Plenty of Motive #2
“Yeah, that’s for sure,” Christian said.
“Leads to a fuckload of emotionally intelligent conversations, for one thing. Self-reflection. Inconvenient personal growth. I experienced a lot of consequences from being held to account for my behavior. And then there’s her risotto.
Fucking ruined me for any other recipe forever. ”
It would have been comical to watch Chad and Sloan freeze-frame at the same time if it weren’t for the fact they’d put Ramona in the hospital.
Chad’s nostrils flared. He covered it with a smirk.
“Chris. I thought you were over the sucking up. Are these two your new best friends? After Ramona spread rumors about your toxic thing with the old dude? Sam, I should tell you, because you have an amazing career to protect, you’d better keep far, far away from this guy. No offense, Chris.”
“Amazingly, none taken.” Christian finger-gunned Chad. “There was a time, I admit. But then I remember that I light my bong with hundred-dollar bills, and the pain floats away.”
Sam was still trying to decide about Christian, but she could admit he was coming out ahead.
“You know what I keep asking myself?” She pointed this question at Sloan.
“I keep wondering, what does Chad owe you? Isn’t that how you two used to do everything, trading back and forth who owed what to who?
But it was never even.” Macie had given them this ammunition in that painful trip down Memory Lane at the Velvet Chair.
“Somehow, you always owed him more than he owed you. Why would that ever change? He was better looking. He got better parts. You were a sidekick, and then you were next door to a nobody. But now you’re right at the cusp of your comeback, this time as Chad’s equal.
I asked myself, how did Sloan pull that off?
I’m thinking he’s giving you that part in the sci-fi franchise in exchange for keeping his secret for another thirty years.
What’s a second murder between buddies when you’ve already gotten away with one? ”
“Of course, Chad’s only ever going to have Chad’s back,” Bex said.
“You know that better than anyone. Logan Widi, the PA, told us about seeing you with a gun. I guess he decided his integrity was worth more than fifty thousand dollars and a cruel threat to a young family. I wonder whose DNA will come back from the blood on the mountain? For that matter, I wonder what DNA might come back from under Ramona’s fingernails?
You know they do that. Collect evidence from victims of violent crime. ”
“Those are such good questions,” Sam said, smiling at her partner.
“You always ask the best questions, Bexley. I’m sure Ramona will clear everything up when she’s interviewed, now that search and rescue’s pulled her off the mountain and gotten her the medical care she needs.
” Sam met Sloan’s wide eyes. “Chad has his little militia of lawyers on the ready. The only firepower you have is who talks first.”
Sloan’s body went so lifeless, Sam had to clench and unclench her fist to make sure time hadn’t frozen.
Then he broke the moment with a wordless shout that ended with a growl, making Sam and Bex both jump.
“You think I’ve wanted this shitass career?
” he yelped. “I’ve had to lay low. Chad has taken everything he can from me and about a pound of flesh more, just so he has enough to cover his own ass.
Like with Juliette.” He sneered at Chad. “I loved her.”
“You’re high,” Chad scoffed, but his lips were as gray as his neck was blood-red.
“You’re going to sit there and snitch me out for Juliette?
You’re going to let them hand you the rope to hang yourself with when we have the project of a lifetime on the line?
Sober up, Sloan. Walk out with me right fucking now. ”
Christian leaned forward, robe parting over his spread thighs, and balanced his elbows on his knees.
“Thing is, Sloan, either Chad will throw you under the bus or you’ll decide to tell the truth.
But whether Chad goes down or you do, this thing he’s promising you isn’t going to happen.
Do you get that? This episode you did of Ramona’s show, if it ever airs, will be about the crime against Ramona.
She’s alive to tell whatever tale she’s a part of, and I do know her, so I know she will tell the truth.
You lose no matter what. You’ve already lost.”
One of Sloan’s hands gripped his knee, every muscle popping into relief.
“Jesus Christ. It was my gun, but I wasn’t going to use it.
We just wanted to scare her a little. Make her leave the past in the past. Juliette’s been gone thirty fucking years.
What happened on that boat still gives me nightmares, but nothing we do will bring her back.
That’s what Ramona needed to understand.
We’d been talking about it at the studio.
Why she needed to leave the past in the past.”
Chad stepped closer, looming over Sloan, and Sloan shoved at his hip to make space between them.
The sudden violence knocked Chad off balance.
He fell to his knees, then surged back to his feet as Sloan shot from his chair, ungainly enough that Bex had to jump backward to keep from colliding with him.
“Shut the fuck up, Sloan!” Chad roared.
“She didn’t even look at the gun. She wouldn’t stop talking.
It was fucked up.” Sloan was speaking to Christian now, moving in a sliding, sinuous dance to evade Chad’s attempts to grab him.
“I hated it. Talking and talking, messing with my head like she does, and then she goes for Chad all of a sudden like a fucking demon. I tried to pull her off and get her away from him. My hand was shaking so much. The safety wasn’t on.
He pushed her toward me. It just got out of control, right?
You understand.” He kept backing away from Chad.
The look he gave Christian was pleading.
“It got out of control. It wasn’t like what they’re trying to say.
Back then, on the boat, or with Ramona.”
Chad caught his arm, and the back of his fist connected with Sloan’s nose. He went down, then rose up again with astonishing speed, one arm around Chad’s neck, the other connecting a closed, vicious fist with his face.
Sam hooked her arm around Bex’s waist and pulled them both back into the deep cushions of her chair. She saw blood splash on the white marble floor.
Piper’s security detail appeared. In one movement, he had Chad and Sloan separated, both of them breathing hard, both of them bleeding. “LAPD’s on the way,” he said.
Chad let out a noise that was probably an attempt at a scoff, but he didn’t have the air left in his body to pull it off.
He spit on the ground at Sloan’s feet. “I’m done.
Christian’s right. You can forget about working with me, and not because Ramona’s finally really lost it.
So determined to hurt herself! She’s a lost cause.
I tried to stop her and take your gun from her before she could hurt herself.
You just stood there! I thought you were different.
I thought you got it. I thought the time you spent away was what you said it was.
Reflection. Improving your craft. But you’re just as grasping as the rest of them. ”
Chad heaved several more breaths after finishing this disjointed speech.
The skin around one of his eyes was an ugly pink, swelling fast. Dripping blood from his mouth, he turned and headed for the door.
Sam was sure he believed he’d gathered all the information he needed to go right to the police with a story about Ramona’s tragic attempt to take her own life.
Probably he would mention his subsequent catatonic shock and the threats he’d received from Sloan, whose gun it was.
But Chad still didn’t know everything.
In front of the doorway, a group of young Hollywood’s best and brightest blocked his path two-deep. A check of the room’s other exits revealed the same barrier. They were surrounded.
“Who the fuck are you people?” Chad asked.
“They’re the part of Hollywood that isn’t about secrets and who owes what to who,” Sam replied.
There would always be bad people attracted to bright lights, but there were more people like her, who only wanted to let them shine on her to figure out who she was, to tell people good stories, and to earn the kind of power that lifted people up and kept them safe.
This was not an army who would let Chad go.
Piper’s security detail looked at Christian over his shoulder. “When the heat gets here, can you be ready to show them where to pull security footage from your system?”
“Will do, brother.” Christian slapped the other man on his back. “I’m going to order pizzas for everyone. Better not be any underage drinking going on here.” He pointed at the partygoers, Vic’s army. “I already showed you guys where I keep the sodas.”
Sam tugged Bex even closer against her body. “Do you want to stay for pizza?”
Bex kissed the top of Sam’s head. “I’m starving.”
Chad paced with his hands in fists, his phone to his ear, making demands of whichever member of his coterie of lawyers he’d managed to reach first. Sloan kept to the corner, where he tried to stanch his bleeding nose with his shirttail.
Sam held the woman she loved in her arms and listened for the sirens.
They would probably never get the whole story from these two, but they’d gotten more than enough to hold whatever lies Chad and Sloan told up to the light.
Everyone had heard their admission that Sloan had brought a gun with him.
Chad had known about it. They’d intended to scare Ramona.
There was an argument, a physical altercation, a cliff.
The LAPD already had Logan’s statement. They would hear from Archie. Bex and Sam would tell them everything they’d learned, and Ramona’s injuries would corroborate that a crime had occurred.
When she was ready, Ramona could tell the whole story at last.
This wasn’t a dark night on a marina thirty years ago. No one had been able to save Juliette. No one had backed up Ramona against the force of Chad and Sloan’s lies.
This time, it would be different.
Once the first police officer burst through the door of the Swan, everything happened in slow motion, and very fast.
Suddenly, the men were everywhere, dressed in black tactical gear.
The partygoers moved to the edges of the huge rooms. The inside of the mansion strobed blue and red.
Sam and Bex got up from where they had been sitting and shifted to a corner with Fergus, Vic, and Frankie, and even though Sam knew this was the inevitable beginning of what justice was available to Ramona, the entire scene felt like barely controlled violence.
“Hold up!” Chad yelled. He was sweating, bloody, absurd in his poolside outfit. Two officers flanked him, one talking into a radio. There was another cop speaking to Piper’s security detail, both of them murmuring in low voices.
“Fuck!” Sloan’s voice was hoarse, the blood on his face nauseatingly red. “What the fuck are you doing?” His arms were held behind his back.
The four officers isolating Chad and Sloan from each other remained expressionless. A female officer next to Chad held Flexi-cuffs in one hand. Her other hand rested on her holster.
“We received a report of an assault at this address. Security directed us to you and this other gentleman. It’s clear an assault took place.” The officer indicated Chad’s bloody mouth. The blood on the floor.
Chad dropped to the ground, swiping his leg out to kick at the woman.
Everyone in the room gasped and moved closer to whatever safe corner or wall they had retreated to as the police subdued Chad with shouts, a gun pointed at him, and eventually the Flexi-cuffs.
They handled him roughly as they dragged him to his feet.
Sam missed Sloan’s arrest, but she saw him in the middle of a tangle of uniforms, following an incoherently screaming and detained Chad out the main entrance.
Once the noise was muffled behind inch-thick hardwood doors, the overwhelming ugliness moving out of range, Sam noticed her heart beating fast enough that she couldn’t take a breath.
“It’s okay,” Bex said. “Inhale. One short breath in, through your mouth. Then drop your jaw and take in all the air you can through your nose. Blow it out.”
Sam listened to Bex’s instructions, and her tunnel vision eased. Her face was damp with tears.
There were three officers still in the mansion. They’d begun lining people up, asking them for their identification and telling them to stay. Piper’s security detail was rearranging furniture, bringing chairs into groups for people to sit.
The night wasn’t over. They would be here a long time yet answering questions. They might have to go to the station even before their appointment in the morning.
But Ramona had been on a mountain, shot, for five days. Maybe Sam wasn’t as level-headed and extremely chill as her reputation suggested, but she could get through this. She was ready for whatever came next.
“Thanks, Bex,” she whispered.
“Anytime.”
“Sit.” Frankie offered Sam a chair. Vic opened the doors that led to the pool as wide as they would go to let in air and, Sam hoped, release the horrible energy from the fight and the arrival of the police.
Fergus rested his hand on Sam’s shoulder. She looked up at her brother. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “I really am.”
He smiled. “You’re not getting rid of me anytime soon.”
It was a long night. The police permitted the pizza delivery.
Sam told her story as the sun rose on a clear day in beautiful Los Angeles, California.