Page 18 of Forced Proximity

His fists meet the bag. ‘Nothing. Just you’ve mentioned that he’s annoying or irritating more than any other of your past clients.’

‘It’s because he is.’

A chuckle escapes him as he switches to a left foot jab.

Whatever. Marcus doesn’t need to know that Justin is far more polite than what his online persona shows. Which I still don’t fully understand. How can he be one way on the red carpet and so different at home? Besides, there’s still the tornado fundraiser event that hovers in my mind like a dark, murky cloud.

‘What about visitors?’ Marcus asks.

Heat trickles from my biceps to my core from the workout. I drop my arms and swipe my forearm across my forehead. ‘I checked the visitor logs for the last six months. A couple of visits from his ex, Willow, right after they broke up, but after that, it doesn’t seem like he has a lot. Zane and Anthony mostly, his lawyer, a few friends here and there, but that’s all.’

‘What about the ladies?’

Marcus’s tone carries the whisper of non-professional curiosity, and I so badly want to bust him. It’d be useless, though. He’ll one hundred percent play it off as part of a regular debrief. ‘Not where they’ve come by themselves. That doesn’t mean he didn’t bring someone home in his car.’

‘Okay, good debrief. Keep me posted on things,’ he says, focusing back on the bag.

After the workout, I give myself a pep talk during the shower. One week down. Hopefully, less than ninety days to go. You can do this.

***

During my two days off, I pace my apartment like a caged cheetah. Marcus mandates that his agents on long-term contracts take two days off a week to avoid burnout, but I think it makes things worse. I’ve worked with the weekend guards before, even helped train them both when they were first hired, but I force myself to not text for updates, and instead wait until their daily notes are uploaded to the portal.

Not only do I obsess if the weekend guards are doing their job, I spend way too much time noodling over mine and Justin’s last interaction. I hate how crappy I feel, how I’m bringing in so much personal history and applying it to someone who doesn’t deserve my wrath. It’s not Justin’s fault that he was born into privilege. It’s not his fault that a tornado ransacked the Midwest. And it’s not his fault that the university stripped my college scholarship, taking my dreams and future with it.

For the most part, I like my job. Sure, it’s not what I thought I’d be doing. Back then, I had a solid plan. I’d go to college on my scholarship, major in criminal justice and become a lawyer or FBI agent. Then I’d get my masters, live out a happy life with Katey, a few kids and a rescue dog.

Yes, Katey and I still married. But the stress from this job bled into our relationship, infecting it until it was unsavable.

That along with failed IVF treatments …

I shake my head. No more thinking of the past.

After my disagreement with Justin, I called our techie to research more about his family and dig up anything that wasn’t in his file. No new information emerged. Justin’s family life truly seemed picture-perfect, the opposite of my childhood, where we blow-dried plastic wrap to seal our old windows and left the kitchen oven open to keep the heating bill low during the brutal Minnesota winters.

Regardless, my feelings of class and unfair privilege were seeping into my work, and I need to put it behind me. And maybe apologize. Maybe.

On the way back to work, I try and absorb the noon sun. My tight ponytail whips in the fresh breeze as I pull through the West Hollywood neighborhood. I bump up the driveway and hop out of the Jeep, when the front door opens and Jack approaches.

Oh no. His normally stoic face cracks with a frown. After working with him for almost a decade, I’ve only seen this look a handful of times.

‘Quick word, Doc.’ He points to his car, pops the trunk and hands me an envelope. ‘These arrived in Justin’s mail today.’

I squeeze the metal clip on the manila envelope and pull out a stack of grainy, candid photos clearly taken with a long range, telescopic lens. Justin jogging outside the perimeter of his neighborhood; drinking coffee at a café with a script; standing on a sidewalk near a boutique in LA; exiting a doctor’s office with Zane. At the final picture, I suck in a sharp breath. The photo was taken from behind Justin in a public bathroom, most likely from the space between the bathroom stall door and doorframe and captures Justin’s image in the mirror as he washes his hands.

Someone was in the stall watching him? Jesus.

Besides the shorts in the first photo, Justin has the same outfit on in each picture, indicating this person tracked him all day. This is definitely outside of the paparazzi MO.

‘We’re not in any of the pictures, so this was prior to us joining his team.’ I flip through the stack again, looking to see if Justin’s hair, weight or facial hair looks different than now. ‘Do we have a timestamp?’

‘Not yet. I just opened this twenty minutes ago.’ Jack strums his fingers on the top of the trunk. ‘I’m going to feed this back to the home office and see what they come up with.’

I shove the photos back in the envelope and hand them to Jack. Until we have more information, there’s no way to tell if these photos were taken a year ago or last month, making it nearly impossible to narrow down the people Justin may have interacted with during that time. ‘See how much the team can zoom in on the script. Even if we get a few words, we can cross-check it with the studio security team to help establish a time frame,’ I say, gripping my backpack. ‘I’ll call the investigative unit out to recreate the angles so we can check where the person might’ve been standing. And I’ll ask Zane for the dates when Justin visited the doctor in the last twelve months.’

Jack slams the trunk shut. ‘Excellent. It’s hard to tell, but the bathroom photo looks similar to a few of the men’s restrooms in the studio. I’ll look into it.’ He crosses to the driver’s side of his car. ‘Per his team’s protocol, I didn’t mention it to Justin. But I sent an email to Anthony and Cc’d you and Marcus.’

The lack of transparency goes against my core values and everything in me tightens. Tomorrow, I’m talking to Marcus about the ramifications of going against Justin’s team and telling him the truth. ‘I don’t like this. He has the right to know.’