Chapter 18. Isabel, the Assistant
Isabel, the Assistant
PRESENT DAY
I pushed open the exit to the police headquarters and was met with a blistering wall of flashing lights and screaming reporters. “Shield Scout,” barked the lawyer beside me, but I’d frozen. In all my years in Hollywood, I’d never seen anything like this.
“You need to move, now,” growled Scout’s lawyer, and his fierce tone wrenched me out of my stillness. I threw myself in front of Scout, trying to block the cameras as we pushed forward. But nothing could protect her from their questions.
“Scout, is it true you’re the lead suspect in a murder?”
“Did you kill Elizabeth Drake?”
“Who is Drake to you?”
“Did Reese Griffin ever assault you? Is that why you killed Drake, for revenge?”
“Ignore them,” ordered Scout’s attorney. “Say nothing. It’s a trap.”
Scout kept her head down as two uniformed officers shouted at the reporters, trying to get them to stand back.
The last twenty-four hours had been a living nightmare, and now this.
We needed to make it to the black SUV waiting in the parking lot, but the throng of people was too thick, not only journalists shouldering cameras but rubberneckers who must’ve been in the vicinity when TMZ broke the news.
Only two days ago, Scout and I would’ve done anything to attract this many paparazzi.
We’d busted our asses for years to increase her profile and sell more albums. It was the wish we both made before blowing out every year’s birthday candles: Let this be the year she breaks through.
The irony of it left an intense bitterness in my mouth.
Scout was wearing the same hot-pink fuzzy jacket and denim cut-off shorts she’d been in for Cybele’s party, a ridiculous outfit that was going to make her look insane in the news coverage.
Detective Holloway had threatened to bring her in wearing her bikini, but after I’d argued myself hoarse, along with our friends, she’d allowed Scout to change.
I should’ve anticipated this moment and gone to her house to grab a change of clothes, but I’d been too sick with worry to tear myself from the station.
She’d endured twelve hours of questioning, which her lawyer told me was a tactic meant to break her down.
I hadn’t been allowed into the interrogation room, and not knowing what they were asking killed me.
I’d imagined every scenario, all of our secrets coming out, the cops busting open the doors to drag me in next.
But Scout’s lawyer had worked his magic, and after what seemed like a year she’d emerged, pale and shaky, but allowed to go home.
“For now,” Detective Holloway had said, leaning against the receptionist’s desk. “But don’t get too comfortable. You’ll be back.”
I genuinely hated that woman.
Finally, the cops shoved a path to the SUV and the doors swung open. We leapt inside, and when they slammed behind us, the quiet was such a relief I had the sudden urge to cry.
“Izzy,” Scout whispered, sounding nineteen and broken again, and I wrapped my arms around her. Those naive girls we’d been, the ones who’d moved out here to chase their dreams, so full of hope and excitement—they never could’ve pictured this.
“It’s going to be okay,” I whispered back. “I promise.”
“We need to talk.” Her voice was choked. “In private.”
My heart thundered. “Does the detective know about us?”
“Not yet.”
I squeezed her in relief.
“I have your agent on the line,” said the lawyer in the front seat, twisting around as our driver honked at the people blocking our path. When they leapt out of the way, convinced by his threat, he gunned it out of the parking lot.
“Haley.” Scout forced herself to sound composed. “We just left the station.”
“I trust you didn’t say anything that’s going to fuck us?” Haley had hardened over the years with her gradual success, becoming a blunt battering ram, like so many other agents.
“Of course not.” Scout slumped in her seat. “The lawyer told me not to say anything. We just stayed at the station as long as we did to learn as much as possible about the case.” She looked at me as she said it, so I knew the information was for my benefit, too.
“So it’s true?” Haley asked. “They actually think you killed someone?”
“Apparently.”
“Christ. And we pay these idiots our tax dollars. Listen, I’m hiring a crisis PR team to draft a statement, and I’m calling your record label to put out the fire before it starts. We need to get your lawyer on it—”
“My lawyer is right here,” Scout said.
“Not your criminal defense lawyer, your entertainment lawyer. Buckle up, honey, you’re about to pay for a shit ton of lawyers.
But here’s the silver lining: We’ve been trying to boost your profile for years, and now we have everyone’s attention.
You bet your ass I’m going to milk this for everything it’s worth. ”
I could almost feel Scout’s nausea.
“And if your label tries to cancel your tour, we’re suing the cops for missed earnings. So hang in there. This could be the best thing that ever happened to you.” With that, Haley hung up.
Numbly, Scout handed the lawyer his phone back. Within seconds, he was busy barking into it. We sat in silence as the minutes passed. Eventually I closed my eyes, exhaustion washing through me as the high of the adrenaline finally receded.
“Izzy,” Scout whispered.
I cracked an eye open.
“They have my hair.”
“What?”
“The detective said they found strands of my hair in the dead woman’s bathroom sink pipe, mixed with her blood. They think I shot her and cleaned up in the bathroom. They tested it against Georgia’s DNA. That’s how they knew it was me.”
They’d used Georgia against her. The awfulness of it took on another layer. “How the hell did your hair end up in a dead woman’s sink?”
Scout shook her head. Deep circles ringed her eyes. “I have no idea. I swear to you, I’ve never met her before.” She looked out the window as we entered the ramp for the 101. My mind spun around the improbable facts. There was only one explanation.
“Scout,” I said quietly. “I think you’re being framed.”
Her blue eyes met mine, vivid despite her fatigue.
It was a strange thing when your best friend was someone whose face you knew like the back of your hand, but also a public figure, an object of fascination to strangers.
You had to hold both versions of them in your head at the same time, like trying to overlay images, marry a larger-than-life magazine ad with a giggling snapshot from eighth grade.
The Scout I’d grown up with wasn’t capable of killing a person. But the Scout who’d clawed its way out after Georgia died … that version had been surprising me for years.
Guilt socked me in the stomach for even thinking it.
“I agree,” she said, oblivious to my disloyal thoughts. “It’s the only explanation. Someone is setting me up. Which means we need help, Iz.”
I glanced at the lawyer. “Haley said he’s the best money can buy.”
She shook her head. “Not that kind. We need to figure out who’s framing me, and why, before the police fuck this up like they did with Georgia. We have to do this ourselves.”
Like everything else, she might as well have said. Like everything that matters.
“We need someone who knows how to investigate.” Scout waited for what she was saying to sink in.
And then it did. I shook my head so forcefully it rocked my whole body. “Absolutely not. He said he never wanted to see me again. He hates me.”
Scout glanced at the lawyer, then lowered her voice. “Izzy, you know what’s going to happen once the cops really start digging into my life…”
I did know. It would destroy everything we’d built over the last decade. It would mean not just her ruin, but mine, because by now, our fates were tied.
Scout read the understanding in my eyes. “We need to shut this down as quickly as possible, and the only way I can think of to do that is to get him.” Her eyes squeezed shut. “Please, Isabel. I’m begging you.”
Once upon a time, I considered Zuma Beach in Malibu my favorite place on earth.
Early in the morning, it was so beautiful it felt like a holy land, with its white-gold shore and rugged Santa Monica mountains in the background, the sun gentle and the sand under my bare feet cool and damp.
I walked down the dunes with my sandals in my hand, watching the surfers bob in the water, patiently waiting for the right waves.
The ocean here was colder than any beach on the East Coast, but they were devout.
After he rode his final wave, he walked down the beach in my direction, board tucked under one arm, kicking up little spurts of sand. His gaze was on the horizon, so I used the moment to study the ways he’d changed.
Boyish Brooks Yardley was gone. That shaggy brown hair, flecked gold from the sun, was dark now, and cut law enforcement-short.
There was no more youthful fullness to his face.
His wet suit was pulled down to his hips, so I could see that his soft edges had hardened: his stomach muscles carved, biceps taut and defined.
Even the cut of his jaw was sharper, his cheekbones more pronounced.
He looked like he’d been honed into a weapon.
I guessed that was what happened when you gave your life to the FBI.
Brooks turned his gaze from the water. And then he stopped. There was a flash of something across his face as he registered me: Shock? Disappointment? But then his expression shuttered, all feeling gone, a trick he must’ve learned on the job. He resumed walking, his emotions a glitch, nothing more.
“I’ve had this dream before,” he said, when we were close enough. “It ends with you holding my head underwater.”
“It’s nice to see you, too.” I stopped, but he kept coming. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“That’s funny. Because you look exactly the same.” Up close, Brooks’s ocean eyes were more arresting than I’d remembered. “How did you know where to find me?”