Broken Strings

Prologue

A lie has no leg, but a scandal has wings – Thomas Fuller

They met in a nondescript motel room off the interstate at a quarter to three on a Wednesday afternoon. Blinds drawn tight, the only light coming from the too-bright overhead and the glow of a laptop on the desk.

"Soooo, what did you want to talk about?" Kendrick Dorsey asked. He was perched on the edge of his seat before the laptop. His fingers rested just above the keys, twitching with anxious anticipation.

He hadn't believed it when he'd gotten the call that morning. Had thought it to be some kind of prank set up by one of his colleagues. It was only upon his arrival at the Sunnyside Motel did he finally believe that he hadn't been invited there as a joke.

Not when he'd knocked on the bright blue door to room number sixteen and was met by none other than Trace Strickland.

The former lead guitarist for the once-popular country music band Tallahassee had opened the door and ushered Kendrick inside with nothing more than a jerk of his head. Kendrick, a reporter for Euphoria – a popular celebrity gossip magazine – had been shocked to come face-to-face with Trace Strickland. If only because the man had been dodging Kendrick's calls for weeks already as he'd tried to get a comment for his column.

Though it wasn't as if Trace had been handing out comments to other magazines. No, the man had been lying low. Hiding out from the public eye as he awaited his upcoming court appearance. His manager had no doubt been telling him to avoid implicating himself in any sort of way but Kendrick didn't think it mattered what Trace said to defend himself. The evidence against him was pretty damning.

For reporters like Kendrick, the trial was to be the final piece in a two-year-long puzzle. The truth behind why Tallahassee split up. None of the band members, Trace included, had ever publicly commented on the end of the band. Sure, they'd been going through a rough patch and they'd been hit with a few scandals at the time of their breakup – most of which had been Trace-induced from what Kendrick had read – but other groups had bounced back from worse.

Hell, Kendrick could name more than a dozen celebrities who had done worse than what Trace had done leading up to that split and were still raking in the big bucks.

Of course, those previous scandals had nothing to do with the big one that Trace Strickland was currently facing. No, this had been a carefully guarded secret, until it wasn't.

"I thought it was obvious what I wanted to talk about," Trace said.

He was lounging on one of the beds, leaning against the backboard with an arm folded behind his brunet head. His hair was close-cropped and spiky – clearly laden with way too much hair gel. There was a glass in his hand, partially filled with an amber-coloured liquid. From the smell that was emanating from Trace, Kendrick guessed that it was whisky.

Alcohol wasn't the only scent that Kendrick was picking up in the room. He had the suspicion that Trace was living in this dump, avoiding his flashy apartment over in Beverly Hills.

Probably a smart move. Kendrick knew of more than one paparazzo who'd been staking out the apartment, waiting to ambush Trace.

"You want to give an interview?"

"Yup." Trace popped the 'p' and smiled in a way that didn't touch his brown eyes. "I figured that if I'm going down, I might as well tell my side of the story."

"Do you mind if I record this?" Kendrick asked.

"Go for it."

Kendrick reached for his recorder and turned it on. "Where would you like to start?"