TRAPPED UNDER ICE (ROCKING ROMANCE COLLECTION)

by M. J. Schiller

  I thought the poison within me

  Had killed all the love I could give...”

  Chad closed his eyes and took a deep breath before continuing.

  Beth’s eyes were also squeezed shut.

  Pete was scanning the audience frantically.

  “But loving you, Beth, is so simple...”

  Nothing happened. Chad felt no bullet tear through him. Beth heard no shot. Pete saw no flash.

  Chad opened his eyes to find David standing in front of him, playing his bass guitar.

  He stood up, grabbing his microphone and stomping out from behind the protection of David’s body, glaring at him. When the song was over, Chad announced, “We’re going to take a quick break while Keith entertains you on the drums.”

  Keith mumbled, “Why is it they all get to go off stage for a drink, and I always get stuck ‘entertaining?’”

  Chad stamped off stage. Pete and Beth saw him coming and, seeming to recognize his explosive mood, got out of his way.

  As soon as they were all backstage, Chad turned on David ferociously. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Trying to save your life!” he yelled back.

  Chad’s eyes opened wider. It was the first time David had ever raised his voice to him. “You idiot! Don’t you know you could have been killed?”

  “I…know,” he responded evenly. Everybody stood frozen for a minute, staring at the two.

  Chad pushed his hair back from his forehead with both hands, flabbergasted. “It’s my job to take care of you, Davy.” His voice broke.

  “Sorry, man. It was my turn.”

  Chad stared at him for a minute, stunned. Then, the two embraced and thumped each other on the back. “I love you, man.”

  “I love you, too, Chad.”

  When they drew apart, Chad searched for Beth. She ran the few feet to him, and he threw his arms around her, picking her up off the floor. He closed his eyes, holding her tight.

  “You jerk!” Beth choked out under her breath.

  That was when everyone realized Keith was going into the fourth minute of his drum solo. “We’d better get back out there.”

  Beth let Chad go and squeezed David. “Thank you,” she whispered to him.

  Roger tapped her on the shoulder. “Beth, we kind of need him...”

  She laughed and released him, slapping Roger on the tush as he turned to leave. “Yeah, right. Everyone else gets hugs...” Beth, feeling jubilant, ran after him and jumped on his back for a second before sliding back down to the ground. Roger turned to get a proper hug, kissing her on the head before leaving.

  Pete didn’t have the heart to tell her Chad still had an hour on stage, just as much a target as before.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Beth woke up to find the other side of the bed empty. Frantic, she pulled on her robe and left the bedroom. She rushed out to find Chad at his weight bench, which they set up in a little workout area just outside of Keith’s door, pumping iron. She stood and watched him silently.

  He wore jeans and a gray t-shirt that was soaked in sweat. His face was contorted as he extended the barbell overhead, his muscles bulging. His skin glistened, and she could see his face was angry as he dropped the barbell, and then pushed it back up in rapid succession, his breath coming out in loud huffs. A sort of fury seemed to fuel him, and she realized he was much more worried than he let on.

  Cali abruptly came out of her bedroom wearing pajamas and yawning.

  Chad shelved the barbell and sat up on the end of the bench. He greeted Cali with a smile, grabbing a towel to mop his face with. “Hey!”

  She glared at him. “Muscles don’t stop bullets, you know, Chad,” she answered callously, not seeming to realize Beth was there as well.

  “Cali!” she shouted, shocked and angered.

  “I’m so sorry,” Cali stammered contritely. “I just have a raging headache. Maybe going toe-to-toe with Roger in a shot war wasn’t my best idea.”

  Beth still frowned at her as she passed to get some orange juice out of the fridge. But then she thought, I should be more tolerant. This death threat has us all on edge, even Cali. She approached Chad.

  He reached out and grabbed the back of her leg. “Hey, babe.”

  She touched his face, and then kissed him.

  “I know we talked about this all night,” he began earnestly, “but maybe now it’s morning, you’ll see things in a different light.” He glanced down for a minute, and then met her eyes. “I want you to reconsider leaving here and going home.”

  “Chad,” she uttered, exasperated, “we’ve been over this. I’m not leaving. We’re husband and wife now. You’re no longer a one-man show and you’re just going to have to get used to that fact. What threatens you, threatens me.”

  Despite his concern for her, the words she spoke he took to heart. He was no longer the one-man show he had been all of his life, especially when he had to grow up fast and take care of Davy when he was barely a teen. Beth came into his life and filled up that void, and chose to become his wife. Sometimes he still couldn’t believe it.

  Chad stood up and cupped her face in his hands, kissing her. “I need to take a shower. I’m all sweaty.”

  He turned to leave and Beth took the opportunity to grab his rear. Even sweaty, he was a hunk. He smiled at her over his shoulder, removing his shirt as he walked.

  ***

  When it came time for sound check, Cali was still “feeling a bit under the weather.” She stayed in the bus to sleep it off while the others trudged into the stadium. Other than Roger suffering from “one hell of a headache,” the check went well.

  As they were coming back out to the buses, though, Roger was being given a pretty hard time by his friends.

  “The Boss Lady thought Cali and I were a handful, but Cali and Roger are like an atomic explosion. I’m going to have to use the B.L.’s strategy and threaten to separate the two of you if this continues,” Beth teased. Everyone laughed.

  “Chad,” Pete said in a low voice.

  “Beth, why don’t we go back and get my guitar.”

  But she recognized the warning tone in Pete’s voice. Instead of turning back, she took a few steps forward, away from Chad. She stared ahead to the door of the bus, where she saw a note was attached with a knife. Red writing trailed down the page, looking as if it was made in blood.

  “Oh, God, Chad. Cali’s in there.” Beth started running in the direction of the bus, but Chad and Roger lounged, grabbing her to hold her back.

  “You stay here, Beth!” Pete yelled fiercely. “YOU STAY HERE!”

  He and Dante moved forward, hands ready to pull weapons from underneath their jackets. They signaled to a police car parked several yards beyond the buses, and two uniformed policemen scrambled out of their cars, hurrying toward them. When the group reached the bus, they stopped to listen. Hearing a noise inside, they drew their guns. Dante nodded to Pete, and Pete opened the door, stepping in just ahead of the rest. Noises were coming from Chad and Beth’s bedroom. Creeping cautiously in the direction of the front of the bus, the two finally stood on either side of the doorway, the policemen flanking them. Mouthing a countdown, with his hand on the doorknob, Pete got to three and opened the door, springing through it with Dante. Cali, who sat on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a towel, jumped up with a scream, the motion causing her towel to fall to the floor.

  Outside, they all heard the scream coming from the bus. Frozen for a second, Chad and Roger forgot to keep hold of Beth. She rushed forward a few steps, but they reached her and started dragging her backward. “Cali! Cali!” she screamed hysterically.

  All at once, Pete appeared on the outside staircase. “Everything’s okay, folks. Coast is clear.”

  “What about Cali?” Chad called.

  “She’s fine. We just surprised her is all. She’d just stepped out of the shower,” he added, rather sheepishly.

  Beth ran forward to check on her friend. By the time she got up the stairs and in
the door, Cali was coming out of the bedroom with a t-shirt on, zipping up jeans, her hair still wet. She swallowed her friend up in a hug.

  “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “Fine,” Cali replied. “But you can tell your friends here, if they want to check out my goods, they just need to ask first.”

  Everyone laughed, lightening the mood a little bit, until they heard the twang of the knife as Pete pulled it out of the door. Beth scooted back over to Chad, and he put his arm around her as everyone gathered around the table where Pete was examining the note. It said: “You’re going to get what you have coming to you, Chad.” Pete felt the letters, which looked wet and dripping, but they were in fact dry. He brought the note up to his nose and smelled it.

  “I think this is nail polish. Beth?” He handed the page to her and she smelled it.

  “Could be. Here, Cali, you smell it. You’re the fingernail expert.”

  Cali held it up to her nose. “Ready, Set, Red #356, LePlume International.” Everybody stared at her. “What? I was just trying to do my television crime scene investigator imitation. Yeah, I’d say it’s a safe bet it’s probably fingernail polish.”

  “Chad, do the words give you a clue? Has anyone ever said that to you before?”

  He shook his head. “Only in jest. I haven’t a clue.”

  Pete turned back to Cali. “And Cali, you didn’t hear anything?”

  “No. I wasn’t feeling the greatest”—she slid an accusatory glance at Roger—“so I slept for…about twenty minutes or so, I guess. Then, I got up to take a shower. And then you know what happened next,” she added pointedly.

  Dante coughed in an effort to cover a chuckle. Pete’s face turned red. “Yeah. Again, I’m sorry about that.”

  Cali snorted, as if not believing him.

  “Don’t you think all of us should stay in a hotel tonight?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that, Roger, and I think we’re better off staying here. A hotel would be difficult to secure with all the people in and out—”

  “But whoever it is that is after Chad wouldn’t know where we were.”

  “True. But let’s face it, they obviously got around our security measures here. We’re not dealing with any dodo.” He paused to let this sink in. “If you all are here, we can limit access to you fairly easily. However, I would like to have Dante and I take turns sleeping on the couch and standing guard, if no one objects.” Everyone looked at Cali.

  “What? As long as you can resist the urge to climb into bed with me, I don’t have a problem with it.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Pete retorted wryly.

  ***

  Everybody turned in early, exhausted by the drama of the past few days. Sometime after midnight, Chad woke up. Beth was moaning in her sleep.

  In her dreams, Beth received a phone call. It was a strange dream, voices shifting from clear to terribly distorted, and faces coming in and out of focus.

  “Mrs. Evans?”

  “Yes.” The bottom of her stomach dropped out.

  “This is Aurora Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We regret to inform you, your husband, Chad Evans, was shot and killed this evening. We did all that we could.” The voice was mocking.

  “Beth,” Chad was shaking her.

  She was breathing hard. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay. Was it a bad dream?” He pulled her closer.

  “Yeah. But everything is okay now.” His arms around her felt so reassuring.

  “We’ll catch whoever is doing this to us.”

  “I know.”

  “I love you.”

  “I know.” Beth drifted off into a more peaceful slumber.

  Having been awakened, Chad had a hard time falling back asleep. After tossing and turning for awhile, he decided to get up. He crept out into the living room.

  Pete’s voice arrested him from the darkness. “Chad, what the hell are you doing?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. I thought I’d go into the building and get my guitar.”

  “What part of ‘stay with the herd’ don’t you understand?” Even in the darkness Pete could see the stubborn set of his chin, silhouetted, as it was, by the parking lot’s lights pouring in through the windows. The older man sat up and buckled up his pants. “I couldn’t sleep anyway. I’ll go with you.” Maybe getting Chad on his own, he’d be able to talk some sense into him about being more cautious and less headstrong, and then ask him why he had the asinine idea to sing that damn song.

  The two men left the bus, passing Dante outside and letting him know they’d be back in a little bit.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Beth woke up with a start after another nightmare. She reached for Chad and found his spot empty. A strong fear gripped her. She could see the light was off in the bathroom, and no light was coming in under the door to the living room either. She flew out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans. She grabbed a sweat jacket and tried to zip it over her camisole as she moved toward the door. To her surprise, the couch Pete had been occupying was empty, and a quick glance out the door showed no signs of Dante either. What could have happened? Where was everybody? She decided to wake Cali so her friend could go with her to investigate.

  “Cal?” she whispered after entering her bedroom. She could see a lump in the bed in the dark. She moved to sit on the edge of the bed, again calling out Cali’s name. She reached over to switch the bedside lamp on. When she turned back, she screamed in terror and jumped out of the bed, stumbling back several feet. One flailing arm became wrapped up in the cord from the window shade. Lying next to her in the bed wasn’t Cali; it was Roger’s lifeless bodyguard.

  Dante’s eyes were open wide in shock, and blood saturated the sheets and mattress. Beth sat staring—her trembling hand over her mouth—as if she looked long enough, the scene would somehow change. Unable to tear her eyes away from the terrifying image before her, she staggered toward the door a few steps, then finally, turned and ran. She knocked hard into a chair bolted to the floor, sending pain shooting up her thigh and hip, but continued to charge toward the door of the bus.

  Once outside, she ran straight to Roger’s bus and pounded on the door, calling his name and Chad’s. Lights came on immediately inside, and within seconds Roger opened the door. He stood inside with a pair of jeans on and no shirt.

  “Beth, what’s—”

  “Is Chad here?” she panted, her eyes wild.

  “Chad?”

  “They’re gone. Oh, Roger”—Beth was crying now—“someone killed Dante.” She swayed and reached for the stair’s railing to steady herself.

  Roger, afraid she was going to topple down the stairs or pass out, grabbed her by the waist to support her. She clung to him, still trying to make sense of everything. “Beth, tell me exactly what happened.”

  She took a deep breath and tried to sort through the rapid fire images in her head. “I woke up. Chad was gone and so was Pete.” She started crying again. “I-I was going to get Cali, but it wasn’t Cali.” She peered up at him, unable to communicate the horror she had witnessed. Roger gazed into her deep green, horrified eyes and tried to comprehend her garbled statements. She glanced toward the other bus. “Dante…there was so much blood!”

  All of a sudden, they heard the sound of pounding feet. Roger, unsure of who was approaching, shifted so he was standing in front of Beth to protect her. Around the far side of Chad’s bus, two police officers raced into view. “What’s going on?” they yelled, recognizing Roger in the parking lot’s lights.

  “I’m not sure. I think someone may be hurt on that bus. Do you know where the others are?”

  By this time, Keith and David stood just inside the door to the bus, looking on with confused expressions.

  “Mr. Evans and Mr. Harris went into the stadium together. Shortly after that, the outside guard went inside the bus, and a woman came out, following the first two men into the stadium.”

  Beth was trying to scramble p
ast Roger. “Chad’s in there,” she mumbled more to herself than to him.

  He spun around and gripped her by the shoulders, bending down to look in her eyes. “You can’t go in there.” Still watching Beth, he called back over his shoulder. “We need to go into the stadium and make sure everyone is safe.”

  “I’m afraid we can’t do that until backup arrives. We called for another squad car. They should be arriving soon. We’ll need to get some more information. Who’s in charge here?”

  Roger nodded at David, who slipped out of the door and put his arm around Beth while Roger stepped down to speak with the police officers. One of the men was taking notes while the other one questioned him. After Beth reassured David that she was okay, the two ventured down the steps to stand behind him.

  Beth’s eyes kept sliding to the stadium door. There was a killer lose, Chad was behind those doors, and all these men were going to do was take notes. When she was certain David was distracted by the conversation, she inched away.

  Roger relayed as much as he understood from Beth to the officers, then he turned around so she could confirm he pretty much got the gist of it, and found she was no longer by David’s side. He immediately checked the door to the stadium and saw a glimpse of her before she disappeared behind it. David followed his gaze.

  “Shit!” they said in unison.

  ***

  Chad and Pete retrieved the singer’s guitar and were heading back to the buses. Chad tried to listen patiently to Pete’s lecture about personal safety, but he was going to be glad to just sit outside with Dante and play some guitar. It was what he tended to do whenever he couldn’t sleep.

  “Hey, man, can I stop really fast before we go outside?” Chad said indicating a bathroom. “I had a lot of beer. You can stand outside and guard the door, and I’ll be right out.”

  “Okay. But make it quick.”

  The door had no more closed behind Chad when Pete thought he heard a sound from the dressing room a couple of doors down. Cautiously, he crept forward, thinking it was probably a mouse or some other small animal, but you could never be too sure. When he got to the door, he saw it was open a crack. He pulled his gun and gave the door a push, letting it swing open of its own accord. Seeing nothing out of place, he entered the room.