with every step as I got up, showered, and prepared for the day.

My flight to LA left first thing in the morning, so I told Noah we should have a nice dinner and go see what was jumping at the Graveyard Club if he felt up to it. He didn’t text me back right away, but when he did, it was with a promise he’d take care of dinner. All I needed to do was show up.

Ringing the doorbell at his house, I could already smell the spices inside. Noah opened the door to me, but he was the reverse image of the man I expected to see. Something dark and pale had overcome the skin of his face, and his eyes had that glassy look of insomnia I recognized all too well. But he was smiling, happy to see me, and bent to pick me up in a tender bear hug. He sighed against my body like he hadn’t held it in a while.

“This was a good idea,” he said. “Thank you.”

I tightened my grip around his neck and planted kisses on his beard and cheek. “I hate to give away my secret, but most people actually eat meals, like, a few times a day… I can’t take credit.”

Noah pinched and squeezed me in the spots he now knew were ticklish as hell, and I kicked, squealing, trying to get out of his strong grasp. But there was no chance for that unless he wanted to let me go. He tortured me a few seconds and dragged me inside the house, closing the door behind us.

“Smells like curry,” I said as I took off my jacket.

“It’s from the Indian place around the corner,” said Noah with a nod of his head. “I… don’t really cook much, as you can imagine.”

“Good thing you’re rich enough to get someone to cook for you,” I said. “And not a prisoner of Ramen Island like the rest of us.”

Noah’s eyes shifted from side to side. “Right, sure. On a totally unrelated note, do not look in the cabinets above the stove, okay?”

I burst out laughing at the look on his face, half-embarrassed, like he was fifteen and I’d just found his porn stash. On my tiptoes I leaned up and kissed him and asked him for a piggy back ride to dinner. He laughed at me a few seconds but then shrugged and flipped me over his shoulders for the short walk to the kitchen, claiming every grasp of my inner thighs was ‘for balance’. The small dining room table he had near the sliding back door was filled with different containers of Indian food, two plate settings, and open beers. A bunch of mismatched candles flickered throughout the room, on the counter and table and windowsills.

“This is beautiful,” I said.

“You sound surprised,” he said, nuzzling into my neck. His beard tickled my skin, but his lips quickly undid it.

“A little, I guess. This is… no one does things like this for me,” I said.

“Well, now someone does,” said Noah, brushing the hair out of the side of my face. He kissed the side of my cheek and held out my chair for me as I smiled up at him.

It wasn’t expected, but it certainly wasn’t unwelcome, to discover that sitting at a table having dinner with Noah was every bit as delightful as anything else we did together. For half a minute, I actually felt
normal
. When was the last time I actually sat down and had dinner—with anyone, even a co-worker? Half the meals I ate were on the go, and the other half were quick fixes scrounged up at two AM to keep me through another night of edits.

But sitting across from Noah, enjoying my food, sharing laughter with him, it was recharging my soul in ways I hadn’t realized I was lacking. There was never a dull moment between us, or hardly even a lull in the conversation. We both had enough experience in the industry that we could talk to one another with lingo and insider knowledge that often kept me, at least, alienated from a lot of people.

Lots of people saw the music industry as a thing you dream about when you’re a young idiot, a place for children to get filthy rich acting out their stupid fantasies. And sure, lots of the stars in every genre were kids who had no idea what was going to happen to them when their popularity faded. But behind the scenes, it wasn’t kids—it was people like me and Noah, who did start out chasing fantasies, and ended up sewing ourselves into the foundation of what we loved. It was difficult to explain that kind of thing to someone who had spent their time following the school-college-marriage-kids life plan handed out to us when we were young.

I didn’t have to explain anything to Noah. He just understood.

We were on our fourth beer each, and Noah on his third serving of Indian, when things got a little quiet. It wasn’t uncomfortable; quite the contrary. It was more comfortable than I’d felt in years. I felt home.

Lost in my own feelings, though, I hadn’t noticed Noah’s mood shift. When his voice finally came from across the table, it was with a heaviness he clearly couldn’t hide anymore. “Laurel, look, I’ve got to tell you something.”

I’d had my feet propped up on one of the empty dining chairs. Shifting to face him, I put my beer down. “Of course. What’s up?”

He stared at his plate, like he didn’t have the strength to lift it and look at me. I could see him lick his lips. “I had a meeting with Gavin today, and… he told me…” Noah bit his lip and forced himself to continue. I could feel my heart beating faster with every second. “He told me the DA is going ahead with charges against me for Sun Fest. I might… I might be in jail by the end of this week.”

My heart dropped. Even though the news wasn’t totally unexpected, it dropped like a dead weight into the water of my mind.

“Fuck, Noah… Oh my God.”

Noah looked up at me finally and his eyes were angry, but also filled with pain and sadness. “I’m sorry, Laurel. I should never have…” He took a deep breath. “I should never have brought you into all of this.”

“No,” I said, jumping up from my chair to kneel down in front of him. “You didn’t. None of this is your fault.” The guilt in my heart started bubbling, molten. I had to comfort him somehow. “I knew who you were when I saw you in the club that day, and I still wanted to meet you. You didn’t bring me into anything, I’m a grown woman. I brought myself.”

He stared at me, thinking, and blinked hard a few times. His throat shifted as he swallowed hard. “Laurel, I… I really care about you. I know that sounds stupid coming from me, and I don’t understand it fully myself, but it’s the fucking truth. I care about you and I feel like a complete piece of shit getting hauled off to jail just when I’ve found you…”

My heart froze in my chest, hearing Noah’s words. Tears welled up in my eyes in an instant, my mouth open in shock. “Noah, I care about you too. I care a lot. I figured it was just me, being a stupid… girl… falling for a rock star…”

“Is that how you think of me? A rock star?” It was a painful question.

“No,” I said. “But I thought that was how you saw yourself. I didn’t imagine you for a minute actually… actually connecting with me.”

Noah leaned forward with his hand in my hair. “But it’s not just me, right? You feel it too?”

I grasped his hand in mine. “Of course I feel it. But I don’t understand it.”

“Well, at least we both suck at this,” said Noah with a self-effacing laugh.

“We can suck at it together,” I said with a teary smile.

Noah returned it as he leaned down and kissed me. It was tender, sweet, and slow. I could feel my tears pressing up against his skin.

After the kiss, guilt overcame me and I shook my head as I stared at the floor. He’d been so honest with me, how could I continue to hold back the truth of myself? “I have to say something unpleasant too, Noah.”

And when I looked up at him in that moment, there was no question whether I had the courage to tell him who I was. I didn’t. Not yet, anyway.

Instead, I started with the smallest disappointment. After all, I had no idea what I was going to find in LA. There was no reason to destroy this until I had to. “I have to fly out of town for a couple of days for work. I leave tomorrow morning.”

Noah’s face dropped and my heart cracked in my chest. I squeezed his hands tighter. “Oh, sure, that’s okay sugar. As long as you’re not just saying that because of… because of what I just said…”

“Fuck no,” I said, leaning down to kiss him. “No, no, no. The trip was already planned before I got here. What you said tonight was… perfect.”

Noah smiled at me, but it was sad.

“I’m really fucking sorry… the timing of this is just awful.” I rubbed the side of his face. “I want to stay here with you during this. But this trip is… it’s crazy important. I wouldn’t be going if it wasn’t. It’s only for two days, tops.”

Noah stared at me, thinking silently. He ran a thumb over my face and lips and brought me in for a sweet kiss. “As long as you fuck me one more time before you go.”

I flushed and smiled against his lips. “I didn’t realize that was even up for debate.”

Noah’s next kiss was instantly ravenous, pulling me up onto his lap in the chair. Already I could feel his cock beneath me, half-hard and getting more swollen by the second. We kissed each other with an intensity, almost a fear, a fear that the world was going to be totally different when we stopped. So we just didn’t stop.

Grinding me on his lap, Noah reached underneath and pulled my shirt over my head, tossing it somewhere into the dark kitchen. He had no trouble unclasping my bra. Likewise, I scrambled to get his shirt off his gorgeous body, and moaned into his mouth when I finally felt the bare skin of his chest against mine. Noah ran his hands up and down my bare back, sliding them into my jeans to squeeze my ass and rub me against his dick.

Without taking his mouth off me, he gripped my ass and stood up. Reflexively, I wrapped myself around him and let him carry us both to the clean-smelling black and white tile of the kitchen floor. Noah worked between our bodies to unfasten first his jeans, and then mine, wiggling them down my body and kicking them into a heap at our feet. His fingers massaged my clit as he kissed me and I writhed underneath him. He pushed two of them inside me and found my wetness was already waiting for him. After a few teasing, deep pumps, he withdrew them and positioned the head of his hard cock at my entrance.

There was no condom this time, and he hesitated for just a moment as if to give me time to object. But I wanted it this way, too. I wanted to feel him, skin on skin. And almost as important, I trusted him, and wanted him to know that.

When he finally pushed his length inside me, I nearly came right there, arching my back and crying out his name against his mouth. He bit my lip as he buried his cock in my pussy and held it there, bottoming out, as he kissed me passionately. Keeping his body and mouth on mine, Noah slowly began to pump his hips just enough to withdraw his huge cock a few inches before sliding smoothly back inside to fill me completely. I hitched my legs around his hips and felt him bump my spot with every single stroke of his cock inside me, and it was almost more pleasure than I could take.

There was desperation in the way we clung to each other, in the way we refused to let our bodies get more than a few millimeters apart at any given time. Even though the pleasure building in my body needed a release, I also never wanted Noah to stop. I wanted to lie here beneath him, making love, forever.

I could see his face clenching and knew he was getting close. Noah’s kisses got hungrier, his thrusts shorter and harder. His hands held me tight against his sweating body.

“Come with me,” he whispered against my mouth. “Laurel, come with me.”

His hot wet tongue danced on my lips and I moaned loudly, feeling my orgasm build. “I’m almost there,” I told him breathlessly.

“I want to feel you…”

“Oh, fuck, Noah!”

Waves of ecstasy shot suddenly through my body and I screamed out. The orgasm hit me like a lightning bolt, my inner muscles clenching Noah’s hard cock as he pumped it inside of me. As I writhed underneath him, he tangled one hand in my blonde hair and held me still as he came, his final thrusts deep and hard enough to send aftershocks through my muscles.

Spent, he collapsed on top of me, still buried within my hot core. He laid his face next to my head and entwined his fingers in mine, panting onto the sweaty skin of my neck.

I looked over at Noah, face lit softly in the candlelight. His eyes were closed, and his gorgeous face looked completely at peace. Gone was the tension around his eyes.

I made myself remember every detail of that moment, deeply afraid I would never get the chance to see it again.

L
.A.
, this cesspool of heat and dust and weird fake smiles that made everything disorienting—I hated it. The Pacific Northwest was one thing, but I couldn’t stand California. Give me the upfront brashness of East Coasters over this granola crunch, passive-aggressiveness any day.

My hatred only made me more determined to get my job done as quickly and boldly as possible. The plane ride from SeaTac was short, but it gave me plenty of time to double-check the data I had already found. And in doing that double-check, I found myself more certain than ever that Noah was telling the truth about what happened at the festival.

I kept trying to tell myself my feelings for him were incidental. Part of me was scared it was just another lie to soothe the ache of the truth. Maybe I had turned into a shit journalist who didn’t know what the fuck she was doing. Maybe I had fallen so deeply for Noah that I couldn’t see past the web of lies he was trying to spin me. But deep down I could feel that wasn’t right. I had fallen deeply for Noah—and Noah was not a cold-blooded killer. Both of those things existed independent of each other, and I was going to prove it.

Even if proving it meant I lost Noah forever.

I had no time to consider that future horrorscape. Instead I turned my focus to the present, and let myself get judgy and grumpy about every little thing I hated about this city to keep my mind from wandering. The cab driver from the airport must have sensed my mood, because he didn’t even try to make conversation as he drove me straight for Sentinel Security’s head offices. My plan was to get there, conduct my research, and get back to Seattle without having to stay overnight. But all of that depended on what I found—or didn’t find.

My flight got me in a little earlier than I expected, and the front door to the modest, two-story office building out in the City of Industry was still locked. Assuring my taxi driver I’d be fine on my own, I waved him off and wandered down to a sketchy convenience store to grab myself a coffee and a donut while I waited. The vibe around here was so different from Seattle, and especially Thornwood, that I found myself somehow feeling homesick for a place I wasn’t even from. Everything was bright and bland here. I missed the shadows.

I missed Noah.

By the time I got back to the building, someone had arrived and opened up the place. A pretty young woman sat at the front desk, jacket still on her shoulders, rifling through some paperwork. She looked up only a moment when she heard the bell on the door.

“Hi there, give me just one second,” she said to me.

I nodded and wandered around the waiting room with my coffee. It was small and surprisingly basic for a firm that dealt with clients as big as the Sun Fest. A few outdated chairs, a water cooler, a table stuffed with random entertainment magazines. On the walls hung various professional photos of security teams at work during concerts. It seemed like the owner of this place probably took home more than his share of the big paydays, and left the branches with as little money to operate their overhead as he could get away with. That could be useful. I was suddenly glad for the wad of cash in my wallet, courtesy of
Slipstream’s
expense account.

After a few moments, the receptionist let out a big breath and stood upright. “Hi, sorry! I didn’t mean to keep you waiting. What can I do for you?”

I turned to her with a patient smile and walked up to the chest-high counter. “My name is Laurel Barnes. I have an appointment to meet with Maria Haro.”

She nodded and bent down to look at her computer screen. She scrolled a few moments, frowning. “I… I’m sorry, I don’t have an appointment for you here. What did you say your name was?”

“Laurel Barnes. My assistant called yesterday and set this appointment. She assured me it was taken care of,” I said, putting my coffee on the counter.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Barnes, it’s just not…”

“Miss, I’m with Bear River Insurance, and I’m supposed to be meeting with Maria Haro to discuss some important matters—I’m sure you can guess which ones. I was assured by your staff this meeting was set up for today. Does Ms. Haro understand that her job, and this very business remaining open, depend on the findings I present to my company?”

It was all bullshit, obviously. Just a bit of social engineering one tended to pick up as an investigative journalist. I found Maria’s name, as well as the public paperwork showing the name of the firm’s insurance company, during my research. A few phone calls later, and I had confirmation she was one of the people in charge of the festival security detail.

But this poor girl didn’t know that. She just went pale and started stuttering.

“Oh, oh God,” she said. “I must not have saved the appointment right in the program…”

I checked my phone impatiently, dramatically. “I came here straight from the airport, and I have to be back there before nightfall. This kind of evasion does not bode well for my report. I suggest you get a hold of her right now.”

“Y-Yes, ma’am, right away,” said the receptionist. She reached for the phone, but then thought better of it and excused herself, disappearing through a door with a keycard lock.

She wasn’t gone three minutes. The door flew open and the girl held it open for who I could only assume was Maria Haro. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight, smooth bun, and her face wore an expression of surprise, and just a bit of fear.

Maria came around the desk with her hand outstretched. “Hi, I’m Maria Haro. I’m told there was some problem with scheduling?”

I shook her hand and kept my eyes on hers. “Laurel Barnes, Bear River Insurance. I set an appointment to meet with you that was, apparently, not taken correctly. It is imperative I speak with you today, Ms. Haro. This is regarding Sun Fest.” I gave a suspicious look to the receptionist, as if I was afraid she would overhear.

Maria took the hint and waved a hand for me to follow her. “Let’s speak in my office.” She led me behind the desk and through the keycard door into a tight, bland cubicle farm. Most of the spaces were empty this early, but a few people were on headsets taking appointments and giving service quotes. Maria had a small, windowless office near the back, and she closed the door behind us before she took a seat at her messy desk.

“I didn’t expect that you’d need to speak to me,” said Maria. “Rory said he was going to handle all the statements himself.”

This was the part where my job got a little tricky and dangerous. Truth be told, I loved it just a little. I thought of Noah calling me a shark, and had to fight the smile it nearly brought to my lips. “He did. But there were some additional questions we had about the reports.”

Maria went a little pale. She leaned on her desk and crossed her fingers. “Oh?”

“You were under orders to confiscate all audience recording devices after the incident, is that correct?”

Maria blinked, surprised. I wanted her off-kilter. “I… yes, that was the order.”

“Tell me, in your own words, what kept your people from successfully completing that task. There are videos all over the Internet.”

Her breathing started to get a little ragged. “We didn’t have the manpower to cover a crowd that large individual by individual. I sent in the call for backup on the radios and we did our best to line the exits, but it all happened too fast, and we weren’t ready for it. I put priority on the front rows and we seemed to have gotten most of those.”

Again, I fought to maintain my poker face at the news that my hunches just kept on being right. Security had taken everyone’s phones in the front rows to hide something.

“Do you still have the phones?”

“Yes, they’re in evidence lockup. Their files have been stored.”

I put my coffee down on the desk because I was so thrilled at the news, I couldn’t hold still. “I’m going to need to look at the videos on those phones.”

Maria frowned now, and for the first time put up some resistance. “Rory said those phones are to be shown to no one…”

“But I work for—”

“…by order of the insurance company, which has already sent a rep to view them.”

Fuck. The wheels in my head spun for a fix. Maria watched me carefully, waiting. Before I could get a lie off my tongue, she was reaching for her phone with a panicked look in her eyes.

“Wait,” I said, leaning forward but not so far that she would feel threatened.

She paused with her hand on the receiver. I put up my left index finger and, slowly, with my right, reached underneath and pulled my wallet out of my back pocket. I threw five crisp hundred dollar bills on the desk in front of her. Maria looked up at me with surprise.

“I’m not here to get you in trouble,” I said. “I don’t care about the company or the insurance, or any of that shit. But an innocent man is about to go down for what happened at that festival, and you and I both know he shouldn’t be.”

Maria’s hand slid slowly off the phone and into her lap. The color drained from her face.

“I’m asking for your help to save him. I’ll make sure it’s worth your while.” I nodded toward the money on her desk. “And I won’t tell a soul about your involvement.”

Maria said in a tight whisper, “Who are you?”

“I’m a journalist. That means even the government can’t make me talk about you. Just take the money, give me what I need, and no one will ever know. Win-win.”

“I could lose everything,” said Maria.

“You have my word that if you somehow lose your job over this, I’ll personally find you a new one.” I put my hands on her desk and waited until she looked me in the eyes. “I really need your help, Maria. Noah Hardy is going to go to prison over this if the truth doesn’t come out.”

Maria stared at the money on her desk and took a few deep breaths. Downwardly she said, “We all were just trying to do what we thought was right… Protect the company, protect our jobs.”

“You get no judgment from me,” I said. “I’ve seen the clients this company handles. Their legal teams would crush you all like bugs. Just tell me what really happened that day and why you had orders to hide it. I can get the truth out and keep you safe at the same time. Like I said… everybody wins.”

Maria frittered at her desk, thinking. She looked up at me and said, “Can you just step outside for a few minutes, and give me a chance to think about this?”

I gave her a tired look. “If you’re just going to call security, we can get this over with now and save some time.”

“I’m not,” she said immediately. “I just need some space to think. Please.”

Either I trusted her, or I didn’t, and at this stage, there wasn’t much of a choice. So I got up out of the chair with my coffee and stepped just outside the door, carefully hanging near her office so no one would think I was trying to snoop and make this more complicated than it already was. She could have been calling whoever Rory was, or some bigger boss, or even the cops. But this was what standing on the edge felt like. All I could do was wait, and see what happened, and hoped I had enough brains to talk myself out of it if it didn’t go my way.

It wasn’t long before the door creaked open and Maria nodded me back inside her office. The money still lay on her desk where I left it, unmoved. I closed the door and sat across from her.

“So, how do we do this?” she asked, uncomfortable.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and showed it to her as I brought up the voice recorder app. “I have to record this to do my job. But I’ll die before anyone gets this phone.”

She didn’t look terribly happy about it, but she nodded anyway. I started to record and put it on the desk.

“Normally, the oversights we cover up aren’t this ugly,” started Maria. “Sometimes a guard will have a rough time with a drunk fan, rip their clothes, accidentally break their phone… and we’re all fine with throwing those under the rug. People have no idea the abuse security guards can take at a show, especially a big one.”

“Sure,” I said. “Uniforms tend to bring that out in people.”

Maria nodded. “People don’t get hurt often, not really. Definitely not like this…”

“So where were you working the day of the show?”

“I was in charge of the crew at the main stage. At the time of the incident I was in the backstage area where the bands set up their tour buses. I heard the calls on the radio and rushed over. It wasn’t long after I got there that my phone rang and Rory—he’s the branch supervisor—was issuing the order to grab all the recording devices. Without question, I spread the order to my people.”

Maria took a long pause before she continued. “I got to the stage and my crew was huddled around the man’s body… he’d hit his head on one of the steel stage beams on his way down. I’ve never seen so much blood in my life. EMTs had been called, but he was long gone before they got through the crowd.”

I wondered if Noah had been forced to see what happened to the man he attacked. I hoped not.

“It was chaos for the first hour after it happened; I can barely remember doing my job. But the body was removed and we got most of the close cell phones locked up in the security trailer on site. Rory took the crew from the main stage and tore them a new one for letting something this explosive happen on their watch. He put me on the duty of uploading all the cell phone footage for archiving and destroying the phones after. I was up all night while he ran around trying to do damage control.”

“I know you’ve got beat cops on your payroll,” I said, recalling the names Steve had texted to me on the plane ride over. “Perkins, Dylan, Martinez… is that why it was so easy for you to keep the news about confiscating the phones quiet?”

Maria nodded firmly. “This place is in tight with the cops. We have to be, really. I suppose we’re in the same business, when it comes right down to it. But there’s a lot of personnel crossover, too. Officers use these gigs as an easy way to make money on the weekends because their skills transfer so easily.”

“Was one of those men on the front lines of the Cut Up Angels set that day?”

“Yes,” said Maria. “A couple of them.”

I said nothing, but felt disgust riling up in my gut. Even though the men were just protecting each other, exactly how I was trying to protect Noah, it still felt like an abuse of power I couldn’t excuse. Having a brother-in-blue directly threatened by this failure of duty would make it pretty damn easy for local cops to want to play along with the security firm’s cover-up. After all, they both had something to lose from exposure.