I look over to find the voice, but the crowd is far too thick now. People are pouring out of the stairwell, desperately trying to get a glimpse of Vaughn and the woman they think is me.
Vaughn ignores them, as does the woman, and he steps forward. People move aside as he enters the vast room and then he leans down and asks a question of a girl standing close.
She raises her arm and points to a tent behind me.
The whole room looks in that direction.
That tent is made up of thick black curtains. I’m only a few feet away, in fact, so I start walking towards the entrance. An arm darts out to block my way and a large man dressed as a Stormtrooper stops me from entering. “Guests of honor first, bitch. You know the rules.”
OK. I stand my ground, waiting to see what they’ve got behind the curtains about Vaughn.
He steps forward, only a few feet in front of me, his eyes straight ahead.
And then the curtain is pulled back.
Chapter Twenty-Two
#JustReturningTheFavor
HER whimpering fills the room. They’ve got the sound on every speaker. Her sniffles boom out from every corner. But it’s the images onscreen that stop me dead and make my heart want to crack.
Grace. On the floor. Trying her best not to cry as Derek Hauser kicks her in the back. I knew it would be bad, but I honestly never thought they’d show those videos of when she was kidnapped as a teen.
My heart speeds up. My face goes hot. The rage I feel at this moment builds, but then the image shifts and it’s another girl lying on the floor. This one is covered in blood too, but this one is dead.
“He killed her.”
Everyone goes silent as the words echo from the speakers.
“He killed my sister.”
The image switches back to Grace, her nude Twitter pictures up for all to see.
I’m mortified that these scumbags should see my wife in this way.
“He uses women,” the speaker system booms. “All of them. See what he made that poor Daisy Bryndle do?”
The tweets on that account are private. They require a password and no one has ever gotten our passwords. I changed them the day Grace was found to some incomprehensible string of numbers. But the pictures are not protected. If you know the link, you can get the pictures.
The scene flashes to Grace in a Nebraska cornfield, being loaded onto the Life Flight helicopter, bound for Denver.
“It was your fault she was taken again, Vaughn Asher. Your fault she was shot. Your fault she lost that baby.”Hare dare that bitch mention my wife’s pregnancy. I turn and face the crowd. “Show your face, you bitch. Show your fucking face!”
Amy Stratton steps out of the mass of people and they part for her, just as they parted for me. “Here’s my face. The one you’ve been trying to forget for more than a decade. You killed her and you got away with it because you’re famous. You celebrities all feel entitled. You all live by your own rules. You flash your money and use your status so you don’t have to be accountable. You make me sick.” She walks straight up to me and spits in my face.
I say nothing.
“What, no denial?” she snarls at me.
“You know I didn’t do it. You know that every word you’re saying is a complete fabrication. You’re the sick one. Your sister did not commit suicide—”
“You made her kill herself!”
“She was on drugs, Amy. She was doing some very questionable things.”
“She hired you to be in her movie, and you fucked her over. You ruined her career. You made her kill herself.”
“That’s not what happened and you know it. I told you back then, that’s not what happened.”
“Yeah, you tried to blame her boyfriend—”
“Her boyfriend, are you fucking kidding me? Frankie Miller was thirty years older than her. He was a scumbag who was taking advantage of her.”
“No. He loved her. You’re just mad because he tricked you. And then you threatened him. You threatened to send him to jail.”
I shake my head and look at the crowd, trying to decide if I need to make my case or not. But then I remember who my date is for tonight, and I realize I have no choice. This is it. I have to come clean and whatever happens afterward, so be it.
“Frankie Miller killed DeeDee Cisco ten years ago.”
“You’re a liar,” Amy screams. “He was found not guilty.”
“He was not found not guilty, Amy. The charges were dropped. There’s a big difference. And the charges were dropped because…” I look over and find Carey Keefe in the crowd. She’s not dressed up and she’s in front to see my reaction. “Because… Because I—”
I stop talking.
But Carey steps forward. “Because what?” Her face is strained. She’s breathing a little faster than normal, so her heart must be beating fast. She’s nervous.
And I realize that she’s as nervous about the truth as I am. She might have set me up tonight, but it’s only because she never believed me. She’s been trying to convince herself for months that I was lying.
But now that we’re both here, she knows I’m not lying. And she wants me to shut the fuck up.
Because I am almost positive that Frankie Miller did kill DeeDee Cisco, aka Danielle Stratton. The sister of Amy Stratton, star gossip reporter for Buzz Hollywood.
I know this because I have video that I never turned over to the police.
DeeDee was just a film-school student in one of his classes. I met her on my eighteenth birthday. They set me up. Drugged me. Had me sign a non-disclosure agreement. And then proceeded to film me doing things I never imagined myself doing.