He eyeballed the younger man. “Name?”
“Rupert Something–or–Other.” He sauntered into the room, grabbed a coffee mug from the cabinet and rested a hip against the counter. “Talked too fast to get it all down. He said he’d call back.”
Sean’s gut clenched, sending his breakfast surging up the way it had gone down. He clamped his jaw shut and willed the bile into submission.
“What the hell kind of first name is Rupert anyway?” Billy asked.
The kind of name that brought back memories of dark closets with locked doors and warnings delivered with a backhanded swing.
The Styrofoam cup crumpled in Sean’s grip. “Where was he calling from?”
He’d croaked out the question, but Billy didn’t seem to notice. Instead the gangly, Southern version of a hipster grabbed the coffee pot and poured himself a cup of dark roast. “Sunny California.”
The other side of the country. The black clouds of dread gathering around the edges of his vision cleared a bit before his gut twanged with suspicion. “How do you know he was in California?”
“Caller ID is a beautiful thing. If you ever talked to anyone on the phone, you would have realized that technology kicks ass. Damn man, you still use a pre–paid flip phone.” Billy held out the coffee pot toward Sean before his gaze dropped to the crushed cup in Sean’s fist. Shrugging, he slid the glass carafe back onto the warmer.
Sean had to play this close. If anyone at the brewery realized his name was Sean Duvin and not Sean O’Dell, there’d be more trouble than he ever wanted to deal with. The only thing worse would be if Rupert showed up on the brewery’s doorstep with a camera crew and a mic.
Trying to maintain his facade of disinterest, he forced his fist to open and dropped the broken chunks of Styrofoam into the garbage. “And he asked for me?”
“Well, I thought it was a telemarketer, because it sure sounded like he’d said Sean Duvin or Darvin or Dugin instead of O’Dell, but I must have misheard because he got all chatty about how he hadn’t seen you in years.”
Almost ten, to be exact. Sean had walked off the stage, away from the cameras, and handed his bastard of a father his Oscar, saying he had to take a piss and promising he’d be right back. Instead, he’d stolen the first car he could hotwire and driven it as far as the gas in the tank would take him, shaved his head, traded in his tux for some Wrangler jeans, and hopped a Greyhound.
“Number?”
Billy dumped about a pound of sugar into his coffee cup. “Didn’t leave one, but I wrote down the caller ID number.” He pulled a crumbled piece of paper from the pocket of his worn jeans.
Sean held out his hand, and Billy slapped the torn corner of a fast food sandwich wrapper into his palm. One glance confirmed it was the number to the Hollywood and Vine Reports offices in Malibu. He’d seen the number enough in his formative years to know it by heart. If Rupert had stumbled onto his trail that meant his father wouldn’t be far off, and if he never saw that bastard again in his life it would be too soon.
The blood in his veins turned to frozen sludge. “Message?”
“Nope.”
That didn’t mean Rupert didn’t want anything. The sleazebag had spent most of the past decade writing about the “bright young talent who had disappeared off the face of the Earth.” He wasn’t about to stop now.
Sean yanked the brim of his Sweet Salvation Brewery baseball cap down with more force than was necessary. He needed space to figure out what—or more accurately, where—his next move was.
“And on less–happy news, the fermentation tank is leaking, but the fact that Natalie has spent the morning shut up in her office balances out that bit of bad news.” Billy smirked at what he no doubt thought was a funny swipe at the boss. “You know, so she’s not running around getting into everyone’s business.”
“Not funny.” Sean glared at the skinny little twerp until he bounced nervously on his toes. “How bad’s the leak?”
Billy shrugged. “Clyde’s fussing with it, but it’s gushing at a good clip.”
The fermentation tank held more than twelve hundred gallons of not–yet–drinkable beer. If they couldn’t fix the leak they’d lose nearly seven thousand bottles of beer. That would be the equivalent of using a flamethrower to light a cigarette in terms of damage to the brewery’s bottom line. “Shit. Why didn’t you tell me this first?”
Not bothering to stick around for the explanation, Sean marched out of the break room, took the first left and pushed through the swinging door leading from the offices to the brewery floor, where all the action took place.
Sean made a beeline toward the small crowd gathered around the stainless–steel tank with the cone–shaped bottom, the pointed end of which stopped a few feet off the brewery’s cement floor. Clyde, the chief maintenance man, had folded himself nearly in two as he twisted his body to get a better look at the damage while avoiding the amber–colored geyser rushing out of the tank.
The whole mess got worse with each step Sean took. By the time the crowd parted for him, there was a river of beer surging out of the bottom of the fermentation tank. “Oh, fuck.”
“You said it.” Billy agreed.
Sean crouched down beside Clyde. The older man had enough lines on his forehead to double as a highway map, each one made even deeper with worry. That meant it was so bad it couldn’t even be registered on a Richter scale.
“What’s the verdict?” As if he needed to hear the words to know.