A Melody for James (Christian Suspense)

by Hallee Bridgeman

  Numb, Melody walked past them and tried to open the door to the apartment. It was locked, and she rattled the handle a few times, then leaned her forehead against the door, wishing it would just open. Jen touched her shoulder to get her to step aside, and with stiff movements, Melody stepped back. James restrained her as Jen did a quick check of the apartment then gave them the all clear to come inside.

  Melody walked into the apartment and went to the corner near the big windows. Leaning her back against the wall, she let herself slide to the floor, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. She started rocking. Hal had been shot, and now two people were dead because she wouldn't marry a man who had another woman in his apartment the day of their wedding.

  James knelt on the ground in front of her. He reached a hand out to stroke her hair, and as soon as he touched her she fell apart. Her sobs felt like they would break her body in half. James shifted her and she willingly went into his arms. He let her cry as long as she wanted, and her whole body shuddered by the time she started to quiet down. "I don't think I can take anymore," she whispered.

  He hugged her tight, not knowing what to say. They weren't the ones calling the shots right now. They'd have to pretty soon, if he had anything to do with it, but for now they just had to wait.

  ¯¯¯¯

  RIKARD Šabalj stood in the crowd outside of the florist shop. He pulled his hat further down his head to shield his face and saw the cop come from her apartment and go to the florist shop.

  He hadn't enjoyed killing them. He'd seen enough innocent death in his life. But, the mother had recognized him. She tried to pretend she hadn't, but he'd seen the look in her eye. The kid took the delivery and he could tell she was going to call the police the second he left. He'd had to take care of things.

  It infuriated him how Melody Mason, superstar, constantly seemed to outsmart him by accident. She was like a bad luck charm. He had to find a way to just make her disappear.

  ¯¯¯¯

  CHAPTER 31

  MELODY woke with a start early on Thursday morning, her pulse pounding, sweat breaking out on her body. She had the same nightmare that haunted her occasionally over the last four years. A pursuer caught up with her, and she relived the night Richard had assaulted her over and over again.

  Her legs shook when she pushed herself out of her bed, and she stumbled on her way to the bathroom. She splashed her face with cold water and stared at her reflection in the mirror. The shadows under her eyes appeared darker every time she looked. Two or three hours of sleep at a stretch since Monday night had started to wear her down.

  They'd watched the video of the hall outside her dressing room four times since Monday, and still hadn't been able to tell if one of the men going into her room was Richard. She felt jumpy, exhausted, and frustrated. This needed to end soon, or else she would have to find a deserted island and hide for the rest of her life.

  She went to the living room, and turned a lamp on low. It was four, and she knew James would be up in an hour. On Thursday's he rose early to work out in the gym.

  "You should call a doctor, see about getting some sleeping pills," James said.

  Melody jumped and turned around. He stood in the entrance of the hallway, wearing a pair of sweat pants low on his hips. He had put off his trip to Tokyo. She knew why, and a little guilt nudged its way into all of her other feelings.

  "You need to quit sneaking up on me until this is over with," she said. She stormed to the kitchen and pushed the button on the coffee maker.

  James grabbed his briefcase off the table by the door, then followed her into the kitchen.

  "Want to work out with me this morning?" he asked. "The physical exertion might help."

  She shook her head. "I have to go workout with Clarissa this morning in Jacksonville. I need to conserve my energy until then."

  "I wrote an app for our phones," he said.

  Feeling like she was trapped in a foggy room, Melody shook her head to clear it. "You did what?"

  "Our phones are different models, different suppliers, different carriers. I wasn't happy with the commercially available options so I wrote a custom app to connect us. May I see your phone?"

  She went to the counter in the corner of the kitchen where she had her phone plugged in and charging. She turned it on and entered the pass code then handed it to him. He grabbed his glasses off of the counter and slipped them on, then pressed a series of buttons on her phone. "This will link us. It will link our calendars and give us an encrypted instant messaging system just for the two of us. A little more immediate much more private than text messaging."

  He handed it back to her. "Access your calendar."

  She pulled up her calendar and saw strips of green across the current week. She turned the screen to show him. "What's that?"

  He took it back from her and brought the week up, then leaned close to her so that they could both see the screen. "See? It says, 'James in Tokyo.' We can customize it to be total, like everything I have scheduled for work and private, or we can limit it to just the out of town trips. Any time you enter an event or appointment in your calendar," he said, pressing a series of buttons, "you just choose whether or not you want to share it with me by clicking here." After showing her how, he pulled out his phone and accessed his calendar. "See? There it is. And, with my calendar, it's linked up with my office, so you'd even be able to leave Rebecca notes about events."

  "You wrote this?"

  James shrugged. "Sometimes I like to play with simple code. There are similar apps everywhere, but I wanted something I knew would work with both our phones."

  Simple code, she thought. What would my husband consider challenging and complex? Melody smiled. "Thank you, James."

  He showed her some more features he'd written into the application, then drained his coffee cup and looked at the clock hanging on the wall. "I'm going to go. I'll be back in about an hour. What time are you leaving?"

  "Hal will be here at seven to get me and Jen. Depending on how things go today, I might end up spending the night there," she said.

  "If you do, I'll go ahead and come over tonight. Give Rebecca a call and let her know or update your calendar on your phone." He walked to the bedroom to change. She followed him and watched him get ready.

  He grabbed his gym bag from the floor of the closet and she followed him to the front door. "I'll see you in about an hour. I have my cell phone with me if you need me," he said as he kissed her and left.

  She locked the door. When she turned around, she saw Jen emerging from the office looking like she'd been awake for hours. "Coffee?"

  ¯¯¯¯

  JAMES stepped off the elevator into the lobby and saw Suarez sitting in one of the chairs, reading the morning paper and drinking a cup of coffee. He walked over to him and sat down. "Melody might be spending the night in Jacksonville," he said without preamble. He looked up as Roberts came through the double doors, spotted them, and headed their way. "She doesn't have good mornings on the days of her performances, and I think part of the reason she wants to stay is so that she doesn't have to add traveling to her day."

  "Jen arranged to have five men scattered among her crew. Suarez and I both have plenty of personal days saved up, so we'll be able to travel with you two wherever you end up going. The Captain is being decent about it. I think he's already preparing the speech he'll give the press when we nail this guy," Roberts said.

  James looked at his watch and stood. "You still want to go work out with me, Suarez?"

  He nodded, handed the paper to Roberts, and stood. "Let's go."

  ¯¯¯¯

  "HEY, Morg. I was hoping you'd be up," Melody said, fiddling with her pen. Fresh song sheets sat next to her on the counter, but she had no music in her head today.

  "Yeah, I just got back from my run. Are you okay?"

  "I can't sleep."

  "I'm sorry, honey."

  "I'm sure it's normal. Are you going to be in Jacksonville tomorrow night
?" She went to the bedroom and braced the phone against her ear with her shoulder. She pulled out her suitcase and started going through the clothes she had there.

  "We're not sure yet. It depends on when some meeting that Kurt has gets over with. Are you staying overnight?"

  "Probably. Days of concerts are bad enough without fighting airports, too. I'll let you go. I'll call when I get in on Sunday if I don't see you tomorrow night."

  "Break a leg, or whatever you say to singers. I love you, Melly."

  "I love you, too." Melody hung up the phone and finished packing.

  Her limbs felt heavy and uncooperative, her head hurt, and she wanted nothing more than to bury herself under the covers and cry. But she couldn't. So she snapped the lid to the suitcase closed and stripped on her way to the shower.

  ¯¯¯¯

  MELODY fell asleep on the plane, and slept through the short flight. She woke up with a worse headache than when she fell asleep and felt irritated at the nagging pain. She swallowed some aspirin as the plane landed and drank a cup of coffee as if dying of thirst. Hal gave her a concerned look, but she just patted his hand and said, "I'm just a little stressed, Hal. I'll be okay."

  They went straight to the coliseum rather than heading to the hotel first. The dancers had already arrived and occupied themselves by warming up for the practice session. They would dry run through it first, then they would do it again with the band. Melody went to her dressing room to change, and recognized one of the security guys keeping guard outside her room. "Make sure Jen, Hal, and Lisa have complete access. Everyone else, you can give a hard time," she told him.

  "No problem, Melody."

  "My husband, knowing him as I do, will probably show up sometime this afternoon. He can have complete access, too," she said, opening the door.

  "Got it," the guard said, tipping his chair back.

  She changed into tights and a baggy T-shirt, then tied her hair into a ponytail and went out to get to work. As she passed an alcove just off the stage, a noise caught her attention and she spun her head around. She felt so jumpy. Her eyes almost popped out of her head when she saw Hal and Clarissa exchanging a very passionate kiss. Melody grinned as she slipped past the alcove quietly, then executed a series of cartwheels and flips across the stage floor, practicing a move they planned for her to do on her reentry after one of her changes. She finished amid the applause from the other dancers, and executed a graceful curtsey. Her headache had vanished.

  ¯¯¯¯

  CHAPTER 32

  MELODY lay on her back on the stage, not quite ready to move after the workout she just had, her arm thrown over her eyes to shield them from the lights above her. Someone sat on the ground next to her. She recognized the scent of James' cologne and felt his hand on her calf, and grinned. "Oh Marcus. You should hurry and get out of here before my husband shows up."

  She heard James laugh, then moved her arm and sat up, noticing that none of the other dancers had moved yet, either. Crossing her legs, she spun until she faced him. "Hi."

  He leaned over and kissed her, causing several catcalls and cheers from the crew around them, then sat back. "Hi, yourself."

  "You're a little later than I expected," she observed.

  "I wasn't going to be here until tonight."

  "Yeah, right." Her eyes roamed over him. "You're going to get your pretty suit all dirty on this floor."

  He leaned back on his elbows. "That's a risk I'm willing to take. You didn't look ready to move yet." He reached behind him and slid a bag toward her. "Unbeknownst to any die hard Atlanta fan that I come across in my business, I happen to own a small chunk of the local NFL team. Here's a present for you from them."

  "This is just a day of presents, isn't it?" she said with a grin, ripping open the box she'd pulled out of the bag. She started laughing as she pulled out a jersey signed by the team and a pair of boots in their colors. "You are perfect," she said laughing. Then something occurred to her. "Hey! Is this why you drive a Jaguar?"

  Before he could answer, Clarissa came from behind her and cleared her throat. "You need to do the reentry in boots to make sure you can, then you need to play the new song so we can work out the steps of the waltz," Clarissa said.

  Melody huffed out a breath before she stood up. "You'd think that I would get a little more respect around here, seeing how I'm the star," she grumbled, going to the wings of the stage and grabbing a pair of boots from Lisa. They had fashioned them with a special rubber sole to allow her to turn flips on the stage floor.

  James stood, brushed off his pants, and moved out of the way with the rest of the dancers. He found Jen in the wings.

  "She's not just some pretty girl, is she?" Jen asked rhetorically, nodding toward Melody stretching on the other side of the stage.

  "No. This job is incredibly physical."

  "I never really thought about it."

  The band stopped tuning their instruments, and at Clarissa's signal, played the beginning of a very upbeat song. Out of one side, Melody and three male dancers came out, tumbling and flipping, meeting three women and one more man that came from the other side. They all moved simultaneously, looking like mirror images of the other, and the final flip of the women landed them in the waiting arms of the men, with Melody and her partner in the front at center stage. Melody started singing, then Clarissa gave the signal to stop.

  "That looked great. Let's not do it again. I don't want to risk someone getting hurt this close to show time," Clarissa said and clapped her hands in a perfect metronome rhythm. "Keep the beat. Don't anticipate. Make your timing absolutely perfect."

  Melody went back to James, and someone passing by her handed her a bottle of water. "Where did you learn to do that?" he asked.

  Melody stood up straight, throwing her shoulders back stiff as a board, and said in a smooth southern accent, "All proper young ladies must take gymnastics lessons. Now quit making a scene and go put on the proper outfit." She relaxed and took a swig of the water. "So said my mother every Tuesday and Thursday from right after my fifth birthday until my freshman year in High School." She grabbed a towel from the stack on the table next to them and wiped her face. "Morgan can do it, too. It's not very complicated stuff. It just looks flashy with all of us doing it in perfect sync," she said with a shrug.

  "Melody, nothing that requires a musical beat is complicated to you. It's us mere mortals who have a problem with it," he said, taking the bottle from her and swallowing some water.

  ¯¯¯¯

  JACKSONVILLE loved Melody. Even with the lack of sleep and the stress she'd been under, she was at her best in front of the crowd. The cheers pumped her full of energy and made her feel tireless.

  She sang the song they'd set up with the same enthusiasm of all her songs, and no one who didn't know better would doubt the sincerity behind it. It made her ill to have to mix it in with her other songs, but it had to be done, so she grit her teeth and sang.

  During one of her changes, she called out to Hal, "Did Bobby call?" The end of the sentence came out muffled as she bent down for Lisa to do her hair.

  "He'll be here any time. We'll switch Tears for the duet." Hal answered her, turning when he spotted Bobby Kent walking up behind him.

  "Signal me when he's ready," she said, "and someone find me something to eat." She didn't look back as she ran back onto the stage.

  Hal shook Bobby's hand, and introduced him to James. "It's a pleasure to meet you. Melody bragged a lot about you at lunch the other day."

  Bobby stood about two inches taller than James, but James looked a little less lean, a bit more broad in the chest and shoulders. The two sized each other up the way men do, and quickly and silently decided they would probably get along. James put out his hand. "I've heard a lot about you, too. Nice to finally meet you."

  Lisa came up to Bobby, popped her gum, and pulled him toward a chair to apply stage makeup. He flirted with her, always trying to get her to say something, but she just worked, occasionally having
to stop a smile from forming. "Lisa, you're going to break my heart one of these days," he said when she finished. She just winked at him and popped her gum.

  Melody came backstage for another change, whipped off her boots, and spotted Bobby. "You all set?" she asked, all business as support staff ripped off her clothes and wiped her down with a towel.

  "Yep. All set."

  "Two songs. Enter after you start singing. I want it to be as big a surprise as possible," she said around a mouthful of melon while she pulled on low-riding black spandex pants and her rubber-soled boots. A shirt was held open to her and she put her arms through, then Lisa sealed it from behind. It was long sleeved and stopped at her midriff, fitting her tight. Lisa put the microphone headset on as Melody tipped her head back to swallow some water. She tossed the water bottle she drank from in James' direction and blew him a quick kiss, then ran to her spot, ready for the cue.

  They performed the gymnastics perfectly. James wondered how she still had the energy to do it. She'd already performed for about an hour now. The crowd went nuts when they finished and she began to sing, and James knew why she'd done it so late in the show. She knew the crowd would be tired, too.

  "Pretty fantastic, isn't she?" Bobby said at James' elbow.

  James turned to study Melody's best friend, searching for anything more than genuine admiration in the other man's voice or expression, but finding nothing. He smiled and nodded. "Fantastic is a mild word for it."