Ruin Me, Daddy novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: The Face

For a second neither of us said anything.

A family from Indiana was waiting behind her with a bottle of Single Barrel and a ghost T-shirt.

"I'll take them," Lettie said, coming out of the back. She looked at the girl's face and then at mine. "Office, sugar. Door's unlocked."

The office was a closet with a desk, a space heater and a calendar from a cooperage.

The model sat on the only chair with her coat still buttoned. I leaned on the door.

Up close she was younger than she'd looked under the ring lights. No braid today. No cardigan.

Her hands were shaking on her knees.

"Does Lyman know you're here?" I asked.

"No." She swallowed. "I told him I was visiting my mom in Bowling Green."

"Are you?"

"After." She tried to smile. "If I don't throw up first."

"Why are you here?"

She took her phone out and turned it toward me.

Night Shift at the Rickhouse. Episode two. Paused at minute nine.

"I listened to this in my car outside the studio," she said. "Three times. And then I went inside and listened to the new Ruin Me in the booth, the way I'm supposed to, so I can learn where to breathe."

She set the phone on the desk.

"And it's not the same. It's close. But yours has somebody in it."

I didn't say anything.

"I'm an actress," she said. "I did a mattress commercial and a pharmacy ad, and I was a dead girl on a cop show. Lyman's agency called and said it was a modeling job for a podcast brand. Good money. Easy."

"Was it?"

"It was easy until you walked in." She looked up at me. "You said he put your grandmother in it."

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