Chapter 54

* Ryder *

There was a lot to be done, not just me turning up at the house. I had to call Janie’s dad and my manager, and anyone else who would be affected by this change with the pretense that I cared. Things had already been worked out where I’d have an excuse for not being here and not being able to spend any time with Janie at the hospital since she was in quarantine. This was all explained to me on the way to the house, and I don’t know how many times I asked the question of whether three little girls had really planned all this.

It seemed so meticulous, calculated even, that it was hard to wrap my mind around it. My only answers, though, were usually grunts and nods, if that, and I was left to draw my own conclusions. I was driven around to the back of my home, a place I don’t think I’d ever seen before we filed out of the three vans that came.

We snuck inside without being noticed, and it was then I was told that the men in hazmat suits who were going to show up were part of Lyon’s squad and that they would be staying behind, at least some of them, to finish the job Tyler and Zak had started. They were going to be going over my house with a fine-tooth comb and going through all the electronics to find anything having to do with the trafficking business.

They suspected that Janie had shared correspondence with the others through those devices, plus they wanted to go back through the security cameras to see who had visited in the last five years, especially Mary and Scott’s visits, which they seem to think coincides with certain disappearances. I’m not sure how they plan to do all that going back so many years, but they seem to think it could be done.

They also, in a roundabout way, answered a pressing question I had. How much did Janie know? It was one thing for her to be a crazy fan who’d hit the jackpot and quite another for her to be completely involved in the trafficking business. I didn’t come right out and ask, but the fact that they wanted to go through her stuff like that spoke volumes. At least I felt better knowing that they hadn’t found anything on any of my devices to be suspicious of, and though they hadn’t said so, I didn’t kid myself that they hadn’t gone through mine as well.

I also felt certain that Elena was in the clear. I don’t think they or the nieces would be going to bat for her like this if she wasn’t. Is it strange that I’ve been in the industry for so long and have always been surrounded by people, adoring people, people who claimed to love me, and this was the first time I really felt like I was part of something?

I guess it’s that feeling of doing something worthwhile after pissing my life away for so long. There’s a new purpose in my day that hadn’t been there before. And the cherry on top, I get to go home to my girl at the end of the day from now on. There’s nothing like coming close to losing something that essential to your life to realize its value and knowing that you should do everything within your power to hold on to and cherish that thing, that certain someone.

Walking into the house felt strange; not even the memories I’d shared here with Elena could take away the tainted feel it now held. I felt something heavy, dark, and depressive as soon as I walked through the door. Or maybe that’s my imagination working overtime after the story she’d told me. I shook it off, though, as the guys went about doing their thing and got down to what I came here for.

The phone calls were some of the hardest I’d ever made, especially having to pretend to be the same witless fool they’d turned me into. The fact that I was no longer high must’ve been giving them fits, so I had to play as if I was still none the wiser. Her dad wanted to come out, but I convinced him that since she would be in quarantine for an unspecified amount of time, it didn’t make sense for him to do that.

Mary was a bit easier to deal with than I expected; she didn’t ask as many questions as I’d thought she would, but then again, she seemed very distracted, maybe because she was dealing with some issues of her own. Scott and Matt were pretty much the same, and I wondered what the nieces, as I’d come to call them, had done to them in the last twenty-four hours to make them act this way.

All the same, I was glad for it since I didn’t have the acting skills needed to keep up the facade for long. They accepted my excuse that Saunders was willing to put me up since I had so much work to do on his project and didn’t seem too put out that I didn’t accept their halfhearted offers of a place to stay if I didn’t want to stay at a hotel until this all blew over.

As preoccupied as they all seemed to be, especially Scott, his main interest was in how things were going with the Saunders group. I’d been coached to tell him that Saunders would be getting in touch with him soon, and that seemed to pacify him as he was all about the money. Matt was more interested in when he could see me next, which reminded me of the things Elena had told me earlier about him and what it was he was really doing in my life.

Of everyone, I think I felt the most betrayed by him, only because of the essence of our relationship. He’d portrayed himself as a righteous person, someone I could trust. And because of him, I now have to revisit my every thought and belief of the last six or seven years. Knowing that the whole time I was trying to get myself together, he had been using my weakness against me is something I find hard to deal with.

Not only because I now know he must’ve been laughing at me behind my back but because he’d played with my head in a way that might’ve been hard to come back from had it not been for these strangers that had come to the rescue, as well as the woman I didn’t deserve. Heaven knows how long it would’ve taken me to make peace with all this had the men not been here to reassure me that this was not my doing.

I’ve been accused of and been guilty of some serious shit in my life, mostly in my wayward youth, but none of it comes even remotely close to this monstrous shit. Had Lyon not shown me the proof, I doubt I would have so easily accepted it as truth. But seeing some of the faces of the young girls who had come backstage to meet me over the years and then reading the reports of their disappearances not long after that somehow never made it into the news, there was no way to deny it.

Of course, I didn’t remember all their faces, but there was evidence that they had indeed been to my concerts because more than one account made mention of them being last seen at one or of them disappearing not long after having attended one. In most cases, it was days after they’d met with me, I guess as a way to hide the connection. But that wasn’t all. Some of the girls had posted about our meeting or the fact that they had been invited to a meet and greet.

It was a gut punch to see the smiling innocent faces, some of them wearing braces, young, with their whole lives ahead of them, full of excitement because they were going to meet their favorite artist, only to be snatched away days later and taken to a world of hell on earth. After seeing that, it was hard not to blame myself. And I wished like hell that someone had seen something or said something sooner because the numbers these guys were throwing around were nothing to sneeze at.

With all the evidence laid out in front of me, it was hard to imagine that no one had put the pieces together after all these years, and I was disheartened to learn, once Lyon revealed the truth, that Mary, Scott, and whoever else was behind them, had threatened those families not to mention my name in anything to do with their kid’s disappearance. That just made the whole thing seem even more diabolical.

The thought that there were people out there who might actually believe I had a hand in all this leaves me cold, and I plan to make things right with each and every one of those families as soon as we rescue their loved ones, something Lyon reassures me can be done as long as they get the information needed. Which is where their men moving into my house comes in, I assume.

I was in the middle of packing some things to take with me when I found the blanket I’d stolen when she was in the hospital. I smiled and brought it to my nose and felt a sensation of peace overcome me. It felt like half a lifetime since I’d sat at the side of her hospital bed, wishing that things could go back to the way they were. Now here we are, and things are really coming together, though better than ever before.

I’d been so worried that to keep the others from knowing what I was doing with these guys or from knowing that I’d found out the truth about their filthy doings, that I might have to move back in here with Janie for a while to keep up appearances.

I’d been worried about what that would do to Elena, knowing that I didn’t have the guts or the right to ask her to be that understanding again. I didn’t want to have to betray her or let her down again, and it seemed it was no longer going to be an issue. Right now, being apart from her for any length of time makes me edgy. We’d already lost so much time, and I didn’t want to lose another second to this, especially if it meant being around the very people she’d asked me to leave behind as part of her agreeing to take me back.

From what had been shared with me about Janie’s situation, I have no doubt the nieces plan to keep her in that hospital bed for as long as it takes, a month, they’d said. My only question was whether or not the doctors were in on it or had they really poisoned her with something that it was going to take a whole month to get rid of. From what I’d heard while at Saunders’ place, it would take a while for anyone to figure out what had been used, and that was the reason for the quarantine, I guess.

I have no idea what had been done or what she looks like, but from the sounds of it; it’s not good. Zak and Tyler had been the ones to call the ambulance, and from what they described, she’d looked nothing like herself when they went to rescue her after hearing her screams. The men all seem to get nervous when it’s brought up, and the fact that Lyon’s daughter has access to their conversations kept talk about that part of it to a bare minimum.

It had been funny watching these men, who I’d come to see as the real deal, get nervous each time that little girl had spoken up while they were brainstorming some idea or the other. I’d asked only once why we didn’t just move away from the computer if they didn’t want them listening in, and the look Lyon gave me had been enough to have my nuts going into hiding.

“How did she get the tracker into the scanner they put in your watch?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” I was genuinely perplexed.

“He’s trying to say they don’t know where I’ll show up.” That had been her answer, along with a cynical laugh that had sent her dad into one of his fits. He seems to have those a lot from the looks of it.

Those two had some arguments that made me forget she was a ten-year-old little girl; the way he spoke to her as if she were someone three times her age and the way she was always able to answer intelligently while still sounding like a schoolgirl in pigtails was pretty freaky. Now I really wanted to meet this kid and her friends, but with Lyon as their guard dog, I was sure that was something else I was going to have to earn.

I don’t think I would mind that, though, come to think of it. Earning the respect of someone like him. It was obvious that everyone took direction from him, and for men like Tyler and Zak to look up to anyone, that person must be damn near perfect because those two are just about the best men I’ve ever met. The fact that none of them seem to give a fig about my money or fame could be the reason for my respect for them.

Even the nieces who are supposed to be fans don’t seem too impressed with me if the way I’d been threatened was an indication. It’s all good as long as they like me, girl, which they seem to; I’ll take that.

* Elena *

I shouldn’t have, but I was watching the news while scrolling through social media for any news about Janie. I knew that Ryder’s house was going to be surrounded by cameras, and since he and his new friends were being so secretive, I figured I might learn something by keeping my eye on things myself.

Char had come up to check on me after they left, and I can’t tell you how her worrying about me makes me feel. I have no doubt that she’s capable of all the things she’d said that she was, so her worrying told me that there was still a chance that something could be done to harm me or Ryder, or both.

I wish I could call my mom and talk to her about this; she was more apt to believe this stuff in the past than I was, but I couldn’t do that without exposing what else was going on right now. I knew for certain that she wouldn’t be happy with me being here, not until I’ve had time to explain everything to her in detail, and even then, I wasn’t sure that she’d accept Ryder and I being back together.

It felt so strange saying that, even to myself, the fact that we were back together. I’m still coming to terms with the fact that it was real, that we had found our way back to each other yet again. It shouldn’t have been; after everything that had happened, there was no way we should have had anything to salvage between us, and yet, here we are.

Who would believe a story about spells and dark magic? Who would believe that Mary Hudson had done the things she’d done or that so many adults had banded together to give one young girl her heart’s desire and caused all this? No matter how I look at it and think it to death, I, too, am having a hard time believing that that is all there is to the story. I’m almost certain that there’s more to the story that no one is willing to share with me.

Even Char, in some of her conversations, kept hinting at some hidden reason that would be shared with me when the time was right. Is this what Ryder and those men are really working on? The reason behind the lie that he was working on a movie? What could it be, though, that they have to keep it hidden from me? The only thing I’m sure of is that it does not directly involve me. The Ryder I know, the one I fell in love with, would not knowingly leave me in harm’s way.

There was an announcement on the news finally, but all that was said was that she’d been hospitalized, nothing more than that and no mention of what type of illness she had. Not long after, social media lit up with post after post of speculation, and then the real fun began. I know better than to believe everything I see on the internet, but since I knew that there was actually something going on, I read everything that came across my screen.

I almost felt bad for her when people started saying that she deserved whatever she was going through. I don’t have it in me, as much as I dislike her, to wish her ill. And then the pictures started coming, and I was sure it was a hoax. “There’s no way! Is that real? What the hell?”

The caption claimed that it was Janie Andrews, but the image looked nothing like the attractive blonde who’d been plastered all over social media and every news outlet for years ever since she married Ryder, and the netizens went nuts.

Smack dab in the middle of all that, there was a shot of Ryder leaving his home as the cameras followed. “Wait a minute. Is that….?” How did he get my blanket? The one that I’d been certain I lost after my stay in the clinic. Oh my gosh, he’d been there. I don’t know why, out of everything that happened, everything that I’d learned in the last twenty-four hours, that should be the thing that broke me, but it did.

I cried stupid happy tears as my heart went through a gamut of emotions. He hadn’t even mentioned it, but he’d been there. Why that should convince me more than his words, I don’t know, but it was the catalyst for me letting go of that last bit of doubt I held onto. And just like before, I decided to go for it, one more time, with Ryder.