Model Bodyguard (Haven Investigations Book 2) Read online

  Chapter Nine

  I WOKE up grumpy. Not sure why. I’d slept pretty hard after some pretty intense sex with Ollie, but pulling into the long circular drive that adorned the front of Jacob Elias’s rented mansion, I was beginning to suspect why I couldn’t stop gritting my teeth. Maybe I’d been wrong about Ollie’s house being a mansion. His Garden Park Victorian classic was nothing like this brick monstrosity that seemed to loom until it disappeared into the tree line on both sides. I’d been buzzed through a privacy gate by guards though they’d barely done more than glance at my ID and tell me I was expected.

  I parked the SUV to the side of the drive under the watchful eye of a man who appeared to be a valet. Only I had no intention of offering him my keys. He stared at me, looked back at the SUV for a moment with an expression of disdain, and then back at me.

  “What? My Mercedes is in the shop,” I bullshitted him. He didn’t look impressed when I walked by him. Weren’t economical hybrid vehicles a trend with celebrities? I’d sat in a Fit once while bodyguarding. It was a car unsuited to anyone over five five. Even Ollie’s Bug had more legroom.

  At the door before I could knock, a tall man greeted me. He didn’t look like the TV sort of butler with the black suit and white shirt, but he was dressed high-end trendy and stood stiffly. “Mr. Elias is expecting you,” he told me.

  “Me?” I asked. Maybe the guy thought I was Ollie. I couldn’t imagine Jacob expecting me, even if his sister had told him I was coming. Telling his staff to slam the door in my face, I could see, but welcome me, not so much.

  “Indeed. Up the stairs, door on the right, all the way at the end.” He shut the door behind us and walked away.

  Okay, then. I gripped my cane and made my way to the stairs. The stairway to heaven apparently because I don’t think I’d ever seen that many stairs outside of the Empire State Building. House as nice as this and no elevator? I glared at the stairs and began my journey up. I didn’t get on the damn elliptical at the gym every other day for nothing. And maybe I could beg Ollie for special attention later, seeing as how this job was going to be physically and emotionally grueling—putting up with Jacob and all.

  At the top of the stairs I ran into the first of Jacob’s goons. He was a slab of meat, a wall really, with no definition to his body other than a thick square. I wasn’t sure he had a neck, and the buzz cut wasn’t military no matter how hard it tried to be. He slouched too much to have ever served. He didn’t look happy to see me either. “You’re the bodyguard?”

  So they did expect me. Not Ollie. I was pretty sure they’d just have ogled Ollie. I chose to ignore the meathead and keep walking. He put a hand on my shoulder, forcing me to stop.

  “I’m talking to you,” he growled.

  I rolled my shoulder, forcing him to let go. “Last I checked I was working for Emily and Jacob. Since you are neither, I don’t answer to you.” I took another few steps down the hall.

  “How is a fucking cripple gonna help?”

  I gritted my teeth. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the remark thrown my way. The limp would never go away. There were more manmade products holding together my hip, leg, and arm than most people could imagine still functioning with. The cane helped, and there would always be pain. But I wasn’t crippled. I could probably outrun this son of a bitch even on one of my bad days—though I’d be rewarded for the effort with lots of cramping. I could do without the cane most days, but it was a handy weapon that everyone discounted.

  “Gollum, leave him alone.” Another guard appeared in the hallway. His tone said he wasn’t going to put up with the meathead’s bullshit. Gollum. It fit. He just needed to start slurring “my precious.” Or maybe he was just a giant, mindless, paper doll made of clay. I could see that too.

  The new guy, however, was ex-military. Might have even been USMC. He was wearing a well-tailored suit that hid his shoulder holster fairly well, and his hair was a little longer than military standard, but he stood strong and straight, shoulders back, at ease but always ready. I wouldn’t be surprised if he specialized in some kind of martial art. He had that look to him. Like he could move.

  Gollum grumbled behind me about two-bit detectives and pay-by-the-hour bodyguards. I raised a brow at military guy. He gave me a ghost of a smile and offered a hand. “Duke,” he said.

  “Alme,” I offered my last name while taking his hand, not sure if Duke was a first or a last. In the military it was always last names. So I’d assume it was his last until he told me otherwise. His shake was firm, practiced, not too hard, not too soft, and not sweaty. He let go and he turned to walk with me down the hall. “So are you the head guard or is there someone bigger and badder than you I need to find?”

  “I guess if there was a head guard that would be me.” He sighed heavily. “There are almost forty total in three shifts, but it’s run more like a game of Rock Band than any guarding job I’ve had before.”

  “You haven’t been here long, then?”

  “No. Emily hired me two months ago. Wanted me to shake up the guards.”

  I grinned. “And did you?”

  “Hell yeah. Fired half their asses. They actually work now. Standing at duty instead of being downstairs playing video games or screwing the groupies.”

  “Any idea who slashed my tires two days ago?”

  “No,” he growled. “If I find it was one of my guys, he’s out. I’ll blacklist him too. He won’t find another bodyguarding job if I have any say about it. We aren’t thugs for hire no matter who’s paying. What’s next, put dead critters on a person’s doorstep? We’re not playing that shit.”

  Only a lot of them were thugs. Being a bodyguard wasn’t about size or being the scariest guy in the room. It was about observation, readiness, and intelligence. I knew how to take down a guy twice my size with minimal effort long enough to buy my charge enough time to escape. Like Ollie I could fight dirty. I had the gun, but I also had a knife in my shoe, the cane, which made a damn good baton, and my weighted backpack, which may have held my tablet, but it was also a good projectile weapon if I aimed it at someone. Ollie had broken a guy’s nose with his laptop. I could probably break someone’s face, only because I knew where to aim. None of the guys I’d seen so far, except for Duke, had any skills in observation. If these were Jacob’s guards, I was surprised he wasn’t dead, or at least mauled on regular occasion.

  “Any incidents lately that I should know about?”

  “Just the usual. Sometimes groupies sneak backstage. He gets lots of gifts from people. I tried to have them all searched before they got to him, but he refuses.”

  “So no one close to him that seems to be acting weird.”

  Duke gave me a look. “They are all fucking crazy. I have no idea how anyone would begin to determine what was weird for them and what is normal.”

  “First celebrity job?” I asked him because it was a certain personality type.

  “Yeah. At least of the artistic variety. Guarded politicians before.”

  “This is a whole new world for you, then,” I teased him.

  “You’ve guarded lot of celebrities? Other than your boyfriend, I mean.”

  “I don’t guard Ollie. He doesn’t need it. But yes. I’ve followed models and a few actors around. This will be my first musician.”

  Duke nodded. “Guess we’ll both be learning on the fly, then.” We arrived at the door at the end, and Duke knocked on it, but didn’t attempt to open it. What if someone came in the window? Was there a guard in the room? All my questions ended a moment later when the door opened and Jacob stood there in only a pair of the tiniest briefs I’d thought possible, and Ollie owned a lot of underwear. Maybe he should have explained to Jacob way back when that they weren’t meant to cut off circulation.

  “Ah, the private dick has finally arrived,” Jacob snarled. He stepped back and held the door open.

  I sighed and stepped inside his room. Two youngish people were scurrying into clothes. I think one was female and one ma
le, but I couldn’t be sure. They had a sort of bland sameness about them with color-dyed hair and pale flesh. They rushed past me and out the door.

  “Show them out, Duke,” Jacob called back and closed the door.

  He turned to me, eyes all over me, and for the first time I felt how Ollie must have felt every time some perv looked him over like he was a hot piece of ass. Whatever he saw obviously came up lacking because he said, “I don’t get why he picked you.”

  I raised a brow at him. “Maybe because I’m not an asshole?”

  “I disagree.”

  Whatever. He didn’t have to like me, nor did I have to like him. I’d guarded plenty of people who were a waste of air. Though none of them as big a vacuum as Jacob. “Not a good look for you,” I told him honestly. Gone were the perfect hair and the clothes that defined him as something other than skinny. He really didn’t have the muscle tone or physique that most rock stars were known for. He was just lanky. Of course Ollie was thinner, but he also looked healthier. Something about Jacob made me think he wasn’t physically well. Too many drugs maybe? “Frankly speaking, I don’t know why he stayed with you so long.”

  “No one else seems to share your opinion.” He stalked away from me, headed toward a large closet. The bedroom itself was four times as large as Ollie’s, opulently decorated with silks and brocades. But it stank of sex, pot—not even good pot—and unwashed man. “Emily said she’ll load my schedule to your phone.”

  “Already have it,” I told him. He had an interview and performance in three hours. Had to be in hair and makeup in two. I’d arrived early to learn about his regular detail, speak to some of his guards, and get a feel for just how much danger he really was in. Maybe the sister was just paranoid. Sure, the notes were a little creepy. They were also really old-school. Which meant we were dealing with someone of really low intelligence or someone older than me. I couldn’t imagine anyone Ollie’s age piecing together a magazine to make hate notes. The digital generation was more about online trolls and sexting than print magazines and written letters.

  “Well, if we’re going to play this game you should have all the cards, right? You already have the card I want,” Jacob shouted to me from the closet. Maybe he was getting dressed. I was okay with seeing less of his mostly naked ass. But his comment irritated me. Ollie was not a card to be shuffled and handed around, or played. It was hard to keep my mouth shut.

  He reappeared a moment later dragging a trunk with him. He dropped it at my feet, then returned to the closet. The last thing I wanted to do was open that trunk. What if it was filled with a bunch of kinky sex toys? Would he regale me with stories of how he used them on Ollie?

  This time he returned with a stack of printed pages. He held them out to me until I took them. It was page after page of bank transactions. The amount of money exchanging hands floored me, and for a minute I wondered why he would show me this. Was he flaunting his wealth? Proving how much better he could provide for Ollie? Except the transactions all went to one account, and they were monthly. Dating back almost two years. Then it clicked. “Blackmail? You’ve been paying them?”

  Jacob shrugged. “Keeps some stuff out of the media. There are certain things I’d rather the world not know.”

  “Like how you treated Ollie?”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “He consented to everything we did together. He is not a victim. I know he gets all weepy and snuggly and you want to believe everything he says, but he was a willing participant. He’s not as vanilla as he pretends to be.”

  “You’re right. Ollie’s not a victim. But he left you. So stop trying to get him back. He doesn’t want you anymore.”

  Jacob flinched, then kicked the trunk. “Open it.”

  “I don’t want to see any of your kink, Jacob.”

  “It’s not my kink.” He leaned over, grabbed the handle, and pulled up the lid. Inside were stacks of letters, newspapers, mangled stuffed animals, and weapons. “Someone sure has a kink over the idea of me biting it.”

  I frowned at the contents of the chest. This was much more serious than even Emily had led me to believe.

  “The critters were gifts from fans,” he said after a moment. “I keep stuff sometimes. There’s a lot of junk, but sometimes I keep stuff. Or at least I used to. Now anything I keep gets torn up. Covered in paint or blood. Nasty things written.” He leaned farther in, poking around. “There’s a voodoo doll of me in there somewhere. Well I guess it doesn’t have to be voodoo. Someone made one of those Asian ball joint dolls to look like me. But this sicko cut it up.” He frowned. “I really liked that doll.”

  “Did you call the police when you found any of this?” I asked, using my cane to poke through the mash of creepy delights. Whoever was doing this was seriously unhinged. There were hunting knives and an assortment of kitchen knives sticking from some of the critters. The box actually smelled like old blood. Gross.

  Jacob waved his hand like it wasn’t that important. “Not even Emily knows. She’d flip. I throw the worst of it away. I’ve gotten bags of animal parts, used tampons and condoms, bottles of spit and piss… it’s all sort of part of the fame gig. We attract crazies.”

  He was crazy letting this go on long enough to have an entire trunk of this shit. “Was this sent to you? Can we track stuff down to addresses?”

  He threw himself back onto the unmade bed, spreading the covers around it and stretching like a newly roused cat. “Found most of that right here. Or on the bed in my tour bus, or in the bathroom here. Sometimes I’d leave the studio to take a piss and come back to find something on my chair. No one ever saw who.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me since you have the world’s shittiest security team. A toddler with a paperclip could get in here.” And all his gifts were going to be searched from this moment forward.

  “So? I’m not dead yet. Other than the threats there’s been no actual incident. It’s all bluster. Some bastard’s kink. He wants what I have and since he can’t have it he has to make my life miserable. I’ve been ignoring it for a long time.”

  “You’re not ignoring it. You’re paying people off.”

  “That’s for the articles. Not the goth pyscho with a stuffed animal slaughter fetish.”

  “Except the articles are still coming. So what exactly are you getting for your money?” I insisted.

  “You already know. They don’t talk about my kink.”

  “So you like to tie people up and slap them around a little. There are plenty of people who like that. Celebrities as well, I’m sure. Your sister assures me it’s all consensual.”

  He rolled over and sat up on the bed. “Consent is the name of the game. But Ollie obviously never told you my real kink.”

  I frowned at him, but had a feeling he was doing this just try to prove he knew something about Ollie that I didn’t. “And what is that? Underage kids? You seem to like them really young.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest, looking unamused. “Full submission. I say lick my feet and someone does it, no questions asked. I could be walking through shit and they’d still do it. That’s my kink. Total control. I’ve had a dozen slaves before. All rushing to do my bidding. Ollie loved it when I bossed him around.”

  I couldn’t imagine Ollie ever being that submissive. He absolutely hated to be told what to do. Except when we played Kade’s lover in my room. That was all about him doing what I told him to. Only he topped from the bottom when we played. But that made sense too, didn’t it? If Jacob had treated him like a slave, then he’d be hesitant to ever let anyone control him again. Nathan must not have known else he’d have put an end to their relationship. Ollie had fire, and a hell of a backbone. He always had. Even when we played, he was never weak. He teased right back until he riled me up to do whatever he wanted me to. What exactly had Jacob done to get him to be meek and submit?

  But I wasn’t going to discuss their past. It wasn’t why I was here, and any questions I had, Ollie could answer. I wouldn’t let Jacob hol
d that power over me. “You’re going to have to call the police. They have forensics and DNA testing that can find this sort of shit out. Instead of waiting for something to happen, be proactive.”

  “I am. I called Ollie and got you.”

  I sighed. “Is Emily here somewhere? Surely there is a sensible member of your staff or family that I can speak to.”

  He shrugged. “She’s here somewhere. My entire fucking family lives here. Travel with me. Never leave me the fuck alone.”

  “So change it.”

  “That easy, eh? Fire them all? Real nice guy Ollie’s found.”

  “You could find work for them that didn’t have them as close.” I shrugged. “You don’t want them around, then fix it. You’re not exactly hard up for money.” I flipped through the pages of the transactions. He was paying over a million dollars a year. This was nuts. How had an accountant not caught this and brought it to the police? “Who’s your accountant?” I pulled out my phone to write down the name and add it to the list of people Ollie would be talking to.

  “Emily’s husband, Levi.”

  “And he knows about the blackmail?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “So where does he think he’s sending the money?”

  Jacob glared at me. I glared back waiting for him to answer. If he thought I was going to back down because most everyone else did, he was wrong. Finally he said, “He thinks it’s child support I keep on the down low.”

  I swore. Did this man ever tell anyone the truth? “Are there any children out there we should be looking at? Scorned lovers who would like nothing more than to make your life miserable? Or maybe I should ask for a list of lovers who don’t feel you treated them like shit. It would be a shorter list.”

  “Fuck you, Alme.”

  “I’m one hundred percent serious. Children?” I demanded.

  “No. None.”

  “That you know of.”

  “I got clipped not long after I hit big. My attorneys advised me to set aside a huge chunk of money for kids that pop up from groupies down the road. Apparently it’s a regular thing for most celebrities. I’ve got enough family mooching off me, so I got clipped. No kids. Ever.”