Chapter 16: One Voicemail

Kit came in with her rhinestone boots in her hand and her blonde waves flat from sweat.

She had watched the whole show from the side of the stage.

She put a silver thumb drive on the dressing room counter.

"Deirdre's assistant cried in a stairwell last week," she said. "I was the one who held the door."

"And?" said Jude.

"And she gave me this. It's the original file off the label's server, with the phone's log. The whole four minutes, not the clip."

She looked at me.

"It also has every email Deirdre wrote about it."

I didn't touch the drive.

My body was still humming from the couch, and my brain had gone quiet and strange.

"How many emails?" I said.

"Forty-one.

The first is dated the week the record was mastered." Kit swallowed.

"She knew whose laugh it was before the album came out. She had the number traced in a day."

"She knew," Jude said, and his voice went very soft.

"She knew from the start. She used you."

Kit pushed the drive an inch toward me.

"I'm not leaving this with Jude," she said. "I'm leaving it with you."

She put her boots on at the door.

"I'm sorry," she said. "About all of it."

"You held up your phone in front of the president," I said. "You don't owe me anything."

Her chin shook, and then she was gone.

We listened on the bus.

It was past one in the morning, and the bus idled in the loading lot with its lights off.

Hank had sent the band to the hotel and posted a security guard at the door, and nobody had asked why.

The lounge at the back had a curved bench and a table bolted to the floor.

Jude sat on one side of the table.