TRAPPED UNDER ICE (ROCKING ROMANCE COLLECTION)

by M. J. Schiller

  Cali sat with her back to him on the couch. She turned when he entered. “Pete. Hey.”

  He holstered his weapon. “Cali, what the hell are you doing in here in the middle of the night?”

  “Well, I thought I might have a little more privacy if I took a shower in here.”

  Pete strolled around to the other side of the couch. “Yeah, I’m really sorry about earlier—” His words caught in his throat as he saw what she held in her hand.

  She smiled at him. “I’m sorry, too, Pete,” she said sweetly, and shot him. He fell against the coffee table and slid down to the floor, staring at her with wide eyes.

  ***

  Chad came out of the bathroom. “Okay, I’m read—” He looked around confused, no Pete. He heard a noise from the dressing room. Was Pete just checking in there to make sure everything was safe? Or was something wrong?

  He entered the dressing room. “Hi, Cali. What are you doing up?”

  “Just couldn’t sleep.”

  “You probably shouldn’t be here by yourself. Pete and I will walk you back,” he offered, coming around so she wouldn’t have to stretch her neck to talk to him. “Have you seen Pete?”

  “Yes, actually,” she said just as Chad rounded the couch to see Pete slumped against the table, blood covering the front of his jacket. He was breathing with difficulty, and his eyes were open wide, but he didn’t speak. Cali held a gun in her hand, which she now pointed at Chad. “I’ve been waiting for this for a while, Chad.”

  Cali? Cali was the one who wanted him dead? “Why?” was all he could manage to say.

  “Why not?” she replied, laughing without joy. “Oh, you’re serious. Because, Chad”—her voice turned harsh—“you just wouldn’t listen. When you treated Beth so poorly, as I knew you would, and she came to me upset, I told you then you weren’t good enough for her.” She rose from the couch with lethal grace, keeping the gun trained on him. “She told me what you did to her was just an accident, but we all know it’s not true. Even Pete here, right, Pete?” She kicked the bodyguard as she passed him, moving toward Chad. Pete grunted, following her with his eyes, but he seemed to only be able to concentrate on his breathing.

  “So you want to kill me because you feel I’m not worthy of your friend.”

  “No. I’m going to kill you because I have to keep you from hurting Beth. She was there for me when Tony cheated on me, when I”—her voice broke for a minute—“when I was in the hospital. I’m going to make sure she never goes through that with you. She’s not as strong as I am. It would kill her.”

  “But, I love Beth, too. I would never do anything to hurt her.”

  “Yeah. Like Tony didn’t feed me the same line of bullshit.” Her eyes flashed.

  Chad couldn’t see how he was going to get out of this one. She stood between him and the door. He only knew, the longer he kept her talking, the longer he lived. And he wanted to live. Besides, it could buy some time for someone to come to his aid. Although, would anyone even be up right now?

  “Yeah,” he murmured. “Beth told me about that. He wasn’t there for you when you lost your baby.”

  She seemed to falter for a moment, the gun in her hand wavering slightly, but then she pulled herself together. “That’s right. Because he was too busy screwing my best friend.” The bitterness seemed to ooze from her pores.

  Chad wasn’t the only one to see it. Out in the hall, Beth peeked into the room, hidden by the door. She heard voices as soon as she entered the building. She heard Cali speaking distinctly, but it wasn’t her Cali. The voice was harsh, with an edge to it she had never heard. And now, as she peered in, she saw her friend holding a gun on Chad. She gasped involuntarily.

  Both Cali and Chad turned toward the noise in the hall. “Who’s there?” Cali called out. They both heard someone scurry away. “Dammit!” she screamed. She moved behind Chad, keeping him in her sights. “You go in front of me, Chad. Start walking!” She jabbed the muzzle of the gun into his back and shoved him with her free hand. He stumbled forward, but caught himself. He glanced at Pete again, their eyes locking for a minute, each wondering if they would ever see the other again, before he was pushed beyond the couch.

  ***

  Roger was in the bus, putting a shirt on as he talked to David. A second squad car arrived, and the police searched Chad’s bus, finding Dante’s body. Beth’s story proven true, they decided to wait and call for more backup before heading into a large stadium where a madman could be hiding anywhere.

  “We can’t just sit around and wait while Chad could be in there...” David didn’t want to complete the thought. “And Beth. Someone has to look out for Beth. You guys need to keep the police occupied while I sneak in there.”

  “No way, man. It’s my turn to do the stupid and foolhardy thing,” Roger stated. “You already did that when you stood in front of Chad at the concert.”

  David looked like he wanted to argue the point, but a policeman stuck his head in the door. “We have a few more questions.”

  David and Roger sat staring at each other for a minute. “Okay,” David finally backed down with an air of disgust, “I’ll be right with you.” The officer left the bus. David put his hand on Roger’s shoulder. “Be careful, man.”

  “I intend to.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Chad entered the hall with Cali trailing him. Who had been outside the door? And where did they go?

  Cali threw a glance to her left. Not far away was the door leading out of the stadium. But she didn’t think they went that way. She hadn’t heard a door close, so she pushed Chad to the right. When they came parallel to the men’s bathroom door, she ordered Chad to stop. His guitar was propped against the wall where he had left it.

  “Open that door.”

  He obeyed her and she leaned into the room, listening for the sound of someone breathing. Satisfied no one was hiding in there, she continued down the hallway in the same way, stopping to check on doors here and there, finding most of them locked. In a few minutes time, they covered the distance of the hall and came to the curtained area backstage. Her eyes continually scanned in all directions, but Cali could not find the person she heard in the hall. Coming to a lighting board, she switched on several rows of lights. In an instant, the stage was flooded with brightness.

  “Come on!” She alternately nudged and pushed Chad until she had him center stage. “Get on your knees,” she ordered. He reluctantly did what he was told. He felt the gun pressed against his temple. “All right. No more games!” Cali shouted into the empty stadium, her voice pinging off the metal catwalks holding the lights. “Come out where I can see you, or you can watch me shoot this man.”

  Beth was crouching in front of the stage. She searched around for anything she could use as a weapon. All she saw were amplifiers, wires, and the pyro board.

  “I’m going to start counting,” the voice warned. “One, two—”

  “Okay. Okay.” She rose.

  Chad’s heart sunk when he saw her. What was she doing in here? Their eyes locked and he swallowed. All he could think about was how much he loved her.

  Cali, too, was unhappy to see her. “Beth, I didn’t want you to see this.”

  “Cali, what are you doing?” She studied her friend with a sad expression.

  “I—” She started to move forward, forgetting momentarily about Chad. “Get up,” she instructed him, her voice reclaiming its edge. He got to his feet. When she turned to Beth, her attitude changed again. “I know you don’t understand this right now, Beth, but this is for your own good.”

  “Cali, you’re right, I don’t understand. Chad is the best thing to happen to me in a long time.”

  “You think that now, but he will break your heart. Trust me, Beth.”

  “Cal, he’s not Tony. Can’t you see how happy he’s made me?”

  “Yeah. And the bigger the height, the harder the fall, girlfriend. You’ll thank me for this someday.”

  Beth blinked in disbe
lief. Could Cali really believe she would thank her for killing the man she loved?

  “Cali, please, this doesn’t make sense.”

  “Not now, maybe. But it will someday, I promise.”

  She stood with her mouth open, at a loss for words. She could see there was no way to talk her friend out of her madness, so she would simply have to find a way for them to escape. “Cali, you have always been such a good friend to me,” she stalled for time, focusing on discovering a way out. “You always make me laugh.” Cali smiled at her words. “You’ve been there with me when I cried. I don’t know how I would have gotten through losing Paul without you. I’m pleading with you now, please, please, Cal, let him go.”

  Chad could see Beth clearly from his position in front of Cali. He saw now that her fingers were on the pyro board. She gazed at him intently, and all at once he realized what she wanted him to do.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Beth,” Cali remarked with sadness.

  “Please, Cali, if you’d only listen to me and—NOW!”

  Chad ran and jumped off the stage just as Beth ignited a ten-foot high jet of fire a foot to their right. He grabbed her hand, and they ran as fast as they could up an aisle between sections of seats. Cali was temporarily blinded and almost knocked off her feet by the heat. They heard her scream with rage as they broke through the doors and emerged into a wide hallway.

  He tried to circle back in the direction from which they came, to the left, but within seconds he heard Cali slamming open the metal doors that they had just come through. Without thinking, he ducked into the next door. They found themselves in a dark commercial kitchen, the only light emanating from a bank of glass-fronted refrigerators on the far side of the room. The light played across the stainless steel tables dividing the room. Knowing she was seconds behind them, they hid behind a row of trash cans and tried to still their breathing.

  She burst through the door. Sardonic laughter filled the room. “Now wouldn’t this just be the ironies to end all ironies. Chad Evans shot by the lunch lady in the kitchen.”

  She flipped on a set of light switches to the left of the door. To the couple’s relief, the lights were the fluorescent-type, which took a lengthy time to reach their full illumination. Chad tried to remember if there was a back way out of the kitchen. He had played this auditorium many times before, but all of the stadium kitchens seemed to blend into one another, and his anxiety over their safety didn’t help his recall much either.

  Cali inched farther into the room, checking behind tables as she did so. He decided the only sure way out was the way they came in, so slowly, trying not to make a sound, they duck-walked in the direction of the door they entered through.

  “Chad, you might as well give up. You’re only prolonging the inevitable. So why don’t you save us all the trouble and just come—OUT!” She sprang forward behind the trash cans they had vacated seconds before. Chad took advantage of her distraction and bolted for the door. He heard the metallic ping of a bullet hitting the door as they whizzed back out in the hall.

  With the pursuer on their heels, they had no choice but to cross and enter the concert hall again. Ducking low, they ran behind rows of seats, heading left again, toward the backstage area. This time, they got a bit of distance between themselves and Cali, who took too long to locate them upon entering the inner ring of the stadium. But as he was looking ahead, he realized, with dread, he had made a bad decision. The section of seats they were running along dead-ended before it reached the backstage area. Before them was a short concrete wall, beyond it, a forty-foot drop to the section below. Beth seemed to realize their predicament at the same time. They searched around for another way out.

  “Chad. The catwalk.”

  Spanning the stadium was a huge, black catwalk supporting the numerous stage lights for the concerts. Beth reached it and immediately scrambled up the ladder, and out onto the skinny bridge. He followed behind her, glancing back to see their tormentor gaining on them. They ran, their feet banging on the metal, across the bridge, the stage lights that Cali turned on swinging crazily below them, shooting beams of light in a haphazard fashion. They reached the far end, and started running down a zigzagging staircase just as Cali reached the top of the catwalk on the other side.

  As she ran, Beth heard a zing, and then Chad cried out. She turned to see him slam hard into the far railing, his momentum carrying him over it.

  “Chad!” she screamed in terror. She rushed to the edge and saw him sprawled on a lower landing of the staircase. As she watched, he struggled to pull himself up the railing to a standing position. Beth glanced up to see how close Cali was. She had stopped to take aim at Chad again. In desperation, she seized a microphone cable that was hanging down from the ceiling and tried to swing it at Cali. The cable was too heavy for her to actually hit Cali with at her distance, but the movement caught Cali’s eye and might have been enough to throw her aim off. In any case, Beth saw Chad clear the last flight of steps and safely make it behind the thick curtains along the side of the stage.

  Cali screamed in fury, her rage distorting her features, and took up her pursuit again as Beth continued to spiral down the stairs. When she reached the bottom, she took off in the direction she thought Chad took, but couldn’t find him. She came to a door and entered a hallway she didn’t recognize. She stumbled onward, her legs beginning to tire, her breathing jagged. Somewhere behind her, she heard a door open. Blindly, she entered a wide set of doors on her left.

  The room she entered was dim, but she could see the outlines of a large skating rink in front of her. Before she could make a move, someone grabbed her from behind, clapping a hand over her mouth.

  “Beth, it’s okay. It’s me, Roger,” a familiar voice whispered in her ear.

  He let her go and she whirled around. Beth grabbed him and buried her head in his chest. “Oh, God, Roger. I’ve never been so glad to see someone.”

  “I know, Beth.” He kissed her head. “Where’s Chad?”

  She gazed up at him, fear clouding her eyes. “I don’t know.”

  They heard someone approaching in the hall. Roger pressed Beth back into the shadow provided by the wall just as the door opened. They both immediately recognized the figure in the doorway. Beth threw herself on him. “Chad! Chad!”

  “Beth.” He sighed in relief, but then hastened to add, “Come on. She’s right behind me.”

  The three ran the short distance to the rink, although Beth saw Chad was dragging one of his legs. He opened the door to the ice, and Beth and Roger stepped through. He closed the door behind him, and the three ducked down behind the baseboard circling the rink.

  “The first chance we get, we’ll jump her and get the gun,” Roger whispered.

  Chad shook his head. “I can’t hit her.”

  “Why not?” Roger and Beth asked incredulously.

  “I can’t hit a woman.”

  “Well you sure picked one hell of a time to get all noble on us,” Roger snapped in irritation.

  They hushed their conversation, hearing a noise. They saw a line of light on the ice from the crack between the doors. It grew wider as someone opened the door. Huddled with their backs against the wall, they listened, all three faces tense, exchanging anxious looks as they waited in the semidarkness. Lights clicked on in quick succession all across the room.

  “Next time you want to hide from somebody, Chad, don’t leave a trail of blood.” Cali’s face appeared above them, her gun pointed at him. “Of course,” she said dryly, “there won’t be a next time. Get up. All of you.”

  The trio steadied themselves against the boards as they reluctantly stood up. Cali motioned with the gun for them to come off the ice. They stepped out onto the concrete floor one at a time.

  Beth could not believe this was happening. Could her best friend really be intending to shoot her husband? None of it made sense. It was like being in some surreal dream, and she kept hoping the alarm clock would go off. But images of Dante’s face wi
th his unseeing eyes kept reminding her, this was all too real.

  “Beth, you need to go. You don’t want to see this.” Cali’s voice was paradoxically kind.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Cal!” she shouted, catching everyone off guard. “If you’re going to do this to him, you better be prepared to do it to me, too, ‘cause I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Beth, you should go,” Chad stated, his voice soft and resigned.

  “No!” she screamed in shock.

  Chad looked at Roger. He gulped, but put his hands on Beth’s shoulders.

  “No! No, Roger, no!” She looked at him, her eyes pleading.

  “Beth...” His expression showed how much he dreaded the action he was about to take.

  “No!” Beth started screaming. He grabbed her around the waist and half-dragged, half-lifted her toward the door. “Chad! Don’t do this! Please!” She was crying hysterically and struggling against Roger.

  Cali was staring at Chad, as if she were glad he finally came to his senses, when suddenly, Roger pushed Beth to one side and lunged at the madwoman. He grabbed her arm and brought her wrist crashing down on the top of the boards forming the wall of the rink. She cried out in pain, and the gun fell from her hand, sliding several feet across the ice. Chad immediately began to hobble over to the door of the rink. Cali snarled with rage, and catching Roger by surprise, grabbed his head and slammed it into the top of the boards beside her. With a groan, he slid to the ground.

  She rushed onto the ice, pushing the injured Chad down before he could reach the gun. She put her heel on his leg, trying to determine by the amount of blood on his pant leg just where the bullet entered him. She put her weight down and was gratified when he screamed in agony.