Chapter 11 #2
The doors opened. As Roy guided him out, DJ was still muttering. “I’m going to bed. It’s not real. I’ll wake up, and they’ll call.”
“Okay.”
Jim was at the door, his expression sorrowful and tight. “Room’s clear, sir,” he said.
Once inside, DJ moved to the center of the room. A sudden rock hardness to his shoulders had Roy doing another visual sweep, but everything was fine. Or not, if he was looking at it through DJ’s eyes.
Only a day ago, Steve had propped his shoes on the coffee table and Lonnie had fussed at him. Pete had flung grapes at him, the two of them shooting the shit over whatever they’d been watching on the TV. When she moved, the lemon shampoo scent in Lonnie’s hair had given off a pleasant fragrance.
“Roy?” DJ’s voice was rough.
“Yeah.” Roy drew closer.
“I want to go home.” He looked at Roy with expressionless eyes. “I don’t want be here.”
“You got it. I’ll get Moss on the phone and—”
DJ pivoted and headed for the hotel room door.
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t want to be here.” DJ said it impatiently, as if he thought Roy hadn’t heard him the first time. “I’m going home.”
“We need to arrange transportation to get you there.”
“How long does it take to rent a car? I’m carrying two thousand cash. We can pay someone to borrow their Civic.”
DJ had his hand on the latch, but Roy got there before he could turn it. He held the door closed with one flat palm while he put the other on DJ’s chest. He earned a searing look and a smack at his hand, pushing it away. Roy allowed it, but used the shift to put himself in front of the door.
“I’m not the guy you want to start a fight with.”
DJ’s phone started ringing. He yanked it out. Roy expected him to throw it across the room, but instead, DJ glanced at the screen. Blocked caller. Just like after the food truck shooter.
An alarmingly monstrous look crossed DJ’s face, and he connected the call, putting it on speaker.
“You don’t need them, DJ.” The altered voice was intent and horrifyingly earnest. “I told you before, they can’t be there for you the way I can. Taking them away is the only way I can prove that to you.”
Holy shit.
The stalker could be bluffing, taking credit for a random tragedy. But Roy’s instincts had told him differently, hadn’t they?
“You goddamn son of a bitch,” DJ rasped.
Roy moved to take it, and DJ whirled around, holding him off.
“You aren’t listening, and I really want you to listen. I’m the best thing for you. Everything in the world I do is to protect and care for you. To look out for you. I’ll—”
DJ howled and flung the phone at the wall. Then he was charging across the living room to the balcony door. Fuck.
Roy feared he’d go right through the glass, but DJ wrenched open the door, allowing Roy to catch up to him. Before he could hurl himself out to do whatever he was thinking, Roy had him around the waist. DJ gripped the frame and screamed out at the city skyline.
“You think you can do anything worse to me? Come and get me, motherfucker. Come get whatever pieces you want. You broke them, and I swear to God I will use one of them, all of them, to cut your motherfucking throat.”
He was straining against Roy’s hold, that railing far too close for Roy’s peace of mind. DJ tried to fight him, buck his hold, but Roy put him down and pinned him to the floor. He tried his best not to hurt him, just to contain him.
He'd seen people deal with loss, but never loss this large, this fresh. It was a different kind of agony, watching someone he cared about suffer with it. His heart ached for the kid, for the anguish he could feel coming off of him in waves.
“Stop,” he told DJ, holding onto him. “Dory, stop. Take a breath. Breathe.”
“Can’t breathe. It hurts too much to breathe. I can’t survive this, Roy. I can’t.”
Hearing DJ confirm what was already in his head helped Roy get a grip. He was a problem solver for his clients. They would figure this out.
He told DJ as much. DJ rubbed his face into the carpet like he was trying to take the skin off. “Get the fuck off.”
“Not until you calm down.”
DJ howled, a wounded animal in a trap. Roy held him, connecting to Jim just long enough to let him know they were fine, despite the noise. About that time, DJ went limp, his long fingers curling into the carpet, his breathing harsh in his throat. “No,” he said softly. “Just please…no.”
Cautiously Roy lifted one hand to pull the curtain back over the balcony door. Just in time, because a network chopper did a fly-by, rattling the glass.
He bent forward. The kid was staring into space again.
“You told me at our first interview that you’ve survived the unsurvivable. This bastard is small potatoes.”
“I’m too tired to survive anything more.”
“No. You’re just tired. Go to bed, and sleep until I get you a ride home. I’ll get you home. Don’t think about anything else. I’ll keep the wolves outside the door.”
DJ laughed bitterly. “They’ve already gotten in and eaten everyone, Roy. What does it matter? Oh hell,” he whispered, and tears flowed from his eyes.
“Come on.” Roy helped him to his feet, half carrying him to put him in an upright position. DJ leaned against him, then rubbed his hand over his jaw. Roy waited him out, the two of them standing there. DJ’s chin dipped, a little nod, as if he’d just now gone over Roy’s suggestion and accepted it.
Proving it, he pushed away wearily, and started toward the bedroom on his own.
As he did, he removed the shirts Roy had put on him, toed off his shoes, and unfastened his jeans, letting them fall.
He stumbled out of them and then fell in the bed in his shorts, pulling the covers up and over.
Roy had followed, ready to help, but giving him room to decide how much or how little he needed.
Roy didn’t like seeing the way DJ curled into himself under the covers. Rejecting contact, making himself as small as possible. But he would respect it. The kid needed time. The man needed time. Time without anyone poking at him.
Though Roy would have to be tortured to admit it, DJ was one of the most responsible clients he’d ever had. Even with his mischievous nature and smart-ass mouth.
Roy would give him the space he needed.
“You want to fly or drive?
“Doesn’t matter. Whatever gets me there the fastest.”
“All right.” There were other things that needed to happen before they could get on that plane, starting with a threat assessment of where they were going, but Roy’s hope was DJ would stay asleep long enough not to fight him on the delay for those necessary precautions.
There was a balcony access in this room, too. When Roy went to pull the curtains on that window, he wished this was one of the hotels that didn’t give their guests an easy way to jump to their deaths. He thought about posting someone in the room, but then DJ spoke, his voice muffled.
“I’m not that pathetic, Roy.”
Roy dropped to a knee beside the bed and pulled down the covers the few inches needed to find DJ’s weary eyes. “You swear it to me.”
It wasn’t his bodyguard’s voice. It was something deeper, and DJ heard it, because he flinched, unable to handle anything like that right now. Roy cursed himself, even as he didn’t take it back.
“I wish I’d been on that plane with them, but I’m not going to follow them. I don’t deal with shit that way.”
“Okay.” Roy made himself walk to the door, knowing he had to trust the kid that far.
“Roy?”
“Yeah.” He paused, looked back.
“Have the hotel staff pack up everything and ship it. I’m not worrying about any of it.”
“Okay. Just sleep, Dory.”
“Don’t call me that right now, okay? I don’t…I don’t want to belong to anyone right now. Feel anything.”
When DJ burrowed even further under the covers, his face disappearing, Roy returned to stand over him. He didn’t touch him, though the urge was overpowering.
Roy wasn’t going to argue the point. He was just going to prove that, on this one single thing, it didn’t matter what DJ wanted. It mattered what he needed.
And he definitely needed to belong to Roy right now.
DJ’s home was outside Asheville, North Carolina, not far from where he’d grown up. Roy dispatched G and her team to do the security assessment. Since he’d been hired while the band was on tour, his focus had been on securing DJ at those locations and on the road.
He would have preferred to do the home assessment himself, but nothing was taking him from DJ’s side.
The fan sites were overflowing with messages of sympathy, love and support. Much of it, far more than Roy would have expected, was sincere. Survival’s music meant something to them, to their lives.
Moss stayed in frequent contact with Roy, since DJ had trashed his phone, didn’t want it replaced, and wasn’t taking any calls.
Or visitors. He stayed in his room, doing the burrowing thing in the bed.
On Roy’s frequent checks on him, the TV was on the same old movie channel.
The noise drowned out anything outside the door, or the constant helicopters passing by, hoping to catch a glimpse. The curtains were kept securely closed.
Roy ordered him room service and got DJ to pick indifferently at it, but after only a few mouthfuls, he turned away and tuned out again.
For now, Roy would let him get away with it.
Moss had flown from Charlotte to Denver to deal with things there, but he’d also arranged for a charter to take DJ home tomorrow, a two o’clock departure time that fit with Roy’s preparation time and the availability and vetting of the plane.
G called from Asheville to confirm DJ’s home security system was top notch. There were some challenges to secure the grounds, but she was on it. Roy told her to sweep for bugs twice a day. Since he’d informed both Warren and G of the phone call, she didn’t question it.