Page 10 of The Player's Club

I finally caved and answered. I mouthed, “Sorry,” to Todd before heading outside to talk alone on the balcony,

“Andrews!” Roy’s voice boomed in my ear. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Sorry—”

“Whatever, don’t care. Do you have an update on Mac, or am I wasting my fucking time again?”

I hesitated. A seagull cawed and swooped toward a nearby roof, causing a flock of crows to burst into flight. The skyline was foggy and dreary, as usual at this time of day. When it was clear, you could see the Golden Gate Bridge on the horizon.

“You’re not wasting your time,” I hedged, my mind racing. “I followed Mac again, but I didn’t get anything interesting. Sorry.”

Wow. I’d been going back and forth on if I should tell Roy about Mac or not. Apparently, I’d made my decision. This discovery was going to be my little secret. With Roy on the phone, I didn’t have time to contemplate my true intentions.

My boss growled. “I thought you said you weren’t wastin’ my time, Andrews.”

“I’m not.” I stood straight, refusing to let Roy’s bluster make me feel guilty. “I tried to get into the building Mac went into, but it was locked up tight. It was an office building, so I’d guess Mac was there for a business meeting.”

“A business meeting? Great scoop.” Roy’s tone was, of course, sarcastic. He sighed. “So are you saying there’s still something worth chasing, or should I reassign you?”

No! Panic burst inside my chest. “There’s definitely something going on. The fact that Mac was there late at night, and people coming and going from the building at that time of day . . .” I paused, not wanting to reveal too much but also not wanting to be reassigned. Meanwhile, the seagull on the roof across from me was joined by three other seagulls, who all started screaming at each other. One held what looked like half a loaf of bread in its beak. Bits of bread began to fall into the street like snow as the gulls fought over their bounty. I stared lost in thought.

“Fine, keep digging,” Roy finally said. “But you need something good for me next time. Otherwise, we’re just wasting our fucking time. I’m gonna have to take you off the big assignments if you’re not producing anything, Elodie.”

“Yeah. Okay. Got it.”

After I hung up, I wasn’t ready to go back inside just yet. I didn’t know why I was lying to my boss. I’d never felt protective about the celebs I’d been assigned to write stories about before. Sure, sometimes I felt a little guilty if the story was extra scandalous. But famous people understood the symbiotic relationship they had with the press. They hated us, but they also needed us. It was the same thing for journalists.

So why had I not wanted to tell Roy about The Scarlet Rope? Maybe I was just embarrassed that I’d let myself get swept up into the strangeness of it all. Or maybe I was embarrassed that I’d liked what I’d seen—

I shook myself. I had a job to do. It didn’t matter that my brain seemed obsessed with Mac and liked to dream about him in the dark of the night. It didn’t matter that he was oddly sweet and protective toward me and that I’d fantasized how that might translate into other situations.

“Babe?” Todd’s voice broke through my thoughts, making me jump a little in surprise. “Did you hear me?”

I had definitely not heard him, and I was sure the guilt was written on my face. I could see Todd’s frustration return immediately in his expression.

“Look, I need to go into the office. Something came up.” His voice was flat, his gaze not even meeting mine now.

“I thought you had the morning off, and we were going to hang out?” I asked.

“So did I.” The remark was pointed. I thought you wanted to spend time with me, it seemed to say.

Todd dressed and was out the door before I could convince him to stay. What was worse was that I didn’t try to make him stay. He was in a bad mood, and I didn’t have the energy to break him out of it.He was often in a bad mood lately. I knew he was frustrated with my not wanting to move to San Francisco, but the constant bickering about it was tiresome, too. And it sure as hell didn’t make me want to spend time with him.

After Todd left, I poured the rest of the mug of tea he’d made me down the sink and ventured across the street for some actual caffeine. Once at the café, I decided I might as well get some work done. It was better than moping around Todd’s tiny apartment all day alone while waiting for him to come home. Finding a corner where nobody would look over my shoulder, I started searching for answers about the mysterious Cole Mackenzie.

What made him tick? What had driven him to seek out a place like The Scarlet Rope? Sure, lots of famous people in Hollywood had eclectic tastes. That didn’t surprise me in and of itself. But Mac had always come off as squeaky clean.”Which is probably why he wants to keep this secret,” I muttered.

I started looking at Mac’s various social media channels, but I already knew they wouldn’t give me anything new. I laughed at his latest video on TikTok, though, where he danced to a viral song with a charm and irresistible lack of reserve. The comments were filled with heart-eye emoji—at least the PG comments were. Some of the more R-rated comments made me blush a little in my chair. Couldn’t say I disagreed with them.

When I googled Mac’s family, I only found a few bits of information floating around the Internet. Apparently, Mac had been raised in Northern Idaho. His Wikipedia article listed Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, as his birthplace, but no articles came up about his time living there. I found a number of articles about Mac’s time at the University of Minnesota, where he played college hockey, but very little about his childhood and adolescence in where I presumed was Idaho.

I frowned, tapping my chin. There was no way that his high school, for instance, wouldn’t be proudly claiming Mac as an alumnus. Yet there was no mention of Mac being a graduate of any of the high schools in Coeur d’Alene.

After looking at Google Maps, I began looking up smaller towns near Coeur d’Alene. I barely noticed that my Americano had gone cold as I searched and searched online.My stomach rumbled as I realized I hadn’t eaten either.

I finally found a hit in the tiny town of White Rock, some fifty miles from Coeur d’Alene. And that was when I discovered there was a prominent pastor by the name of Robert Mackenzie. When I found his photo on the church’s website, I nearly fell over in my chair because he looked just like Mac. His father.

Well, I guessed Mac was a preacher’s kid. I couldn’t help but smile. Everybody knew preachers’ kids always ended up the wildest. I remembered one girl in my high school who got pregnant at sixteen, and her dad had been a leader in their local church. It had been quite the scandal in Los Angeles, even back then.