What You Don't Know (Sequel to "Secret Love")(Hunter Hayes/James Marsden)

Seeing Red

Man, I'm so clever. The title of this chapter is "Seeing Red" and I'm not sure if anybody will catch why I called it that, but dude. xD I crack myself up on occasion.

God Bless and Happy Reading!

Trenton watched the clock. Ten minutes passed, then twenty, then thirty, and Bethany still had not returned from her fool's errand. He smiled to himself. He must not have given her enough credit in the beginning. Perhaps she really was smart enough to take the opportunity to snoop around his home. He had hope she would. There was one place in particular he hoped she would discover, and when he joined her there...it would be a fitting denouement, to say the least.

Everything was turning out precisely as he had designed, and nothing could make him happier. The show was now over, and the cast was mulling around, tossing pieces of their costumes into buckets and dabbing makeup remover onto their faces. Trenton watched it all, and the tumultuous atmosphere hardly bothered him. Nothing could perturb him tonight.

'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'

Darryl arrived at the theater just in time to watch the cast members recede from their curtain call. He knew this auditorium well, and followed the cast through their dimly-lit tunnel, intent on locating Trenton McDermott at any cost.

It took only a moment to spot him, he stood out so sorely in the crowd. Darryl crossed the room to him quickly, and lifted onto his toes to glare into Trenton's eyes.

"Where is she?" he growled, not breaking his gaze even as Trenton looked him up and down with obvious loathing.

"Oh, it's you," Trent replied, scratching his belly and pursing his lips. "I'd forgotten you existed."

"Where is she?" Darryl repeated, his glare growing darker still.

"Whoever do you mean?" Trenton answered, feigning ignorance, and looking around as though the conversation was not even worth his time.

"You know who I mean, McDermott, and you will answer my question."

Trenton looked over at the blustering man. The tan skin above his eyes was wrinkled, and his eyebrows were so close they almost touched. Trenton laughed, thinking how odd it was that this man was so agitated over some dame.

"I'm glad I let you go when I did, Reddock," Trenton returned, shifting his weight onto his other foot. "You always did have a soft spot for that Bethany. Oh, I understand it, indeed, but you allowed it to interfere with your work, and that's just stupid, son."

Darryl rolled back his shoulders. If he had fur, it would have been standing straight up on the back of his neck.

"It didn't interfere with my job," he spit, poking a finger into Trenton's chest. "My job was just to 'watch her', as I recall. I did that part just fine. You are the one who isn't doing your job, Trenton McDermott, and so help me God, if you don't take care of it soon...I will."

That gave the other man pause. It was inconceivable, the thought that Darryl Reddock, the biggest idiot on the planet, could possibly have anything to do with the assignment he had been given.

Trenton grabbed the front of Darryl's shirt and shook him once, solidly. "Was it you? Are you the one who hired me?" He said it low, menacing, so his point could not be mistaken.

Darryl only stared back, his gaze unwavering.

"Was it?!"

A moment passed, then Darryl grit out, "What's it to you?"

Trenton growled, but released Darryl's shirt. He spared only one last glance at him and said, "It'll be over soon," before he waltzed out the back door and caught a cab.

It was time to finish this.

'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'

Bethany had gone through every file in the closet and had found nothing else of interest, at least not anything else she thought was pertinent enough to send to Jeremy Willakers. Already she had texted him the pictures of Dean Mosby's name in Trent's records, and the enigmatic, hand-written reports she had found with this year's dates on it. Nothing else had surfaced, nothing she could relate to any of the information she had found before.

Frustrated, she locked the closet back up and moved back into Trenton's bedroom. There was still nothing of consequence in here, though she checked every crevice a second time.

"Come on, Beth, think," she berated herself, smacking herself in the forehead with the leather bound book from Trent's nightstand. She thumbed through it again, but still the random letters were a puzzle. She took a few more pictures, of the dates and initials, and sent those also to Jeremy.

She ended up back in the guest room she had opened earlier, confirming that the drawers had all been empty. None were locked, either. Beth spared another glance at the mirror, wondering why it was there. Without really thinking she would find anything there, she lifted it off the wall and turned it around.

"Aha!" she exclaimed, seeing the silver key taped to the back. Behind the mirror, wedged in a hole in the wall, was an industrial-strength safe, and Bethany beamed at her discovery. She yanked the key off the mirror and shoved it in the lock, but nothing happened when she attempted to turn it.

She frowned. Of course it would not be the key to the safe. Who would keep the key to a safe right next to it? It would have been especially brainless for someone like Trenton McDermott, who obviously had something to hide.

Beth placed the mirror down gingerly against the wall, and rummaged through the keys one more time. None would turn in the lock, and she sighed. Trenton was clever for sure. She took a few steps back and took a picture of the safe as well, sending it off with the message "No Key".

She returned the mirror to the wall, but kept the silver piece she had taken off the back, curious as to where it might lead. She caught sight of the door she had noticed earlier, and decided that, in order to be thorough, she had better look into the guest bathroom as well.

She jiggled the doorknob, but it was locked. She raised an eyebrow.

"That's weird," she whispered, but stuck the key into the knob anyway. She was surprised when it turned, but her astonishment escalated with her heartbeat when she saw the red light coming from underneath the white frame.