Eric swallowed, hacking a “Yeah, I’m fine,” and sat back onto the floor.
Blaine leaned against the frame and crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re doing better than me, mate.”
“I meant I’m not dying from the overload of antacids I tried to inhale.” He reached to a rack above his head, ripped the towel away from the bracket, and swiped it over his mouth. “If you’re asking me if I’m okay from the ass-kicking we’ve just discovered from our visit with Finn, then no, I’m no good at all.” He wadded the towel into a ball and flung it across the room. “Please tell me Finn is playing one of his sick jokes.”
Blaine gave a shrug followed by a heavy sigh. “I wish.”
“I don’t understand how we were so stupid.”
“Don’t know either.” Blaine rubbed the back of his neck and stared at Eric. He appeared to be in a dazed fog. “But we were.”
“You say it almost too easy.”
“To be truthful, this news has stunned me. Once Finn accused us of taking his money, my gut told me something was up. Only I didn’t think things would be this bad. The realization hit me probably ’bout the same time you figured the problem out too. I couldn’t breathe. My chest got tight. I was scared I’d pass out.” Blaine’s skin flushed from the memory. “Sorry I left you on your own, but I needed out of there. The tension filled Finn’s house the moment we stepped inside. Seemed to get worse the longer we stayed. I’m surprised you hung around as long as you did.”
Blaine was right. The pressure was high when they arrived. Finn expected them to not only apologize for their behavior toward him during their final performance, which they did, but he also wanted the two to write him a check to return funds he was sure the band had stolen from him throughout his span with the group.
Which they had not. After calming Finn down, they convinced him they hadn’t taken his money. To help him out, the men spent several hours assessing the shape of his accounts, and then they examined his income. They realized Finn was correct. The compensations he should have been paid for his time as lead singer of Raging Impulse wasn’t there.
“I tried to quiet Finn a bit, although Richard being ’round didn’t help the situation. I hate that guy.” Eric shook his head. “He despises me too.”
“I think he dislikes all of us, including his own brother.” Blaine nodded. “Finn’s an ass, whereas Richard is scum. I can’t believe we kept him around for as long as we did.”
“If he wasn’t such a spineless perv, I’d suspect him of working for Dugan.”
“You mean as his hit man?” Blaine bit his bottom lip. “Yeah, I could believe that.”
“But I don’t think Richard’s our problem. We have to deal with the fact Finn is now our ally. I’m not sure that’s a good thing. Anyway, after I left him, I took the long way home by walking the beach. I wanted to clear my head. Maybe come up with some ideas on how to fight this.”
Eric did his best to put away his reflections of Darla Hennessy. The mention of his trip home brought on a rush of memories of her. He needed to get this woman out of his head. There were too many other issues to deal with right now. He rose from the bathroom floor and walked into his room. Blaine trailed close behind.
“I don’t understand,” Eric seethed. “We are the highest selling teen band of all time. Twelve number one records plus seven top-selling albums. We were on the road almost every day for eight years. Our concerts sold out, including standing room only. The T-shirt and merchandising sales alone should’ve made us enough money to retire on and live comfortably for the rest of our lives. We also were to be paid residuals for our song writing, not to mention compensation for the music we published. What the fuck happened to it?”
“Good question. There should be some major royalty checks from our record company too.”
Neither spoke for a full minute.
“Seems unreal we’re broke. All those years, now we’ve got nothing to show for the work we’ve done.” Eric tracked to his closet. He opened a small trunk and rummaged through. He lugged out a thick folder, then carried it to his bed. Sitting on the side, he sifted through the pages in the file. “I checked in my bank account this morning, I had plenty of cash.”
“Same here.” Blaine picked up a binder he’d evidently left on Eric’s dresser when he’d come in earlier. He settled on the opposite side of the mess of paperwork. “I went over my contracts after I got home.”
He held open a marked place in the notebook and pointed to an area for Eric to examine. “I found the exact clause in every one of them. It’s in small print, like we discovered in Finn’s. I bet you’ll find the same in yours.”
Eric glanced over at the passage Blaine indicated. “Yeah, I’m thinking that too.” He returned to his papers, taking several minutes to research before he nodded with a frown. “Here it is.” He tapped the paper with a forefinger. “Same as yours, same as Finn’s.” He shifted on the bed and stared at Blaine. “Dugan maintained power of attorney over all of our assets. We unknowingly signed every penny over to him.” His grimace deepened as he released a massive sigh. “This means he went into our investment and bank accounts at will. I’m guessing he cleaned each one of us out before he closed them down. Now he’s disappeared with nearly all of our cash.”
“You said he’d be coming after us. What better way to get to us than take our holdings. He left enough in our principal account to last for a time while we were none the wiser. Now he can hide anywhere in the world and live off our millions.”
“And use our money to hire someone to get rid of us. How’s that for poetic justice?”
Blaine’s mouth twisted. “Bastard.”
“That he is. But we already knew that, didn’t we? Yet we trusted him to act in the band’s best interest. We were fools.” Eric gathered his documents and straightened them before he put them back into the binder. “I’m sure we’ll get a better idea how this all happened by looking up this stuff online. We may find out if he took everything at once or a little at a time. Except, he probably pass-coded those accounts so I don’t know if we will be able to get in.”
“More than likely he’s shut ’em down, but we should check anyway.”
Eric glanced at Blaine. “Did you call Mitchell?”
“I did talk to Mitchell. He’s pretty upset about Drake, and this news makes things even worse. He’s gonna investigate on his end and let us know what he finds tomorrow. Though he figures he’ll get the same results.”
Eric slammed the folder shut. “Shit. I can’t believe we were so damn gullible. We should’ve watched our money closer.”
“Look, I know we’re troubled over this, but still we can’t go kicking ourselves over something that’s already done. It’s not an excuse, except we were young when we hooked up with Dugan. We come from meager backgrounds. None of us knew much about investment management, because we didn’t have any money to worry over. Like you said, we always assumed Dugan took care of our finances.”
“Oh, he took care of them all right.”
“He did. Once we got a taste of having cash all the time, we never thought we’d need to bother ourselves over money.” Blaine rolled off the bed. “Why would we? We were a huge success. Dugan always made sure we had enough in our pockets. We assumed there’d be plenty.”
“True.” Eric motioned to the folder. “Except us being naïve about investments isn’t a good excuse. We could’ve become smarter. It was clear early on what Dugan was. We looked the other way on a lot of things. Our minds were on making it big and he was doing that for us, so who cared about his outside activities. My parents were against me getting into the music business, but I told them I planned on following my ambition regardless. My dad suggested a lawyer review every document before I signed anything. In the beginning, I couldn’t afford one. After I had the money, I didn’t want to bother. We were too busy. So I lied. I said I handled things as a way to blow him off. He’s gonna have a say after I give him this news.”
“My family advised the same thing,” Blaine agreed. “They’ll be disappointed in me too.”
“Damn, I wish we had listened. When Dugan was still our manager, we may have had some options. Now I’m not so sure.” Eric lifted his shoulders. “We’re just aware.”
“I’m holding out we’re wrong. Maybe Finn’s confused about what he spent.”
Eric gave him a doubtful look. “As long as you’re not holdin’ your breath.” He nodded toward the file in front of him. “From the way those papers read, we’re fucked.”
Blaine began to pace. “Yeah. I guess Finn going through cash like water is a good thing, or it might have been months, even years before we made this discovery.”
“We can go over this stuff more thoroughly tomorrow. See what we find. I’m hoping there’s a legal loophole which will give us a way to recover our losses without having to hire a shitload of attorneys we can’t afford.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Although I’m betting these contracts are airtight. More than likely we will need to go to court, and we stand a chance of losing. We’d end up spending the money we have left on lawyer fees and get nothing.”
“You’re forgetting something else.” Blaine stopped wandering. “Eric.” He directed a worried glance toward the closed binder lying on the bed. “We’ve funded this new band with our own money. We’ve footed the bill for everything. Studio time, producing, marketing, you name it, the costs has been on us. We’re only in the beginning stages, so we’re hardly in a place where we’re gonna be earning our investment back anytime soon. If all the money we have is in that one account, we’ll need to keep every penny to live on. We’re going to have to put this venture on hold.”
Eric scowled as he considered what Blaine told him. Each word made perfect sense in his head, yet his gut yelled no. He wouldn’t surrender his goal easily. One he so desired to reach. “We’ll find other ways to raise funds.”
“How? We tried to regroup after Finn quit and we canned Dugan. No one would touch us, although I’m sure the exposure of Dugan’s activities may have something to do with that. We were a teen band. We’re like poison in the legitimate rock world. The negativity and rejection disillusioned Drake and Mitchell so much they retired from the business to do other things. We’re lucky Shane is around to manage us, though I dunno how long we’ll be able to afford to keep him.”
“There has to be a way. We’ve worked too damn hard, Blaine. Money aside, you and I are literally crawling out of the depths of teen idol hell, and are working into the ranges of respectability. I don’t want to throw that away or let this dream die.”
“Yeah, but we’ve been quiet about our newer happenings. People are starting to hear our later stuff, especially in the UK, although no one has an idea it’s us. We must maintain our anonymity for continued success, at least for the time being. Any rumblings from our camp will kill us professionally. Your idea to keep our presences out of the new band was great and helped us acquire many new fans. But even if our songs are good now, we can’t risk being discovered, and asking someone to bank us could bring us down. The music world may be massive, but it’s a small one too. People talk. Word surely will get out and sink us again. Our time and money would be wasted.”
“We’ve got to work at something, for something. I’m not gonna quit, Blaine. I’m going to find Dugan Holt. He has our money and I’m getting every cent back.”
“I hope you do,” Blaine said as he left the room. “I hope you find him before he finishes off any more of us.”
Eric stared at the door. His mind whirled over the chaos from the last few hours. He slipped off the bed to put his folder back in his closet, and then stomped into the bathroom. He stretched inside the tub and twisted the knob. Water spurted from the showerhead. He quickly undressed, leaving his clothes in a heap beside the sink before he stepped into the bathtub and yanked the curtain. After a long, cool shower, he swiped up the towel he’d thrown earlier, dried, and dropped it back onto the floor.
Naked and exhausted, he walked into his room, then fell onto his bed. With his mind in a constant churn, sleep wasn’t going to come. For the first time in a while, he wished for a dose of the barbiturates Dugan use to give him regularly. The pills didn’t necessarily let him rest as much as they numbed him. Right now he needed not to feel.
Because of his past addictions, he refused to take the risk. Strong sleep medications, even the over-the-counter kind would never pass across his lips again. Not only did his physical strength depend on him staying clean, but also his psychological concentration needed him to keep his head clear. There was one other thing that helped him relax.
Sex.
Once more he fought the mental picture of Darla. He rejected going back to that place. He pulled a sheet over him, closed his tired eyes, and willed his attention in the direction of sleep. Neither his mind nor body obliged. Reflections of her materialized, then transformed into sexual fantasies. He became restless, excited with urges impossible to overlook. He wanted to see her, touch her, and to kiss her. He wanted her.
He tossed the covers away and rolled off the bed. He had to get this woman out of his system. A quick glance at the clock told him daybreak would be approaching soon. Too late to go to her or too early depending on how she’d view things. Besides, he didn’t mentally want to be with her. The rest of him was the problem, overruling his stupid head. An idea arose.
He might be able to find another resolution. A substitute would do the trick, yes, a stand-in. His body wouldn’t know the difference. He was lucky enough to be acquainted with several ladies he could call on for this sort of occasion. They’d come to him even at this hour, no questions. These women would give him the physical relief he needed and politely leave after. A good romp with someone else may get Darla out of his thoughts. Help form a detachment from her.
He took several long strides
across the room to find his phone. His foot tapped an object on the floor. The thing skidded over the aged hardwood and stopped against his dresser. He frowned as he walked to where the entity lay. His song writing tablet.
He bent to pick it up and reread the words of a sweet, innocent girl with haunting dark eyes. Forcefully, he flung the pad through the air. It hit the window and dropped to the floor with a loud plop. The early stages of dawn filtered through the exposed glass. The light molded an odd but beautiful radiance over the pad, as if this were a sign. The words he’d written were his promises to her, penned for her from the depths of his heart.