Page 4 of The Fix

Phone.

Hot cocoa.

Pocket sanitizer?

All secured.

“Thanks for coming,” Leo says, closing me in the house with the rest of his band—As Above. While I used to be intimidated by the massive muscle and rebellious ink covering each member, I’ve grown to ignore it.

Mostly.

“I was heading out to get some work done anyway.” I shake my head against Leo’s offer to stow my coat and instead tighten the furry material around my body. “So why am I here?”

“Well.” Leo leads me through the foyer to the back of the house where I know an addition was added and Fin agreed to share the space with Leo for band meetings. “Ian found something in the mail and I wanted you to see this shit before it got any worse.”

“Oh, boy.” Coming around the back of the original portion of the converted condominium built in the late 1800s, Leo leads me into the modernized version of the house where a massive formal dining table takes up the room.

It might be modernized—as in recently built—but this place looks like it’s straight out of an old Victorian home. It matches Fin’s significant other perfectly.

Gothic and dark.

The table is not the only thing that takes up space in the room, calling all attention to it like a volcano warning of eruption.

“What’s this?” I gesture to the mountain of mail left on the wooden surface.

All of As Above converges, including the band’s resident security members from Sentry Protection.

Everyone speaks at once, all drawing together in a way that deflects around in my head until I hold up my hand for silence. “One at a time.”

Clearly, whatever this pile of mail contains has everyone on edge.

It’s my job to get ahead of whatever it is.

“Sentry sorts the mail. Checks it—”

“I know this,” I add, cutting off my boss’s explanation.

“And a few included what seemed like innocent declarations,” Leo explains.

“That’s not abnormal. As Above’s fanbase is insanely attached. They practically grew up with the band.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So this one in particular has been going on for a while.” Ian, Sentry’s head of security for their contract with As Above and Rex Thompson’s main protection detail, steps up to me with a stack of envelopes in his hand. I stretch my neck all the way back to maintain eye contact. “We originally dismissed most of it. We see so many names that it’s hard to keep track. Anything remotely threatening gets archived, and anything the guys may want to see gets sent over for them to look at when they can.”

“Fan mail. This is all about just some fan mail?”

His lips flatten into a thin line as he tilts his head in confirmation. “It’s what came through the mail.”

Ian presses a particularly bulky envelope into my offered hand. “This is just the most recent development. I found everything I could.”

I nod and step aside to place my travel mug of hot cocoa on the table. Then I peek into the already open parcel and pull out the contents. Unfolding the page, I can’t help the squeak of surprise that escapes my lips when I’m met with a pregnancy test taped to the page.

A positive test.

I’m going to need that sanitizer now.

There are only two sentences on the page accompanying the capped stick. “Toby, it’s yours. Call me.”

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