Page 40 of Lost in the Moonlight

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After staying way too late at the gallery, I’d come home and slept for only a couple of hours again before rising and heading to the home gym at the back of the house. The workout had burned through my lungs, proving I’d let it slip for too long.

By the time I’d showered and changed, the sun had just started to rise. When I stepped out of my house, a light mist was clinging to the grass in cobweb-like strands rather than the dense fog of the previous morning.

As I slid my baseball cap on my head, an engine revved, and my eyes were drawn to a gray sedan parked in the shadows of a large cypress tree outside the cemetery gates. I couldn’t see who was inside it, but my mind flashed back to the altercation with the guy downtown the night before last and the Civic I’d thought he’d sped off in.

I hesitated, debating whether to stalk over and demand to know what he was doing or minding my own damn business. Hardy would definitely encourage the latter, but then again, if he and his team were here, they wouldn’t have let anyone loiter around just yards from my house.

I glanced over at Willow’s cottage as I made my way toward Main Street. The house was dark and quiet. At around two-thirty, wide awake and flooded with concern that Willow would walk to work even though she’d told me she wouldn’t, I’d found my way down to the office and brought up the security cameras.

Feeling uncomfortably like the stalker Felicity had become, I’d watched as Willow and her mom had loaded bakery boxes into the back of a Pathfinder. Staring at the screen, I’d wondered if the sick, voyeur-like feeling I’d had was how my security detail, or any detail, felt while watching the people they were protecting. Had Felicity ever been disgusted with herself for stealing parts of my life like this without my knowledge?

I’d almost reached downtown when Katerina’s ringtone sounded from my pocket.

“It’s too early in LA for you to be calling,” I said in lieu of a greeting.

“Love you too, Mr. Grouchypants,” she said. “I’m at the studio. I have a long morning of work ahead before I meet up with Dad at his last fundraiser here in SoCal before they head up to Santa Clara tomorrow.”

I ran a finger over a brow and then tucked my hand into my pocket. “I’m sorry I’ve left you to deal with the campaign on your own. I know you have a lot on your plate.”

“I do,” she said with that recent bite to her tone that wasn’t usually there. Then, she sighed. “It’s fine. I understand why you’ve ducked out of the public eye. That’s why I’m calling.”

“What’s up?”

“Felicity cornered me at the fundraiser last night.”

Anger and concern flooded me, feet stalling. “She did what? Where was your detail?”

“She begged me to ask you to issue a statement saying you didn’t take out a restraining order against her. The gossip is all over town, and she’s getting backlash for it.”

Any backlash Felicity got would be nothing compared to what she’d sent spiraling toward me. She’d tried to ruin me completely going into Dad’s reelection year, making it sound like my family had hidden drug abuse, serious mental disorders, and even blaming me for what had happened to Sienna and Lyrica.

She’d used every single one of my ghosts against me, while I hadn’t used any of hers. I could have easily sent out a press release hinting that she was stalking me and used the months she’d spent in a mental health hospital as a teenager to add credence to it. She’d once used that trauma and her fear of the media finding out about her past to tug me closer to her. And it had worked until she’d flung it all into the wind after I hadn’t shown up at the resort in St. Micah like she’d expected me to. Even still, I’d done my best to keep the restraining order quiet. I hadn’t flashed it in the media.

Feeling eyes on me, a ripple of wariness went up my spine, and I turned back toward the parked sedan. It wasn’t the private investigator she’d had tailing me until Hardy had sent him on his way. The PI had been a fleshy, doughy man with a bald spot and a mustache that belonged in the 1970s. The person in the car, even shadowed, didn’t look wide enough to have been the same person.

“Is she getting backlash?” I asked. “Or is this just more manipulation?”

“She’s definitely encountering walls. No one is sending her any scripts. But that isn’t just because of the rumors of what went down with you. It’s because she’s a diva and has burned bridges while on set. And you’re not the only one she’s tried to manipulate. I wouldn’t have mentioned her at all if she hadn’tdemanded you ‘stick your head out of the little town you’ve tucked yourself into’ long enough to help her.”

Acid burned through me. “She knows where I’m at?”

“Or she was trying to get me to cough it up.”

“Damn it. Thanks for letting me know. I’m sorry you had to deal with this.”

Katerina sighed, and she sounded really tired as she said, “She manipulated me first, remember? Like you said, Iamthe one who introduced you.”

“I was just teasing,” I said gently.

“You were, but it’s true.”

“Don’t take that on, Bumblebee,” I said, instantly trying to comfort her by whipping out the rarely used nickname she’d earned with her nonstop energy as a kid.

Voices came over the line—deep male voices—and Katerina covered the phone, but I could still hear something in her voice that put me on edge. She was frustrated with whomever she was talking to. She came back on after only a brief exchange. “I gotta go. Just wanted you to have the latest intel, seeing as you saidadiosto Hardy and his team.”

I barely got out a goodbye before she’d hung up. An unease for my sister settled through me. Something was up with her, and I needed to nail it down before it turned into something bigger.

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