More Than a Feeling (Curves for the Rock Star 3 - A BBW Rockstar Erotic Romance) (2 page)

Martin smiled. "Fuck, that's
brilliant. The trail of crumbs leads back to where it started."

"Exactly. It's going to take a
while longer but we're working on it. One thing this does point to
is that it's not the most sophisticated of operations we're talking
about. A professional wouldn't have done something stupid as
bouncing the signal off a router connected to a local line. It's a
schoolboy mistake."

"So, we find the router and we
find Luke?" I asked.

"Exactly. We just have to locate
where that router is in time. And who knows, we could get there and
find it sitting on the floor of an empty warehouse. They might be
one step ahead of us and using the router to throw us off. But it's
a pretty amateur play. I have a gut feeling this could be the thing
that leads us to the boy."

A tearful Julia walked down the
hallway, arm in arm with Michael. "Is there any news?" She asked.
"Please tell me there’s some good news."

I walked over to her and placed
a hand on her shoulder. "We may have a breakthrough," I smiled.

All of us jumped as Rick's phone
began to ring. "Calm down, everyone," he sighed. "It's just
Charlie. Hello? That's great," he said, nodding into the phone.
"I'll tell the others. Thanks for everything."

"Is that about the money?" I
asked.

"Yeah. It's on its way now.
Everything is in place. We can get access to it as soon as we know
what the instructions are going to be."

Michael walked up to Rick, his
head bowed. "I'm sorry about what I said earlier. I know you're
doing everything you can."

"That's okay," he said, putting
his arm around Julia's husband. "We're all a little bit on edge
right now. Let's just stick together and get through this, okay?
Let's get Luke back safely."

A group of police officers
swarmed forward, weapons drawn, as a knock came from the front
door. Martin turned to Julia. "You expecting anybody?" She shook
her head. He walked slowly to the door, gun pointed forward and
beckoned us to stay back and to the side. Crouching slightly, he
flung the door open.

"Whoa! Holy shit, calm
down!"

I couldn't believe my eyes.
Jake, the slimy bastard who had drugged me just the day before sat
cowering with his hands in the air.

"What the fuck is he doing
here?"

I grabbed a furious Rick's arm
as he made his way towards the door.

Martin slowly lowered his weapon
and turned to Rick. "You know him?"

"Yeah, unfortunately. He isn't
welcome here."

Jake slowly rose to his feet.
"I… I'm his agent."

"Ex-agent," Rick scowled.

"Look, I know we've had a crazy
24 hours, but I got a text from one of my media contacts that there
was a huge commotion outside the house. I just wanted to check
everything was okay. I couldn't believe it until I saw all the
police cars. Let's just put our differences aside for a minute,
okay? I can help. "

I felt my blood boiling, my
cheeks becoming flushed with anger. "How, exactly, can a piece of
shit like
you
help us? The best assistance you can provide
is to get the hell out of our sight." Rick turned to me and smiled
slightly, impressed at my retort.

"I know LA like the back of my
hand," Jake sighed. "Every warehouse, every back alley. All I want
to do is help."

We didn't get the opportunity to
humour Jake any further. The sound of Rick's ringtone pierced the
room, followed by the dreaded "Caller Unknown" message on the
screen, and we all fell silent as Rick instinctively picked up the
call and placed it on speaker.

"Do you have the money?"

Rick scowled as he answered the
heavily disguised voice. "Yes. It's on its way."

"Good. I hope you've picked some
speedy couriers, Mr Borrell. There is a sculpture of Lenin on the
south-east corner of La Brea Avenue and 4
^th
Street. Some
bullshit modern art that us taxpayers really shouldn't be having to
finance in this recession. As a sort of cruel irony, I'd like you
to place the $5 million in a sealed, plain black holdall at the
foot of the sculpture at exactly 4 PM this afternoon. Place it
behind the structure so it cannot be seen from the street."

"And then what?"

There was a slight pause. "Then,
Mr Borrell, you will fuck off. As soon as the money has been
recovered and verified as genuine, your son will be released."

"Why the hell should I trust
you? What's stopping you from just taking the money and keeping
Luke?"

"You have no choice but to trust
me, Mr Borrell. While I accept my methods have given you little
reason to, you have no other options. If it's any comfort to you,
I'm not the paternal type. The sooner I get to hand back your
child, the better. Just remember to do exactly as I say, Mr
Borrell, or the only way you'll be getting your son back is in a
body bag."

The line went dead and Martin
turned to Rick. "There we have it, then. We have to find where that
router is transmitting from before 4 PM."

"And if we don't?" Rick
asked.

"Then I'm afraid you're going to
have to make a trip to the bank."

"So, officer, you think the
signal may be coming from the north of the city?"

The mere sight of Jake made my
skin crawl. Since he arrived, he seemed more interested in speaking
to the police than actually asking about what had happened. Maybe I
was just being paranoid, but every fibre of my being distrusted
him.

"If we don't have a breakthrough
in the next hour, I'm going to have to pick up the money."

I turned to Rick and gently
kissed him. "I don't want you to do this. It's too dangerous. I'm
worried about you."

He brushed my cheek with a thumb
and gently kissed my forehead. "Don't worry about me, Amy. I'll be
fine. I'm more likely to get jumped by autograph hunters than
anyone else. Besides, I don't have a choice. Michael was partially
right."

"He didn't mean what he said. He
was just being rash."

"I know. But my life is too
insane for the average person."

"I'm still here," I smiled.

"Well, you're anything but
average. All of this makes you think, you know? I've lived a
selfish life for so long, jumping on a plane or a tour bus and
going off to play gigs anywhere and everywhere around the world
without a care for anybody. When I think of all the people I've
left behind, all the failed relationships, Luke even…"

"But you're here now. That's all
that matters."

"I can't change the past.
There's no point dwelling on this but I don't just want to live in
the present either. It's time to start thinking about the future,
Amy. As soon as this is over, things are going to change. I won't
let you be the one that got away."

I placed a hand on his arm,
softly squeezing the rock-hard muscle beneath the fabric of his
designer top.

"Don't you worry about me,
superstar. I'm not going anywhere."

"All right, everybody. Can I
have your attention please?"

We turned to see Martin in the
centre of the room, a tablet computer in his hand. "We appear to
have made something of a breakthrough. We've traced the router
signal to an industrial estate in north-eastern LA."

"How big an area is that?" I
asked.

"Pretty big but we're working on
triangulating the signal right now. We have teams ready to move in
if need be but I don't want to have any kind of visible presence
there just yet. If the kidnappers are still at that location then
it's only going to rattle them. I'll have more news as soon as we
get it."

I noticed Jake take several
steps into the empty kitchen at the back of Julia and Michael's
house. I didn't trust him to begin with, but now his behaviour
seemed really odd. Why had he just turned up here? And why was he
wiping sweat from his forehead as he talked quietly into his mobile
phone?

I made a point of marching into
the kitchen, pretending to get a drink.

"Is that the new iPhone,
Jake?"

"Yeah, yeah it is," he
stammered.

"I'm thinking of upgrading mine.
Mind if I take a look at it?"

"Why?" he asked, visibly
nervous.

"I just want to see if it fits
in my handbag, that's all."

I noticed his hand shaking as he
slid it across the granite countertop towards me. I picked it up,
pretending to look at the dimensions. "Hmm, it's a little longer
than I would've liked. Maybe I'll keep my existing one."

I quickly swapped his handset
for the identical model I had in my back pocket while he turned
away. Now I had to fight to control
my
hand shaking as I
passed my own iPhone over to him.

"Thanks," he said, hurriedly
putting the handset back in his jacket pocket. He seemed too
distracted to notice anything, let alone check the phone
itself.

"What did I come in here for
again?" I said, rolling my eyes skyward. "Never mind, it'll come to
me." He grabbed my arm as I walked past, hurriedly attempting to
get out of the kitchen and back into the living room.

"I hate you, Amy. You do know
that, don't you?"

"The feeling is mutual," I
seethed through gritted teeth.

"Your little love affair with my
client has cost me a fortune. I just want you to know, there's
plenty of hard feelings. Mountains of them, in fact. I know a
million gossip columnists and bloggers in this town. Anything
that's in your past, I'll find out. Anything that's in your
present, I'll find out. Anything that's in your future, I'll
destroy. Your plus-sized ass is mine."

I snatched my arm away. "Don't
bank on it, Jake. You're nowhere near as smart as you think you
are."

I hurried into the main hallway
of the house and pulled out Jake's iPhone. As I scrolled through
the messages on-screen, I was horrified. Brief, coded updates of
how the police were progressing; warnings to move "the boy" as soon
as possible. I beckoned Rick over and showed him what I had
found.

"It's Jake's phone. He's working
with them, keeping them one step ahead of us."

"Son of a bitch…"

I called up his voicemail to
find a new message. Rick grabbed Martin and we huddled around the
phone on speaker. On the other end was a desperate sounding Sean,
pleading with his brother to stop.

"Jake, man! You've got to end
this! This has gone way too far. I'll talk to Zee, man. We'll work
something out. Let's just stop this, okay?"

"Who's Zee?" Martin asked.

"Sean's drug dealer," Rick
replied. "He owes him money. A
lot
of money."

"Not $5 million worth, surely,"
I asked.

"No way. But between paying him
off, making up for the lost royalties from disbanding Beautiful
Losers and some good old-fashioned greed, $5 million probably
sounds like a nice round number to these assholes."

A panicked Jake suddenly came
running down the hall, his face ashen. "You bitch…you took my
phone…"

Before any of us even had chance
to open our mouths, Jake was on the floor, on the receiving end of
a bone crunching uppercut from Rick.

“
Where is he?” he
screamed. “Where the
fuck
is my son?”

What the hell kind of life had I
got myself into?

This so-called dream of mine,
this fairytale that I was living had begun to spiral into something
I didn't understand any more. The entire day had become a complete
blur, so much happening in the space of such little time but it was
hard to keep track of it. Jake was now in custody, led away by
police for questioning. He had already given up the location of
Luke – the exact warehouse where he was being kept, an empty former
paint factory. All around me police were suiting up and loading
weapons, the constant buzz of radios and mobile phones becoming
nauseous.

My days of being unable to pay
my rent seemed so far away. I'll never forget the time when I saw
the words "eviction notice" on a letter through my door. You never
really understand the gravity of what that means until it actually
happens to you. I remember pleading with a guy from the electric
company not to cut off my supply – begging him to at least let me
cook something that night. He took pity on me, saying he would tell
his employers he couldn't find the address that day but I had just
24 hours to figure something out. I literally pulled together every
last penny I had the next day to pay that bill. Simple acts of
kindness like that from a stranger reminded me that there were
still good people in the world.

Now, my life was unrecognisable
from what it had been – but at what cost? I had gradually lost
contact with all my old friends – those who were happy for me
simply couldn't relate to my constant travelling and bizarre change
of lifestyle. I had become some kind of quasi-celebrity myself, a
curiosity of sorts. Gossip magazines and websites photographed me
taking the bins out or heading home from the shops. I was famous
for not doing anything other than being the partner of a rock star
– a partner constantly criticised or praised depending on which day
it was for my weight, my dress sense, the amount of make-up I had
on.

Now, I was sitting in yet
another surreal scene being played out before my very eyes. In the
midst of it all, a child had been kidnapped and we all faced up to
the terrible prospect of what might happen next. What if a rescue
attempt went horribly wrong? What if Jake was lying and Luke was
long gone – or worse? I shuddered at the thought.

"You're to stay back – right
back, understand?"

Rick and I nodded as Martin
secured bullet-proof vests to both of us. To say this was becoming
utterly surreal was an understatement.

"I want you to both stay in one
of the surveillance vans. You can go with Miriam, one of our best
techs. Do not engage, is that clear? The only reason you guys are
even coming is because I fear some kind of negotiation may end up
taking place. So far, the kidnapper has only spoken to you," he
said, pointing at Rick." Heaven forbid, if something goes wrong, we
may need to keep that line of communication open."