Chapter 7

"Where the hell are you?" Brian asked, sounding both anxious and pissed. "We have a show in four fucking hours and you're nowhere in sight."

"The county jail," Paul said flatly.

"What? Dude, this is no time to be joking around."

"Who said anything about joking around? My ass got locked up."

"For what? You don't go anywhere to cause any trouble. You don't do anything except hole up in the room and talk online with teenybopper fans half the damn night. If anyone should be getting busted for shit, it should be me."

"According to the booking papers, failure to pay child support."

"What the fuck….? Dude, I thought you took care of that!"

"Evidently not fast enough. Someone couldn't wait three days like I told them it would take and the next thing I knew, two cops were right at the rental car when I pulled up back at the hotel and hauled me down here."

Brian sighed. "What's the bond? We need to get you out of there not only before the show tonight, but also before someone gets wind of it and it gets all over the news sites, and then we'll really be fucked if that happens. Those wannabe writers would have a field day with shit like this, and much as I hate to say it, you're an easy target for a lot of them to begin with, especially that one lady reporter you managed to piss off not long ago. She'd really love getting hold of this."

"There's no bond. They're holding my ass until there's either a hearing or the amount is paid, along with the court costs. Lori Anne had me nailed to the wall good. I knew she had some fire in her, but Christ, I never guessed she was this vindictive."

"What's the amount and where does it need to be paid?"

"Dude, no one can exactly pull nearly three thousand dollars out of their ass in less than four hours, not even you."

"Don't count on that just yet. I'll get it somewhere, even if it kills me. Then I'll kill you for being a dumb shit to land yourself in this situation in the first place."

Meanwhile:

Edie Edwards was a sharp journalist; before she'd gone into the wrestling genre four years earlier as a tribute to her late husband, she'd worked for several newspapers across the country as well as spent a year behind the scenes in broadcast news.

Most guys in the sport usually laughed off Internet reporters, but Edie Edwards was not the average one. Practically wrestler from the local indy circuits all the way up to the main eventers of WWE were scared shit of the woman, though it wasn't made known on their parts.

It was also common knowledge that Edie carried a grudge toward anyone that even did the most minor thing to rub her the wrong way and wouldn't fail to write an assassination piece on her latest target if she knew it would make a good story and drew hits to the site that employed her, a site which was both one of the most reputable and very top sites on the Internet. No one messed with Edie Edwards and emerged unscathed.

So when word got out via a guard at the local jail–one of many Edie's connections across the country–that Paul was in the lockup for being behind in child support payments, she pounced immediately.

The ungrateful bastard had all but shunned her the last time they had been in town for a show while being busy being fawned over by several teenage groupies and young party girls. Edie had been pissed at the slight; after all, not long before, she'd busted her ass to do a huge, flattering feature article on him that drew record hits on the site that month, and he hadn't even as much as acknowledged her presence, much less thanked her.

Now would be the perfect revenge, she thought. Mr. Pretty Boy Clean Living Goody Goody being exposed to the world as a deadbeat dad.

Her webmaster and editor, Tim, would be totally drooling with excitement once he got word of this.

Imagine the site hits, Edie! she could hear him say now. Imagine people from other sites seeing you got this story first! You'll be a fucking legend!

Well, Edie thought, if I'm going to be a legend, I need to get in gear to find out the details, not to mention who Mama is and get the rest of the story from her view.

At the same time:

"Mom, I can't believe you'd put Daddy in jail!" Brittany cried during her weekly call from camp. "I know you're mad at him, but why that?"

"All right, let's get one thing straight off the top, Britt. I didn't put him there; he put himself there because he broke the law by not making payments. He was warned things like this would happen when we went to court in the beginning. I had nothing to do with the judge's decision to put him in jail."

"I don't care. It isn't fair. He doesn't belong there."

"He does, Britt. It may not be fair to you, but life isn't fair, period. He was ordered by law to make support payments for you each month. He failed to do that. Excuses don't pay for me to take care of you, even if I did just start this new job. And how did you find out he was there anyway?"

"One of the counselors said so," Brittany replied. "She said one of her friends that worked at the hotel where Daddy stayed saw the police take him away and heard one of them say he was going to jail for not paying you."

"Oh, God…." Lori Anne groaned.

"Are you gonna get him out?" Brittany asked.

"Honey, I can't. For one, he either has to go to a hearing or come up with three thousand dollars that he owes to be released and Lord knows I don't have that kind of money laying around here. Second, he needs to sit there and rot for a bit to get it through his thick skull that because he's a 'name' person doesn't mean he can get a pass on skirting the law when the average person gets punished much harsher for doing the same thing."

"You're still mad," Brittany said sadly.

"I'm not mad. I'm disappointed and merely stating a fact. I don't want you worrying about this, all right? I'm sure someone will help somewhere or perhaps he could be cut a break. We'll have to see. Now your time is almost up and we can talk next week. Maybe by then he'll be out and everything will be okay."

Lori Anne sighed when they hung up. She was hoping all of this would be blown over before her daughter had gotten any knowledge of what happened. No chance of that happening now.

The phone rang once again, a number on the Caller ID she didn't recognize. Thinking it was probably a telemarketer, she was about to go into a tirade about not being interested when a woman said she was doing a story…..