Steel 7 (Multiple Love)

"Tell me what we're doing here?" Ben asks, rubbing his face and slumping into a green velvet bucket chair, immediately resting his leg straight to take the pressure off the prosthetic.

"We're letting Angelica know that this shit with Luna needs to get sorted."

"Because we don't think she's already trying her best? I mean, it's not as if she'd want a stalker interfering with the tour she's running. It's not exactly great for her reputation, any more than it is ours."

"I don't think she's considering all options," I say, but to be honest, I'm not really that sure of what other options she could be taking into consideration. I guess I just want Angelica to know that we've got Luna's back and that we want to see results. If nothing else, a little pressure in the right place can get things moving.

"Before you call her, I want to tell you something," Mo says. He stands and paces a few steps, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. It's not like Mo to have bunched shoulders filled with tension. He's a man who's lived through enough to have become stoical in even the most difficult of situations.

"What is it, Mo?" Shifting forward in my seat, I wave for him to take a seat opposite me.

He glances at me, then at the seat. Once he's sat down, he seems ready to talk. "You know me…I'm not a man who believes in instincts. I always think that going with gut feeling is a recipe for acting with emotion rather than logic. But I have this feeling that I can't shake."

"What feeling?" Ben says, leaning forward.

"A bad feeling about a person." Mo rubs his chin and grips his other hand into a tight fist. "I didn't say anything before because my feeling isn't based on any evidence. I haven't seen this person do anything bad. I don't know anything about them other than they make the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end."

"Someone's giving you the creeps?" I frown, still not quick getting what Mo is saying.

Mo nods. "You know all of the issues that Luna's had have been close…someone needed to be able to access backstage to get to her things. They've also happened around the world. We know it's the same perpetrator."

"So, some super weirdo fan is following Luna around the world. People do that shit. It's not unheard of."

"No, it isn't," Mo says. "But maybe that isn't what's happening. Maybe it's someone in the crew?"

"The crew?"

"Yes, Connor. The crew."

"You think that someone hired to help Luna’s tour is the one scaring the shit out of her?"

"Maybe. As I said, I don't have evidence, just gut-feeling."

I slump back into my chair, resting my hands on the arms and allowing my legs to fall. If Mo's right, we've could have been passing the time with a man capable of hurting our girl. "Who?"

"As I said, I'm pointing the finger at a man who could be innocent. I just…we can't let this go on. Luna's having a baby. Even the worry that something might potentially happen will be stress, and stress is bad for a developing fetus."

"So tell me who it is."

"Marcus, the lighting guy," Mo says.

I glance up at the ceiling, trying to put a face to a name. There are so many people on the crew, and I've spent so much of my mental energy focused on Luna that I haven't paid much attention to the people who I should be able to trust.

Ben nods, gripping the arm of his chair. "I agree that guy is creepy. I've seen him looking at Luna like he wants to eat her liver with a nice glass of wine and some fried onions."

"Fuck. You too?" Mo says.

"You should have said something," I say to both of them. "We're a team. We're stronger together and keeping secrets will only make us weaker. I don’t know how many times I have to repeat myself."

"It wasn't a secret," Ben says. "Just a passing thought that I didn't think would be worth sharing.

"Well, in the future, can you share your passing thoughts?"

Ben raises his eyebrows. "If I shared them all, we probably wouldn't still be friends."

Mo chuckles, the joke breaking the tension between us. "I don't think you should tell Angelica that we have a bad feeling about Marcus. She's going to go on the defensive. She brought the guy into work on her team. She'd feel responsible, and it's human nature to try to defend against that possibility."

"So, what should I do?"

"Tell her that we need to rule out everyone in the crew. Tell her that we're going to be fingerprinted and that if the rest of the crew don't come forward, it will look like they have something to hide."

"Okay. That could work." I pull my phone from my pocket and dial Angelica's number. After five minutes of encouragement, she agrees to come to the lobby to meet with us.