Page 4 of Trouble Walked In

Della shrugged. “I don’t want to be me anymore.”

Chapter Two

Jackson Renic looked down at Manhattan’s Friday afternoon traffic from his office window and quietly seethed. “What do you mean she’s gone?”

Behind him, his assistant, Morgan Wells, huffed out an impatient sigh. “You’re an educated man. You know what it means.”

He turned to face her. “Did Jordanna go with her?”

“No. She’s her manager, Renic, not a LoJack. By the time she realized what was happening, Della was gone.”

He rolled his shoulders to ease the tension that had accumulated over the past few hours. If Della had left her manager behind, something more than typical twenty-something antics was going on. “Walk me through it again.”

Morgan lounged in one of the client chairs with one leg crooked over the arm like a teenager, even though she was only a year younger than he was. She had a bright pink streak in her blonde hair and wore a bright yellow shirt over dark jeans and yellow three-inch heels. She tapped a pen againsther leg in a quick burst of nervous energy, a sure sign she was in problem-solving mode.

“According to Jordanna, Della said ‘I can’t do this anymore. I’m done.’ Then she took off in an Uber and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. There’s no more to the story than that. You can keep asking but the answer’s not going to change.”

“‘I’m done.’” Renic shook his head. “What does that mean? Done with parties? Done with music? Done with life?”

Morgan shrugged. “Won’t know until we talk to her, but it can’t mean anything good after an all-night party like that. Last time I said something even close to that was the night my band had that big fight. We broke up the next day.”

“She’s a solo act. Her band already broke up.” Renic gripped the back of his chair. “Is there any way to track her?”

“Not yet. I’ve tried talking my way into Uber, but they refuse to cooperate. We never enabled the tracking on her new phone, so that’s out. I have someone staking out her apartment in case she turns up there, and all of her inner circle has strict instructions to contact me or Jordanna if they see her. I’m not sure what else we can do except wait for her to surface.”

“You’re saying she’s been off the grid for”—Renic checked the clock on the wall—“seven hours and counting.”

“Just about, yeah.”

Renic swore under his breath. The biggest and brightest star in his portfolio might be dead or kidnapped or on a plane to Paris. “Damage control?”

Morgan looked down at her phone. “I already canceled the press thing today, and the interview withGood Morning New Yorktomorrow. They were pissed but I told them she was sick, and that they’d still get first dibs. That made them happy for now.”

He waved those two issues away like the gnats they were. “What about the tour? How many dates are firm?”

“About half of them are firm but the others are somewhat flexible since the biggest part happens after the first of the year. The one to worry about is the launch at Madison Square Garden. Even though it’s well before Thanksgiving, it’s part of a holiday kickoff, and I can’t cancel itormove it, and by contract we aren’t allowed to substitute. If she doesn’t show, we owe the penalty plus we lose booking rights for the next three years. We donotwant to piss off these people.”

“Do they know she’s missing?”

“Not yet.” Morgan stopped tapping the pen and returned her attention to her phone. “It’s only a matter of time, though. People saw her leave. Sooner or later, they’ll start to talk. I’d put money on the Uber driver spilling the beans at some point.”

Renic closed his eyes and tried to gather all of his anger into a tight ball. Morgan didn’t deserve his bad mood, but damn it could be frustrating to deal with talent. Della was such a pro that sometimes he forgot how young she was. “What else are we doing to find her?”

“I have the team checking her extended network of friends—”

He snorted. “Groupies, you mean.”

“Yeah, well, they make great stalkers, and that’s what we need right now. Jordanna is working a few of her own angles. We’ll find her. It’s just a question of who finds her first, us or the paparazzi. And when.”

His anger settled into something more like concern and started to grow. What if something serious had happened? This wasn’t normal behavior for Della. Was she just having a moody moment, or had she been assaulted or threatened insome way? “We need to do more than just find her. We need to know why she bolted. What happened at that party?”

Morgan shrugged. “Far as I can tell, nothing. Usual people, usual antics. As parties go it was fairly tame—no huge amount of recreational drugs except booze. The only thing that stood out was the impromptu sing-along by the award winners in the early hours. Usually by then the ones who are left are all passed out.”

“Sing-along?” He lifted an eyebrow.

Morgan grinned. “Yeah, like when we used to shut the bar down at the end of the night. Remember?”

“I remember being drunk off my ass belting out a very off-key ‘New York, New York’ as they turned up the lights.”