“So what are you doing, just sitting on your arse?” Gwen was louder than she meant to be, earning her a look from one of the guards. Her time was almost up.
“We’ve got extra security staff now, they’re talking to hotel staff and looking for surveillance footage. We’ll find him, Gwen.”
“Shit. I’m out of time.” Gwen dug in her shirt pocket (her only pocket) and found Harrison’s card. “If anything else happens, call my lawyer, Alesha Harrison.” She gave him the number. “She’ll be able to get in touch with me.”
“Try not to worry. We’ll find him, I swear,” Craig said.
“Yeah. Keep me posted.”
Try not to worry. Honestly, had anyone ever said anything more worthless to her? Two possibilities cycled through her head on endless repeat as she walked back to her cell. One, Lucas gave in to his demons and had left the hotel to find a dealer. He was under a strain right now, but Gwen remembered the look on his face when he’d talked about getting clean. What about Christmas, though? He could have. She didn’t want to believe it, but he could have.
Two, the stalker finally saw her chance. Gwen could think of any number of scenarios where Lucas might have left without a struggle. If the woman had had a gun, or if she’d threatened someone else on the crew …
Yeah, Lucas would have left with her under those circumstances.
She was useless, utterly fucking useless. It was like the whole situation was bleeding out under her hands and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it.
Panic glittered at the edges of her vision, wanting to steal her breath and make her heart race.
She noticed her cell mate glaring at her again, so she threw herself onto her bunk and focused all of her energy on remaining completely still, on breathing. One breath. Then another.
It was hot, she was sweating beneath her uniform shirt—no, not her uniform, it was the jumpsuit. The desert heat had always got to her. It had been hot that day. The war was starting to wind down, but they were still active. She’d been sitting outside the mess with Janet drinking tea and hoping for a breeze. Janet was bitching about paperwork.
A pair of Humvees drove by, and one of the men stuck his head out the window. “Oi! Sergeant Tennison!” His red hair and broad Northern accent had always made her smile. “When are you going to let me buy you a pint?” He’d been flirting with her ever since she’d treated him for a sprained wrist earned while pranking his tent mate by moving all the tent mate’s furniture onto an airstrip.
“Soon as we’re somewhere you can buy a pint, MacEwan,” she teased. “I promise.”
He settled his flak helmet securely on his head and pointed at her. “Gonna hold you to that, Sergeant. I’ll look you up.”
“I’ll be in Hampshire, Lieutenant.”
He winked at her as the Humvees rolled out, and she wanted to tell him no, to come back because she knew what happened next.
Then came the explosion. She could smell the burning gas even though she knew she was lying on her bunk in a jail cell. They ran, she and Janet. She’d stopped to grab her kit and her flak jacket.
The Humvees had only made it about two hundred yards from the camp before hitting the IED. The front vehicle took the worst damage; men from the second piled out, weapons drawn, scanning the area for enemy targets.
Janet climbed up to look in the cab of the first vehicle after clearing it with the demolitions expert, and Gwen was right behind her, dropping her kit and flak jacket to climb up.
The driver was dead; the explosion had been on his side of the vehicle. MacEwan was in the passenger side, moaning.
“We have to get him out,” Janet said.
“MacEwan?” Gwen said. “Lieutenant? Hold on, all right? We’re gonna get you out of here.” They pried open the door, and between the two of them were able to ease him down to the ground, well clear of the vehicle.
Gwen pulled away his armor to get to the worst of the bleeding from his neck. That was when the bullets started flying. She crouched over him as the other soldiers started firing back at the armed men hiding behind a ruined building. Her flak jacket. She cursed and tried to reach for it.
One of the gunmen took aim at Janet. Gwen screamed at her and reached for her service pistol instead.
It happened fast. Janet was knocked back by the shot, blood spattering from her belly. Gwen fired a single round in the man’s direction before crawling over to her. She didn’t see if she hit anything or not. She was too slow, she was too fucking slow.
She grabbed the heavy gauze pads from her kit. “Janet? Come on, open your eyes.” Training took over as she peeled back blood-soaked uniform fabric to reach the wound. Part of her mind shut down, the part that was screaming at her now that it was all over. She stripped open packet after packet of the gauze, yelling over her shoulder, “Medic down!”
She rolled Janet over to check for an exit wound. There was none; she focused on slowing the bleeding until they could get an evac. She pressed down with the gauze, drawing a low groan from Janet. “I know,” Gwen said, “I know it hurts. Focus on that, come on. Stay with me.” The words flowed out of her, from too much practice at giving a patient something to cling to.
“You gotta hang on. You still owe me for finding you some real shampoo.” The firefight behind her wasn’t going well. She yelled over her shoulder again, “Did someone call for a bloody evac or not?”
Janet’s eyes fluttered open. “MacEwan—”
“He’s fine,” Gwen said. “The bleeding is slowing down.” Janet’s wasn’t. There wasn’t enough gauze, maybe not in all of Afghanistan. “You had to be a prima donna and get hurt worse, didn’t you?”
“Am not,” Janet croaked.
“Yeah, you argue with me.” Gwen blinked her suddenly stinging eyes. “As long as you can tell me how wrong I am, then you’ll—” Something or someone punched her in the back of the shoulder, stealing away her breath. This was going to hurt, it was going to hurt so much. There was a floating sensation at first, until she looked down and saw the blood pouring from the exit wound in her shoulder.
It wasn’t fair at all, not when she fainted, not when she might’ve been able to keep Janet alive if she’d just fired a little faster. If she’d just put on her damn flak jacket like she was supposed to.
The feeling of salt water dripping into her ears brought her back to the here and now, her first hint that she’d been crying. She hadn’t had an honest to god flashback before, not like that. It had been so real, she was left with the same sick feeling of utter helplessness and failure rolling through her gut. Now she was helpless again, and this time she didn’t even have a handful of gauze.
This time there was nothing she could do but sit and wait.
***
Lucas was dreaming. He was in the passenger seat of an armored Humvee driving through the desert. Gwen sat behind him, and Lee was driving. The road was littered with body parts, human, but bloodless, like one giant doll after another had been dismembered and tossed into the road. Gwen made Lee stop and she went out and gathered each and every piece. “We can make new ones,” she said. “Come help me, Lucas. Don’t worry. The IEDs won’t go off for musicians. It’s in the Geneva Convention.”
The dream slowly faded, and Lucas grew aware of a terrible pain in his throat. That was enough to bring everything back. They’d walked to a nearby parking garage. She’d made him open the back door of her car, then tied his feet and hands before making him lie down in the backseat. He slowly opened his eyes to see a dimly lit but otherwise perfectly ordinary-looking bedroom. He was tied to a heavy iron bedframe with his knees and ankles tied together.
After she’d tied him to the bed, Sally had left him, saying she still had a job to do. He’d shouted for what felt like hours, but there was no response. Finally the exhaustion had been too much, and he’d fallen asleep.
“Oh good, you’re awake. I was beginning to get worried.” Sally was sitting across the room, cross-legged in a battered armchair. “Ho
w are you feeling?”
“My throat hurts a little,” Lucas said. His voice was raspy and rough from shouting.
She stood up and walked over, sitting next to him on the bed. “I’m sorry I had to leave you for so long. Things are going crazy at the hotel. I had to talk to the police. They think you’re out looking to score.” She reached up and brushed his hair back from his face. He resisted the urge to flinch from her touch. He could picture her calmly talking to Craig, Cathy, the police, lying about him. They thought he was out getting high. Worse, they’d tell Gwen he was out getting high. He couldn’t let himself think about her, sitting in a jail cell convinced he’d betrayed her. That feeling got swallowed down, along with the tears threatening to sting his eyes.
“Wait here,” she said—as if he had much of a choice. She left the room, and a moment later Lucas heard the sound of running water.
She came back with a glass of water. “Nothing tricky, I promise. Just water.” She held up the glass for him, and he drank. It was uncomfortably intimate, more so than when she’d touched his hair.
“Thanks.”
A quick look around the room showed almost no furniture other than the bed he was lying on; no personal objects at all. Just an armchair, a small television. No one lived here, not really. Stayed, maybe. But not lived.
Sally sat the glass on the floor and smiled. “So, alone at last.” When Lucas didn’t reply, she pursed her lips in a pout. “I thought you’d be pleased.” She was flirting, he realized.
Play the game. He’d played it before: managers, journalists, fans. Before he did it to get a better contract, to get a good story written about him, to get someone in bed. Now he had to play it like his life depended on it—because it did. He looked, really looked at the woman sitting next to him. The notes said she thought she’d had a mutual connection with Lucas beyond what he felt. Well, he was used to that. This was more … extreme. Her attitude projected confidence, but there was uncertainty in the slight tilt of her head. There. That was a weakness he could possibly use. He smiled, a mirror to hers. He turned toward her as best he could, twisting his shoulders. “I am, I’m just surprised.” Now it made sense, how the stalker knew so many details about the tour, like where they were staying and how to find them.
She laughed, and even though it was a laugh he knew, had heard hundreds of times, he had to fight a shiver. “You liar. All those times you sang to me, and you’re still doing it, right under Gwen’s nose, singing my song for me.”
Sound check, trying to get a rise out of her by playing “Mustang Sally.” “I, um, I knew that song had a lot of meaning for you.”
“You were so alone, Lucas, and so was I.” She trailed a finger up his arm, and he fought back another cringe. She tilted her head and looked up at him, coy. “And then we finally managed that one amazing night. The next day you were in detox, then straight into rehab.” She leaned in to whisper in his ear. “You got clean for me, Lucas. I was so proud of you.”
A chill went through him, and he passed it off as a different sort of shiver.
“I’d been waiting for you for years.”
Lucas swallowed and tried another smile. “I’m a shit. Forgive me?”
The charm worked. She reached up and touched his cheek, and he forced himself to lean against it. “This time,” she said.
Oh Gwen. How am I going to get out of this?
***
“There has to be something you can do,” Gwen said. “Some sort of emergency clause, or … I don’t know.” Gwen couldn’t sit down in the consultation room. Alesha Harrison looked calm and unruffled, seated at the table with her briefcase and paperwork, and Gwen had a sudden irrational urge to fling the papers across the room and mess up Harrison’s expensive suit.
“I’m sorry, Gwen. I can’t imagine how difficult this is for you, but there’s really no way I can get your arraignment moved up.” She folded her hands and leaned forward. “I was able to contact the San Jose police and convince them that this wasn’t an ordinary missing persons case, however. With the documentation you kept of the stalking incidents, they’re treating this as a kidnapping now.”
Gwen stopped pacing and turned to her. “Even though it hasn’t been twenty-four hours?”
Harrison smiled slightly. “I was very persuasive.”
Gwen pulled out the chair and sank into it. “Thank God. Do they know anything yet?”
“Now that they don’t believe he left to find a dealer, they’re finding more information, yes. One of the surveillance cameras caught Lucas leaving the hotel with a woman. The shot of her isn’t clear, but they have a vague description. They’ve talked to everybody else on your staff, but no one else saw anything.” Harrison reached across the table and touched Gwen’s arm. “The police are looking for both of them. They’re watching the airport, the train and bus stations. They’ll find them.”
Gwen chewed her lip. “Jesus. She planned for me not to be there.” She looked at the clock on the wall. Lucas had been missing for nearly fifteen hours. She tried not to think of what could happen to him in fifteen hours. The thought she couldn’t block, though, was the constant sense that she was letting him down. She should be at the very front of people trying to find him, and instead she was stuck here. This woman couldn’t have found a better way to torture her if she’d tried. “There has to be something else,” she said, then sat up. “Has someone contacted Lucas’s family? He has a brother. Call him. He may be able to—I don’t know—pull some strings, provide some extra resources, something.”
Harrison started taking notes. “I imagine they’ve been contacted, but it’s worth a shot. What’s the brother’s name?”
“Leighton Wheeler.” Gwen thought of the Sig Sauer, probably still stowed in one of the equipment cases, and all of the paperwork that had come with it, making it legal for her to carry it. “He’s helped out before. And apparently the whole family is powerful.”
Harrison wrote some things down. “And I’m guessing your sister knows how to contact him?”
Gwen nodded. Why hadn’t she thought of Lee before? He should have been her first thought. God, if she had, Lucas might be home already.
“All right,” Harrison said. “Anything else?”
“Just keep me posted, please,” Gwen said. “I’m going bloody mad in here.”
“We’ll find him,” Harrison said. “And we’ll get you out of here as soon as we can.”
Gwen signaled to the guard that they were finished and let him lead her back to her cell.
***
“The first time we met, do you remember?” Sally asked. She had untied Lucas’s legs and was leading him into a spacious kitchen, gleaming and largely empty.
“It was when you joined the tour, wasn’t it?” he said, wishing he could rub the circulation back into his legs.
“Oh, it was before that,” she said with a small smile. Before Lucas could respond, she tugged him farther into the kitchen and nudged him into one of the four chairs that sat around a cheap Formica table. “Sit down. We’ll chat while I make dinner.”
“You’re going to … cook?” He sat down, angling to keep an eye on her and on the rest of the house. He tried to think how long he’d been here. There were no clocks, but from the light outside it was late afternoon or early evening. Not quite dark yet, but close. Say twenty hours, maybe. With his legs free, could he make a run for it? He had to assume that she still had her gun on her person somewhere, and if he ran …
“Of course.” She opened a shopping bag and drew out brand-new utensils, a frying pan, and a large pot. “Isn’t that romantic enough for you?”
He forced a smile. “It’s great. I don’t think anyone’s done that in ages.”
“You seem distracted. Were you expecting someone?” She gave him a beaming smile. “You don’t have to worry. You’re safe here. There’s no way anyone can get into this house without me knowing. No one is going to take you away from me. But if someone does show up … well.” She hummed thou
ghtfully as she pulled onions and green peppers from the bag. “Let’s just hope they don’t. It would be unpleasant.”
She started chopping vegetables and opening cans. “I tried, Lucas,” she said, her expression shifting to sorrowful. “I wanted to take care of you, but that bitch Sam Tennison wouldn’t let me manage the tour. Oh no. She passed over me in favor of her sister. Her stupid sister who doesn’t know the first thing about the music business.” She slammed her hands on the kitchen counter, making Lucas jump. “That job was mine. I worked for her for two years just so I could be close to you. I put up with all of those uninspired hacks because I knew I could help you. I would have taken such good care of you.” She put down the knife and came over to where Lucas sat, her eyes roaming restlessly over his face. “Bad enough she took my job,” she continued, her voice lowering, “but then you slept with her, like you always do. Honestly, Lucas.” Another quick-change to a rueful smile that went nowhere near her eyes. “What am I going to do with you?”
He swallowed with a click in his throat and softened his expression. “I’m sure you have some ideas.” He pitched his voice low. “Sally, why don’t we just send her home? I don’t want to see her completely destroyed. Let’s give the money back and convince Sam to hire you in her place. She really doesn’t know what she’s doing, you’re right. Has no business being here.” Please let this work.
“And I thought you liked her,” she teased, pulling him to his feet.
“So did she. It made her much easier to work with.” He leaned closer. “As long as you and I each get what we want, let her go. She’s harmless.” Smiling and dismissing Gwen was a twisting knife in his gut.
They were close enough now that Lucas could feel her breath against his skin. “And what do you want, Lucas?”
To wipe that smirk off your face. He still smiled. “I’m sure you can figure it out.”
“Yes, I’m sure I can.” She leaned in and brushed her mouth against his neck, and he resisted the urge to pull away. When she started moving her lips, Lucas fought against shoving her away, made himself sag against her, made himself give a quiet sigh.
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