Breaking Hollywood (39 page)

‘Yeah, baby?’

‘You have no idea how great tonight is gonna be when I see you.’

Lauren giggled. ‘I love a man who makes promises he can keep. Bye, baby.’

On the scale of instant feelings of crap, Sarah suddenly ricocheted right to the top. Brilliant. She’d planted a camera, risked a horrific breach of trust, almost had herself taken out by
a lethal close-protection agent, inadvertently broken a dozen different laws, seen Logan naked, totally invaded his privacy, and all to end up with a bird’s-eye view of a cute scene that
belonged in a romcom.

OK, enough for now. Eli was probably lining storm troopers up outside the door this very minute. Her thumb went to move to the ‘stop’ button when the image on the screen jiggled and
she saw that Logan had turned to greet a new arrival.

Eli’s profile came into view. Great. He was bugging her in real life and on screen now too.

Her thumb moved again and—

Stopped.

Froze.

Eli wordlessly paused in front of where Logan was sitting, pulled something out of his pocket. Oh God, she should switch off. She suddenly didn’t want to see anything that could
incriminate Logan. He was such a sweet kid, and everyone made mistakes, and what business of hers was it, anyway? It was different when he was just the catalyst for a chapter in her book, but over
the last couple of weeks she’d really grown to like him. And then there was Mirren too. How could Sarah possibly be complicit in anything that would hurt that woman? Hadn’t she been
through enough?

She should stop. Definitely. Yet . . . she couldn’t, because she had to know. It was like watching a car crash in front of her and she couldn’t walk away until she knew exactly what
the body count was going to be.

Using her thumb and forefinger, she enlarged the image, zooming in on Eli’s hand. A small, clear bag with what looked like white power inside. Another bag. Little blue pills.

Bollocks. Total bollocks.

Don’t take them, Logan. Don’t take them!

Logan wasn’t listening. He got off the couch, took them from Eli’s hand, headed over to a large holdall on the other side of the room, opened it. Sarah knew what was going to happen,
but she still couldn’t switch it off. From the holdall, he pulled out that bloody red bag, the one that had bugged her the whole tour, and dropped the little packets inside.

There was absolutely no pleasure in the fact that she was right.

Damn it.

She fast-forwarded to make sure she missed nothing else. Logan getting dressed. Logan fixing his hair. The runner coming for him. Logan handing Eli the holdall. Everyone leaving and then nothing
until her own face appeared, making a pretence of searching for her phone.

Then it faded to black.

So now she knew.

The question was, what was she going to do with the information? Obviously she had to tell someone. There was no way she was going to let Logan go down the same road as his sister. Right now, he
was handling it well, still functioning, lucid, but how long would that last? She knew how it worked. The time would come when he needed a little more to get high. Then a little more. And more.

Before long, he would be just another addict, and the fact that he was in a boy band that was heading for global domination wouldn’t matter a damn, because all he would care about was the
next fix.

If anything, his position was more dangerous than the run-of-the-mill junkie, because he had unlimited funds and a long line of people desperate to get him anything he wanted. Including that
fucker Eli. Sarah was suddenly furious. How dare he? How fucking dare he? And no, she couldn’t exactly claim the moral high ground, given her little recording stunt, but a professional on the
payroll supplying a young guy with drugs? Military training or not, she wanted to go out there right now and kick his arse up and down the length of the plane.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Please ignore the crazed young woman in the aisle, kicking the crap out of a South City protection officer. Thank you, and have a
pleasant flight.

A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts.

‘Two minutes,’ she said brightly. No doubt it was Eli. He probably had some kind of Jedi ESP and realized she was coming for him, so he was trying to get in there first. The
important thing was that despite every instinct telling her to go out there guns of indignation and fury blazing, she couldn’t and shouldn’t react until she’d worked out a plan
for the best way to handle this.

Sighing, she was just about to switch her phone off when she remembered . . . She clicked into the text function. Seventeen new messages. What? She didn’t even know seventeen people in
LA.

Scanning the list, she realized every single one was from Davie.

‘Just in case you see the news . . . Don’t worry – I’m OK.’

The news? Why would he be on the news? And why was he saying he was OK?

Next text: ‘Been a fire at house. Not sure how bad.’

Next text: ‘Heading there now.’

‘Fuck, I’m here.’

‘Smoke everywhere.’

‘Can see flames.’

‘Fire service here.’

‘Can’t find Ivanka.’

‘Kitchen gone.’

‘Christ, it’s a mess.’

‘Where are you, Sarah?’

‘They won’t let me go in.’

‘Can’t stand here doing nothing.’

‘This is a nightmare.’

‘Fuck it, I’m going in.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.’

‘Love you.’

It’s almost time.

Almost.

The watching and the waiting have been intolerable, but I did it because I had to make sure I got this right.

There will only be one shot. One chance. Because once people know about me, then they’ll come for me.

You think I don’t know that? You think I’ve spent all this time planning and watching and making it right and that I’m so deluded I believe I’ll just walk away
when I’m done?

I know that won’t happen. But I don’t care.

That’s the thing about having all that matters taken away from you.

Once it’s gone, you have nothing to lose.

And the gain?

That’s easy. There’s only ever been one upside on this. I’ll take away from you what you took from me.

And I’ll look you in the eyes and I’ll make sure you know.

You’ll know it was me who did this to you.

‘Burn’ – Ellie Goulding

Davie

Karma. Was that what this was? Was this retribution for every fucked-up asshole thing he’d ever done in his life?

Sitting on the terrace, in an all-weather lounger, Davie pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders and scanned the chaos that surrounded him. The fire crews were mostly gone now, just a
couple of guys with clipboards, still walking around the premises. Mike Feechan and a dozen security guys were here too. Mike was in the security room, running through CCTV footage from around the
property. The rest of the team were patrolling and securing the grounds. Horse bolted. Stable door shut.

‘I bring you drink. You should not try to go to fire. You crazy ass.’

Ivanka pointed out the obvious as she handed him a mug of water. It was the only one he used, and it had survived the flames because he’d left it out on the patio table that morning. His
mum, Ena, had bought it for him on her last visit, from the Starbucks shop at Glasgow Airport. Funny. In his world of excess, an inexpensive piece of china meant the most.

Thank God Ena hadn’t been here when this happened. Look how he’d reacted when he thought Ivanka was inside. Dozens of LAFD’s finest and he decides to play hero and run into a
burning building to look for a housekeeper who spent her whole life conveying the impression that she thought he was a knob.

Meanwhile, he, it would seem, thought he was Bruce Willis in
Die Hard
, charging in, trying to save the day. Although, he didn’t remember a scene in
Die Hard
in which two
firefighters blocked Bruce at the door, pushed him back, at which point he tripped over a sprinkler that protruded from the grass, sprained his ankle and ended up sprawled on the ground, with the
sprinkler rain soaking him.

Pathetic.

Utterly pathetic.

Especially when Ivanka had turned up half an hour later after her daily trip to Whole Foods.

He’d almost risked his life for an empty house.

Karma.

‘Hey, Davie. Can you come take a look at this?’ Mike Feechan shouted to him from the security room. Located in the back of the pool house, it was an impenetrable room that monitored
everything that happened in the grounds and around the perimeter of the property.

Groaning, he pushed himself up and headed over, getting a better look at the house as he passed. The main body of the property looked OK, but the kitchen was destroyed. One exterior wall of the
room had completely crumbled; the others were black with smoke, water still running out of the open doors.

The damage didn’t faze him. That’s what insurance was for. But it was the potential devastation this could have caused that was twisting his gut right now. His kids could have been
here. Sarah. His ex-wife. Although, if Jenny and Darcy were inside, he wasn’t sure he’d have been quite so gung-ho in charging to the rescue. He may have toddled real slow.

In the security room, Mike was sitting at a bank of monitors.

‘Come look at this, Davie.’

Shuffling under the weight of his wet clothes and blanket, Davie did as he was instructed. Mike pressed ‘play’ on an aerial shot of the house, taken from the top of the roof and
programmed to capture everything within 200 yards, 360 degrees. That just about covered the grounds and drive.

Davie stared at the screen, saw nothing. Stared some more. Still nothing. Then he saw it. A black dot in the distance, increasing in size as it got closer, hovering above the house, static, then
swooping down to a spot right outside the French doors that led to the kitchen.

‘What the fuck . . . ?’

‘It’s a drone. Remote-controlled. Battery-operated. We’re seeing them all over the place at the moment, flying low over celebrity houses to capture images for the paps or
unscrupulous investigators using them to gather evidence in divorce cases. Illegal to fly without permission, but almost impossible to track. The person who sent that here could be sitting ten
miles away.’

‘Christ . . .’ Davie whistled in disbelief, his eyes going back to the screen.

There was no sound on the footage, which made it even more surprising when the machine, or gizmo, or whatever the fuck it was called, exploded into flames. It was strangely hypnotic. The flames
went high, blue at the tips . . .

Mike noticed that too. ‘Some kind of accelerant was on there. That’s the reason for the blue flames.’

Davie nodded, back to watching, as the flames appeared to diminish. Then he noticed a new flicker. The flame from the drone was now encompassing a tiny area of the door to the kitchen. Then a
bigger area. Then bigger.

Mike pressed ‘fast forward’, and in less than a minute, the flames had enveloped the whole door.

‘That’s how it started. But you can clearly see it was deliberate. It’s time we had that conversation, Davie. You need to face up to the fact that this isn’t some
harmless weirdo. Someone has a serious wish to cause you harm. And until we find out who it is, you need to get clear of here and go somewhere you can be protected.’

‘Fuck that. I’m not leaving.’

‘Then I can’t guarantee your safety.’

‘Davie! Davie!’ The edge of desperation in Sarah’s voice made him drop the blanket and dash outside. As soon as she saw him, she ran to him, like a scene in an action movie in
which the heroine runs to thank the hero who just saved her life.

Only Sarah wasn’t that heroine.

As soon as she was in front of him, her expression of pure relief turned to something else altogether.

‘What the fuck did you think you were doing? “I’m going in”?’ she quoted his text to him. “I’m going in”? Are you crazy?’ She was yelling
now, top of her voice.

‘I’ve been worried out of my mind! It’s all over the news – the images of the smoke, and the fire, and they didn’t know if you were OK . . .’ She was
babbling, crying, ranting, furious, relieved, and Davie smiled because he didn’t think he could love her more.

‘Don’t bloody smile at me. You’re an arsehole!’

‘I think that may already have been mentioned today,’ he informed her.

‘That’s because you are!’ Still shouting, mascara tears streaming down her face. ‘Why didn’t you text me back? Why? Why would you do that?’

Davie shrugged sheepishly. ‘Sprinkler soaked my phone.’

Sarah looked stunned.

Incredulous.

Then suddenly burst into a weird, surreal laugh.

‘Are you telling me you live in a forty-million-dollar house . . . ?’

He knew what was coming, but he couldn’t help pointing out the obvious. ‘Might be less now. Fire damage.’

She ignored him. ‘And you only have one phone –
one phone
– with my number in it?’

‘I’m a crap boyfriend.’

She slumped down onto the wet grass. ‘And I’m a crap girlfriend.’

Davie sat down beside her, put his arm around her, pulled her head onto his shoulder, melting at the sight of her crushed, disconsolate face. ‘Honey, you’re not. I’m glad you
weren’t here. I really am.’

She popped her head back up. ‘What?’

‘I don’t think you’re a crap girlfriend for leaving me here,’ he explained.

The lines between her eyebrows puckered into a frown. ‘Neither do I.’

‘Oh.’ This was one of those situations when he felt like he should know what she was talking about but really didn’t. ‘Then why are you a crap girlfriend?’

He watched her inhale deeply. Oh shit, she’d cheated on him. She’d shagged someone on tour. Fucked someone on the tour bus. She was leaving him for a boy-band member. God, even that
thought hurt. How could he have lost her in such a short space of time? He should have called more. Paid her more attention. Showed her that—