Page 52 of Ticket to the Stars: Part Two

Deacon groaned and buried his face in his hands, probably marveling at his brother’s stupidity.

But Angel shook her head and said, “No.”

That got all of us to stare at her. No, it wasn’t Pope. But how…

“The door handle was broken from the inside, like someone messed with it. It still opened from the outside. Pope came earlier. He had a key. He said someone gave him that key, along with a note.”

“A note,” Deacon repeated. “Who the hell would do that? He’d only come if it was…” He stopped, and he shared a meaningful look with Angel. A look I did not understand.

“Can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on?” I asked. “Because it sounds like you’re saying this wasn’t Pope. If it wasn’t Pope, who was it?”

“Ramona,” Angel’s answer came swiftly, softly.

Bishop was quiet. Deacon was thoughtful and pensive, if a little broody, like always. I was the only one who could speak after that bomb, “Ramona? What does she have to do with any of this?”

“Pope said the note and key was from Ramona,” Angel explained, and then she went on to explain more, and together, she and the others put the pieces together while I stood there, slack-jawed, and listened.

Hey, I never won any awards for being the smartest around. My skills were elsewhere.

My dick. My skills lay with my dick. And my mouth, and my fingers… okay, anything of the bodily variety, just not the brain in my head.

Ramona got her alone before the show. Drugged her water when she wasn’t looking. Grabbed her once she was out in the hall, semi-out of it. Ramona knew the venue, so she knew where the cameras were. While she’d told us she was helping us search the grounds at the stadium, she’d brought Angel back here, to the Redborne, where she had this suite ready for a staged kidnapping.

She’d sent Pope the key and the note, and right after he got here, the police showed up. There was a public record of what Pope did and how upset and angry he was at being thrown out of the band, so no one would blink an eye or investigate more than they had to. It was the supposed definition of an open and shut case.

None of it could be a coincidence. I didn’t want to believe her, mostly because Ramona had been in our lives for years now, and she’d never so much as shown a hint of crazy. A need to control every aspect of our lives? Yes. Could she be over-the-top? Also yes. None of that meant she could plan something like this and actually pull it off.

I didn’t want to believe Angel, but at the same time, Angel would never lie to us.

It was Bishop who spoke first after Angel had finished, “So what do we do?”

“I have to tell the police the whole story,” Angel whispered, rubbing her arms absentmindedly as she staredoff into space. “Pope can’t go down for this. This time, it wasn’t him.”

Deacon muttered, “She’ll deny it, and she knows just what to say to people to get them to believe her. Who’s to say they’ll believe you and not her version of events?”

“As much as I hate to agree with him—” My words earned me a hard glare from Deacon. “—I think we’ll need to do things a little differently… if you want to do this, I mean. We’ll need to get the police on-board, but I’m sure if I use my charm, it won’t be a problem. Were there any lady cops?”

I didn’t need a female officer to lay on my charm, it’d just be easier that way. Women tended to fall for my charms a lot quicker than men did. Men were more likely to dismiss everything I said—I think because I was so much better-looking than they were.

They were jealous, of course.

Bishop rolled his eyes at me, but Angel must’ve been on the same wavelength, because she was nodding and saying, “We need to do it now, try to catch her off-guard. Call her and tell her to meet us upstairs.” She got to her feet and glanced down at the white dress she wore. “I need to get out of this damned dress.”

And so our plan began. Would it work? Who could say? But we had to try, because I, for one, would hate to continue having a manager that thought staging a kidnapping and framing someone else for it was a good idea.

Ramona was going down.

Chapter Twenty-One – Angel

I’d showered and changed into a fresh set of clothes, and I was sitting on the couch in the living room, the guys hanging around me. Ramona was on her way. Two officers were nearby; it wasn’t so hard to convince them. Pope was playing ball—anything to get him off—so he’d told them where the note was. The notion of his story corroborating with mine, combined with an officer actually finding the note in his place, was too much for them to ignore.

They were on board, so hopefully we’d do this right.

Either way, it went without saying that Ramona wasn’t the manager of Black Sacrament any more.

We had to get this right, because if we didn’t, and Pope went down for this, then the world would know his realname, and it’d take short work for everyone to dig into his past and figure out who the others were.

A lot was riding on this.

---