Unplugged: A Bad Boy Rockstar Romance (12 page)

~ SIXTEEN ~

Laurel

L.A.,
this cesspool of heat and dust and weird fake smiles that made everything
disorienting—I hated it. The Pacific Northwest was one thing, but I couldn’t
stand California. Give me the upfront brashness of East Coasters over this
granola crunch, passive-aggressiveness any day.

My hatred only made me more determined to get my job
done as quickly and boldly as possible. The plane ride from SeaTac was short,
but it gave me plenty of time to double-check the data I had already found. And
in doing that double-check, I found myself more certain than ever that Noah was
telling the truth about what happened at the festival.

I kept trying to tell myself my feelings for him were
incidental. Part of me was scared it was just another lie to soothe the ache of
the truth. Maybe I had turned into a shit journalist who didn’t know what the
fuck she was doing. Maybe I had fallen so deeply for Noah that I couldn’t see
past the web of lies he was trying to spin me. But deep down I could feel that
wasn’t right. I had fallen deeply for Noah—and Noah was not a cold-blooded
killer. Both of those things existed independent of each other, and I was going
to prove it.

Even if proving it meant I lost Noah forever.

I had no time to consider that future horrorscape.
Instead I turned my focus to the present, and let myself get judgy and grumpy
about every little thing I hated about this city to keep my mind from wandering.
The cab driver from the airport must have sensed my mood, because he didn’t
even try to make conversation as he drove me straight for Sentinel Security’s
head offices. My plan was to get there, conduct my research, and get back to
Seattle without having to stay overnight. But all of that depended on what I
found—or didn’t find.

My flight got me in a little earlier than I expected,
and the front door to the modest, two-story office building out in the City of
Industry was still locked. Assuring my taxi driver I’d be fine on my own, I
waved him off and wandered down to a sketchy convenience store to grab myself a
coffee and a donut while I waited. The vibe around here was so different from
Seattle, and especially Thornwood, that I found myself somehow feeling homesick
for a place I wasn’t even from. Everything was bright and bland here. I missed
the shadows.

I missed Noah.

By the time I got back to the building, someone had
arrived and opened up the place. A pretty young woman sat at the front desk,
jacket still on her shoulders, rifling through some paperwork. She looked up
only a moment when she heard the bell on the door.

“Hi there, give me just one second,” she said to me.

I nodded and wandered around the waiting room with my
coffee. It was small and surprisingly basic for a firm that dealt with clients
as big as the Sun Fest. A few outdated chairs, a water cooler, a table stuffed
with random entertainment magazines. On the walls hung various professional
photos of security teams at work during concerts. It seemed like the owner of
this place probably took home more than his share of the big paydays, and left
the branches with as little money to operate their overhead as he could get
away with. That could be useful. I was suddenly glad for the wad of cash in my
wallet, courtesy of
Slipstream’s
expense account.

After a few moments, the receptionist let out a big
breath and stood upright. “Hi, sorry! I didn’t mean to keep you waiting. What
can I do for you?”

I turned to her with a patient smile and walked up to
the chest-high counter. “My name is Laurel Barnes. I have an appointment to
meet with Maria Haro.”

She nodded and bent down to look at her computer
screen. She scrolled a few moments, frowning. “I… I’m sorry, I don’t have an
appointment for you here. What did you say your name was?”

“Laurel Barnes. My assistant called yesterday and set
this appointment. She assured me it was taken care of,” I said, putting my
coffee on the counter.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Barnes, it’s just not…”

“Miss, I’m with Bear River Insurance, and I’m supposed
to be meeting with Maria Haro to discuss some important matters—I’m sure you
can guess which ones. I was assured by your staff this meeting was set up for
today. Does Ms. Haro understand that her job, and this very business remaining
open, depend on the findings I present to my company?”

It was all bullshit, obviously. Just a bit of social
engineering one tended to pick up as an investigative journalist. I found
Maria’s name, as well as the public paperwork showing the name of the firm’s
insurance company, during my research. A few phone calls later, and I had
confirmation she was one of the people in charge of the festival security
detail.

But this poor girl didn’t know that. She just went pale
and started stuttering.

“Oh, oh God,” she said. “I must not have saved the
appointment right in the program…”

I checked my phone impatiently, dramatically. “I came
here straight from the airport, and I have to be back there before nightfall.
This kind of evasion does not bode well for my report. I suggest you get a hold
of her right now.”

“Y-Yes, ma’am, right away,” said the receptionist. She
reached for the phone, but then thought better of it and excused herself,
disappearing through a door with a keycard lock.

She wasn’t gone three minutes. The door flew open and
the girl held it open for who I could only assume was Maria Haro. Her dark hair
was pulled back in a tight, smooth bun, and her face wore an expression of
surprise, and just a bit of fear.

Maria came around the desk with her hand outstretched.
“Hi, I’m Maria Haro. I’m told there was some problem with scheduling?”

I shook her hand and kept my eyes on hers. “Laurel
Barnes, Bear River Insurance. I set an appointment to meet with you that was, apparently,
not taken correctly. It is imperative I speak with you today, Ms. Haro. This is
regarding Sun Fest.” I gave a suspicious look to the receptionist, as if I was
afraid she would overhear.

Maria took the hint and waved a hand for me to follow
her. “Let’s speak in my office.” She led me behind the desk and through the
keycard door into a tight, bland cubicle farm. Most of the spaces were empty
this early, but a few people were on headsets taking appointments and giving
service quotes. Maria had a small, windowless office near the back, and she
closed the door behind us before she took a seat at her messy desk.

“I didn’t expect that you’d need to speak to me,” said
Maria. “Rory said he was going to handle all the statements himself.”

This was the part where my job got a little tricky and
dangerous. Truth be told, I loved it just a little. I thought of Noah calling
me a shark, and had to fight the smile it nearly brought to my lips. “He did.
But there were some additional questions we had about the reports.”

Maria went a little pale. She leaned on her desk and
crossed her fingers. “Oh?”

“You were under orders to confiscate all audience
recording devices after the incident, is that correct?”

Maria blinked, surprised. I wanted her off-kilter. “I…
yes, that was the order.”

“Tell me, in your own words, what kept your people
from successfully completing that task. There are videos all over the Internet.”

Her breathing started to get a little ragged. “We
didn’t have the manpower to cover a crowd that large individual by individual.
I sent in the call for backup on the radios and we did our best to line the
exits, but it all happened too fast, and we weren’t ready for it. I put
priority on the front rows and we seemed to have gotten most of those.”

Again, I fought to maintain my poker face at the news
that my hunches just kept on being right. Security had taken everyone’s phones
in the front rows to hide something.

“Do you still have the phones?”

“Yes, they’re in evidence lockup. Their files have
been stored.”

I put my coffee down on the desk because I was so
thrilled at the news, I couldn’t hold still. “I’m going to need to look at the
videos on those phones.”

Maria frowned now, and for the first time put up some
resistance. “Rory said those phones are to be shown to no one…”

“But I work for—”

“…by order of the insurance company, which has already
sent a rep to view them.”

Fuck. The wheels in my head spun for a fix. Maria
watched me carefully, waiting. Before I could get a lie off my tongue, she was
reaching for her phone with a panicked look in her eyes.

“Wait,” I said, leaning forward but not so far that
she would feel threatened.

She paused with her hand on the receiver. I put up my
left index finger and, slowly, with my right, reached underneath and pulled my
wallet out of my back pocket. I threw five crisp hundred dollar bills on the
desk in front of her. Maria looked up at me with surprise.

“I’m not here to get you in trouble,” I said. “I don’t
care about the company or the insurance, or any of that shit. But an innocent
man is about to go down for what happened at that festival, and you and I both
know he shouldn’t be.”

Maria’s hand slid slowly off the phone and into her
lap. The color drained from her face.

“I’m asking for your help to save him. I’ll make sure
it’s worth your while.” I nodded toward the money on her desk. “And I won’t
tell a soul about your involvement.”

Maria said in a tight whisper, “Who are you?”

“I’m a journalist. That means even the government
can’t make me talk about you. Just take the money, give me what I need, and no
one will ever know. Win-win.”

“I could lose everything,” said Maria.

“You have my word that if you somehow lose your job
over this, I’ll personally find you a new one.” I put my hands on her desk and
waited until she looked me in the eyes. “I really need your help, Maria. Noah
Hardy is going to go to prison over this if the truth doesn’t come out.”

Maria stared at the money on her desk and took a few
deep breaths. Downwardly she said, “We all were just trying to do what we
thought was right… Protect the company, protect our jobs.”

“You get no judgment from me,” I said. “I’ve seen the
clients this company handles. Their legal teams would crush you all like bugs.
Just tell me what really happened that day and why you had orders to hide it. I
can get the truth out and keep you safe at the same time. Like I said…
everybody wins.”

Maria frittered at her desk, thinking. She looked up
at me and said, “Can you just step outside for a few minutes, and give me a
chance to think about this?”

I gave her a tired look. “If you’re just going to call
security, we can get this over with now and save some time.”

“I’m not,” she said immediately. “I just need some
space to think. Please.”

Either I trusted her, or I didn’t, and at this stage,
there wasn’t much of a choice. So I got up out of the chair with my coffee and
stepped just outside the door, carefully hanging near her office so no one
would think I was trying to snoop and make this more complicated than it
already was. She could have been calling whoever Rory was, or some bigger boss,
or even the cops. But this was what standing on the edge felt like. All I could
do was wait, and see what happened, and hoped I had enough brains to talk
myself out of it if it didn’t go my way.

It wasn’t long before the door creaked open and Maria
nodded me back inside her office. The money still lay on her desk where I left
it, unmoved. I closed the door and sat across from her.

“So, how do we do this?” she asked, uncomfortable.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and showed it to her
as I brought up the voice recorder app. “I have to record this to do my job.
But I’ll die before anyone gets this phone.”

She didn’t look terribly happy about it, but she
nodded anyway. I started to record and put it on the desk.

“Normally, the oversights we cover up aren’t this
ugly,” started Maria. “Sometimes a guard will have a rough time with a drunk
fan, rip their clothes, accidentally break their phone… and we’re all fine with
throwing those under the rug. People have no idea the abuse security guards can
take at a show, especially a big one.”

“Sure,” I said. “Uniforms tend to bring that out in
people.”

Maria nodded. “People don’t get hurt often, not
really. Definitely not like this…”

“So where were you working the day of the show?”

“I was in charge of the crew at the main stage. At the
time of the incident I was in the backstage area where the bands set up their
tour buses. I heard the calls on the radio and rushed over. It wasn’t long
after I got there that my phone rang and Rory—he’s the branch supervisor—was
issuing the order to grab all the recording devices. Without question, I spread
the order to my people.”

Maria took a long pause before she continued. “I got
to the stage and my crew was huddled around the man’s body… he’d hit his head
on one of the steel stage beams on his way down. I’ve never seen so much blood
in my life. EMTs had been called, but he was long gone before they got through
the crowd.”