She laughed. "Sure. Did he also get someone pregnant through eye contact? Maybe you?"
I scoffed. "No, that’s just silly." I patted my belly to check anyway. He did send a fair number of dark flutters through my stomach last night . . .
I swallowed a large gulp of my smoothie and filled her in on the rest of the details—from the moment he first locked eyes on me until to the look on his face as I left him empty-handed.
She laughed riotously. "If your past boyfriends are any indication, he sounds like he’s just your type. When can I expect to hear about part two?"
"There’s not going to be any part two," I grumbled. "Look, the guy was hot. Muy hot. Tres hot. But I am not going there. I can tell he’d be way more trouble than even I could handle."
"Well that’s saying something."
Kristen had helped me through the fallout of some pretty bad choices in men. Cheaters, liars, and the occasional creep-job: the Riley Exes Hall of Fame would be a lousy place.
"So what else is new? How’s work going?" Kristen continued after I had been silent for a while.
"Crazier than usual. I just found out this morning that I’m going to be some band’s tour accountant for a few weeks. I just got this certification so I’m a little surprised they stuck me on an actual tour so fast."
"Whoa! That’s great news, congrats! I didn’t know you got certified in that. I’m not even sure I know what ‘tour accountant’ means. So you just manage their expenses and the money they make from their shows?"
"Yeah, basically. The band manager already put together a preliminary budget. In theory I’m just supposed to keep a close eye on the cash flow, make sure the band isn’t overspending, and all that jazz."
"You must be excited! Travel plus partying equals fun. Well, with maybe a little bit of work in between. Sounds like your ideal job."
I nodded. "That’s why I got certified! But we’ll see. I’m hopeful, but I’m imagining there’s going to be a lot less partying and a lot more of me jumping in front of guitars and amps to save them from being smashed on-stage. I’m probably gonna have to end up being a total hardass to make sure we stick to the budget."
"If anyone can do it, it’s you." I could practically hear her wink over the phone. "I’ve worked out with you, I know you worked hard for that hard ass."
She always knew just what to say to put a smile on my face. "You know it, Kris. But seriously, I feel like I’m in a little over my head. You’re in wealth management, got any tips for me?"
"Just one, and only because it’s you: mixing business with pleasure is never a good idea," she said, chuckling.
I heard Vincent’s voice protesting in the background—they’d mixed business and pleasure pretty frequently when they first met—and I laughed. "Don’t worry about me, Kris. Some of us have self-control."
We both erupted in giggles.
By the time we said our goodbyes and I hung up the phone, I was feeling much more relieved. The smoothie had erased my hangover and talking to Kristen always brightened up my day.
Now that my headache was cured, I headed back into my room to pack. After rummaging under my bed, I retrieved a suitcase emblazoned with Louis Vuitton logos and set it down in the middle of my room. The bag had been my best thrift store find in years: fifty dollars for a suitcase that originally cost thousands.
I wasn’t thrilled about Hans-Peterson sending me into a last minute assignment with almost no preparation, but I could definitely teach this band a thing or two about managing a budget.
Chapter Five
THE SUIT
"You the new suit?"
The guy questioning me looked like he walked right off the cover of a classic rock album: a tangle of brown curly hair with long sideburns, tinted sunglasses, a faded Led Zeppelin t-shirt, ripped jeans. The only modern thing on him was his an expensive pair of STAX headphones slung around his neck. He looked to be in his late twenties, maybe early thirties. In his hands, he fiddled around with an odd electronic device that looked like a baby monitor mixed with a Geiger counter.
"Yep, that’s me, Riley Hewitt, the new suit." As much as I would’ve preferred to have been dressed in casual attire in this summer heat, I was outside this Brooklyn warehouse on behalf of Hans-Peterson, so I was dressed in my typical work uniform: a pink blouse, blue pencil skirt with matching blazer, and black flats, with my hair pulled up in a tight bun. I’d be the first to admit that the outfit was better suited for an accounting convention than a rock concert tour.
"Riley the suit, I’m Chewie the drummer." He held out his hand and grinned like we were long-lost friends. A lingering odor of marijuana filled the air, and I suspected it came from him.
"Nice to meet you," I said, shaking what felt like a leathery baseball mitt.
Two roadies scurried past me on the sidewalk and tossed a few crates into the cargo bin of what must’ve been the Taj Mahal of buses. Three levels high, wide enough to take up a full lane, and covered in shimmering gold paint, it looked like a bus that had been injected with steroids and given to a Bond villain to dip in gold. How does that thing even fit under bridges?
When the initial awe wore off, numbers began swirling around in my head as I started considering how much it had to cost. Driver, fuel, maintenance, cleaning, and who knew what else. The tour projections in my files indicated profits, but I wondered how that was possible with such an expensive bus. The sight of the glittering behemoth left me with a nagging feeling that this assignment wasn’t going to be easy.
The next thing I knew, Chewie started moving the weird device up and down as if he was scanning me.
"Uh, what are you doing?" I said, instinctively holding up my hands behind my head. "This is all starting to feel a little like the TSA."
"You can leave your hands down," Chewie said nonchalantly. "I’m just checking you out for ghosts. This is the same detector Lady Dada uses when she goes on tour."
I looked at him skeptically. "That has to be a joke, right?"
"For fifty grand, it’d better not be a joke," he said, checking the read-out. "Nope, you’re cool. No ghosts here."
"So why would Lady Dada use a . . . wait, did you just say fifty grand?!" I couldn’t believe that bogus device had cost so much.
"Well yeah," Chewie said as if I was the dense one. "You get what you pay for. No way I’d go with one of those cheap detectors that couldn’t detect a ghost from a thetan. Only suckers would get those."
An anxious feeling settled in my stomach. "And did you use your own money, or did you expense it to the tour account?" Although I felt like an old teacher scolding a naughty child, I was here to do my job—not play Ghostbusters.
"Oh great, here it comes." He rolled his head back and groaned. "This was a legit band purchase. A rampant ghost on the loose will do a lot more damage than fifty grand and we don’t have ghost insurance."
I wanted to slap my forehead but managed to restrain myself. If I’d met this space case in a bar, I would’ve laughed and given him a high-five, but this situation could quickly turn into a nightmare if I didn’t put my foot down early. The band could walk over me with thousand-dollar ectoplasm-resistant boots and go bankrupt, and before I knew it I’d be out on the streets, holding up a sign reading "WILL DO TAXES FOR FOOD."
Still, it wasn’t as easy as just putting my foot down, because I didn’t want to be seen as the enemy. Honey always caught more flies than a flyswatter. I took a deep breath. "Chewie, I understand your concern about ghosts, but you’re not seeing the big picture. I wouldn’t want to be sucked into a TV and spit out with birthing fluid all over me, either, but we can’t afford to pay for every contingency we see in a movie. What if a UFO crashes into the bus? There’s no insurance for that. We just have to balance the risk with the expense. And I’m here to make sure we do that, so that at the end of the day, you guys get the money you deserve."
He furrowed his brows and scratched his chin. "Yeah, I guess you’re right. Didn’t think of it that way. The less we b
uy for the tour, the more weed I can get. Got it."
That wasn’t really what I’d meant, but it seemed close enough for now. "Great," I said. "Oh, by the way, do you have any receipts or bills you could give me? I want to make sure all the important papers are kept in a single, safe place."
Chewie laughed, and it ended with a bit of a cough. "Only papers I’m in charge of are the rolling papers."
"Um, okay. Who should I speak with to get started then?"
He stroked his chin. "That’d be Jax. He’s the man in charge around here. Wish I could be more help, but I’m only here to rock n’ roll," he said, wiggling his fingers on an air guitar. "Jax’ll be here soon enough though. Knowing him, he’s probably busy fighting off a horde of women."
I was hoping the person in charge would be more responsible than Chewie, but it sounded like Jax was probably even less responsible. Great.
A ding came from Chewie’s pocket. He pulled out a shiny, gold-plated iPhone and read the message. "Okay guys," he shouted so that everyone could hear. "We’re shipping out soon, so let’s shake a leg." Chewie turned to me. "I’ll take your suitcase on board. You can wait for Jax on the bus if you want."
I held my hand up like a visor and looked at the blue sky. It had rained last night, leaving puddles here and there, but the gray clouds were nearly all gone, allowing the sun to shine through. "It’s a nice day out, so I guess I’ll wait for him here."
"Suit yourself," he said. I chuckled as he took my luggage and hopped onto the bus.
I took a deep breath, inhaling the crisp summer air. This was going to be some assignment. Judging by the exorbitant bus, the fifty-thousand dollar ghost detector, and the gold-plated iPhone, I could already tell that reining in the expenses was going to be a pain in the ass with a capital "P". But if I’d learned anything from the past three years at Hans-Peterson, it was that no matter how difficult the assignment, I’d always figure out a way to handle it.
I watched the roadies trying frantically to finish loading up all the gear into a trailer attached to a separate, smaller bus that had a psychedelic paint job and an assortment of rust splotches.
I walked over to one of the roadies stacking up empty boxes beside the warehouse, curious to see what he was doing. He was middle-aged with stringy hair and a wiry build.
"Looking for something?" he said, catching sight of me.
"Oh, nope," I replied. "Just killing time waiting for someone named Jax."
"Ah, I see. Trust me, you’ll know when he’s around."
I stared at the stack of empty boxes that looked like a modern day Stonehenge, wondering if it would’ve been easier to collapse them instead. The beautiful tower was just begging for someone to run into it, destroying all the hard work it took to build it.
When the roadie finished what he was doing, he locked the trailer, and he and all the other roadies piled onto the school bus.
What was just a flock of busy people was now a barren landscape. I was the only person left on the street. For a Brooklyn neighborhood on a Monday afternoon, the long city block was eerily empty and silent. Nothing but overfilled garbage cans along the curb and a few small saplings lining the sidewalk.
As I enjoyed the view of the skyscrapers in the distance, a crowd of people rounded the corner down the block. A group of at least a dozen men ran together with one person in the lead. Was the marathon today?
As the runners sped down the sidewalk toward me, I noticed that none of them were wearing numbers clipped to their shirts—and there wasn’t a pair of running shorts in sight. No, it wasn’t a marathon. It was a mob, and they were headed in my direction.
The throng of men appeared to be chasing someone in a white tank and black jeans. I couldn’t make out his face from this distance, but I could tell from his figure that he was fit. A few of the men behind him were waving around wooden baseball bats. It looked so much like Frankenstein’s monster getting chased out of town by angry villagers that I half-expected to see some of them carrying pitchforks and torches.
The guy being chased ran past a line of garbage cans and pulled each one down behind himself, spilling trash everywhere. The first chaser jumped over a rolling can, clearing it with ease. A fat guy followed, leaping to clear the debris, but caught his foot on a trash bag and fell flat on his face. A third man hurdled both the fat guy and the garbage, and the remaining men did as well. Tossing over the garbage cans had been a smooth move, but it couldn’t stop them all.
As the mob’s target approached, his jet black hair flowing wildly around his head, I noticed colorful sleeves of tattoos covering both of his bare arms. My eyes focused on his face—long, flowing black hair and a peppering of stubble—and then it clicked.
It was him!
Stud—the rock god, the male Siren—was the grand marshal of the carnival of chaos running full speed down the pavement. I didn’t think I’d ever see him again, but there he was, racing in my direction with at least a dozen people chasing after him.
As they approached, the crowd’s unintelligible shouting crystallized into words: "Fuck you, motherfucker!" "Gonna beat your ass!" The men chasing him were clearly not his adoring fans. I was no stranger to swearing, but even their vulgar cries made the hairs on the back of my neck prick up. These guys were seriously pissed.
Stud lingered in place for a moment, looking back at his pursuers. They were about to run right past me on their way to the bus when one of the men heaved his bat like a throwing knife. Stud jerked to the right to dodge it, changing his course. While he kept looking back to the mob of angry men, he was now running in a straight line toward me.
"Oh no. No, no!" I shouted, waving my hands frantically in front of me.
He turned his head to look forward. "Shit!" he yelled as I turned sideways and scrunched myself, bracing for impact.
He swerved out of the way at the last second, crashing into the tower of boxes and sending sheets of cardboard flying in all directions as he tumbled along the pavement. Groaning and rubbing his head, he staggered to his feet and faced me. Dark eyes squinted. "Pepper? What the hell are you doing here?" Hearing him say the nickname he’d given me sent an unwelcome flutter through my belly.
I was just as surprised as him. "What the hell are you doing h—"
"Now we’ve got you, you fucking scumbag!"
A brown haired guy running at full speed leapt into the air, launching himself like a torpedo at Stud. Stud fell onto his back and kicked his legs upward, sending the guy somersaulting into the air and landing with his head poked through a cardboard box. Stud flipped onto his feet then immediately ducked. A punch passed above his head, and the assailant lost his balance. Stud balled his fist and landed an uppercut against his jaw, sending him flying off his feet and then slumping back to the sidewalk in a lump of skin and clothing.
Another man arrived and landed a blow across Stud’s jaw with a loud crack. The excruciating sound sent a tense dagger down my spine.
Stud quickly spit out some blood then pivoted, right in time to dodge a baseball bat to the skull. Stud retaliated with a swift punch to the batter’s gut, sending him staggering backward into another guy, and then another, all of them collapsing to the ground like dominoes.
The fat one who had tripped over a trash bag earlier threw a jab, but Stud blocked it with his forearm. Stud absorbed another guy’s kick to the torso with a primal grunt, then clocked the fat guy in the face. The fat guy wobbled for a split-second and fell backwards, hitting the ground with a heavy thud.
"You think you could get away with this, asshole?" screamed a guy holding an aluminum bat, nostrils flaring and eyes crazed. Although Stud was holding his own pretty well, there were too many of them for him to handle by himself. I began to fear for his life.
"Stop it!" I screamed as the blood rushed from my head. "Stop fighting!" My cries went ignored as two guys rushed at Stud. I frantically looked around to see if anyone could help out, but everyone was already on the bus far away.
I heard a bone-crun
ching slam, turned back, and saw more crimson drops splattered across the sidewalk. I couldn’t tell whose blood it was. This was like the flipside of Saturday night. Instead of women throwing panties and having orgasms, these men were throwing punches and hurling obscenities.
Stud’s back was turned and a goon with dreadlocks snuck up and wrapped thicks arms around Stud’s neck, squeezing him like a boa constrictor smothering its dinner. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to choke Stud or break his neck. Stud grasped at the guy’s arm, trying to pry it off, but it wasn’t budging. When I saw Stud’s face turning a bluish-red, my entire body filled with dread.
He was going to die.
Adrenaline overruling fear, I tore off my silver locket and ran toward Stud. "CLOSE YOUR EYES!!" I shouted to him.
He closed them, and I squeezed my locket, blasting fifty milliliters of industrial-grade capsaicin into the eyeballs of the guy choking him.
Dreadlocks screamed in pain, releasing his grip to claw at his own face. "My eyes! My eyes!"
"You little bitch!" someone growled behind me.
I spun around and saw a scowling blonde guy winding up to punch me. I screamed and took a step back, tripping over my flats, dropping my necklace, and landing in a puddle of dirty gutter water. My bun came undone and hair clouded my vision.
A strong grip wrapped around my wrist from behind. "Get away from me!" I screamed, rolling around and kicking my legs and splashing water everywhere.
"Stop it!" he yelled.
"No!" One of my kicks landed in what felt like his crotch. He groaned in pain but didn’t release his hold on me. I should’ve went with heels!
"Stop fighting me, dammit!" The next thing I knew I was hoisted into the air over the guy’s shoulder.
Brushing wet hair from my face, I realized we were moving away from the brawl. Panic shot through my veins.
He was kidnapping me.
"No! No! No!" I wailed at his back with my fists, trying my best to aim my blows at his kidneys, but his body was hard as fucking stone, and his firm grip around my waist only tightened. It was like being carried away by a gorilla.