by Bargo, Holly
Then her gaze caught the flicker of flames and black boil of roiling smoke and she gasped, “Oh, no. Sonia!”
Candace raced forward. “She must be in there! We’ve got to rescue her!”
Two security guards grabbed her and struggled to hold her back. One of the roadies ran toward the bus and, taking a deep breath, jumped inside. The heat blasted him. Thick, black smoke blinded him. He dropped to the floor and crawled. His hand landed in something wet. Shaking with dread, he lifted his hand to taste the wetness and gagged at the coppery taste.
Gasping and coughing, he reached blindly about until his searching hand landed on something soft and yielding. He clasped it and began to crawl backward, dragging the limp, heavy burden.
Another security guard plunged into the worsening conflagration and quickly found the suffering roadie.
“Get out!” the guard shouted.
The roadie grabbed the man’s fist and pulled it toward the body he’d been laboriously dragging. The guard’s eyebrows rose and he understood that he had to help pull the victim from the fire.
Sirens filled the air, clashed with the roar of the fire. Candace dropped to her knees, not caring of the damage the pavement did to them. Fire crews were near, but they hadn’t arrived yet. The guard and the roadie tugged and dragged, coughed and spat. When one man’s legs protruded from the doorway, more people rushed forward to grab on to the two brave men who had leaped into the burning bus. Hands clutched and pulled at the men.
“She’s in there,” the security guard gasped because the roadie could not speak.
“Get away from the vehicle!” came the order over a bullhorn. “Repeat: Get away from the vehicle!”
Someone ran over to the firetruck to inform the professionals that there was someone still trapped in the bus. Two firefighters ran forward and emergency medical technicians went after the security guard and roadie who had attempted to rescue whoever remained in the bus.
Boom!
A ball of fire rolled out of the bus. The firefighters who had entered the vehicle threw themselves down, one landing protectively on top of an unconscious body. The front windshield exploded. People scattered in desperate fear. It knocked down the firefighters, who picked themselves back up and hurtled toward the bus. Long seconds later, they carried out two victims—one of them a firefighter—to a second ambulance that had just pulled in.
“Does anyone know who she is?” one of the firefighters asked.
A roadie approached and said, eyes welling with tears, “That’s Sonia, Mick’s wife.”
“Where’s this Mick?”
“He’s onstage. He’s the lead guitarist for Iron Falcon. It’s their concert going on right now.”
The firefighter blinked and said, “EMTs will take her to the hospital now. He’ll want to be there.”
From somewhere deep within, Candace found the strength to rise to her feet and approach.
“I’ll ride with her.”
“Who are you, ma’am?”
“I’m Candace Gordon, the tour manager for Iron Falcon.”
“Unless you’re family, ma’am, you cannot come along.”
She pleaded and begged, but emergency personnel remained obdurate in their refusal. She ran as best she could to back to the concert hall, racing through the building to the announcer’s booth.
“Stop the concert!” she shouted and pounded on the locked door.
Within the soundproofed booth, the announcer frowned at the pounding on the door and opened it.
“What in the hell is your problem?” he demanded, voice hissing.
“Stop the concert,” she urged.
“Absolutely not. We can’t do that.”
“Iron Falcon’s tour bus is on fire. Mick’s wife was in that bus. She’s on her way to the hospital. I don’t even know if she’s alive!” The last words ended in a wail of grief.
The announcer’s jaw dropped and he sucked in air for a few seconds. Then, shaking, he returned to his chair and sat down heavily. At the flip of a switch the red light below the booth flashed. He took a deep breath and said into the speakers: “My apologies to everyone. We have an emergency.”
With a crash of sound, the music stopped and the audience grew quiet.
“The Iron Falcon tour bus is on fire. Emergency personnel are present. There was one person on the bus.”
“Sonia,” Mick gasped, the name reverberating from the microphone through the concert hall. His guitar fell from suddenly numb hands. The neck snapped when the instrument hit the stage floor. He tore off the microphone headset and raced offstage. The rest of the band followed within seconds.
Indoor security were commandeered to take them to the hospital.
Up in the announcer’s booth, tears trickled down Candace’s face as she whispered a thank-you to the announcer.
Hospital personnel were not prepared for five large, sweaty men who looked like hell on wheels to burst into the emergency room.
“Where’s my wife?” one of those men, his bare arms bulging beneath brightly tattooed skin.
“Sir? Who are you, sir?”
“Mick Hendriksen. My wife, Sonia. Where. Is. She?”
The nurse in charge researched recent arrivals and said, “A Sonia Hendriksen was transported into operating room number three.”
“And where is that?” Mick demanded.
“Sir, you cannot go in there.”
“I need to be with my wife. Now find someone who can take me there or I’ll tear through this whole fucking hospital until I find her.”
The nurse pressed the silent alarm button underneath the desk. Armed security rushed to the call and quickly surmised that the five tattooed, dangerous looking men were the problem.
“Gentlemen, please leave the facility.”
Mick looked at the man who ordered him to depart. Eyes wild, he said, “My wife’s here. I need to go to her.”
The guard looked at the nurse who nodded and confirmed, “His wife was admitted about twenty minutes ago. She’s in OR-3. Two more individuals arrived with her. Both are being treated for second degree burns and smoke inhalation.”
The guard looked back at the younger man whose desperation was clearly written on his face. “If your wife’s in the operating room, you can’t go in there. You’ll have to wait out here. If you can’t wait patiently without creating a disturbance, then you’ll have to leave.”
A big hand clasped over Mick’s shoulder.
“Come on, Mick, let’s go sit down,” Davis said. “There’s nothing we can do but wait. Let the docs do their thing.”
As one, four men escorted the fifth and they found a place to sit. And then the paparazzi arrived. Jack lunged at the nearest photographer, shouting imprecations about the invasion of privacy. He took a wild swing that connected with the man, who punched back. A brawl erupted, with the paparazzi getting the worst of it before law enforcement arrived and started cuffing people.
Into that mess, Candace arrived. Angelo caught her eye and shouted, “Call Jay!”
She nodded and pulled out her phone. “Jay, we need a lawyer. Pronto.”
The call went to voicemail.
The five men of Iron Falcon spent the night in jail with a dozen so-called journalists who complained bitterly about confiscation of their cameras and violation of their First Amendment rights.
Candace stayed behind in the waiting room. She was there when a weary looking doctor came out and asked for the family of Sonia Hendriksen. She stood up and said, “That’s me. Is she alive?”
“So far,” the doctor said. “The burns actually aren’t too severe, but she’s badly concussed and she lost a lot of blood. If she makes it the next one or two days, she should pull through just fine. These next forty-eight hours are critical.” He looked at her, taking in the rumpled clothes, the scabbed knees. “Is there someone who could sit with her?”
“I can do that,” Candace said.
“You might want to go home for a shower and change of clothing,�
� the doctor suggested.
She looked down at herself and grimaced. With a soft expulsion of breath in a nearly soundless laugh utterly devoid of humor, she said, “I’m afraid everything went up in flames. I have nothing else.”
“Miss, you’re in no shape to stand vigil beside your friend. You need a good meal and some rest.”
She sighed and knew that neither would be in her near future. “How are the other two? The two men who pulled her out of the bus?”
The doctor glanced at the nurse in charge, who checked hospital records. The answer: “One, a Mr. Ramirez, was treated and released. The other, a Mr. Jamison, was admitted. I can’t tell you anything more.”
“Thank you,” Candace said.
Her phone rang. She politely excused herself and answered it.
“Candace, what in the hell’s going on?” Jay’s voice blasted her ear.
“Someone attacked Sonia. The bus caught fire. Sonia’s in the hospital. And Mick’s in jail.”
“What?”
“Jay, I’m on my last nerve. We need a good lawyer right away. The bus and everything in it is a total loss. Sonia almost died … and—” Candace sniffled “—she might still die.”
“Okay, okay,” Jay said as soothingly as he could. “I’ll catch the first flight out and be there as soon as I can. You get a ride to a hotel and text me your location.”
“C-can you go to my apartment and pack some clothes for me?”
“Yes, I’ll do that. You hang in there and I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
The nurse in charge took pity upon the young woman and handed her a business card for the local taxi service. She briefly recommended a nearby hotel. Candace thanked her and made the call as the phone’s battery quickly died. Ten minutes later the taxi pulled up and Candace was on her way to spend the night in a lonely hotel room.
Chapter 17
Jay arrived at the county jail early the next afternoon after a late morning meeting with Candace. He was accompanied by a high-powered lawyer who quickly obtained the band’s release from jail. Jay paid bail. He was tired and angry.
“Jet did it,” Jack muttered. “The crazy bitch is responsible for this mess.”
“You have no evidence,” the lawyer said.
“Doesn’t mean she didn’t do it,” Jack stubbornly insisted.
Jay escorted the band to a local discount department store where he bought them each a change of clothing. Then he took them to a motel and rented rooms where they could shower and change. Meals came next. Mick could hardly eat.
They traveled to the hospital, where Mick obtained his wife’s location and raced to the intensive care unit. The men stood in the hall, looked through the glass at the gauze wrapped form from which tubes and cords sprouted, and prayed.
“Are you her family?” a nurse quietly asked.
“I’m her husband,” Mick said.
The nurse, a pretty, young woman, recognized the ICU’s visitor and visibly refrained from asking him for an autograph. It just wasn’t appropriate, considering.
“She resting comfortably,” the nurse said. “She’s on a morphine drip for pain. The IV keeps her hydrated. Considering what new reports tell of the bus, she’s not badly burned. Most of the burns are second degree burns. They’re unsightly now, but she won’t scar too badly.”
“Can I go in to see her?”
“If you sit quietly. Her left hand is mostly untouched, so you may hold her hand if you like.”
Mick nodded and followed the nurse into the dim quiet room. Beeps and buzzes and the various noises of machinery and computers permeated the weak hope in that room. He sat in a chair beside the bed and picked up her left hand. The wedding ring was still there, blackened and filthy.
“I’m here, baby,” he said softly. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner, but I’m here now and I won’t leave you. You won’t be left alone. I love you, Sonia. I love you so much.”
Tears trickled down his stubbled cheeks and he bent his head to the narrow mattress and wept. He looked up and noticed bright red bleeding through the blanket and shouted for help.
A nurse came running, took one look at the spreading spot of blood and hit the emergency button. Seconds later a team of doctors and nurses surrounded the bed, snapping orders and reporting vital signs.
“What’s going on? Tell me!” Mick demanded, but they ignored him. Two orderlies wheeled in a gurney and Sonia was transferred to it on the count of three. They raced down corridors to an operating room which Mick was barred from entering. Not wanting to land in jail again, he hovered outside the doors and watched through the narrow windows as doctors worked on his wife.
Finally, finally, one of the doctors emerged.
“What is it? What’s wrong with my wife?”
The doctor leveled tired brown eyes at him and said tonelessly, “She miscarried and hemorrhaged.”
“I didn’t know she was pregnant,” Mick whispered, his heart clenching with loss.
“About ten weeks.”
Mick counted back and dropped his face into his hands. She’d conceived on their wedding night. “But she had her periods,” he muttered.
“Was she on the Pill?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not all that uncommon for that to happen in the first trimester, especially if the woman is still taking contraceptives and doesn’t realize she’s pregnant.”
“The baby?”
“We don’t know whether it was male or female,” the doctor said and patted his shoulder. “I’m truly sorry for your loss. But your wife’s alive and you still have the opportunity to have children.”
Mick nodded and followed the gurney back to ICU.
“How is she?” Jay asked when he arrived at the hospital. Candace and an Armani-dressed lawyer followed in his wake. Kris, Jack, Davis, and Angelo sat in uncomfortable plastic and steel chairs outside the ICU.
Kris shook his head. “The docs won’t tell us anything. Mick won’t leave her side. He told us that she miscarried. We didn’t even know she was pregnant.”
“Has the press been a problem?”
“Hospital security won’t allow them on this floor, thank God.”
Jay nodded. “I’ll hire extra security and clear it with hospital administration. You guys will have to find a place to stay, some better clothing. Candace will help you with that.” He gestured toward the lawyer. “This is Jude Q. Ellesworth. He’ll help ensure that whoever did this will spend a long, long time in jail.”
The lawyer, who looked like the human version of a Doberman pinscher, acknowledged the introduction with a curt nod.
Jay continued: “This won’t be cheap, boys.”
“I don’t care,” Kris snarled. “I want to nail that bitch to the wall for hurting Sonia and setting fire to our bus.”
He glanced through the plate glass windows beyond which an exhausted and distressed Mick sat beside his wife, holding her hand, lips moving as he spoke softly to her.
The lawyer nodded his understanding. “I’m sorry to meet you under these unfortunate circumstances, but rest assured that I’ll get justice for you and Mrs. Hendriksen.”
“This guy’s good?” Jack whispered to their agent.
Sotto voce, Jay replied, “If you have to swim with sharks, then you want the biggest, baddest shark on your side. That’s him.”
“Good.”
“You guys just do as he tells you and don’t fuck up.”
Jack nodded.
Days passed with unbearable slowness. Mick refused to resume the tour and the band was forced to cancel several weeks of concert dates. The press mobbed band members whenever they ventured from the hospital. Cards, gift baskets, stuffed animals and mail inundated the hospital as tabloid reporters spread rumors of miraculous recovery, tragic death, bitter divorce, and group separation. Arson investigators picked through the wreckage of the tour bus and officially determined found no trace of an accelerant or other specific flammable used to ignite the fire. Police and p
rivate investigators searched for clues to whatever had caused the blunt force trauma to Sonia’s skull.
Law enforcement tracked down Hillary Ann Calder, otherwise known as Jet of Jet Fueled, and questioned her. But questioning a woman who was constantly high on illegal substances proved a repeated exercise in futility. The Jet Fueled band members endured interrogation, but were cleared of any wrongdoing connected to the assault. They suspected that Jet had something to do with the whole debacle and weary of her aggressive and unpredictable behavior, abandoned her. Two returned home to respectable haircuts, khaki pants, and golf shirts to work in their families’ businesses. One, envisioning himself to be the next Darius Rucker, decided to jump genres to country music and found a band willing to take him on. The fourth decided to get his G.E.D. and apply for college admission.
Of them, three never touched their instruments again in a professional capacity.
Deep within the safety of oblivion, Sonia shied away from the noise and pain of living. But a deep, strong voice sang softly and beckoned her up, up, up from the depths of a coma. The voice was beautiful. Sometimes it was joined by other voices in rich harmony. Sometimes another voice sang to her, deep and velvety, or light and smooth. The names attached to those voices tickled her memory, but she shunned those memories because they pulled her away from the comforting cocoon of dark painlessness.
As Sonia’s body healed, she spent more time in the twilight of consciousness where pain hovered just beyond the hazy edges of lucid thought. The beautiful voices called to her. The touch of gentle hands upon her hand formed a warm connection that her waking mind could not ignore.
She emerged from safe oblivion with a low groan as pain suffused her awareness.
“Hurts,” she rasped, the word escaping a parched throat, dry mouth, and chapped lips. Her eyelids fluttered open, eyes squinting against the ICU’s dim light. She wanted to flinch away from the exclamations of surprise and joy that erupted around her.
Blurry figures surrounded her. One of them shined a bright beam of light into each eye, making them blink and water.
“Water,” she croaked.