don’t need to hear him say it out loud.
Layla was in the car when it crashed, she’s bleeding, and now who knows where the fuck she is. I know from when she was attacked outside the club that her blood doesn't clot very well, so if she’s hurt bad enough and doesn’t receive treatment, her life will be on the line. I should have never let her walk out that door. I should have told her the truth when she stormed over to me with all that passion and conviction in her voice. I should have turned around and told her I loved her instead of pushing her away and making her feel like she didn’t matter.
“Hey, Brady,” Austin calls to me from the hallway. “There’s something back here you need to take a look at.”
Stepping over trash and dirty clothes, I head down the hall behind Austin, following him into a small, cramped bedroom with Adam right on my heels.
“Oh my God,” I mutter as I look around the room.
“Holy fuck,” Adam whispers, echoing my shock.
Every single available surface is covered with pictures and news articles of Layla and Hummingbird Records. There’s a picture of her on stage at practically every venue she’s been to and pictures of her from magazine articles, photo shoots, and entirely too many candid photos taken from a distance with a telephoto lens. Layla having lunch with Finn at an outdoor café; Layla grocery shopping at Puckett’s; Layla sitting on her front porch holding onto the guitar she’d just played for me; a copy of the picture of the two of us in the truck that had been left on my front windshield.
There are articles pinned to the wall about each new recording artist that Hummingbird signed, copies of their financial reports, and print-outs of Eve’s personal brokerage and savings accounts. Her net worth and that of Hummingbird Records is plastered all over one wall and up on part of the ceiling.
“Jesus, this guy is a sick fuck,” Austin says as he bends down and looks at the picture of Layla and me. I want to tear that thing off of the wall and rip it to shreds so no one else can see it, no one else can be a part of that private moment between the two of us, but I know I can’t. It’s evidence and it needs to stay right where it is.
“Eve swore she hadn’t talked to this guy since that night she asked him to do something about Jack, right?” Austin asks. “If she’s telling the truth and she didn’t hire this guy to stalk Layla as some sort of twisted publicity stunt, who the hell did?”
I run my fingers through my hair in frustration and turn around in a circle, my eyes running over every single thing in the room.
“Finn. It has to be Finn. He lied about Billy being in custody to get her out of the house,” I reply.
“Okay, so he was pissed about the fact that they were siblings and she got all the limelight when he got diddly squat, but that doesn’t explain how the hell he even knew who this guy was or why he would do something as stupid as put her in his path,” Austin replies.
“How would you feel if one day you found out you had a rich megastar for a sister, and the mother who did everything she could to make sure your sister rose to stardom completely denied your existence?” I ask him.
“Yeah, that’s pretty messed up, and it would probably make me mad, but mad enough to form a connection with a dangerous, convicted felon who would probably stab you in the back, literally and figuratively, to get what he wants? This Billy guy is ten shades of fucked up from what his rap sheet says. Why the hell would Finn want to tangle with him?”
Glancing over at the wall that holds the only window in the room, my brow furrows as I step closer to a large blueprint that hangs on the wall to the left of it.
“Is that the layout of Hummingbird?” Austin asks, coming up behind me.
“Yeah, it is. Why the fuck would he need this?”
Austin and I study the page, but it’s just a standard blueprint. There’s nothing written on it and no notes to clue us in as to why this guy has this in his home.
“Can you say obsessed much? Maybe he’s planning on taking all of Eve’s money, taking