“With Cullen?” She looks horrified at the prospect, her forehead marred by three deep creases. “Like have sex with Cullen? Gross. Not that he’s not attractive, if you like his type, but I’m not into men who are blond and pushy as all hell. I like ’em dark, sweet, and willing to worship the ground I walk on.” Her features suddenly become downcast and wistful, and I realize that she’s thinking of Bar. “More to the point, sleeping with Cullen would be like incest. He’s like a brother to me. A big, overprotective, bullheaded brother whom I love deeply. And who needs my help right now.”
She stands and pushes in her chair, squeezing the back of it so tightly, her fingers blanch for a moment. Then, just as quickly, her back straightens, a mask of strength and composure slipping over her features. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come. Please be safe wherever you’re going.”
I stare at her back, my chest tight, my thoughts racing too quickly for me to keep up with. I still don’t know what to make of a great deal of Cullen’s bullshit, but the journalist in me warns that once a set of facts are torn apart, all others must be examined. More to the point, if Adrianna is right about Cullen being in trouble—
“Wait!” I call, my words hitting her in the back as she reaches for the door. “Can we start over? If Cullen is in trouble and I can help before I leave, I’d like to.”
She turns slowly, her features now guarded enough to make heat touch my cheeks. She’d come with nothing but openness, and I didn’t exactly present the most trust-inspiring front. The teapot chooses this moment to beep its readiness, and I pull out two mugs and the last pint of Ben and Jerry’s from the freezer, waving the ice cream at her like a bribe. “You came all this way, and I have treats.”
Her gaze narrows at the Cherry Garcia. “Unfair tactics, not that it makes me immune to them.” With a small, hopeful smile, she returns to my kitchen table, pulls out her phone, and hits Play, the familiar fight from WorldROCK filling the screen. The footage starts with Cullen in midswing at Jaden, fading away with Liam and Eli both wrenching Cullen’s arms behind his back to keep him from ending the asshole permanently. By the time the video is done, so is Adrianna’s hint of a smile. “Something is wrong. The Cullen I know doesn’t go off on people for no reason—and he hasn’t been home or in the office or anywhere I could find him since. Idiot that I am, I told him about the video. Now I’m afraid that if we don’t find him first, he’s going to do something he’ll very much regret.”
My brows narrow as I rewind the video, something about the footage—besides the sight of Cullen half killing Jaden—bothering me. “The part you’re not seeing is Jaden having attacked me a few moments before the fight,” I say, taking the phone from her hand to force myself to review the horrid scene again. Swallowing down the bile that rises up my throat, I reach for my journalistic objectivity as I study the frames.
There had been hundreds of people milling about the various routes, so in theory, anyone could have happened to be around to capture the footage. Except the photograph here had caught the fight as if the photographer had been right there in the midst of it, which they couldn’t have been. The onlookers—whom I’d largely ignored—had been on the outskirts. “Whoever took this had a very good zoom lens,” I say, freezing the recording in place.
“It’s amazing what cell phones today can do,” says Adrianna.
I shake my head. “Most cell phones can take high-quality video, but it takes more than a good phone to get this. Look at the lighting. With that aspen tree there, there were hotspots and shadows all over the place, but the colors all look balanced here. Also, look how stable this is. No nauseating movements like most people holding a phone would have, especially when tensions are high. Whoever took this watched this scary, unpredictable moment and stayed as cool as a cucumber.”
“So a professional, then?” Adrianna says thoughtfully. “Not out of the realm of possibility given the number of reporters at WorldROCK.”
“But rather convenient to have been there at the right time and place. The climb hadn’t started yet. There was no reason to expect something to happen.”
I pinch my fingers together on her screen and push them outward to enlarge a section at the bottom. Numbers. A date-time stamp and some other nonsense that probably makes sense to whoever took the shot. Just like the type of marker Frank’s always on James Dyer’s ass about.
I frown at Adrianna, the question that I should have asked first only now coming to mind. “Wait, who sent this to you?”
“Frank Peterson. Bar’s brother. He’s been after everything Bar left me, and my house is the holy grail for him. The way the legalities are structured, he can only get it if it goes into foreclosure, so he’s been trying to get me to skip payments—mostly by ensuring I bleed money somewhere. But Cullen—”
“Cullen has been picking up the tab, hasn’t he?” I say, squeezing my eyes together as the pieces from the bank accounts and Cullen’s words snap together into a full picture. It wasn’t his disrespect for my career choice that made him protest my working for Frank, it was Frank himself.
Adrianna nods. “Frank sent me this today with a threat to make it public if I don’t stop accepting Cullen’s help. Not that I haven’t tried to tell Cullen to stand down, but this takes it to a new level. It’s just a house. I’m not letting Cullen get destroyed over it. Not if I can help it.”
“How exactly are you going to do that?” I ask. “If I know him, Cullen isn’t going to stop making the payments.”
“Because I submitted my notice to the bank this morning,” says Adrianna, her voice wavering for the first time. “He can’t pay for a house that doesn’t exist. I know this doesn’t take Frank out of the picture, but whatever is going on with him right now, he doesn’t need this adding to it. Looking at that video… I think he’s hurt too. There’s been a piece of shrapnel in his shoulder that he’s been delaying surgery on—and I think that fight did a great deal more damage from the inside than the outside. If I’m right, he’s hurting like hell right now, and that’s not going to make him more agreeable, I can tell you that. I would normally go to the guys, but with something like this, I can’t be sure one of them wouldn’t go break Frank’s skull in on principle. I’m looking for a de-escalation, not an avalanche. This is all my fault.”
She tips her face up to the lights, her eyes glistening, and my chest tightens. Reaching out my hand, I place it atop Adrianna’s trembling one. “None of it is your fault, Addie,” I say, hoping I’m allowed to use the nickname. “Everything about this smells of a setup. A couple of days ago, Frank mentions Cullen’s violent tendencies to me. Which means they were on his mind for some reason. Then a pro photographer, just like the one who works for Frank, happens to be there right when Cullen loses his shit. Frank gets the video within hours. It’s almost like he knew to send his guy there.”
Addie scrubs her face dry. “You think this Jaden is working for Frank too? That he provoked the fight?”
“I don’t think they know each other, but I’ve been wrong before.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Either way, this flaming disaster we’re in, it’s not a natural fire. It’s one where someone has poured gasoline all over the place. We need to find Cullen.”