Maybe he’d escaped norovirus.
A quick trip to the bathroom, and then he grabbed his phone and sat against the headboard, listening to the rings.
Carter picked up on the third. “I read the news. Are you okay? What happened?”
Right—it was later in Ontario. Carter had probably seen something about Max’s sudden disappearance from the show this morning. “Max caught norovirus. Stomach flu, basically, except he was stupidly feverish and didn’t tell anyone and almost fell off the stage.” Even now Jeff felt drained from the ordeal, and he wasn’t even the one who was sick. “The hospital kept him overnight, but he texted this morning to say they’re discharging him around noon.”
“I’m glad he’s all right. But areyouokay?”
Jeff opened his mouth to say yes, but the lie wouldn’t come. “Honestly?” He plucked at the bed covers. “I don’t think I caught norovirus, at least. But I’m….”Fuck.He wasn’t supposed to tell Carter anything was amiss. But a few of the details wouldn’t hurt, right? “I caught Tim trying to break into my phone, basically, and I’m worried about Max, and….” And he was making everything about him. “It’s kind of a lot to handle. Distract me, would you? Did you find your bear?”
Carter sighed. “Not yet. That’s not so unusual, though. We don’t get sightings every day. I just worry.”
No surprise there. Carter was always soft like that. “What about everything else?” Jeff frowned. Their time in Vancouver seemed so long ago already. “You were doing something for your friend—Emily?”
“Oh—yeah, that’s a… I mean, we make jokes about government inefficiency, but if you knew the truth, you’d probably become a libertarian.”
Jeff barked out a startled laugh. “I doubt it, but I can imagine. I take it it’s, uh, not going well?”
Carter hummed. “It’s going okay, really, just getting multiple people at multiple different parks—national and provincial—to collect the same data and then put that data in the same place and make it accessible to people who want to use it for science is apparently more of an undertaking than I realized.”
What a surprise that he’d bitten off more than any reasonable person would chew. Jeff leaned back and tilted his head toward the ceiling. “You know you’re supposed to be recovering from breaking a bone, right? Not finding more work for yourself?”
“I like working.” Stubborn. “Besides, this is… I don’t know. It’s not what I thought I’d do with my life, but it feels a little more important than lecturing tourists about littering.”
Jeff knew Carter’s job was more than that, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that Jeff worried too, largely about Carter’s pathological inability to actually relax. But sayingplease slow down before you work yourself into an early grave the same as your fatherwould be unforgivably cruel. Jeff disliked himself for so much as thinking it.
He’d have to come up with a way to approach the problem from another angle. In the meantime he just said, “It’s good that you’re doing it. Itisimportant.”
“Thanks.”
Before Jeff could say anything else, his phone beeped, and he checked the call ID. “That’s my lawyer calling, sorry. Following up on the whole Tim thing. Call you later?”
“Obviously. Tell Max get well soon from me.”
Jeff smiled. “Thanks, I will.”
As usual, Monique got right to the point. “Jeff. Did you get a consensus from the group?”
He exhaled, nodding. “Yeah. I think they were already unhappy with the pace and the pressure and the whole contract… situation.” They’d signed young, and their cut of royalties wasn’t what it should have been, and they didn’t have an advocate for their own interests. “But seeing how Tim treated Max and his invasion of my privacy—they’re on board.”
“Good. Like I said, this can’t leave the group or the deal will be dead in the water. I’m talking injunctions, lawsuits, blackballing—they will make your lives hell. But I’ve found a way to get you out of your contract.”
Jeff’s breath caught. “Seriously?”
“Here’s the thing. When you signed your extension, they forgot to update your exit clause. You were already big. You know what the penalty is now?”
“Enough.” They could afford it if the other band members had saved the same way he had, but he knew Max hadn’t and he wasn’t sure about Trix. Jeff could pay it only because he’d written and recorded songs outside of their contract with Big Moose, but doing so would wipe out his savings. “It’s not a practical option.”
Monique hummed. “Not for you, maybe. But for a competitor label?”
Oh.Jeff licked his lips, intrigued now. “How would that work?”
“That’s the tricky part. I’d rather explain it to all of you at once. In the meantime, do you want to talk about the red herring? I think you’ll like it.”
Whatever Jeff was paying her, she had earned every cent. “God, yes.”
“So the label’s calling Tim back to Toronto. They’re going to send someone else out with an NDA. Don’t sign it until I’ve looked at it and okayed it.”
