“Don’t I know it.” Ian gestured for Julian to have a seat. “Why don’t we get started now that Kyle and MaeBe are here.”
Kyle strode in with his tablet in hand. He held the door opened and allowed MaeBe Vaughn to enter. MaeBe was the resident goth tech goddess. She’d recently changed her hair color to a bright pink in honor of spring. She was in her mid-twenties and looked so youthful and bouncy she made him feel old.
“Hello, Mr. Lodge. I’m Mae Beatrice Vaughn, and I will be running tech today.” She held her hand out and Lodge politely shook it. “Everyone calls me MaeBe.”
“Then I shall as well,” Lodge said with genuine warmth in his tone. “Kyle, it’s good to see you.” He turned Ian’s way. “When did they all get so young?”
Ian sat down, a lemon muffin in front of him. “I have to get them young. My old guys are all boring and married and whiney. I tried to get Theo on this one, but he was all My wife will kick my ass if I top another woman. But the good news is Michael there hasn’t given in to the old ball and chain yet.”
Charlotte’s eyes were back to lasers. “I’m telling Erin you called her that.”
“I wasn’t talking about Erin. Theo’s got old balls, and Erin wrapped a chain around them,” Ian quipped. “They have pictures and everything.”
“They absolutely do not,” Charlotte began.
But Julian was already laughing.
The door opened again, and a large, muscular man walked through. Wolf Meyer. He’d handled Julian’s personal security for more than a decade.
He nodded as he took a seat beside Julian. “The car is secure. Everything looks good.”
That got Big Tag’s brows rising. “You had Wolf do a walk-through of my building? You know I’ve been doing this for a long time.”
“And so has Wolf,” Julian replied. “I believe you’ll find this was at his insistence, not mine.”
Wolf Meyer sat back. “I check out everyone, Tag. Especially dirty cheaters. You paid that ref. I did not fumble that ball.”
Ian’s eyes flared, and Michael knew if he didn’t take control of the situation, they would relitigate the last flag football game. It had turned into all the guys punching each other.
“MaeBe, why don’t you start? If I’m meeting Ms. Hale this evening, I would like to know a little something about her,” Michael said. This was his op, and he was going to run it without a throwdown between Julian’s mentees.
“Yes, if you two want to fight it out, I can call down and Alex will be more than happy to set up a vat of Jell-O,” Charlotte offered. “But after the meeting.”
“Jell-O?” Wolf asked.
“The women like a good Jell-O wrestling session,” Tessa replied. “Or you can lube up and go at it.”
Wolf frowned. “I feel vaguely offended.”
“You’ll feel vaguely…” Tag began.
“So the subject of our investigation is one Vanessa Hale Benedict.” MaeBe completely cut tag off and started her presentation. “Benedict is her married name. She goes by it.”
“Hale was her stage name, if I’m correct.” Julian seemed ready to get down to business.
“You are, sir.” MaeBe hit a key on her laptop, and the image of a young woman with dark hair and stunning eyes came on the screen. She wore a green dress, and her hair was long and draped over one shoulder. She looked utterly unlike the woman he’d seen on magazine covers, with the exception of that fuck-me mouth of hers. Her lips formed a perfect pink bow that any man of the right persuasion would want to try out.
But not on this woman. This woman looked…innocent. Excited. Ready to take on the world.
God, was Tessa right and he was going into this whole op judging her because of the way she looked now? Because of stories he’d heard?
“She was born Vanessa Jones, but that was considered too boring for Hollywood. She was born here in Dallas. She won a teen modeling contest, and that was how she ended up going to Hollywood. She dropped out of high school to do her first movie,” MaeBe continued, and the slide changed. Now it was a movie poster that showed a younger, but more recognizable Vanessa Hale. She was blonde and busty. “The classic Terror in Walton Woods. She played the flirt who gets chopped up by the crazy former summer camp owner. They liked her so much that she came back as a ghost in the second movie, and as her own evil twin who turned out to be the killer in the third.”
“They’re fun in a totally awful way,” Kyle commented and then frowned. “MaeBe made me watch them.”
“They’re supposed to be tongue in cheek,” MaeBe argued. “But that’s beside the point. From there Vanessa Hale actually became something of an ‘It Girl’ in Hollywood for a couple of years. She did several romantic comedies, and even a drama she got positive reviews for. But then she got a reputation for being difficult.”