Page 63 of Get A Fix

“So the FBI is waiting to hear from Jared?” I asked Nash. “Do I have that right?”

“You do.”

“Amazing that if Jared says he’ll question Ash, they just back off.”

“I suspect that when your network all over the world is bigger and a helluva lot scarier than theirs, they’ll sit instead of taking matters into their own hands.”

“Were the Feds going to put Ash into protective custody?”

“No,” Owen said. “They were planning to just take him into plain old custody.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It does if you look at those photos as a whole. To them, Ashford Lennox looks pretty fuckin’ cozy with a known fugitive who died not long after their encounter.”

“What are you talking about?”

Quickly, Owen moved through other pictures for me, all the ones not taken by Ash, and in them, he was at the table, leaning forward, talking, listening, laughing, and smiling. I had to admit that it did look like he and Voss were buddies.

“Yeah, okay, this doesn’t look great.”

“This is why we’re here,” Nash said flatly. “To help you guard Mr. Lennox, and more importantly, to get answers.”

I shook my head. “There’s an explanation, I know there is, and anyway, Ash is not some nobody off the street that the FBI can just toss into some off-the-books black site and press him until they get answers. He’s a huge star.”

“Great. Good,” Nash was quick to agree with me. “But our boss would prefer that our client not be interrogated by the FBI on our watch. We’re looking to prevent trauma, not allow it to happen.”

“Of course,” I agreed.

“Good. So go back in there and wake your boyfriend up so we can figure this shit out. We’re wasting daylight.”

“I will. I just have something I need to ask Owen.”

“Hit me,” he said.

So I told him all about Burke Furniss, and how he’d tried to seduce, then attack Ash in the middle of the night. I also told him that Burke had been rough because he’d known, presumably from watching, how Ash preferred his sex.

Owen nodded. “You’re worried he has pictures or video of Lennox in bed with men at his home, in hotel rooms, on location where he filmed movies⁠—”

“Yeah. All that. And Ash is being very calm about it, very whatever happens, happens, but I don’t want that for him. I can’t have that happen.”

“Of course,” Owen told me. “I’ll get into it now.”

“His old bodyguard, she runs her own business now. Her name is Preeya Shah, and she never liked Furniss and didn’t want Ash to hire him when she left to give birth.”

“You’re thinking what?”

“Well, she says she has a new bodyguard for him who sounds great.”

“You want me to check up on that?”

“No, Preeya sounds amazing, and because of that, I’m wondering if she already dealt with Furniss.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Owen assured me.

“Hello?”

And there was Ash in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt—one of mine, actually. Nash had been standing at the sliding glass doors, looking out at the rain, while Owen and I sat on the couch. We all turned to Ash at once.