Calder made a disgusted sound. “Of course he did. Fucking kiddie diddlers, man. I hate these fucking cases. Let me get this shit over to Webster. This guy could be sharing his tapes on the Darknet. I’ll keep in touch. In the meantime, don’t do anything your boy’s gonna regret.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Shep muttered.
Shep disconnected and plugged in his phone before slipping back into bed. Elijah stirred, his lids at half-mast. “Who was that?”
Shep wondered how much of the conversation Elijah had heard. “Calder.”
“Was he trying to figure out if the coast was clear?” Elijah asked, a sleepy smile on his face.
He looked so at ease, Shep didn’t want to put the weight back on his shoulders. “No, he was just telling me he wouldn’t be back until morning, but he’ll be there to take you to set.”
“What do you do here all day, now that Calder takes me to work and guards my body?”
He didn’t want to tell him the truth. That he’d been working with Webster, trying to dismantle Leonard Medford’s foundation books to find out if he was really paying people off and, if so, why. Elijah didn’t know about any of it and Shep planned on keeping it that way until they had proof.
“I just power down until you get home,” Shep quipped.
Elijah smirked. “Is that another robot joke? Still not funny.”
“I do what I can.”
Elijah snuggled closer, tucking himself under Shep’s arm, resting his head on his chest. “Do you think I’m overreacting? About backing out of the franchise?”
Shep shrugged. “I’m not the person to answer that question. I don’t understand fear or panic or anxiety. I’m not made that way. But if being in that man’s presence will make you feel like you felt that day in the conference room, it’s not worth it.”
Elijah kissed Shep’s chest. “But it’s the role of a lifetime.”
There was no passion in his tone. It was just something he’d clearly heard repeatedly, probably from Lucifer. “Do you want to make blockbuster movies? Do you want to be a household name? Are you happier now than when you made your last movie?”
Elijah fell silent but Shep knew he wasn’t sleeping because his fingers played in the light dusting of hair just below Shep’s navel. Finally, Elijah sighed and said,“I love acting. I hate being an actor. I hate the PR bullshit. I love telling a story. I like roles where people care more about the substance of the story than how pretty I am or who I’m dating or if what I’m wearing is too gay or my voice is too high.”
Shep asked the question he wanted to ask almost from the beginning. “Why not just take the roles you want? Dress how you want? Speak how you want? Do what you want? Live like you want?”
Elijah scoffed. “Lucifer would never allow it.”
“You know you don’t owe her anything, right? Just because she gave birth to you doesn’t mean you’re beholden to her. When has she ever put you first? Ever?”
Elijah didn’t answer, just rubbed his face against Shep’s skin like he was trying to absorb him or something. “Sometimes I think I’d be happy on stage in some small playhouse where nobody knows my name or in small budget indie films.”
“Whatever you want to do, I’m with you. Even if you just want to retire from the world and go live in a yurt.”
Elijah laughed. “That sounds more like your fantasy than mine.”
Shep smiled. “Yeah, I suppose.” He kissed the top of Elijah’s head. “Go to sleep, rabbit. Four a.m. comes fast.”
* * *
“You’re telling me he’s running these payments not through his charity, but through offshore accounts?”
Webster nodded at Shep. “Exactly.”
Shep examined the papers and spreadsheets strewn across the dining room table. “But why? What is the connection between Leonard Medford and David Cane? Why does he keep bailing this guy out?”
Webster pushed an errant lock of hair from his eyes, adjusting a pair of dark-framed glasses. “I think I’ve found something. This David Cane douche is a ghost. Until fifteen years ago, he didn’t exist. No birth certificate, no social security number. Nothing. I couldn’t figure it out. At first, I thought maybe he was under the Marshall’s protection. You know, like witness protection? Turned state’s evidence or something, got a new name and a new identity, but then I started looking at Leonard Medford’s charity and noticed that for eighteen years he was paying a Lisa Crawford a fifty thousand dollar a month consulting fee.”
Shep scoffed. “What does Lisa Crawford do for that kind of money?”
Webster smacked the pages in his hand against the table. “That’s the thing. Near as I can tell, prior to her job as a consultant, she was a cocktail waitress at the Mirage Hotel’s pool bar.”
