“Well, I figured that. Listen, my boyfriend’s home. He’s in his office here-he won’t hear us. But if he comes in, change the subject, okay? I don’t think he wants to hear me talking about other guys.”
“Sure,” I said.
I absently noted his use of the word boyfriend. I supposed it made sense. Sugar daddy might have been awkward to say. Employer? I realized I didn’t know the proper etiquette here. I supposed boyfriend was as good as anything.
Lucas led me to the living room where we’d talked the first time. After some small talk, I got to the point.
“I don’t think Brent’s death was an accident.”
Lucas paled. “What do you mean?”
“I think he was murdered. Because he had a secret. A secret he was about to reveal. One that would have cost the person I think did this to him a lot of money. It would not only have wrecked the guy’s business, it probably would have sent him to jail, too.”
“A secret worth killing for…” Lucas whispered.
“Yes.”
Lucas’s coloring went from chalky white to crimson in an instant. “Who? Who do you think did this, Kevin? Because, I swear to god, I’ll kill him myself.”
I’d forgotten how quickly Lucas lost his temper. “No, I’ll go to the police. Don’t screw up your life for revenge.
“But I wanted to tell you before I went to the authorities. You may need to take steps to protect yourself when this comes out.”
“You think I had something to do with… you think I could have ever hurt…?” Lucas spoke with unmistakable outrage, the cry of the falsely accused. He looked ready to spring out of his chair.
“No,” I interrupted, holding up my hands in the universal gesture for “I surrender.”
“I know you wouldn’t have hurt him. I’m afraid, though, that you might wind up getting hurt before this is all over.”
Now Lucas looked confused. I wasn’t sure I could blame him. “I don’t understand. You think whoever killed Brent would want to kill me, too?”
“No,” I said. “Let me tell you what I found out.”
But, first, I had to tell Lucas about the conversation I had with Brent after the taping of my mother’s show. How he said he had information that could destroy SwordFight and would threaten to use it if he had to.
“You think he told them, right?” Lucas asked. “And they killed him rather than let him go public with whatever they had on him?”
I nodded.
“Who?”
“Mason, probably. It’s his business. Although he might have had Pierce do the dirty deed for him.”
“But what was the secret?” Lucas asked. “And how does it involve me?”
“I’ll show you.”
I took from my backpack the high school yearbook I’d gotten from Brent’s mother.
“Look,” I said. “This is from two years ago. Brent wasn’t a senior when his parents kicked him out of the house. He was a freshman.”
“So?”
“He wasn’t eighteen when he made his first films for SwordFight. He was sixteen.”
Lucas fell back into his chair as if he’d been shot. “Fuck.”
Fuck was right. Ever since the rise, fall, and semi-rise back up of Traci Lords, it was common knowledge that filming and distributing sexual depictions of minors was a pretty serious crime. I Wiki’ed her after discovering the truth about Brent, and found out that between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, she’d appeared in roughly one hundred adult movies.
The owners of her movie agency were arrested. They and other companies involved in films with her spent millions of dollars defending themselves in court. They also had to go to the expense of making sure that hundreds of thousands of her videos and even magazines in which she appeared were removed from store shelves. My understanding was that they avoided being prosecuted on the more serious charges of child pornography. Perhaps because Traci presented them with a fake ID and they could claim they didn’t know her true age.
I didn’t think that was the case with Brent.
He’d said something that nagged at me. In the middle of talking about how he had the dirt to ruin SwordFight, he mentioned something about how they’d “helped” him. At the time, it didn’t make sense. Isn’t helping someone usually a good thing? How did that relate to whatever leverage he had?
Unless, what they’d helped him with was illegal. Like, covering up his real age. Mason was gaga over Brent. All that “flesh impact” and such. I was pretty sure he had the savvy and connections to set up Brent with a fake driver’s license, Social Security number, and whatever else he needed to establish a new identity.
I couldn’t prove it, but maybe the cops could.
Even if that could never be ascertained, though, just the fact that they’d sold movies of him at all was probably enough to destroy their business and get them imprisoned. Plus, this new information also provided Tony with what he said was missing: motive.
In this case, money.
One of the Big Three.
I hadn’t realized how much this all was weighing on me. Laying it all out for Lucas was kind of therapeutic. Somehow, not being the only one to know made me feel better. I felt myself relax into the sofa as I realized I no longer had to carry Brent’s secret alone. I hadn’t realized how tense I was until I felt myself start to calm down for the first time since I saw that yearbook yesterday.
Unfortunately, my peacefulness didn’t last long.
No sooner had I started to feel comfortable when I saw Lucas bound from his chair and come running at me as he swung up his arms.
40
Damn it. Had I figured wrong? Maybe Lucas was involved in Brent’s death. How else to explain why he was charging me like a mad bull?
I knew a lot about self-defense. But in the seconds I had before he reached me with almost a hundred pounds of muscle in his favor, I wasn’t sure what I could have done. He was hurtling forward and would pin me through sheer momentum and gravity. Fear seized me before he did.
And seize me he did. But not in an attack. In a grateful embrace.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Oh, Kevin, thank you. If those bastards hurt him, I want them to suffer. I want them to pay. If it hadn’t been for you, they would have gotten away with it.”
“You’re welcome,” I choked out, breathless from his crushing bear hug. Maybe he was trying to kill me.
He let go. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to crush you.”
“No problem,” I said. “I’m sure the ribs will heal. But, now, you need to think about yourself, Lucas.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, Mason may have made and sold a film with a sixteen-year-old star, but you screwed around with him onscreen.”
“Is that illegal?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. But you should. Do you have a lawyer? An agent? Anyone you could ask?”
“I don’t.” Lucas looked thoughtful and then grinned. “I have something better right here. My boyfriend. He knows everything about the industry.”
“He does?”
