“I have a show to do.” She kept her voice firm, wanting him to think she remained in control. That his mere presence hadn’t set off her alarms.
James consulted his watch. “In three minutes,” he said. “Which allows you just enough time to answer my question.”
Trena turned away and placed the roses on the dressing room table. Then she stalled for as long as she could under the guise of checking her makeup.
“I was hoping maybe we could meet up after the show? Grab a late bite and just talk?”
She knew she should decline, and yet there was a good chance James had insider knowledge about the Madison case, that he knew the kind of things that could really cement her standing as a big-time journalist. In the interest of furthering her career, she figured she might as well. . . .
“What did you make of Layla’s blog entry? You think it’s legit?” She trained her focus on James, watching for even the slightest hint of deception.
He flashed his palms wide and said, “Nothing surprises me in this town.”
She was about to follow up, when there was a knock at the door. “Two minutes!” someone called.
She looked at James. They could sort it out later. Maybe over that late bite he’d offered. “You can hang out here.” She kept the tone as professional as she could, considering the deeply interested look he gave her.
He grinned and settled into the same chair she’d just vacated. “Break a leg!” he said as she passed him.
Immediately, she turned and stared. He’d just recited the words from the threatening note she’d originally suspected him of sending.
“That’s what they say before a performance, right? Break a leg?” He cocked his head and shot an appreciative glance over her body.
She pressed her lips tight and made for the door. She’d just reached the threshold when her phone chimed with an incoming text, and she glanced over her shoulder at James. Had he sent it? She could’ve sworn she heard that telltale swoosh seconds before she’d received it.
He lifted his gaze to meet hers and flashed a flirtatious grin that could mean just about anything.
Was James helping her or harming her? She couldn’t be sure. But she knew better than to read too much into his response until she could gather enough evidence to prove either way. Without another thought, she left him alone in the room and went in search of Priya.
“You okay?” Priya reached an arm toward her, but at the last second, quickly pulled away.
“I need them to run that clip with the nurse at Eileen Banks’s convalescent home,” Trena said, her voice a bit shaky from her encounter with James. “Tell them to cut the clip of Ira if they’re worried about time.”
Ira wouldn’t like it, but too bad. That was what he got for refusing a live interview in order to manipulate her into doing a piece on his empire. He’d get his segment, but for tonight, he was on the cutting room floor.
“Did something happen?” Priya seemed surprised by the change.
Trena considered sharing the text, which included an image of Madison’s birth certificate, revealing her real name, as well as the true identities of her parents. After all, it was Priya who’d discovered that Madison,
Paul had been the first on the scene when Madison’s childhood home burst into flames, ultimately claiming the lives of her parents. He’d been there to help when Madison moved to LA, and he’d been looking out for her every day since. Paul had been impossible to track down. They didn’t call him the Ghost for nothing. But Trena was convinced that if anyone knew where Madison was, it was him. She just needed to find him.
She studied Priya. Something about her covetous expression convinced Trena to hold back. Let her watch the show and learn the same way as everyone else.
“Just see that it’s done!” she called over her shoulder.
She had a show to shoot. And thanks to that text, she had no doubt there was an Emmy waiting in her future.
WAITING ON THE WORLD TO CHANGE
Tommy Phillips stood in the entry of his luxury apartment and looked all around. After nearly a week in jail, he could hardly believe his good fortune to land in such a place. But with the way things were going, he couldn’t help but wonder how long he’d get to stay.
He grabbed a beer from the fridge and headed out to the balcony, where he pressed against the glass banister and gazed at the flickering LA skyline beyond. For most of his life he’d dreamed of that view. He’d driven all the way from Oklahoma in a piece-of-shit car with a cracked windshield in pursuit of it. Just another small-town hotshot with dreams of making it big—yet another LA cliché to add to the heap.
Funny how the city ended up being everything he’d thought, and nothing like he’d hoped.
When he first arrived, he got the impression that while LA wasn’t exactly welcoming, it was still full of possibility for those who worked hard and refused to give up.
Now it reminded him of one of those flaky internet life coaches the city churned out by the dozen. The kind who seduced you into confessing your wildest dreams, only to sell them back to you at a price you never saw coming.
Tommy had dreamed of fame and he’d scored. There wasn’t a tabloid out there that hadn’t featured his face on the cover. As the last person to see and kiss Madison, he’d been the headline on trash rags all over the world, though his record label warned that as a walking, talking PR crisis, they needed to find a way to cut through the noise and persuade people to give him a chance.
Malina had even dreamed up a strategy she laughingly referred to as Project Ghost. The idea was to pay a big-name director to create a video scored by one of Tommy’s songs without ever actually featuring Tommy. The video would be so beautiful, the song so irresistible, it would immediately go viral and only later, after it had hit number one on iTunes, would they reveal that Tommy was the voice behind it.
It sounded gimmicky, disingenuous, and Tommy instinctively hated everything about it.
But he also realized that in the current climate, it might be the only way he’d ever get a fair shot.
He closed his eyes and took a long swig of beer. The last few days had been rough. He’d used his one phone call to talk to his mom, wanting her to learn the bad news from him instead of one of her tabloid-reading friends. It was the toughest call he’d ever made. She’d spent most of it crying and pleading with him to come home.
“I told you not to work for Ira Redman,” she’d said, her voice choked with tears.
Tommy had gripped the phone tightly, waiting for her to finally put a reason to the refrain she’d been repeating since he moved to LA. To finally admit that the man she pretended was his father didn’t exist, though his real dad, Ira Redman, did.
The long, dark hours in jail had been spent wondering where he’d be if Ira Redman had never walked into Farrington’s Guitar, spotted him behind the counter, and passed him the flyer advertising the Unrivaled Nightlife contest. He guessed he would still have the job, since Ira was a big part of why he’d lost it. He would’ve struggled to get gigs, meet a girl he could truly connect with, and make friends in a new city that wasn’t nearly as friendly or inclusive as it pretended to be.
Despite Tommy’s growing list of regrets, despite everything bad that had happened to him because of his involvement