The Handler (Noir et Bleu Motorcycle Club #2) (6 page)

“This has nothing to do with Cain. I just don’t—” she trailed off and leaned back against the wall as if she lost her nerve to stand up to him.

“You don’t what?” His voice softened as if he genuinely did want to know what was bothering her.

She shook her head, losing assertiveness by the second. “Nothing. Never mind.” She glanced at me but looked away again, maybe worried I would judge her for not fighting harder. “It doesn’t matter,” she mumbled. She fidgeted with the hem of her blouse as she grappled with the decision. She was on the verge of tears from the pressure when her face brightened with a light bulb idea. She walked over and stood right in front of me with a wide-eyed expectant look. “Will you come with me on tour?”

“What? Uh. No. I can’t.” I checked Hal’s expression to see if he was going to shut the idea down. He seemed to contemplate it. “I can’t go to Europe. I have school and I need to work.”

“You’ll get a salary,” Hal interjected, obviously on board with her crazy plan.

Lincoln grinned and jiggled around excitedly. “You can do online courses on the road. Don’t you want to see Europe?”

“A salary for what?” I asked Hal.

“You’d be a handler.”

“Handling what?”

“Lincoln.” He pointed at her. “Hang out with her, keep her company, and help her have some fun.”

I frowned and avoided eye contact with her as the possibilities of what Hal meant by handling her ran through my head. “How much does a handler make?”

Hal’s eyebrow raised as he made mental calculations. “In this case, about ten thousand dollars a day.”

I shook my head to clear my brain. “How many days is the tour?”

“Forty-three.”

I blinked, and my mouth hung open as I rewound and replayed his words in my brain. I glanced at Lincoln who held her breath waiting for my response. “You want to pay me four hundred and thirty thousand dollars to hang out and talk to Lincoln?”

“Yeah. How’s that sound?” Hal rubbed his palms together and grinned, assuming that it was too good of an offer for me to turn down.

Lincoln laced her fingers into a prayer type gesture. “Say yes.”

It was an insane amount of money, and tempting. Even though Digger used Noir et Bleu funds to pay for security to protect Huck because my dad was like a brother to him, he didn’t support us. And my grandparents weren’t wealthy, so I hated to burden them. There were expenses for my mom’s medical care that insurance didn’t cover, my student loan was only going to get bigger, and I hadn’t been able to save anything for Huck’s college fund yet, despite wanting to.

“Forty-three days,” I clarified.

Hal nodded. They both watched me as I thought about what I could do with that kind of money. I’d be able to move my mom to a private room at the long term care facility, buy a two-bedroom place so Huck could live with me instead of at our grandparents’, and send her to any school she wanted.

Taking more than a month off from searching for the third suspect wasn’t ideal, but the trial was still six months away, and the Noir et Bleu were also keeping an eye out for anyone who fit the description I gave them. If the guy was smart, he probably wasn’t in L.A. anyway—even though I had convinced myself he was so I could feel like I was doing something productive while waiting for the trial. Lincoln was right, I could study on the road. I honestly needed the break. I always wanted to travel. Liv would blow a gasket, but the money would really help my family.

I didn’t need much time to think about it. “Yeah, all right.”

Lincoln leapt forward and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Yay.”

Whoa
. Maybe I should have taken longer to think about it.

Hal tapped his watch. “We need to get going for the radio interview.”

“Okay. I’m ready,” she said. “I just need to put my boots on. Be right back,” she sang as she took bouncy steps into the bedroom.

Hal handed me another stack of money. “Here’s your five grand. Nice work, kid.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“That’s the beauty of it. Pack your bags. The flight to Rome is tomorrow at five.”

Really? It was that easy? “Hold on. Don’t you want to do a background check on me or anything first?”

He typed on his phone and didn’t even look up to respond. “Why? Are you a criminal?”

“No, but you just hired a guy you know nothing about to hang out with an impressionable and presumably naïve girl. It’s irresponsible.”

He shrugged as if it either hadn’t occurred to him, or he didn’t consider it important. “I can set up an interview with the head of security if that makes you feel better.”

“It’s not about making me feel better. It should be standard procedure. You can’t let just any nut job near her.”

He tucked his phone into the inside breast pocket of his suit and slapped my shoulder. “I’ll arrange for you to meet with security while she does her radio interview. Is there any reason why you shouldn’t be around her?”

That depended on the head of security’s feelings about the Noir et Bleu. “Uh, no. I don’t think so.”

“Good,” he said as Lincoln returned and met us at the door. He handed her an itinerary that she barely glanced at before giving it back to him. “Okay, so after the radio interview you have lunch with Gayle.”

“Gayle?” she asked but didn’t actually seem interested in the answer.

“The songwriter working on your next album. You met her last year,” he reminded her. “She wants to go over a few things with you. You have a photo shoot for the concert promos at three, and dinner with your mom at seven. After that, you can take the night off and hang out with Cain.”

She smiled at me.

“Uh, no. I’ve got shit I need to do before tomorrow. I can’t babysit all day,” I said.

She frowned and crossed her arms when I called it babysitting.

“What if your salary starts today?” Hal asked.

“Ten thousand?”

“Yeah. Do you have a problem with that?”

I smiled at how unbelievable it was to make that kind of money in one day. “No. I guess I don’t.”

“Good. There’s a car out front for you. I’ll meet you guys at the radio station.” He paused and pointed at me. “Tim, the head of security, will meet us there, too, for your background check.”

We all walked outside together. Hal waved a black SUV with a driver up to the curb for us, then he got into a silver Maserati that the valet had waiting. During the ride to her radio interview, Lincoln texted on her phone. “Sorry. I’m just interacting with my fans. It will only take a second.”

“You give out your number?”

“No, silly. On social media. I write what I’m doing. They go crazy and write me a bunch of messages. See.” She held her phone out and scrolled through all the messages from her fans.

“How many people read your messages?”

“I have just over twenty million followers.”

“Over twenty million people read every single thing you write?”

“I guess.”

“Don’t you worry about saying the wrong thing?”

She frowned and shrugged. “I’ve never really thought about it before.”

“What did you put in that last message?”

“On my way to KdubLA for interview with @SteelyDean. Make sure to listen.” She handed me her phone so I could read her other posts. The one she wrote the night before was,
Going for a ride with C.

“Am I C?”

“Yeah.”

I handed the phone back to her. “Don’t ever mention me in one of these again.”

“Nobody knows it’s you. What’s the big deal?”

“Just don’t ever do it again.”

“Fine.” We pulled up in front of the radio station building and there were at least twenty cameramen and a crowd of young girls bouncing around the front door. We got out of the truck. She held onto my waist and buried her face against my back as I pushed through the crowd toward the front door. A security guard at the front let us in and closed the doors behind us. We went up to the twentieth floor and a woman escorted us to a waiting room.

Hal showed up ten minutes later with a muscular black guy in his late twenties. “Cain,” Hal said. “This is Tim Olifoya, head of security.”

I stood and shook his hand.

“There’s an office across the hall you guys can use,” Hal said as he grabbed a donut off the table and got comfortable on the couch.

Lincoln hugged Tim.

“How have you been, Linny?” he asked.

“Busy. And a little stressed.” She glanced at me and then gave him a pouty puppy dog face in an attempt to influence his decision. “I really need Cain to come with us on tour.”

He chuckled at her tactics to persuade him. “We’ll see.”

She winked at me as if it was a done deal. Tim and I left to meet in the office across the hall.

“So.” Tim sat down across the table from me and hovered a pen over a blank sheet of paper. “Cain Allen?”

“James Allen. Nineteen years old. Canadian citizen. I’m working under the table as an electrician. I live with three members of the Noir et Bleu Motorcycle Club. My dad was a former full-patch member, but I’m not associated with them, and I don’t have a criminal record.”

Tim appeared unsure whether to ask a question or write down what I already said. Eventually, he scribbled a few notes before he looked back up at me. “Do you have any previous security experience?”

“No.”

He put the pen down and leaned his elbows on the table. “Why did you want the job?”

“I really didn’t. Lincoln and Hal insisted.”

He shifted back and chuckled. “So, you’re doing it for the money?”

“Pretty much.”

He nodded and appeared amused. “All right. In that case. You get paid at the end of the forty-three days. If you do anything inappropriate or fuck up before then, you get nothing. Fair?”

The all or nothing condition wasn’t part of the original offer, but it didn’t matter since I wasn’t planning to half-ass it anyway. If I was going to do it, I was going to do it well. I sat back and crossed my arms. “How big is your security team? And why wasn’t anyone managing that mob out front?”

He raised his eyebrow. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was impressed or surprised that I even cared. “When she’s at home she doesn’t have any security unless specifically requested. When she travels, there are two other guys besides me who protect her. We hire out security companies in each of the cities to manage the crowd and venues.”

“What’s your background?”

He chuckled again because I was studying him as if he was the one being interviewed. “I was a Marine. I’ve worked for Lincoln for two years. I’m twenty-eight. Married. A kid on the way. Sagittarius. Anything else you’d like to know?”

I shook my head, satisfied that he knew what he was doing. “Nope.”

“All right. Here’s my card. Send me your social security number, contact information, and an emergency contact person along with a copy of your driver’s license.” He stood and shook my hand. “Welcome to the team.”

I snapped a photo of my license with my phone and emailed him the rest of the information. I returned to the waiting room just as Lincoln was ushered into the DJ booth. Hal and I stood outside and watched through the window. She held her thumb up and then tilted it down to ask me how the interview went. I gave her a thumbs up, which made her smile before she sat down across the desk from the DJ.

Lincoln was a total pro. She was kind of flirty and cut the DJ down a couple of times in a funny way. It was impressive to watch her work, but right near the end of the interview, he directed the conversation to a topic that made her neck turn red.

“So, Lincoln. It was in the news today that your father was thrown in jail again last night for assault. How are you coping with that news?”

Her posture straightened, and she stared down at the desk for a long pause. “Well, I think I speak for my entire family when I say that we are all very concerned for his well-being, and we are praying for him to get the help he needs to recover. Addiction is a terrible illness, and my father’s struggles have been my continued inspiration for being a drug and alcohol free role model for my fans. I hope everyone joins me in praying for my father’s speedy recovery.” She shot a look at Hal that could have broken the glass of the booth.

“Yeah, let’s hope your dad cleans up his act before he blows your entire fortune up his nose,” the DJ said and chuckled. Lincoln looked over her shoulder at Hal again, and the muscles in her jaw were rigid. “While we’re on the subject of last night,” the DJ continued, “you posted that you were going for a ride with ‘C’. All your fans are dying to know who this mysterious new friend is. How about you let your family at KdubLA hear it first. Is C a new boyfriend?”

“Oh, Dean, you know you’re the only boyfriend for me. Thanks everyone for listening. I love you all and don’t forget to check out the new behind-the-scenes documentary available on my website. Kisses.” She stood up and ripped the headphones off. The DJ smiled at her in a mischievous way, so she threw the headphones at him. The cord stopped them short of hitting him, but he flinched anyway. He laughed as she stormed out. “Hal, if you can’t keep these assholes from talking about my dad, then the least you can do is keep me up-to-date with what skeevy thing he’s done lately so I don’t look like a total idiot.”

Hal held his palms up in defense. “That was the first I heard of it, too. You didn’t look like an idiot. You handled it beautifully,” he reassured her.

She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the elevators.

“Lunch is at Camelia Garden Bistro. The shoot is at Moreno’s, and dinner is at your mom’s house. There’s a car waiting downstairs for you guys,” he called after us.

Once we were alone inside the elevator, she moaned and leaned against the mirror. “Do you see what I have to deal with?”

“You handled it better than I would have.”

“It’s so stressful.” She clutched the roots of her hair.

“You can quit any time,” I reminded her.

She rolled onto her shoulder and rested her forehead on the mirror. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

She smiled sadly. “Well, like you said, it’s complicated.”

I nodded and gave her a hug because I understood exactly how she felt. As soon as she sunk into my chest, I knew I shouldn’t have done it.