Flirting With Disaster

by Ruthie Knox

  All week, she’d been dreaming of Kentucky bluegrass. Totally unrealistic, given the time of year and the fact that she was about to spend the weekend in some dank, beer-piss-smelling nightclub, but she couldn’t turn the daydreaming off. Her mind had a mind of its own.

  “Let me talk to Owens,” Caleb said.

  “What for?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Is it about work or my personal life?”

  “Also none of your business.” His voice had gone all clipped. She wasn’t getting anything else out of him.

  She tried anyway. “C’mon, Caleb. It’s my phone.”

  “Put him on.”

  “Yeah, fine. Okay.” She jimmied the phone out of its cradle and leaned way over to open the passenger-side door a crack. “Caleb wants to talk to you.”

  Sean took the phone, and she closed the door, not wanting any more cold air to get into her toasty car than necessary. He walked ten feet away and lifted the phone to his ear.

  She imagined what he’d sound like if she could hear him. He had an unusual way of shaping words. Every syllable came out perfectly enunciated, as if he had nothing better to do than tumble the sounds around his tongue.

  She liked listening to him talk. Yet another reason it chapped her hide that he wouldn’t speak to her.

  After a minute, he disconnected the call and folded himself into the car. He was too tall for a compact. Too broad, too. He brought the cold air in with him, and she could feel the chill coming off his black leather jacket and soaking into her right shoulder.

  “You good to go?” she asked, putting the car in gear and releasing the emergency brake.

  He nodded, eyes straight ahead.

  “You wanna drive?” They’d already begun rolling toward the exit. “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

  If he thought she was funny, he didn’t show it. Instead, he waved her on, settled back in his seat, and closed his eyes.

  Sean Owens: World’s Most Boring Copilot.

  One of her favorite Judah songs came up on the stereo, so Katie cranked the volume and started to sing along, bouncing gently up and down in a low-key car dance.

  Caleb couldn’t spoil this for her, and neither could Sean. Nervousness be damned—she was on a mission. She had sixty miles left to drive, a job to do, a future to claim.

  Plus, if everything went according to plan, she was going to get laid this weekend.

  This trip was the single most exciting thing to happen to her in a long time.

  Chapter Two

  If Sean had put himself in a dumber situation in his life, he was hard pressed to remember it.

  Driving to Louisville with Katie Clark was beyond dumb. It was such a bad idea, it deserved its own category.

  Lost Causes Sean’s Dick Talked Him Into, maybe.

  They hit a light, and Katie squeezed the phone between her shoulder and ear so she could downshift and steer at the same time. She’d given up on the speakerphone when Ellen’s call came in. Probably wanted to avoid further embarrassment.

  She changed lanes rapidly without signaling, laughing at something Ellen said on the other end.

  “I did not say that. Huh? Oh yeah.” She glanced over at him, her brown eyes dancing with amusement. “It’s been a lot longer than that. Nope. Uh, no. I’m just saying—Yeah, well, long enough that I’m hoping everything still works.”

  She listened, then laughed.

  She put her foot to the accelerator and ran her car right up the ass of a Ford pickup that was going too slow for her taste.

  It would be a miracle if they made it to the job in one piece—a fact that only served to highlight the idiocy of his presence in the car. He was escorting Katie Clark to Louisville so she could have sex with another guy. Why not just cut off his balls and hand them to her?

  Of course, he wouldn’t be able to tell her what he’d done or why, since he couldn’t fucking talk around Katie. He’d have to convey the message telepathically. You might as well take these. I’m not using them anyway.

  Sean swallowed a laugh and looked out the side window. They were inside the clogged interstate perimeter of the city now, the traffic heavier and the scenery more obviously urban after hundreds of miles of rolling fields covered in a blanket of dingy snow.

  His own phone buzzed in his jacket pocket, a nagging reminder of other claims on his attention. His best friend and business partner, Mike Anderson, had been trying to call him all morning. Something was going down in California. That, or Mike was panicking for no reason. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  Sean’s fingers itched to whip out the phone and tap a quick message to Mike. Fuck off, I’m on leave.

  It would probably do the trick, but on the whole, he preferred to know what was going on in San Jose. Just because he’d relinquished control of the company seven months ago didn’t mean he’d fallen out of the loop.

  Besides, he liked fixing problems. Bring him a problem, and Sean solved it. It was the way he was wired.

  Katie was the exception—a problem he could neither solve nor enjoy.

  He’d been studying her for almost four hours, trying to compile a list of everything that was wrong with her so he could use it as a weapon against the way she made him feel.

  Unwillingly compelled. Trapped.

  He’d climbed into her car this morning intending to crack her open like new code. No matter how well it was written, he could always find a hack. Finding the perfect hack had been his obsession once. He’d built his whole career on it.

  But after a few minutes in her tiny Volkswagen, all he’d been able to think about was the way she smelled.

  In high school, she’d come to class in a cloud of watermelon Jolly Ranchers and whatever lip balm she was wearing that day—root beer, cherry, wintergreen. Grown-up Katie still had a thing for lip balm. Today she wore something minty, and it mixed with another scent from her hair or her skin that reminded him of fresh grass and lemons and filled the whole car, making it impossible for him to keep a clear head.

  Four hours wasted reminding himself that there was nothing wrong with that straight, shiny black hair skimming her shoulders and moving like water when she turned. Nothing wrong with those warm, lively brown eyes or her olive skin. And her body … she had slim hips and small breasts, and she shouldn’t have caught his attention every time she moved, but damn it, she did.

  Katie wasn’t stunning. She wasn’t even beautiful. She was cute in an ordinary sort of way, but she got to him. She had this energy, this bright, shiny presence that drew him in.

  Katie Clark made him weak. He almost hated her for that.

  Sean pointed to the right, signaling that she should take the exit for Bardstown Road up ahead. Katie was too busy riding the brake pedal to notice. Sean waited for the car that had been tailgating them for half a mile to slam into the rear bumper, but the crash didn’t come.

  She laughed again. “You’re just jealous,” she said. “What? No way. He’s too hot to be disappointing. He’s going to be—”

  Sean plucked the phone out of her hand and disconnected the call.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  He pointed to the right again, and she whipped the wheel around. The club was just a few blocks down on the left, a nondescript place called the High Hat.

  “I can’t believe you did that,” she said. “That was so rude.”

  He gestured left, and she entered the lot and parked.

  She turned fully toward him, her nostrils flaring with outrage. She had a great nose, long and straight, like some kind of aristocrat. Princess Katie demanding he apologize for insulting her royal person. “Aren’t you even going to try to explain yourself? I’ve been putting up with the silent treatment from you so far, but we have a job to do together, and it’s not going to work if you refuse to talk to me. Particularly if you’re going to pull shit like that. That was way out of line, Buster.”

  It had been, but when he tossed the phone in
her lap and got out of the car, he couldn’t help feeling pleased with himself. They were here, they were alive, and he no longer had to listen to Katie talking about her plan to seduce Judah Pratt.

  He checked out the club with his back to her and a smile on his lips.

  Even in high school, she’d called people “Buster.” Where had she picked it up? Old movies?

  Katie came up behind him. “Seriously, can you at least write me notes? Send me emails? I don’t see how this is going to work otherwise.”

  She had a point. He didn’t see how it was going to work, either. How to interview Judah Pratt with Katie as a sidekick and manage not to stutter?

  He’d have to improvise.

  He took his phone out of his pocket and tapped out a text message. Shall we go in?

  Katie’s phone chirped. She checked out the screen. “Very funny.”

  She stomped across the gravel lot toward the building’s entrance, leaving him to trail along behind her, trying to keep his eyes off her ass.

  From the outside, the High Hat looked like any other seedy club that hosted college bands and past-it rock acts—just a windowless one-story stucco box with floodlights on the corners.

  Not the kind of venue where Pratt belonged. The man hadn’t had a hit in years, but he was still too well-known to be playing a dive like this.

  Except that when Sean followed Katie through the battered steel front door, he discovered the High Hat wasn’t a dive at all.

  “Whoa,” Katie said. “This place is swanky.”

  Swanky as hell. The club boasted a long, gleaming hardwood bar, high-backed velvet booths, and cherry tabletops inlaid with peacocks wearing top hats.

  A fresh-faced blonde rose from one of the booths. The room was otherwise empty.

  “You must be the folks from Camelot Security,” she said as they approached. “I’m Ginny Wainwright, Judah’s assistant manager.”

  She stuck out her hand. Katie shook it and introduced herself, then added with a quick glance over her shoulder, “This is Sean Owens.”

  Sean clasped Ginny’s fingers. She was very short and very young, with hair that didn’t match her eyebrows and a cheery smile that didn’t reach her eyes. They were bright green, a color concocted in a lab.

  “Nice to meet you both,” she said. “Have a seat.”

  “Where’s Judah?” Katie slid her long legs into the booth. Sean sat beside her, careful not to touch her.

  “He’s not coming in until later on. He sent me ahead to meet you.”

  Pratt had dragged them across two states in the middle of the winter for this meeting, and he couldn’t even be bothered to show up for it. What a dick.

  An absent dick. Too bad for Katie.

  “When will he be here?” she asked.

  “Around seven, I think,” Ginny said. “In time for sound check. He said he can meet with you before the show, if he has a few minutes.”

  Three or four hours to kill. At least he’d have time to find out what Mike wanted.

  “What are we supposed to do until he gets here?” Katie asked.

  “Judah had me reserve rooms for you at the Quality Inn down the street.”

  “Thanks. Is he flying out?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Are you at liberty to tell me how to reach him?”

  Sean glanced at Katie, impressed with how placid she sounded despite her disappointment. Placid wasn’t a word he normally associated with her.

  “You’re welcome to ask me any questions you have.”

  Katie folded her hands on the table. Her index finger found her thumbnail and poked at it.

  One of her nervous habits. She usually wore a silver ring on that thumb. In the office, she would avoid his eyes and twist her ring around and around.

  Ask her where Judah’s staying, he thought.

  Silence.

  Ask her if she knows anything about why we’re here.

  She looked at him with an uncertain frown between her eyebrows.

  Katie didn’t know what to say next because she wasn’t supposed to have to know. Her brother had told her repeatedly that this was Sean’s show.

  But what the hell kind of show was it? Pratt had been getting threatening messages from a fan. Sean and Katie weren’t supposed to protect him from whatever danger might be associated with those threats, whatever they were. Pratt had made it clear to Caleb that his regular detail would handle his security.

  All Camelot was supposed to do was get to the bottom of the problem. Somehow. For some reason.

  Sean couldn’t trust any plan with such sketchy outlines, and it didn’t help that Caleb felt the same way.

  Pratt’s evasive, he’d said. I don’t know what his game is. And I don’t want him sleeping with my sister—not that I have any control over that. Just keep an eye on him, okay? And keep an eye on her. Keep her out of trouble.

  Sure.

  “I can show you the way over there if you like,” Ginny said, rising from the booth.

  This wouldn’t do. He had to talk. He had to cheat.

  The trick was to pretend Katie didn’t exist.

  Closing his eyes for a second, Sean put himself at the head of the mahogany conference table in the Anderson Owens boardroom. He flattened his palms on the polished wood and leaned forward. Twelve expectant faces waited to hear what he’d say. Waited to be told what to do.

  Ginny’s was one of them.

  A sense of purpose settled over him, of power. In the conference room, Sean was perfectly in control, steering his company in accordance with the vision that had driven him from the day he and Mike hacked into a Syntek server and Sean took command of his destiny.

  He didn’t stutter in that conference room. Not ever.

  Avoid hard consonants. No sibilants. Concentrate.

  When he opened his eyes, he asked, “Where will he be?”

  Perfect.

  Visualization was a cheap gimmick—one of the first he’d learned in speech therapy—but it worked.

  “Judah?” Ginny asked.

  Sean nodded.

  “He’s staying at the 21c Museum Hotel downtown.”

  After a beat, Sean said, “Us, too.”

  She frowned and sat back down. “Judah’s manager, Paul, asked me to put you up at the Quality Inn with the rest of his staff. I don’t think he’ll be willing to pay for—”

  “Don’t worry ab-bout that,” Sean said. He fumbled a little on the b, one of his trickier sounds, but it didn’t matter. In his imagination, he could smell the furniture polish the cleaning crew used to make the conference table shine, and his throat was loosening up. Katie was gone. If he took it slow, he could say whatever he wanted.

  He inhaled. Important to breathe. It had been years since he had to do this—ten years?—but it was all coming back.

  “We stay where he stays. Do you have the number for the hotel?”

  She did. She pulled it up on her phone, and he programmed it into his tablet.

  “Now tell me, what do you know about what, ah—”

  His throat seized up. Visualization or no, Sean couldn’t say her name. Anything else, but not her name. That hard c at the beginning had once been his least reliable sound. K-k-k-katie C-c-c-clark. A stutterer’s nightmare.

  He’d work around it. “What do you know about what my partner and I are doing here?”

  Ginny smiled, giving him the same false one she’d used on Katie, and said, “You’re here because Judah wants your help with a personal matter.”

  “Which is?”

  “Personal.”

  “Don’t you know what it is?”

  She crossed her arms, her smile souring. “Judah wouldn’t say.”

  Sean leaned back in the booth. If she didn’t know why they’d been hired, it wasn’t his business to tell her. Caleb had presented Katie and Sean with a confidentiality agreement they’d had to sign before they left town. They weren’t supposed to discuss the details of the case with anyone unless Pra
tt okayed it.

  They had no details to share.

  “What about tomorrow night? Are we still going to Lexington?” They’d been told Pratt would play two shows this weekend, one in each city.

  “As far as I know.”

  “Where are we staying there?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Find out. If we’re not all in the same place, move us to wherever Judah’s going to be. I want rooms on the same floor.”

  “He’ll be in the penthouse.”

  “Then I want rooms nearby.”

  “Fine.” Ginny’s tone had grown peevish. She hadn’t expected him to push her around. Sorry, kid.

  “Why doesn’t he have a poster out front?”

  “He’s not advertising these shows. All the locations are a surprise.”

  “So how do fans find out about them?”

  “Two hours before the show, I’ll send a message to the people who run his fan clubs, plus put a bulletin up on Twitter and on his Facebook page. Word will get around.”

  You had to love the Internet. In the age of social media, a guy as famous as Judah Pratt could put on a concert with two hours’ notice and attract a crowd. “How many people does he expect to draw?”

  “He’ll get capacity.”

  Sean looked around the room. It would hold about four hundred people packed tight. “In two hours?”

  She shrugged. “He has some pretty dedicated fans.”

  One of them was sitting next to him. The thought broke Sean’s concentration, and he had to close his eyes again and force himself to go back to the boardroom. “How long will he play?”

  Ginny shrugged. “Ten minutes? Four hours? As long as he wants.”

  Sean ran his hand over his jawline. “I don’t get it. Why the secrecy? If he wants to do a show, why not just do a show?”

  “He’s got some new songs he wants to test out. This gives him an audience, but a friendly one—small and responsive—and he likes to do some of the songs acoustic. It works better for him than trying new material for the first time on a crappy sound system in some huge amphitheater.”