Fractured Beat (Meltdown Book 1) (13 page)

I’d grown up in a small community where everyone knew each other’s ancestors from as far back as the colonization of the New World. By the time I could date I was so deep into practice and competition that I had no time for boys, much less love. I lost my virginity in the back of a barn to my best friend’s big brother when I was seventeen. That was the summer before the Olympic trials, the summer before I had my accident. I’d had a few sexual encounters since then but had never really made a solid connection, so jealousy had never been a factor in my life.
Until now
. I stared at Grant’s lips on that woman’s breast and felt green with envy.

Focus Mallory.

The night these pictures were taken I left my phone in the locker. No one was supposed to have access to the locker except for band members, and management. Clearly that was not the case. Still, why me? My phone was buried at the bottom of my purse and I made sure to shove it in the back of the locker. The sound of music accompanied by masculine laughter swirled around me as I lay there frozen to my bunk. Why were these pictures on my phone? Should I show them to Grant or delete them? Suddenly I had a thought, a seriously horrible thought.

Please let me be wrong.

With shaking fingers I closed the pictures app, opened my mail and scrolled down to the sent folder. My finger hovered over the icon.
Please let me be wrong
. I opened it and slowly began scrolling through my sent mail. There had to be over a hundred sent emails in the folder. I scrolled back over the past two weeks and let out a huge breath of relief when I discovered no emails had been sent from my phone with those pictures attached.
Thank God.
Before closing out of my mail folder I made sure to erase my sent items as well as clean out my junk mail and empty the trash folder. As I lay there listening to the music, I had a second horrible thought.
My text messages.
And I knew, just like I knew when my manager was about to sell me out to the press or when Mr. Eckleston told me he was going to the drug store and I intercepted him at the liquor store. I knew I would find it there.

“Please, please, please let me be wrong,” I whispered, as I opened my text messages. I was not much of a texter. In fact, the only two people I ever texted were CiCilia and my mother, and that was only because they insisted on texting me first. I had three missed text messages, two from CiCilia, and one from a number I’d never seen before. My stomach dropped as I pressed the number I’d never seen before and the thread of pictures popped up. The attached message read,

I thot you might want to see this. This certanly makes my job much harder dont you think?

I didn’t know what made me most angry, the fact that someone stole my phone, took incriminating pictures, and then pretended they were me as they sent them off to a complete stranger, or the fact they couldn’t spell worth a damn. Someone wanted to get me in trouble. I started to call the number, but realized I wouldn’t be able to hear them over the music. Being stuck on a bus in such close quarters had its definite disadvantages.

I must have drifted off to sleep because the next thing I knew Grant was in my face breathing his minty fresh breath all over me. “Wake up sleepy head. You sleep like the dead.” I blinked up at him and tried to process what he was saying. “We’re in Atlanta and it’s time for our morning run.” Pretending I didn’t hear him I rolled over. A loud thunking noise echoed through the bus, followed by complete silence. By the time I realized the sound was my phone hitting the floor it was too late.

“What the ever loving fuck?” he hissed. I flipped over and tried to snatch my phone back. He easily dodged my hand and continued to stare down at my text messages with a shocked expression on his face.
Why didn’t I password my phone last night?

“Grant,” I called out. His eyes lifted to mine and my heart hitched at what I saw on his face. Hurt and betrayal were followed closely by anger and finally hatred.

“I was half kidding when I accused you of snitching to Kirkland. I should have known better.”

“Grant, please listen to me,” I tried again.

“If you knew how to do your job, which clearly you don’t, you would’ve figured out by now that I’m not a fucking addict and this,” he swept his hand across the bus, “is all bullshit and lies.” He tossed my phone at me and then turned and strode toward the front of the bus. I knew if I let him go without saying something I’d regret it.

“I didn’t take those pictures and I didn’t have a clue as to whose number that was until you just told me. If you don’t believe me ask Hank or Marcel. I went back to the hotel early that night, but I left my purse in the locker. Hank brought it to me later. Ask him.”

Right before exiting the bus I heard him growl, “Fuck off Mallory.”

The curtain next to me opened and Nash’s head appeared. He stared at me for what seemed like forever before closing it again. I didn’t know whether to get up and go after Grant or to stay put. In the end I decided to stay.

If Grant didn’t hate me before this, he
certainly
did now.

Dead Or Alive?

Grant

I
fucking knew
it! Traitorous bitch!
Hank greeted me with a smile at the bottom of the steps of the bus. When he saw the pissed off look on my face he instantly sobered and asked if I was okay. With a snarl I brushed past him and took off in a fast paced run. Fuck no I wasn’t okay. How could I be such a poor judge of character?

A few months after Happenstance signed Meltdown we launched our first album. Once that happened we were on the grid with our asses swinging in the wind. With notoriety came all kinds of shit, both good and bad. You’d be surprised the damage a bunch of women could cause, especially when drunk. Thankfully my dad knew a guy whose son was in the security business. His name was Hank Brown and he was very well regarded. At my dad’s suggestion I passed Hank’s contact information on to Blane and a week later he and his crew were hired as Meltdown’s security team. Hank and I instantly bonded, partly because he didn’t put up with any bullshit on his watch, and partly because he was an all-around cool guy who I trusted to keep our asses safe. To this day Blane thinks Hank reports to Happenstance, but Hank and I both know better.

“Talk to me,” Hank said when he caught up to me. It took me a few minutes to get a grip on my anger. Women didn’t do this to me, ever. Yet, here I was all tied up in knots and all I could think was
she played me
. Why the hell did it bother me so much? It wasn’t as if she was mine. Hell, I didn’t even like her. Okay, that was a lie. I liked her.

Before I addressed the Mallory issue I needed to handle business. “I take it there were no cameras on the bus?”

“No, we scrubbed it thoroughly and found nothing.”

“What else?”

“I have the names of everyone who was there before the show the night you were drugged. We’ll need to go over the list and see if anything jumps out at you.”

“Done. What about the Oxy and coke? Did you get the fingerprint results back?”

“Yes, and they’re also a no go. The only prints found on the bottles were Blane and Nash’s. There was a third partial print on the vial of cocaine but it wasn’t large enough to run.”

“Damn. I’m fucking sick of dead ends.” We pounded the pavement in silence while I tried to get over my disappointment. I’d really hoped the bottles were going to give me some answers. Once again we needed to go back to the drawing board.

After another half mile I was ready to talk about Mallory. “I asked Blane to check into Mallory for me. He avoided me for most of the week before getting back to me with some lame ass excuse about employee confidentiality.”

We slowed down in order to cross the street. As we turned back toward the bus, Hank responded, “You think she’s not legit?” He sounded surprised and I wondered if he knew something I didn’t.

“She’s Kirkland’s fucking puppet.” I glanced over at him. “Why? You think she is?”

“I do.”

His emphatic tone made me pause, and suddenly I had to know. “Why?”

“You should have heard her the day Blane and I picked her up at the airport. Typical Blane tried to railroad her into reporting your every move back to him.” Hank huffed out a laugh. “He kept interrupting her and finally she put her hand in his face and said “‘Don’t.’” I’ve never seen someone shut him down like that. It was awesome. Anyway, she was angry for you. She accused Blane of not supporting you and then asked if she was being hired to spy on you or rehab you. She told him she wanted a clause added to her contract stating that if management interfered she could walk and still get paid for the hours she’d worked. Of course Blane blew her off, but you should have seen the look of surprise on his face. If you ask me Mallory Scott is a total badass, and one hundred percent in your corner.”

Huh.
This was the last thing I expected him to say. Not sure if I approved of his obvious affection for Mallory, I decided to give him shit about it. “You sound pussy whipped.”

“No, just impressed. I like a woman with grit.”

Another half mile passed before I got up enough nerve to ask the question that had been bothering me since I’d walked out on Mallory earlier. “The first night of the Houston concert, did Mallory go back to the hotel early?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Did you take her?”

“No, Marcel did, but I was there when they left, why?” he asked again.

“Did she leave her purse in the locker?”

“Yes, but I took it to her after I brought you back to the hotel. Did something happen to her purse?”

My mind was racing. That was the night I ended up in bed with Becki with an i, the star of those pictures, and giant pain in my ass. If Mallory didn’t take those pictures then who did? Other than Nash, Luke, and Chaz, who were all in different stages of pissed off at me, Hank was the only person I could completely trust. “Someone took pictures of me that night and texted them to Kirkland.”

A confused look appeared on his face. “Why the hell would they do that?”

“And, they used Mallory’s phone,” I added.

He stopped dead in his tracks and I shot past him. “What do you mean they used her phone?”

I jogged back to him and explained, “Pictures of me from that night were texted to Kirkland from Mallory’s phone.”

“Hold up a second. You’re telling me that someone snatched Mallory’s phone from the locker, took pictures of you and sent them to Kirkland?” Here I was sweating my balls off and practically stroking out and the fucker was barely breathing heavy. “Is that why you were calling her a narc?” he asked.

“You were at the meeting where Kirkland cut off the parties. Blane said he went home early that night. I knew security hadn’t snitched. That left Mallory. You have to admit, it makes sense.” I dropped my hands to my knees in order to catch my breath or throw up, whichever came first.

“There were at least thirty other people there that night. Kirkland could have paid any one of them to spy on you.”

“I went to wake up Mallory this morning and her phone literally landed at my feet. When I picked it up to hand it back, her text messages were open and front and center was a picture of me sucking Becki with an i’s tit. Below it was a message talking about how my actions were making it difficult for her to do her job. It was definitely Kirkland’s phone number.”

“Becki with a what?” Hank asked.

Ignoring his question, I continued explaining, “I confronted Mallory, she denied it and I didn’t believe her. On my way out the door she claimed she wasn’t even there and to ask you about it.”

“She’s telling the truth. Like I said before, Marcel took her back to the hotel early that night, which means she couldn’t have taken those pictures.”

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse it had. I felt bad for being such a dick to Mallory, but in all fairness, the evidence was damning. For the rest of the run we discussed our next move. Hank wanted a copy of the text sent to Kirkland from Mallory’s phone. We weren’t sure if it was the same person who drugged me but suspected it was. Hank was also going to check if we had a list of names from the night the pictures were taken. I had one thing on my to-do list and that was to apologize to Mallory.

As we neared the bus, Hank let out a chuckle. I glanced over to see what was so funny and he nodded his head in the direction of the bus. Standing at the foot of the bus with her arms crossed and her foot tapping furiously on the gravel was a very unhappy looking Mallory. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. Wearing a form fitted t-shirt and a skirt that only someone in the seventies would wear, she reminded me of a young Joni Mitchell. I couldn’t help but let out a bark of laughter, which of course only added fuel to the already blazing fire. With her fancy braided hair swinging back and forth to the rhythm of her tapping foot, she was a sight to see, a breath of fresh air, an absolute vision. Hank and I cautiously approached her, or should I say I cautiously approached her and the song
Hard Headed Woman
popped into my head. Her eyes narrowed and I realized I was smiling like a goof. Yes, I think I might have found my very own hard headed woman.