The Purest Hook (Second Circle Tattoos) (26 page)

“Yes,” Cujo said.

“Yep,” Trent agreed.

“It’s that simple?” she asked.

“Of course it is,” Cujo said, making a funny face at Petal. “Look, she’s smiling at me.”

“She’s got gas,” Trent added with a laugh. “Yeah, it’s that simple, Pix. We’ve been thinking about expanding. We’re constantly turning away people right now. So Cujo and I have been chatting about adding two more artists and a body-mod expert. Perhaps the body-mod expert doubles as a part-time office manager too while they build their client list. By the time they do that, you’ll have a better idea of where you want to be.”

Pixie shook her head. “I don’t know what to say, guys. I love you both.”

There was a knock at the door, and Drea walked in wearing her work uniform. “Here’s your gym bag as instructed, Mr. Bossy—whoa!”

Pixie could see the exact moment Drea realized the man she was madly in love with was holding a baby.

Cujo waved Petal’s hand. “Hey, Drea,” he said in a baby voice. Drea sighed.

Trent laughed. “Oh my God. Harper was the same. Ga-ga over a baby.”

Drea put her hand over her heart.

“Put that look away,” Cujo laughed. “None of these until there’s a ring on your finger and your university degree certificate is nailed to our wall.”

Pixie could feel the love between Cujo and Drea. She felt the comfort from Trent holding her hand in his, and looked at Petal blowing bubbles.

Sometimes, it really was that simple.

* * *

Dred wandered into the studio, his mind drifting in a thousand different directions. He owed it to Sam to speak to him before he fired his ass for the misery he’d created. But first he needed to explain to the band what was going on.

Their producer, Stu, was sitting at his desk. “Morning, Dred. Ready to get those lyrics wrapped up from yesterday?”

“Hey, Stu. Can I get five with the guys first?”

“Yeah, I’ll go get caffeine. Long day today, right?”

Dred focused on the guys. Lennon was sitting behind his kit with one headphone on as he warmed up to play. Nikan was bouncing around as he played a series of notes for a song they hadn’t recorded yet. Jordan sat quietly on a stool in the corner, and Elliott had his back against the wall, mindlessly sipping on coffee. It was going to hurt them all to find out what he’d learned.

Putting his feelings aside, he walked into the studio.

“Glad one of us is getting some,” Elliott said with a grin. “Wish I had a good reason to be late.”

“Fuck off, dude. I had that TV thing this morning. Anyway, I need to talk to you guys.”

Nikan pulled his strap over his shoulder and put the guitar back on its stand. Lennon slotted his sticks into their holder on the side of his drum.

“What’s up?” Jordan asked.

“I just got off the phone with John Ferica. I think Sam is screwing us over.”

“You serious?” Lennon stepped out from behind his kit.

“Yeah. Ferica said he knew nothing about the concerns we had. Said he’d not heard from Sam in a while and was wondering what we were up to.”

“Any reason why Ferica might lie to us?” Elliott asked.

Dred walked over to a stool and sat down. “I don’t know, El. Possibly. But I honestly didn’t get that vibe from John. He seemed genuinely surprised. He didn’t know about Petal, or our concerns. Said he didn’t give a shit about the festival stuff as long as we nail the album and tour.”

Nikan leaned against the studio wall. “What made you call him?”

“I got a message from Sam this morning saying he’d spoken to John about our requests, and that they wanted us to just keep going. I was pissed, so I called him.” Dred switched his phone from hand to hand.

“Fuck. So you definitely caught him in a lie,” Jordan added. “So what do we do?”

“Well, I placed a couple of calls. You remember how pissed I was when the photograph of me and Pix at the Miami gig hit that trash mag?”

The guys nodded.

“Yeah,” Lennon said. “It was early days for you and her, right?”

“It was. Well, I asked Sam to help us figure out who it was. He said he called the arena and security had told him there was no camera coverage of where we were standing.”

“It feels like there’s going to be a but in there somewhere,” Lennon said.

“There is. I called the head of security at the arena,” Dred replied. “He was very obliging once I convinced him who I was.”

Jordan cracked his knuckles. “Let me guess. Sam never called.”

“Not according to security. He’s reviewing the footage now.”

Nikan pushed away from the wall. “Shit.”

Dred’s phone buzzed in his hand.
John
Ferica
.

“Hey, John. What’s up?”

“Your call bothered me. I wanted to know what the deal is with Sam. One of my guys found out he is doing the rounds with publishers, touting a book about you guys.”

He didn’t want to know. Really didn’t want to confirm what he was already suspecting. “What kind of book?” Expectant eyes were on him.

“A tell-all exposé. You guys got some big secrets we need to know about?”

Dred looked around the room.
Secrets.
They had more secrets than the Catholic Church, the CIA, and every episode of
The X-Files
combined. They were fucked. He looked at Jordan and Lennon, who’d had the biggest psychological issues to overcome; he looked at Elliott, who at some level or another had to fight his compulsions every day. Then at Nikan, who was never more than a step away from his next drink. His own secrets were nothing compared to those. They’d been broken. Unwanted. For all that to be printed on a page was unfathomable.

“It’ll get messy,” was all Dred could think of.

“Okay. Call me back at one. I’ll get the full team in. PR and legal, especially. See if we can figure this out. You need to cease all contact with Sam. Want us to do that for you?”

“No. We got it.”

Dred hung up. All eyes were on him. It was up to him to get them through this. “Whatever I say after this,” he told them, “just remember we have made it through worse.”

Something like this wasn’t going to break them apart. “We need to fire Sam. He’s trying to sell a book about us. An exposé.”

If he’d had to predict their responses to the news, he would have been correct. Lennon got up and kicked the stool across the studio. Jordan didn’t move. Nikan cursed and paced. Elliott looked him straight in the eye.

“We need to think about what we’ve told him over the years. Like what does he actually know?” Dred explained. “We have to assume he knows everything about the last decade, but before that?”

They spent the next couple of hours going through what Sam knew. It was a helpful exercise. And while Sam didn’t know as much as they feared, he still knew enough to lay them wide open and bleeding to their fans. But Dred was more concerned with the personal cost. It sickened him that people might find out their personal histories. The effects could be destructive.

Dred’s phone pinged.

Easy to find. Four minutes past midnight. Let me know if you need anything else.

The head of security had attached a short video clip. There in the shadows of the arena, pointing his phone directly toward where Pixie and Dred were kissing, was Sam.

While they geared up for the one o’clock conference call with John, Dred excused himself to call Pix. She needed to know what was going on. As much as he hated dumping more shit on her, they’d promised to always share the good and the bad. He stepped outside the studio for some privacy and fresh air. He considered quickly running over to the condo. The studio they’d rented was only a block away, but he wasn’t sure if she was out for one of her walks with Petal. There was a message on his phone from her.

Hey Daddy, it’s Pixie and Petal. Can you say hi to Daddy?

He smiled as Petal started to join in on the call with her favorite ooh-ooh sound. She’d found her voice over the last week.

We miss you, Daddy. Have fun making songs for us to dance to. Pixie is making me a new dress.

Petal joined in again, as if motivated by Pixie. It was exactly what he needed to hear after everything he’d learned that morning. He made a decision to keep the news to himself until he got home that evening when he could tell Pixie in person. While he couldn’t think of a reason that Sam would include anything about Pixie in a tell-all, there would be blowback on them as a family. He heard a knock at the apartment door through the phone.

Okay, Daddy, we’re getting the door. We’ll speak to you tonight.

He heard her undo the locks.

Bye Daddy. Say bye-bye Petal. Let’s look and see who it is.

Then the door opened. . . .

Look, Petal, Sam came to see . . . Oh my God, Arnie.

Pixie tried to slam the door, but with a baby in her arms it was impossible to stop the two men from forcing their way into her home. She pulled Petal tightly against her chest. Obviously Arnie was there for her, but she couldn’t understand why Sam was. How did the two men even know each other? Was he really so concerned by her ability to distract Dred that he would go to these kind of lengths to get her out of the way?

Arnie stared at her, aggression seeping from him like a dense fog. He lurked in the entrance hall to the condo, never straying more than a foot or two away from the door, blocking her exit. Pixie tried to think of the best place to go. There was no way she could make it to the bathroom where she could lock herself in. Getting too close to the balcony doors didn’t seem like a smart idea either. She stepped toward the kitchen, hoping the marble island would put some space between them.

“Why are you here?” she asked, suddenly aware that she’d never hung up the phone on Dred’s voice mail. She placed the phone on the counter, hoping it would capture more of the conversation.

“I offered you a chance to pay up, Sarah-Jane,” Arnie said, taking a few steps toward her.

Petal started to whimper, and Pixie tried to relax her grip a little. She took a moment to look toward Sam, who was watching the exchange curiously.

“I gave you all I had,” she lied, praying desperately that her decision to call Arnie’s bluff wasn’t going to cause Dred’s daughter to come to any harm.

Arnie looked around the living room. “Maybe. But then I look around this place and I see you
didn’t
give me everything. So I decided to get my money another way.”

Pixie shook her head in disbelief. She needed to focus on keeping Petal safe and getting them both out of there. Arnie either didn’t know Brewster was alive, or he didn’t know
she
knew Brewster was alive. There would be no need to keep up the pretense otherwise. For now, she’d keep that information to herself. “Take the photograph to the police. I don’t care anymore. I’m not going to steal money from my friends, and I won’t let you extort them.”

“None of that matters now,” Arnie growled. “Sam and I came to a new arrangement.”

“What kind of arrangement?” Her entire body shook, and her heart raced so badly she feared she’d pass out.

“Arnie,” Sam warned, stepping around the other side of her. They were caging her in. “That’s enough.”

“No. It’s not enough. What’s happening? How do you know each other?” Pixie asked, hating the way her voice trembled with fear. “You have an arrangement?” She looked quickly between the two of them.

“Yes,” Sam admitted. “You’re going with Arnie, and I’m staying here with Petal. Give her to me.”

Pixie backed away. “No. Like hell I will. Please . . . she’s just a baby. Don’t hurt her.”

“You need to hand her over,” Arnie said, stepping toward her.

“Fuck you, Arnie. You’ll get Petal over my dead body.”

Arnie reached around his back, and retrieved a gun that he pointed straight at her. “That can be arranged, Sarah-Jane.”

“Please,” Pixie begged. She was outnumbered. And very much alone. “I was just on the phone with Dred. He’s on his way home,” she said, wishing she could control the trembling in her lip.

“He isn’t,” Sam replied, “because I just checked in with their producer, and they’re locked up in the recording booth and plan to be there all day.”

Pixie thought about the message she’d been in the middle of leaving. Was it still recording? Would it cut off after a certain amount of time? Discreetly, she looked over to her phone, but the screen was dark. All she could do was pray Dred listened to his messages sooner rather than later. Hopefully it had recorded enough information to help Dred find them, because she was all out of ideas, except kicking and screaming like hell as they attempted to remove her from the apartment.

She looked around the kitchen, damning the ultramodern interior. There wasn’t a single item on display, except the kettle. Knowing Sam was looking to get Petal from her, she wasn’t prepared to put her down while she figured out a way to fight, and couldn’t afford to take the risk of Petal getting hurt.

The first step was to keep them talking. Hopefully it would give Dred more time to see he missed her call. “Your agreement? Tell me, Sam. Don’t you think Dred will be suspicious when he comes home to find you here, but not me?”

“Not when he finds these,” Arnie said, pulling a small bag of white powder, a lighter, a syringe, and a small spoon from his jacket pocket. “You see, your son-of-a-junkie lover won’t do shit once he thinks you’re using again.”

“Wait, how do you . . .”

“We need to get on with this,” Sam said, wiping his forehead.

Confusion crawled over her, as nothing made sense. “Wait, Sam. You told Arnie about Dred’s mom?”

“I did what I had to do to stop you from disrupting my plans,” he replied.

“What plans? I don’t understand? Are you going to kidnap us? Kill us?” she asked. She knew tears wouldn’t help, but futility overwhelmed her. She couldn’t see a way out of the mess she was in, and the thought crushed what was left of her fighting spirit.

“When your boyfriend assaulted me in the alley, I contacted Sam with plans to sue his fucking ass, but Sam offered me a surprising deal instead.”

“Arnie. Enough!” Sam shouted. It made her jump and Petal started to scream in her arms.

“What does it matter if she knows? With the money you paid me, we’ll be out of state and locked down before anyone can do anything about it.”

Pixie let the weight of Arnie’s words settle. Sam was paying Arnie to make her disappear. “Am I really that big of a threat to you? It will kill him if you hurt either of us. And if you let Arnie take me, are you really going to sit there with Petal and wait for Dred to get back? And say what?
I came over and found her using so I kicked her out, and like a good girl she left
?”

“Listen, you stupid bitch,” Arnie shouted, moving right up against her, the gun pressed up against her cheek. “Hand. Sam. The baby.”

Pixie sobbed, kissed Petal on the top of her head, which smelled of lavender and soap from her bath. Little beads of sweat were forming on Sam’s brow. He wasn’t comfortable at all. Arnie on the other hand looked nonplussed. If she had any chance of getting out of this, there was only one person she needed to convince. “He’s going to know it’s you, Sam,” she cried. “You honestly think he’s going to walk in and believe your bullshit story?”

“Shut up,” Sam snapped as he reached forward and attempted to take Petal, but missed her body and ended up pulling her by the arm. Petal screamed out in pain, her shoulder joint wrenched so awkwardly it looked dislocated.

“Leave her alone!” Pixie screamed. “Don’t hurt her.” Pixie let go and Sam took her away.

She reached for Petal, but Arnie had his arm around her waist. Tears of frustration began to fall. She kicked her legs and dug her fingernails into Arnie’s forearms earning nothing more than a grunt of pain. Being barefoot, her feet were of little use against him. He pressed the gun back against her cheek, the cold, hard metal pressing roughly into her skin.

“I know what you need, Sarah-Jane,” he said as his fingers tightened around her ribcage. “You need something to take the edge off.”

He was going to give her drugs. Drugs that would numb her, take her away. The man who started her addiction in the first place would desecrate a year of getting clean, years of being sober.

She thought of her friends. Of Trent and Cujo and the kindness they showed her. Of Dred’s confidence in her to remain clean after everything he had gone through with his mom. Of her sponsor. Of Lia. Even Petal, who was screaming in Sam’s arms. She needed to keep her wits about her.

“No,” Pixie shouted, knowing full well he had her at a huge size advantage. “Never.” The thought of being shot paled in comparison with the fear of becoming addicted again. That was the kind of hell she could only go through once.

Pixie screamed as loud as she could, a piercing scream right against Arnie’s ear. Immediately he yelled in pain and released her to cover his ear with his hand. She hurriedly crawled out of his reach and moved toward Sam. Scrambling to her feet, she continued to scream and shout for help, praying that one of her neighbors would call the police, or building security, or hell, try to take down the door with a baseball bat.

She was nearly to Petal and could see the shock on Sam’s face. Whatever plan they’d had when they walked into the apartment had changed.

“Please, Sam,” she begged. “Don’t do this. Help me get Petal out of here.”

Sam looked at her, sadness creeping into his eyes, replacing the fear she had seen earlier. “It’s best for Dred this way,” he said, but uncertainty tainted his words.

“Don’t let him hurt me, Sam,” she cried. “Dred’ll know. He’ll know it’s you.”

Sam looked behind her. Hope replaced panic as she stretched out her arm, reaching for him. Between the two of them, they could get away from Arnie. But at the exact moment the tips of her fingers crossed his, a look horror washed across Sam’s face.

“Arnie, no!” he yelled.

And then her world went black.

* * *

Dred heard the scream from the end of the hallway. The gut-wrenching sound of Pixie yelling
No
would echo through his memory for the rest of his life. His heart hadn’t beat since the moment he’d listened to Pixie’s ice-cold gasp on his message that Arnie was at her door. As soon as he heard the words, he was off running, yelling to Stu who was leaning against the wall taking a smoke break.

He’d sprinted across the street, dodging cars that honked as he ran in front of them. Never in all of his experiences had he been so terrified. The only thing that mattered was getting to them.

My girls are in trouble.

A frigid anger unlike anything he’d ever known pulsed through him. It kept him calm enough to remember to tell the concierge to give his brothers permission to follow him up the stairs, to call the police, and to shut down the building as he burst through the door and ran through the lobby.

Thankfully, at the moment he’d tried to decide which would be faster, the stairs or elevator, the elevator pinged open.

The door to the condo felt like it was a million miles away, and his legs burned as he tore along the carpeted hallway to their front door. Another scream filled the corridor, then a sudden abrupt silence. Fear filled his lungs leaving no room for air.

He reached the door, and grabbed the handle only to find it locked. Seconds felt like minutes as he pulled his key from his pocket and unlocked it, slamming the door open so hard it ripped off its hinge.

The assholes who had his girls were going to fucking die.

Arnie turned, his skin flushed from exertion. “I thought you said he was out all day,” Arnie yelled at Sam, spittle leaving his lips.

Dred scanned the room quickly. Sam had Petal in his arms. Her piercing cry ripped his heart out. Arnie stood over Pixie, who lay unmoving on the floor next to the coffee table, a bloody gash on her temple. He was too far away from her to understand the true extent of her injuries. Dred’s stomach dropped to the floor. He couldn’t even tell if she was breathing, but one thing he was certain of. “I’m going to fucking kill you,” Dred snarled at Arnie.

“Tell you what I think, lover-boy,” Arnie said, pointing the gun directly toward Pixie’s head. “I think you’re going to let me walk out with Sarah-Jane, if you want to keep her alive.”

Dred swallowed hard and breathed deep shallow breaths. Dark, crimson blood was pooling on the floor by Pixie’s head, and it took away the limits of his control. But he noticed her eyes fluttering open. She turned her head toward the sofa. Relief flooded through him—she wasn’t dead. But that wasn’t going to save Sam or Arnie.

The building was hopefully locked down, so there was no way Sam was walking out with Petal.
Scratch that
. There was no fucking way Sam was walking out, period. For once, Dred let the anger fill him, let the icy-cold flood course through him until he was blinded by it.

“Tell you what
I
think,” Dred snarled. “There’s no way you’re getting out of here.”

He saw Pixie clumsily move her hand toward the side table and could immediately see what she intended to do. With a cry of pain, she grabbed the scissors she must have been using to make Petal’s dress and jammed them into Arnie’s calf. Dred seized the opportunity as soon as she started to move. He charged at Arnie, hitting him with his full body weight to push him away from Pixie. The side table broke Arnie’s fall, sending shards of glass splintering around them. Dred went down on top of him, punching him until he hit the ground. The gun skittered away.

They rolled in the glass, and Dred ignored the pain of the slivers cutting into his shoulder.

Arnie fought back, his knuckles glancing off Dred’s jaw, but Dred felt nothing. Insulated from pain, his focus was solely on his girls. Their safety relied on his ability to remove the scumbag who threatened them, and that thought motivated him.

He wrapped his hands around Arnie’s throat, fully intent on strangling him, until Arnie hit him on the temple with something hard. The blow caught him off guard and made his head spin, but he’d received worse over the years. And never had the stakes been this high.

The base of the lampshade fell from Arnie’s hand, but he gripped the cable and attempted to wrap it around Dred’s throat.

They rolled again, Dred ending up astraddle Arnie. He grabbed Arnie’s collar and began punching him. Fuelled by the agonizing memory of Pixie’s blood-curdling screams and Petal’s high-pitched cries, Dred hit Arnie over and over, until he realized Arnie was no longer struggling beneath him.

Dred gasped for breath, and sat back on his knees. He lifted Arnie’s head and let it fall back to the floor. He was definitely out.

“Pix. Fuck, Snowflake,” he cried, crawling over to her and lifting her head onto his lap. He gingerly brushed her hair out of her face and fixed her blouse so she was less exposed. “Please, gorgeous, don’t close those eyes on me again.”