56. James
JAMES
“Just fucking ask him,” Es said as she flopped back on my bed in frustration. She’d come over to my apartment to sort through everything we’d found on Tony so far.
The pictures of Will and Derek together made my skin crawl, and there had to be close to a hundred of them, laughing and flirting and looking totally in love.
But the photo that hit hardest was the one of Will asleep in Tony’s bed.
It was clearly a hotel room, the key sleeve visible on the nightstand.
Had Will grown frustrated with Derek’s inaction and taken comfort in Tony?
Tony was a handsome man, after all, a total silver fox, even if he was a creep.
Or maybe Tony was jealous of Derek’s attraction to Will and deliberately seduced him to sabotage their budding romance.
Then again, maybe I was reading too much into it.
Maybe Tony had merely staged the photo, planning to show it to Derek.
After all, Tony was obsessed with his number one client.
He had enough photos of the guy on his phone to wallpaper a mansion.
“Ask his mother, then.”
I ignored Es and the overwhelming urge to smoke a bowl. Theo was right. Apologies and explanations weren’t enough. I needed to fight for Will. I needed to take Tony down. But that was proving easier said than done.
Es sat up and grabbed her laptop. “I told you, we’re wasting our time. Tony must’ve found the spyware and gotten himself a new phone. There’s no way he hasn’t made a single call in days.”
“Why didn’t he just delete it, then?”
“Because he doesn’t want us to know he knows.”
“Isn’t there facial-recognition software that can ID these last two guys?”
We’d been able to put names to faces for all but two of the young men in Tony’s photos. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how you looked at it—they were all of age.
“Maybe, if you wanna bring the cops in. But they’ll wanna know how you got these photos, and they’re probably at least eighteen anyway.”
Es was right. Goddammit.
I flopped onto the mattress and stared up at the water-marked ceiling. I should just paint it myself. The landlord certainly wasn’t going to.
“Wait a second. Holy fuck! Holy fuck!” Es shouted.
I sat up to see what she’d found. She’d clicked out of the photos and pulled up the elevator footage of Will and Derek.
“What did you find?”
“Shh, hold on.” She hit play, and once again I watched them step off the elevator and lock eyes. Then Es paused it. “There, look, on Will’s cheek.”
She zoomed in, and though the security footage was grainy as hell, a faint smear of red lipstick was visible on Will’s pale skin. How had I never noticed that before?
“And now look here.” She opened the photo of Will asleep in Tony’s bed, and there it was, the same red smear. “It’s the same,” she said. “Tony must’ve taken this the night of the Golden Globes.”
“What?”
Es opened YouTube, and in a matter of seconds, she had Will’s winning moment playing, the shocked, almost horrified expression on his face, his thin, boyish body moving like a sleepwalker up to the stage. Then Julianne Moore planted a kiss on his cheek as she handed him the award.
“I don’t think Chapman did it,” Es said.
My head spun. “What do you mean?”
“Listen.” She cued up the video of Will and Derek arguing. The moment I heard Will say, “I need to lie down,” I understood, and rage coursed through my veins.
“That son of a bitch drugged him, didn’t he?”
“I think so, which is why William doesn’t remember anything. I don’t think he did it. I think Tony did.”
That didn’t make sense. Why would Tony try to kill Derek? He was in love with him. “But Tony’s obsessed with Derek.”
“I bet this is Derek’s bed, not Tony’s,” Es went on, as if I hadn’t said anything. “Derek must’ve been in on it. Or maybe he left the room. Fuck, I bet that’s it.”
“What’s it?” I asked, trying to keep up.
“I bet Tony thought Derek was gone, but he wasn’t. He must’ve been about to catch him with Will, and Tony panicked.”
Part of me heard Es’s words, but another part of me was so consumed by fury I couldn’t form a single rational thought.
“That’s why he stole the security footage,” she added. “It wasn’t to blackmail Robert and Donna, at least not at first. It was to save his own ass.”
My anger began to calcify into something sharp. “I’m gonna fucking kill that son of a bitch,” I said. “I’m not even joking.”
“I’ll help. But first, you gotta call Derek and get him to tell you where the fuck he was when this was all going down.”