Page 72 of Not Another Rockstar
“I will. Hopefully all this will be over soon. I want to bury whoever is doing this alive.”
Elijah chuckled. “Call if you need help with the body.”
“I knew I liked you,” Axel said, knowing he meant it.
“I’ve got to go before Brinkley wakes Autumn up. Tell Phoebe our thoughts are with her. We’re here if you need anything,” Elijah assured him again before hanging up.
Axel couldn’t thank Elijah enough for his support of both Autumn and now Phoebe. Autumn had been harassed, threatened and deceived by someone close to her, and it terrified him to think that someone close to them could hurt Phoebe.
Elijah texted him Isaiah Rivers’ number, and he wanted to ring right away, but waking a stranger in the middle of the night and asking for favours might not be the best first impression. Before he did anything, he wanted to make sure Phoebe was alright with his plan first.
Phoebe came out in her lemon-print shorts and matching T-shirt, her eyes red from crying.
“You’re not staying in this room. You don’t have to stay in the basement, but you can pick any other room but this one,” he said, not wanting her to have to look at her door all night.
“The basement is perfect.” She didn’t argue, merely walked into his arms and rested her forehead against his chest.
Having her space violated like that, there was no way she was going to be able to sleep. Nor was he going to leave her alone for a second. He kissed the top of her head and grabbed her pillow before bringing her down to the basement. Once Phoebe was tucked up in his bed, he told her about Isaiah, and they agreed to seek out his help first thing.
In the morning, Axel made sure Olivier kept all the camera footage from the last twenty-four hours and did a thorough sweep of the house for any cameras or listening devices that could have been installed. They hadn’t taken the threats seriously enough, and he was going to make sure no one got within five feet of her without being fully vetted.
“The foils really make your eyes pop. Maybe you should’ve gone for silver.” Lena plopped herself down in the empty salon chair beside her while Phoebe waited for the box dye to be stripped from her hair.
“Sorry, I didn’t even notice you come in. I was half asleep.” Phoebe swivelled in the chair to face her friend. Lena’s own hair was styled to perfection. Phoebe was beginning to think she rolled out of bed perfect.
Despite being home a week, every night since Nick’s party, she’d woken up in a sweat, terrified someone was breaking in. Booking an early hair appointment had been the easiest way to avoid people, but she wanted to die whenever a Brothers of Anarchy song came over the radio during the application. The desire to make a run for it was only quashed by the anxiety of having to cancel an appointment when she’d already arrived. Thankfully, her stylist was more concerned about the layered box dye in her hair more than who she was.
“I thought you fixed the sleeping problem?” Lena asked, being the only person she’d told about her and Axel.
“Being with Axel helps, but we’re still waiting to hear from Isaiah, a detective friend of Elijah’s, to find out if Gunther was up to his old tricks or if this was someone else.” They had called after the spray paint incident, and thankfully, Isaiah had been eager to help.
“Has he given you any updates on leads?” Lena asked, tapping away on her phone, the queen of multitasking.
“He is reaching out to the media outlets who were the first to release the stories about Cillian and I. So far, he’s learnt that the tips were all sent in anonymously, or the outlets are refusing to share their sources. The sender didn’t want money, which makes me think it wasn’t Sheen, since he admitted he broke into the studio because he was paid.”
“Not much to go on without a name or a money trail.” Lena shook her head. “I’ve tried to reach out to some of my contacts to get their sources. I got one or two bites from friends, but fake email addresses were used to send the footage about the accident and the studio break-in. If you try and email them back, it doesn’t go through.
“If you want a career change, you’d make a good detective,” Phoebe said, grateful for her help.
“Nobody hurts my clients, especially not my friends.” Lena rested a manicured hand over hers. “If they don’t want money, why the hell are they bothering to go to all this trouble?”
“To hurt me. Axel and I were thinking that if itisSheen and, like with the studio, someone paid him to leak the articles and videos, he wouldn’t need to be paid by the outlets.”
“That’s if Sheen was telling the truth. That person would have to trust him a lot, and they could be working together either way.”
Phoebe hadn’t considered that.
“There’s one way to figure that out. You’ve sent stuff to LouderTech before, right?”
“Contracts and the like, sure.” Lena shrugged. “Why?”
“How tight is their security? If someone sent an unmarked package, would it be accepted?”
“No way, it must be registered, addressed and signed for. Even couriers must sign in and out, otherwise it doesn’t make it past the mail room. I made that mistake of leaving a contract at the front desk without signing for it,” Lena said.
So, had Sheen been lying?
“Sheen said that an envelope of cash was waiting on his desk when he got back from Munich,” Phoebe told her. “Could someone have got into the building and left it there without raising alarm bells?”
