Chapter 1
Evan
Boom… Boom… Boom…
My eyes slowly peel open and immediately squint back shut against the harsh morning light. I can’t tell if the loud, banging-type sound is inside my head or not, but if the way my tongue is glued to the top of my mouth is any indication, I’m going to guess I’m hungover.
Not a shocker. I had a killer party last night to celebrate the finish of my second album, Core Deviance, and I was hitting the Jack pretty hard to blow off all the steam and stress that comes from the recording process. I didn’t drink so much, however, that I don’t know why there’s a naked, soft body pressed up against me. I open my eyes again and swivel my head to the right, take in the sleeping redhead beside me. Yeah… totally remember fucking her last night… twice.
Boom… Boom… Boom…
Now that right there… that’s the sound of someone beating on my bedroom door, and is most definitely not the pounding headache I first suspected. In fact, my head actually feels pretty good. There isn’t any telltale queasiness that would indicate I over-imbibed last night.
“Evan,” Tyler Hannity calls out from the other side of the door. Boom... Boom… Boom… “You awake in there?”
“Yeah, just a minute,” I call back with a froggy voice and push the woman away from me, which isn’t all that easy as she’s complete dead weight as she sleeps. I put a hand to her shoulder and give her a slight shake.
She moans and opens her eyes to stare at me blearily. “Wazzup?”
“You gotta go,” I tell her bluntly, and then roll in the opposite direction away from her. Right across the expanse of my king mattress and onto the floor where my jeans lay. I pull them on, buttoning the fly as I round the bed toward the door. When I look back over at her one more time, see her eyes closed again, I yell, “Hey… you gotta go. Get your ass up and get out.”
Her head pops up from the pillow and she glares at me, so she’s not as “sleepy” as she was putting on. “Seriously… you’re just kicking me out after what we shared last night?”
I snag my t-shirt hanging off the end of the bed and pull it over my head. It hides the roll of my eyes and when my head pops through, I say, “We fucked. We both got off. Couple of orgasms is all we shared. Now get up and get dressed. I can have someone drive you home if you need.”
I know that sounds harsh, but it’s necessary. I’ve been stung one too many times by women who only wanted my fame and fortune. I was taken advantage of a few times before I wised the fuck up.
Now, I pretty much just party hard, fuck nameless women, and then kick them out in the morning. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
It’s not the life I’d envisioned for myself, but I guess fame changes things. Sure, it’s the cliché of what everyone thinks a rock star does, but it’s really not what I wanted. Pathetic thing is, though, this life is not conducive to serious relationships.
I know.
I’ve tried.
It hasn’t worked.
The redhead curses something at me, but I don’t pay attention. I reach out and pull my bedroom door open.
Tyler stands there, a somber expression on his face. His blond hair is a mess, sticking up all over the place, and I’m guessing he must have passed out on a couch or in one of the spare bedrooms last night. His eyes flick to the redhead and stay pinned on her a minute. I turn my head to look over my shoulder and see her prancing around naked while she collects her clothes, tits swaying back and forth as she bends over and retrieves shit off the floor.
I turn back to look at Tyler with a slight grin, as I know he’s probably thinking… “lucky fucker.” Instead, his eyes come back to me, his expression not changing. He’s my manager and closest friend in the world, and he looks like someone just died.
“Oh, fuck… did someone die?” I ask, my heart immediately sinking down into my stomach. My thoughts first go to Midge, because, let’s face it—she’s the most important person in my life, even more so than my own parents.
Tyler gives a quick shake of his head, but my immediate relief is quashed when he says in a low voice, “The police are here to see you.”
“For what?” I ask, completely flummoxed. When I woke up, I saw by the bedside clock that it was fucking nine-thirty in the morning. The party’s long been over, and there’s no need for the police to be here.
Tyler shrugs as he takes a step back, but his voice is tense when he says, “They wouldn’t say. Just that they needed to talk to you about something.”
Midge.
Fuck… what if something happened to her?
I’m done questioning Tyler when he clearly doesn’t have answers. I push past him and practically run down the curved staircase that leads to the first floor, my heart thundering with fear. He follows behind me and murmurs, “They’re in the kitchen waiting for you. I’ll go hang out in the living room.”
“No,” I say curtly as I hit the marble foyer, which feels ice cold against my bare feet. “I want you in there.”
I have no fucking clue why the police would be at my house early on a Wednesday morning, but whatever the reason, it’s going to have an impact in the media. Tyler is going to have to handle that—which sucks because he’s bad with publicity—so he needs to know what’s going on. I hope to fucking God it’s not Midge.
Please be about anything but Midge, and I won’t ever ask for another thing again as long as I live.
Empty beer bottles, solo cups, bags of chips… there’s trash scattered everywhere I look as I turn right off the staircase and head toward the kitchen. Just another weeknight at Evan Scott’s house. Normally, Tyler would have someone on standby ready to clean this shit up, but I’m thinking plans changed a bit with the arrival of the police.
I glance into the living room, seeing a few people sleeping on the floor. I recognize them all… casual friends, not close. But trusted enough that I don’t care they crashed here. Tyler would have ensured anyone unknown to me personally left before the doors were closed and locked once the party was over. I have no clue what time that was because I know I was balls-deep inside the redhead for the first time around midnight.
When I turn into the kitchen, I’m immediately caught off guard by the two men standing there. When Tyler said police, I expected they’d be officers wearing the dark blue uniforms of the Raleigh Police Department. Instead, these men are wearing civilian clothes. One has on khaki pants and a pink button-down shirt with a police badge hooked at his belt. The other is wearing a dark gray suit with a white shirt, no tie. I don’t see a visible badge, but as if he could read my mind, he reaches into his interior breast pocket and pulls it out.
He flips it open, leaning toward me while holding it out for my inspection. “Mr. Scott… I’m Detective Simon Turnbull. That’s my partner, Detective Grady Kasick.”
I let my gaze flip to his badge briefly before saying, “What can I help you with?”
Detective Turnbull looks behind me, and I know Tyler must be standing there. “We need to talk in private.”
“Whatever you need from me can be said in front of Tyler. He’s my manager,” I tell him firmly. “He’s privy to everything.”
Turnbull turns to look at his partner and something silent passes between them, but I don’t like the slight smirk Kasick’s wearing. Turnbull turns back to me and with a short sigh, says, “Mr. Scott… Keith Carina was found dead late last night.”
Tyler’s breath hisses out in disbelief, but I can’t even make a sound because the air is clogged in my lungs. Surprisingly, my first internal reaction is one of deep grief mixed with stunned surprise.
“What happened?” Tyler manages to ask.
“He was shot,” Kasick replies bluntly. “Execution style in the back of the head.”
“Jesus fuck,” I finally manage on a ragged exhale.
“Can you tell us where you were last night between roughly midnight and four AM this morning?” Turnbull asks coolly. My gaze snaps to his, my stomach flipping over and then dropping at the hardness in his eyes.
“I was in my bedroom,” I mutter, my voice sounding shaky. And fuck… will they think that means I’m guilty?
“Alone?” Turnbull prompts.
I shake my head. “No, there was a woman with me.”
“The entire night?” Kasick asks with interest.
“From about midnight, she was. In fact, she’s in my bedroom now,” I say, throwing my thumb over my shoulder. “Before that, I was here at my house. There were a couple of hundred people who can attest to that.”
“I’ll go get her,” Tyler says quickly, but Turnbull says, “Hold up… let Detective Kasick go up with you.”
This thoroughly rattles me because that must mean they think Tyler would try to feed her a story or something to bolster an alibi. My fingers curl inward, pressing into my palms, and I take a deep breath as Tyler and the other cop leave the kitchen.
“Nice place you have here,” Turnbull says conversationally, his gaze roaming the gourmet kitchen with custom cabinetry, Viking appliances, and Italian tile. It looks like it belongs in a Tuscan villa and so not me, but what the fuck did I care? I have a lot of money now and wanted a nice house. Didn’t give a fuck what the kitchen looked like.
“Thanks,” I mutter and walk over to the Keurig sitting beside the sink. I pull a cup out of the cupboard. Out of a politeness I am most definitely not feeling, but also knowing I can’t be antagonistic, I offer to the other man, “Want a cup of coffee?”
“I’m good,” he says, and I don’t bother responding. Instead, I put the pod in the machine and watch as the coffee starts to steam into the cup.
“You been living here… what… about nine months now?” Detective Turnbull asks.
“About that,” I say without offering anything more.
“You’ve had quite the rise to fame,” he says, and my back tightens. I don’t like discussing how I got to where I am today. It was through a lot of hard work, busting my ass, and then just a whole lot of luck. A lot of times people focus on that luck and don’t seem to give credence to my talent or perseverance. I have no clue what category this dude falls in, so I don’t bother engaging.
“Shunned by all the major recording labels,” Turnbull says, sounding as if he’s reciting a book report. “Decided to produce your own LP and released it on iTunes. Did some creative marketing, including a YouTube video of your debut single, which garnered over nine million views in under a week, and shot your album up to the top of the Billboard charts. Now you’ve got all the majors clamoring to get you signed, and you’re gracing the cover of Rolling Stone.”
I can’t fucking stand it. The shock of being told Keith is dead and that I might be a person of interest, as well as having this cop recite my crazy but meteoric rise in the music industry as if it’s almost a fluke, has me getting punchy.
“Well, congratulations, Officer,” I say in what will go down in history as my most sarcastic voice ever. “You know how to read Wikipedia.”
He’s unfazed and merely chuckles before saying, “It’s detective. Not officer. Patrolmen do not ordinarily investigate homicides.”
I cringe. His message is pointed and hits me direct center. I might be in some serious fucking trouble.
And as if things couldn’t get any worse, Kasick walks back into the kitchen with Tyler right behind him. Tyler looks at me with wild eyes.
“No girl up there,” Kasick says.
“She must have jetted out of here fast,” Tyler says apologetically while looking at me.
No clue why he should be sorry. I’m the one who practically pushed her out of the bed and demanded she leave.
So much for my alibi.
“I think it’s best if you come on down to the station with us,” Turnbull says, trying to sound as if this is just an ordinary day. “We’ll stop and get some coffee and donuts on the way… We want you to be comfortable while we talk.”
I let out a pained sigh and scrub my hands through my hair. It’s long and messy on top, hanging in tangled layers down to my ears. I look up at Turnbull. “Can I grab a shower first?”
“I’d rather you not,” he replies with almost a taunt. “We’re going to ask you to let us take some swabs for DNA comparison and check your hands for gun residue. Can’t have you washing away evidence now, can we?”
A surge of nausea wells within me as the shit is starting to get real. Of course they won’t find anything on me that will link me to Keith’s murder, because I didn’t fucking do it, but I’ve seen enough shit through Midge to know that the police will fabricate evidence, particularly in a high-profile case.
I turn to Tyler. “Call Midge. I’m going to try to call her on the way there, but tell her what’s going on and to meet me down at the police station.”
Tyler nods at me, his own face green with fear. I try to remind myself I have nothing to worry about because I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t kill anyone and the truth shall prevail.
At least I hope that’s how it works in the criminal justice system.
