Three-Part Harmony (12 page)

She frantically searched the bedroom. David’s tone hadn’t left room for dawdling, but she’d arrived here in nothing more than the cloak, which had no closures or fastenings. There wasn’t a second robe in the closet either. That left his open suitcase. She dived in, finally finding a clean pair of boxer briefs and a dark blue workout shirt. Without thinking about the sanity, or lack of, in the action, she threw them on. Then she took one steadying breath and left the bedroom.

The breath was a wasted step. It got knocked out of her the next second. “Oh, thank God!” shrieked Mary, launching a full Wayne Gretzky on her. She’d barely finished the body check before the other dancers swarmed her.

“Are you all right, Dasha?”

“Did you get the message too?”

“Who the hell is doing this?”

“What if it’s one of
us
?”

“Should we call the police?”

The din got sliced by another arrival to the room. It was George, the show’s tech lead. The tension beneath his gray-tinged beard softened a little when he laid eyes on her, but only a little. He scanned the rest of the room, seeking David. When the two men locked gazes, their expressions darkened from intense to ominous.

George glanced to the smartphone in David’s hand. Only then did Dasha realize everyone else had their phones out as well. Whatever the displays carried, it was critical to the point of dire. No one had noticed, let alone commented, on her David Pennington designer attire.

“You got it too?” George asked.

“Yeah,” David said, his voice tight. “I got it too.”

“Got what?” She forced her mind out of its cocoon of blissful submission, back into the take-charge star everyone expected. “For God’s sake, David, what’s going on?”

He answered by holding up his phone’s window. As soon as she read the message there, then gasped in shock, everyone else in the room held up their devices too.

Every phone had been sent the same text.

Dasha dies and delivers us all.

“Miss Moore, are you certain you don’t know of anyone who’d want you dead?”

“No. For the thousandth time, no.”

David clenched his teeth and his fists, also for the thousandth time. Special Agent Phelps, with his polished loafer braced on the table between him and Dasha, had David mentally reassociating the initials FBI into
Fucking Batshit Idiots.

The moron stood here treating her like the suspect instead of hunting down the lunatic who roamed loose after sending texts to all sixty members of the show’s cast and crew. Damn it, the psych-job was still free somewhere out there, no doubt dreaming up his next scheme to get close enough to—

He had to force-feed the rest of that into his brain.

Close enough to kill Dasha.

It definitely wasn’t where he’d thought the morning would go. Not when he’d answered the door four hours ago, expecting to get rid of Raife as fast as possible and return to rewarding his girl for taking her punishment so well. A back-burnered plan for now…but absolutely still on the stove.

“No pissed-off ex-lovers? A reporter or blogger you might have offended? Maybe some fan who’s been showing up at your stage door, begging for extra attention?”

“That’s enough.” David pushed off the wall where he’d been standing sentry. “She’s told you everything she can.”

“Which is a hell of a lot of nothing,” countered Phelps.

“Which is where you guys come in to do your goddamn job.” He surged forward, sending the strongest back-off-fucker vibe of his life. “She’s been through enough already with this, and you assholes keep prodding her like a science experiment. You’re not gonna get a different answer, no matter how you rephrase the question. So lay off.”

Wisely, Phelps eased his pose. That brought a modicum of satisfaction. But no more. For the last two hours, since making the call to the police, then watching them hook in the FBI due to Dasha’s high profile, he’d felt like a piece of the room’s wallpaper. Just
there.
Useless. Purposeless. And worst of all, powerless. This time, it wasn’t just about his recurring, brother-on-brother world war with Josh. Maybe because this time, it wasn’t just about their past personal baggage or future Pennington stock standings. This power suck had to do with Dasha. Silence wasn’t going to solve it. He had to do something. They had to do something.

“Listen,” Phelps said, hands held up, “I’m just trying to be thorough.”

“Great.” David didn’t waste effort on inflecting it with anything but rage. “Glad to hear it.
Thorough
would be tracking down the source phone of those texts.
Thorough
would be learning if there’s any credence to this shit, or if we’re just dealing with some fanboy whack job. Leave
her
the hell alone.”

“Well said.”

The commendation didn’t come from Phelps. David snapped his attention to the suite’s doorway and the stranger standing there. Everything in the guy’s tone said he was just another FBI jack-off, but everything in his appearance defied that order. From the neck up, he looked like a casting shot for some Peter Jackson fantasy epic. His dark brown hair tumbled well past his nape, and his formidable jaw sprouted a small forest of stubble. But from the top of his leather-jacketed shoulders to his Bauhaus T-shirt, black cargo pants, and heavy boots, he was complete modern Goth. The guy wouldn’t be making the cover of next month’s
GQ;
on the other hand, he probably didn’t give a fuck. Where he did narrow his focus made David victorious and furious at once. The guy honed his brilliant green eyes on Dasha and locked his gaze there.

“We tracked the cell that sent the texts,” he said, again in that no-bullshit tone. Despite that very good update, David’s tension hovered right where it was, thanks to the way the guy didn’t waver his stare from D. Who the hell was he? Were they really letting G-men do the sword and dragons look now?

“All right, so who is the scumbag?” David sat as he issued it, then scooped a fast, possessive arm around D’s shoulders. The guy tangled stares with him again, though he cranked down the temperature in those laser irises.

“Untraceable so far,” he replied. “We found the device in a trashcan at Miami International, in the Central Terminal. The number is registered as a corporate phone for an exports business out of Buenos Aires.”

“Which tells us what?” Dasha asked. “Agent…ah…”

“Moridian,” he supplied. “Special Agent Kress Moridian, undercover operations. I’m the lead on your case, Miss Moore. We’re not usually brought in for a case like this, but Miami PD made the call, based your high profile.”

“It’s
our
case,” David injected. “I’m Miss Moore’s manager.”
And a lot more,
he said via the tight handshake he gave the agent.
Moridian, huh? Hell, you really are a holy crusades rehash.
“David,” he stated aloud. “David Pennington.”

Moridian held his own on the handshake, but the bastard’s face took another bath in tenderness as he looked back to Dasha. “I apologize for taking so long to get here. I know you’ve been waiting to get back to your suite and your things, but we felt it important to track the source phone first.”

“Of course,” Dasha replied. She colored a little at Moridian’s reference to her state, barefoot, disheveled, still dressed only in David’s shirt and boxers. David had basked in a mental fist-pump when she’d emerged in the stuff, sex-flushed and gorgeous, wrapped in the clothes of who’d made her that way. If it were up to him, she’d stay like that all day, broadcasting his claim on her to everyone. But right now, she needed the comfort of her own things on her and around her. And these pissants had kept her from getting to them for three hours now. Which was two and a half hours too long.

“Can we get on with it?” he interjected, rising, then pulling Dasha up too. “She can at least get into her suite for a few minutes now, right?”

“Of course,” Moridian responded, the picture of forced decorum. “And…refresh my memory…why wasn’t she in it to begin with?”

This time, it was Dasha who bristled. “I was with Mr. Pennington. And that information needs to remain exclusive to your team, Agent Moridian.”

“She’ll be remaining with me too.” David dropped his hand around her waist. “I’m not leaving her side until this bastard is found.”

He felt Moridian’s scrutiny on both of them. Good. Let crusader boy get a long look at the connection he shared with D, stronger now than ever. “Details of all our cases are kept confidential. So don’t worry about that, Miss Moore.”

Another agent waited in the hallway, and he accompanied the three of them into the VIP elevator. Though the ride up the next thirty floors took only a minute, David captured Dasha’s stare, then nodded toward the wall, silently inviting her to join him in a shared memory. Her eyes, darkening to molten copper, told him she’d gladly take him up on that. For a few seconds, they remembered those magical, seductive moments they’d shared during their last journey in this space. It was a welcome, needed break from this bewildering, surreal day.

“The hotel moved the other guests from this wing,” Moridian said as they got off at the forty-eighth floor, and Dasha shot a furtive stare down the hall. “Like I said, confidentiality is key to a case like yours. If this ass-wipe is motivated by publicity, then lack of it will smoke him out.”

David grunted approval at that. He hadn’t wanted to. And that made him grimace. All right, fuck it, he wasn’t a fan of how Mr. M eyeballed his woman, but he appreciated the respect Moridian gave this case and this criminal—and the determination he already showed in chasing down the cocksucker.

They arrived at Dasha’s suite. A handful of agents still swarmed the rooms, FBI bees looking for any evidence to cross-pollinate to their lab for clues.

“I just need a few minutes to pull my stuff together,” she told him quietly, daring a small kiss to his lips. As he expected, Moridian joined him in watching her disappear into the bedroom.

“She’s nice,” the guy commented.

“Mmm-hmm.” It was all he could do not to growl it.

“Not the stuck-up pop princess I expected.”

“Nope.” He drew out the vowel in it, hoping his territorial subtext seeped through.

“How long have you two been together?”

David arched a brow. “Professionally or personally?”

Moridian didn’t flinch. “Both.”

“And is my answer relative to your investigation?”

Those nearly neon green eyes finally darkened. For once, the guy looked normal. Yet pissed off too. “When I’m brought in to secure the personal safety of a beautiful woman it is.”

David almost smiled.
Hell.
Under different circumstances, he’d enjoy having Moridian as a friend. He could easily envision them shooting some pool, maybe downing some beers. But as the man had phrased it, the safety of a beautiful woman was at stake. A beauty that had taken on new dimensions for him since she’d knelt at his feet two weeks ago…and deepened dramatically for him over the last twenty-four hours.

There was nothing beautiful about the scream shattering the air then.

Dasha’s scream.

“Oh God!” she cried out. “Oh my God!”

“Fuck.” David blurted it as he and Moridian raced to the bedroom. The other agents joined them. They careened through the doorway but froze once they got there—except for David, who rammed them all aside to get to her.

He gripped her shaking shoulders. Like that did any good; her whole body quaked. Her stare didn’t veer from her toiletries case. There, lying on top of her makeup and tampons and deodorant and toothpaste, was a white dove with its neck sliced open. The mirror embedded into the lid reflected the creature’s murdered eyes. Around the bird’s neck hung a note, preprinted off a computer and taped to a piece of cardboard:

Bleed, Sweet Dasha, and Save Us All.

“Who the
hell
missed this?” Moridian bellowed.

David raised his hold to the back of D’s head and turned her face into his shoulder.

“Get her out of here,” Moridian told him. As David gave him a concurring nod, he muttered one more thing. “This sure as fuck changes the game, Pennington. Whether you like it or not, I’m not leaving her side now either.”

Eight hours and several hundred miles later, Kress took a long-overdue drag on a beer and finally shifted his brain out of overdrive.

Nobody was happy about the situation, least of all him. The last thing he’d joined the FBI for was pop-star babysitting duty. He knew Pennington wouldn’t believe it, though, so he didn’t bother saying it. But it was clear they had a sick fuck on their hands, one who’d had access to Dasha Moore’s suite, expanding their possible suspects to the army of people who worked in and around the Viceroy.

They’d flown her out of Miami right away. Pennington ordered reschedules on the next two weeks’ worth of concert dates, and CNN was called about a backup plan for the Piers Morgan gig. Kress had backed him without hesitation, earning them both a fuming silence from Dasha. Kress could protect her in a lot of places, but the middle of an arena concert stage wasn’t one of them. So here they’d landed, hiding out in Atlanta in an opulent rent-a-mansion, which had clearly taken some major string-pulling prowess from Pennington. On the other hand, he was a Pennington. One of
those
Penningtons. David hadn’t believed it when Phelps handed the guy’s file over after checking out everyone on Dasha’s tour staff, but there it had been, in black and white:

David Tristan Pennington. Primary residence: Rancho Palos Verdes, California. (Secondary residences: Paris, France, and Barahona Coast, Dominican Republic.

Parents: Maddox and Sarah “Sissy” Pennington. Primary residence: Scottsdale, Arizona. Relationship: cordial.

Brother: Joshua Kerrian Pennington. Primary residence: New York, New York. Relationship: estranged. (*Flag as possible suspect?)

The file had gone on with details piled on details. He’d discarded most of the facts right after reading them, except having the brother checked out, of course. But it explained David’s hat trick in scoring this place so fast. And as a venue for playing the lay-low game for a week…well, it sure didn’t suck. The mansion was pure Margaret Mitchell on the outside, all shnoo-shnoo Designer-Snob on the inside. Marble floors, wool carpets, leather wallpaper, designer chandeliers. The couch on which he’d just parked his ass probably cost more than his annual pay.