“Are you all right?”
Chloe whirled to find Erik right behind her. “Fine.” The word came out choked, sounding hoarse, so she cleared her throat. “I’m fine.” Grabbing the bottle, she held it out in offering. “Want some?”
“No thanks.”
With a nod of acceptance, Chloe kept hold of the bottle and her glass and marched with determination back into the living room. It was time to rip open a wound she suspected might never fully heal.
“It all started a little over two years ago when I was performing at the Met.” Chloe looked from Erik’s attentive gaze to Jayla, who had just taken a big bite of some sort of wrap.
She took another small sip of her scotch, then rolled the glass between her hands. “It was common for me to receive flowers after a performance, notes and cards, even small gifts, especially from the VIP ticket holders. So the night I found a single red rose with an unsigned note in my dressing room, I didn’t think much of it. I thought the manager or one of the other performers had placed it there for me.”
“What did the note say?” Erik asked.
“You deserve better.” Chloe cleared her throat. “I wasn’t sure what it meant. Better than what? So I didn’t dwell on it. The next rose, also left in my dressing room, added a little clarity. It said: You could do so much better than him.”
“You were dating someone,” Jayla chimed in, scooching forward a bit in her seat.
“Not really. It was more of an image thing. His agent and the opera house employed the same PR company. It was meant to get my name out there, being seen arm in arm at events with a relatively big name, that kind of thing. The press may have speculated that we were romantically involved, but we weren’t. We were just friends.”
Erik nodded. “Who was the guy?”
“Tyler Sinclair. He was an actor who was growing in popularity thanks to his role in the cop showWatchtower.”
Jayla perked up. “Hey, I’ve seen that show!” Herface fell. “Oh, wait…”
Chloe nodded and took another bracing swallow of her scotch. “The next time, I didn’t get a rose, but a gift. And this time, I asked around to see who had put the box in my dressing room. No one knew what I was talking about.”
Erik’s voice was gruff when he said, “So, whoever it was must have somehow snuck backstage.”
“Yes.”
“What was the gift?” Jayla asked, her food abandoned.
“It was a necklace.” A beautiful piece, with diamonds and emeralds set in platinum, that she normally would have loved, but after reading the note that had come with it, she hadn’t even wanted to touch it. “With it, there was a folded piece of paper with a printout of a photo that had recently appeared online of Tyler at a party, making out with a woman who was sitting on his lap, his hand up her dress. Written above it was: He’s a piece of shit. I would treat you like a queen.”
It still broke her heart to think about it, so her voice was choked with emotion when she told them, “Two nights later, Tyler was shot and killed outside a popular nightclub.” He hadn’t deserved that. “The police had no leads, so I brought them the necklace with the note. I would have brought all the notes, but I’d already thrown the others away.”
Erik nodded while Jayla said, “They never found his murderer.”
Chloe was almost positive she knew who it was. There was no way it could be a coincidence. The problem was that she couldn’t prove it.
“After that, I received a few more roses with notes that said things like ‘We can be together now, nothing is standing in our way,’ and professing his undying love for me. I was scared to death that whoever this person was, they were following me, stalking me. What if I did something to make them angry, and they decided to kill me next? So I brought everything to the police, making sure not to touch any of it with my bare hands, so they could maybe get fingerprints from it. They took them into evidence, took my statement, but they were unable to pull any DNA or fingerprints, and pretty much told me that without that, there was nothing they could do.
“When a cop later showed up at my door, introduced himself and told me he was going to be keeping an eye on things to keep me safe, I was relieved.”
“Jackson Savoy?”
Tears welled in Chloe’s eyes, and there was a painful lump in her throat, so she nodded. She felt so foolish now, so gullible. Raising her glass to her lips, she drained the remainder of the scotch and poured herself another. A little self-deprecating laugh escaped her. “Seeing his unmarked patrol car outside my apartment building was a comfort. He made me feel safe again. I brought him thermoses of coffee, made him snacks, chatted with him…”
Jayla’s hand landed on her back and rubbed soothing circles. “You couldn’t have known.”
Chloe swiped at the tears on her cheeks that had spilled over. “When he asked me out, I wanted to accept, told him as much, but that I was also afraid for him after what had happened to Tyler. He told me he’d take care of it, and not to worry about it, so I took a chance.”
Keeping her gaze on Jayla, she confided, “He took me out to dinner, and it was one of the best dates I’d ever had. We had so much in common. He liked opera, enjoyed some of the same books I’ve read, shared a lot of the same views as me, and he had a great sense of humor.
“But after, I was waiting for that rose, the note, the threat.”
“It didn’t come, did it?” Erik murmured low, his outstretched hand offering a tissue.
