“God, no!” Ethan let out.
“Then what?” Ric asked. “Something’s going on. You’re pulling back again. The last time you pulled back like this…” His voice trailed off.
“Was last month,” Ethan said. “I’m very aware of what happened last month. And I promise, no one is trying to get my cell phone or kill me.” Ethan paused momentarily and tried to shoot his bandmates a reassuring smile.
“Dude,” Orr said. “What the fuck was that?” He turned to Ric, “Did you just see that?”
“The fake-ass smile after he said, ‘No one is trying to kill me?’” Ric replied in a higher-than-normal pitched voice that mimicked Ethan’s. “Yeah, I saw that.”
“I donotsound like that,” Ethan said.
“And now he’s being evasive,” Zach added.
“I’m not being evasive,” Ethan said faster and higher than he intended. He took a deep breath, centered himself and said, “I’m perfectly fine.”
“No one’s buying it,” Lucas said.
“Tell us, or I’m calling Mr. J.,” Ric said, pulling out his phone for emphasis. “You know he’ll get to the bottom of it.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Ethan said. The group had always used calling Mr. J. as the ultimate threat when one of their members wouldn’t get in line. They weren’t exactly scared of their bodyguard, but they knew him well enough to know he could be terrifying.
Zach turned on the screen, shuffled for a few seconds and showed Ethan an image of Mr. J.’s bald white head over a green button that said ‘call’.
Ethan deflated in front of the group.
“Just tell us,” Zach said. “There’s nothing you can’t tell us.”
And it all came flooding out of Ethan’s mouth, every last thing that had happened over the past few days—from coming home and finding Ms. Hennigan in the house, to giving her blood, to spending the day with an assassin, making friends with another assassin and waking up to find a third assassin sitting in their bedroom.
“That security system I had installed is patently useless against these people. I might as well have installed a turnstile!” Ethan frantically looked at the guys as he took quick breaths. He looked at Ric and added, “And no, I’m not having a panic attack!”
“Well, who had international conspiracy and assassin in the betting pool?” Orr joked.
“My bet was that Blayne had turned Ethan into his personal gimp,” Zach said.
“I had you two running off to Paris to get married,” Orr said. “I was on team Blay-than… Eth-lane just didn’t work for me.”
“I had they were having a massive orgy,” Ric joked. “I guess that’s kind of what happened,” he said with a shrug.
“What about you, Lucas?” Blayne asked his assistant. “What did you think we were doing here?”
“I had no idea and didn’t think it was my place to guess.”
“Trust me,” Orr said. “We tried to get the little guy to talk, but he wouldn’t.”
Ethan shook his head. “So now what?”
There was silence for a few minutes. Finally, Ric broke the silence. “I guess that depends. What do you need from us?”
“I… I…uhh…” He tried to form the idea of what he wanted to say. He finally came up with, “I don’t know.”
“Do you want us to take you away from here? Get you unentangled from all this?” Orr asked seriously.
“No,” Ethan said, looking up. “I don’t. How fucked up does that make me? I won’t leave Blayne to handle all this alone.”
“Wow,” Zach said, “you really love him, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Ethan whispered. “I do. I love him. And yes, all this is completely fucked up. And yes, I didn’t want to get suckered into this mess, but I am, and I’m not about to leave Blayne on his own. I brought this to him.”
