Manaconda(3)

But as crazy as it was, it also gave off a warmth that no other theater could pull off in my opinion. It was perfect for this kind of day. Meet and greet with a select number of fans and then they’d give them music.

The signing would be up in the balcony area so we could control the number of people who came at the band. Security was intense—both hotel and the band’s. According to my notes, there were one-thousand people coming. They would fill the bowl of the theater.

I looked around. Velvet seats in a deep ruby red were impeccably kept. Not a bad seat anywhere to be found. The stage was sizable, but kept things intimate. When I got to the stage, I turned around. Another fifty VIPs would be put up in the balcony section after the signing. Those VIPs would include A-listers and a few up-and-comers on the B-list.

The entire set-up was a make-or-break situation.

This had all been set up in the last week by Lila Shawcross and Donovan Lewis. The moment Hunter Jordan had exploded with that cover, this had been the ultimate release party. I couldn’t pay to get this kind of publicity.

Luckily for Hammered, Donovan Lewis had pull and style. He knew exactly what kind of perfect storm this could be. And I owed the billionaire mogul a favor, so I was here at the last minute to make all of this work.

Juggling my workload to make time for this circus was a feat in itself, but when Donovan called in a marker, you answered.

Now all I had to do was keep Hunter together enough to get through it.

The speakers were piping out the first single from Hammered’s new album. I flicked away the itinerary to check the rankings on iTunes and scanned reviews that my assistant had gathered from the bigger music publications, as well as the very vocal fans on the music sites.

Most were surprisingly glowing. The rank I expected, but good reviews were a blessing. Usually when a band shot up the charts there were plenty of trolls out in full force. As of right now, people seemed to be excited about the album. I did a quick search for Rolling Stone’s review. They’d given it four stars.

Wow. That was like getting a perfectly buttered and salted kernel of popcorn at the bottom of the bucket at the movies. Not impossible, but damn rare.

I hadn’t gotten a chance to listen to the album all the way through. I’d gotten the assignment to maximize Hunter Jordan’s viral fingerprint at o-dark-thirty by Donovan himself. This day needed to go off without a hitch. I’d immersed myself in his background, the band’s biography—both unsanctioned, and the info they put out on their wiki page and website.

Often very different in my experience.

My reputation for spinning Hollywood’s toughest cases required constant access to social media, news, and the trades. US Weekly was still running Hunter as their top story, Music Life wanted a cover spread, and Rolling Stone had sent out a second printing to the stores. The fact that the stores were already selling out of copies again was awesome.

This was what I did.

I stopped the oncoming train of fame from crashing into the station. My job was to make sure each stop was smooth, and control the chaos into career-making brilliance. When I was done with Hunter tonight, I’d have a record-breaking third print run ordered.

I climbed the stairs to the stage. My heels clicked across the scarred wood as I set up a charity auction for two print copies of the magazine that my assistant had procured that morning. It had taken Carter driving all over the freaking city, but he never ever let me down.

It was going to a good cause, now I just needed Hunter to sign them.

“Miss.”

I kept walking and flashed my lanyard at him.

“Miss,” he said more urgently.

I slipped my hand through the strap on the back of my iPad case and hugged it to my chest. I looked up, and then up again. Big fucker. I had memorized the core group of Hammered’s security and important personnel. A massive redhead, former pro football player wasn’t hard to tag, even in my overactive brain. “You must be Patrick.”

“And you are?”

I pressed my lips together. He should know. “I’m Kennedy McManus.”

“Only four people have approval for that lanyard, and you are not on the list. I don’t know where you got it, but you’ll be leaving now.” He stood directly in front of me and folded his arms.

“Excuse me?”

His face was completely devoid of emotion. “Whomever you think you know, you don’t.”

My eyebrows shot up. “I applaud your attention to detail, but I was given this,” I rattled the laminated, high quality photo of Hammered’s album cover with a red and metallic bronze border, “by your boss.”

“I wasn’t advised of a change.”

I tilted my head. “Check.”