by Dee J. Adams
“Casey, it’s Miles. How are you?”
She swallowed her popcorn and had tons of answers to that question. None of which were appropriate to say. The woman on TV covered her face when she saw her beautiful new home and Casey used the remote and lowered the volume. “Getting used to the real world again. How about you?”
“Funny you should say that about the real world,” he said. “You won’t believe what I’m about to tell you.”
It couldn’t get much worse than losing the show. She looked around her filthy apartment and pretty much figured this was as rock bottom as it got considering she didn’t drink or do drugs. “Okay…”
“Due to unforeseen circumstances, you have just been crowned the new winner of Write Your Ticket.”
Funny how her brain thought he said she’d won the show. Even her pulse revved faster. “I’m sorry. The line broke up and I didn’t hear you.”
“Brendan’s out. You’re in.” Casey’s brain froze as Miles rambled. It took a second to hear his words. “…to make the announcement as soon as we get our ducks in a row. It’s going to mean you’ll be on the road doing most of the shows Brendan did last week, plus a few that he didn’t. There’s going to be a hell of a shitstorm so the first thing you need to do is come in so we can get our stories straight.”
Her mouth went stone dry. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! You’re talking way too fast, Miles.” Almost as fast as her erratic heartbeat. She switched the phone to her other ear. “Why is Brendan out?”
“The little shithead isn’t a bartender. He works in the music industry…as Seger Hughes’s assistant, no less. The media is going to be all over us when they find out, but we don’t have a choice. There’s no way to keep it under wraps and our rules are very clear.”
All those weeks Brendan and Seger had been on the show and nothing had happened. Why now? “How did you find out?” Her pulse beat so fast she thought she might pass out if she stood up. What if Brendan thought she spilled the beans? She hadn’t and her sister and best friend assured her they wouldn’t. Which meant it came from someone else. But who?
“We got an anonymous tip and we checked it out. Good thing we did. I can’t imagine how much worse it would’ve been if the media had found out before we did. This way, we can control the fall out. At least most of it. So… You busy right now? Can you come in and go over the schedule for next week?”
“What?” Cool air hit the whites of Casey’s eyes as she stared ahead blindly.
“Have you listened to anything I’ve said? You’re the new winner. You get the contract and the money.”
The rush of winning landed like a lit match in a pool. It fizzled out instantly. She’d won at Brendan’s expense. She was still second place when it came to talent. How was Brendan right now? He had to be feeling ten times worse, because he’d been handed the prize then stripped of it.
“What did you say to Brendan? Have you told him he’s out yet?”
“Hell yes, I told him. That little prick cost me thousands. Hey, don’t cry any tears for that asshole. He’s going to land on his feet because he’s got Seger Hughes in his corner, not to mention half of the country. Back to you. Can you come down? We’ve got a ton of work to do. We need to set you up with a stylist before we send you out, coordinate schedules, yada, yada.”
She looked down at her comfortable holey jeans and stained T-shirt, then at her filthy apartment. A wash of embarrassment heated her cheeks despite knowing Miles couldn’t see any of it. “Um…I, okay. I guess I can be there in an hour.”
“Great. I’ll leave a drive-on pass at the gate. See you then.” Miles disconnected before she got another word out and her screen faded to black. She glanced around her apartment. A dream. It had to be a dream. She kicked her coffee table and yelped at the instant burn in her big toe.
Nope. Not a dream.
Someone knocked at the door. She wasn’t expecting anyone. Hobbling toward the door, she tossed a discarded sweatshirt and pair of sneakers toward the hallway in an attempt to pick up. She looked through the peephole. Brendan stood in a black and gray baseball jersey and faded jeans, his hands on his lean hips. He looked pissed and put out and her heart shot into her throat. She shut her eyes. No, no, no. Maybe he was a mirage. She opened them again, but he was still there.
“Casey, open up. I know you’re in there.”
How the hell had he found out where she lived?
Dammit. She may have told him they’d see each other after the show, but how was she supposed to look him in the eye after the phone call she just got? She’d left him without a good-bye in Hawaii, avoided him for the past week and now she’d stolen his win from the show, not that she had any control over that. She’d questioned his right to be there from the first day, but his words from breakfast always drifted in her head. I’m the whatever guy. His job had sounded very non-music-like. Obviously just because she didn’t have a problem with it didn’t mean anyone else did. “I’m coming, I’m coming.” God, what was she going to say to him?
She opened the door wide. “Look, I’m really—”
Two shots rang out at the same time Brendan stumbled forward. Blood sprayed her face and something pulled her hair. Casey practically caught him as fear erupted in her chest. A scream lodged in her throat as Brendan’s weight took her down to the floor. It all seemed to happen in slow motion.
His weight shifted off her as he rolled onto his back. More shots dinged the floor and flew over their heads. Glass sprayed from her big windows and Casey kept an arm over her head. One glance told her Brendan was in trouble. His wide eyes stared at the ceiling, his breathing harsh.
“Brendan? Bren?” Shit, shit, shit! Her pulse hammered faster as bullets continued to spray the room. Casey finally took action by kicking the door shut. They still needed to get out of the line of fire. “We have to move,” she yelled. Nothing penetrated his haze. “Brendan! Come on!” She tried to drag him, but he weighed a ton. Finally she grabbed the edge of the entryway carpet and pulled with everything she had. Sweat plastered her T-shirt to her skin as she struggled for each inch. “Help me, Bren! You have to help me!”
Finally, Brendan started using his legs to help propel them back toward the kitchen and away from the bullets. “That’s it! That’s it. This way.” Blood was quickly eating away at the material on his shoulder, but Casey took it one problem at a time. Once on the linoleum, she pulled Brendan’s cell phone from his pocket since hers was still on the coffee table, and punched 911.
Every one of her nerves shook with paralyzing fear as she spoke to the dispatcher. The shooting stopped, but not before all her windows had been busted and her front door looked like Swiss cheese. Blood flowed from Brendan’s shoulder and Casey crawled to the dishwasher and yanked a dishcloth from the handle. On her way back, she noticed drops of blood splattered on her old beige floor, but Brendan hadn’t moved from his spot under the counter separating the kitchen and the den. That could only mean one thing. “Shit!” she hissed when she saw the blood dripping from her hair. “Dammit!” She felt the scrape along her scalp. Couldn’t have been too bad since she didn’t even realize it was there. “We need help, now!” she told the operator. “Cops, ambulance. All of it. ASAP!” She set the cloth on Brendan’s shoulder and applied pressure.
He gritted his teeth and his body went even more rigid. Casey put the phone down, but left the line open. “Bren? Brendan, can you hear me?” Sweat slicked his skin and tears blinded Casey. “Brendan!” She practically screamed his name. “Look at me! It’s Casey! Look at me!” She shook his good shoulder, trying to get his attention. He was so pale, so out of it, which didn’t make sense with the amount of blood he’d lost. Small tremors shook his body with every breath. “Please, Brendan. Please,” she whispered.
Eerie silence settled over the apartment until faint footsteps crunched on broken glass near the front door. Casey covered her mouth, holding back the anguish and fear that bubbled in her chest and threatened to leak out in a terrified wail. She needed to do something
besides sit here like a carnival duck. She grabbed the small dining room table and flipped it, creating a barricade in the doorway, just as a new round of bullets whizzed through the front windows.
Brendan glanced up and blinked. Then his eyes widened. “Case?” He barely got the word out and he looked around the kitchen, then at her. “What’s—”
Casey reached for him as the wood above her head splintered. She shrieked and ducked. The gunman had to be right at the far window to get that angle.
“Move! Move!” Brendan moved into a low crouch and pushed her deeper into the kitchen, oblivious to his injury. “Stay fucking down!” His brutal grip on her arm scared her as much as the bullets. “What happened? What’s happening?”
Casey had no clue other than the obvious. At least Brendan seemed to have gotten past his trance. “He’s at the front door. We need to get out of here! My room’s that way.” She pointed straight across the open living room.
“He’ll pick us off in a second. Stay here!”
Casey grabbed him before he moved. “You can’t go that way either. It’s just as dangerous!”
“I’m going to do what I have to if it means you’re safe.”
Fresh bullets crashed into the apartment and Brendan covered her. Wailing sirens in the distance got louder. More crunching glass and fading footsteps had them listening intently.
“Maybe he left,” Casey said, taking in a ragged breath.
“I’ll check.”
“No!” Casey grabbed him. “Just wait for the police. They’re on the way.”
“I’m not going to wait for some asshole to break the door down and shoot us!” He glanced toward the door and took something out of his boot. “Don’t move. Stay here.”
Frustration and fear tangled in her chest like strangling ivy. She couldn’t let him check it out alone and moved to follow him.
“What the fuck, Casey! Did you not hear me a second ago? Stay the fuck here!”
His tone made her jump. It was enough to be shot at, but it was another thing to be yelled out. “Fine. You want to check it out? Go! Go check it out! Be the fucking man!” She sat in her spot, angry, shaking from head to toe, and still scared as hell. Blood continued to drip from her hair and she reached for a clean dishcloth in the drawer overhead and put it against her scalp. A shock of pain exploded like the bullets a few minutes ago. “Shit!” Dammit, that hurt! She took the cloth away from her head to check the amount of blood.
“Keep pressure on that,” Brendan ordered as he reentered the kitchen. As if he didn’t have his own injury to worry about. No, he had to tell her what to do.
First her parents, then Jeff and now Brendan. When would people quit ordering her around? She put the towel back against her head, pissed that the wound required it.
The shooting had stopped, but who knew if the psycho had left for good.
Brendan crouched next to her, blood seeping down his shirt. “I think he’s gone.”
“You’re bleeding all over the place. Would you just sit down. The police will be here any second.” Thankfully the blaring sirens made an honest woman out of her.
She pressed the cloth he’d abandoned to his shoulder and he winced. “Sorry,” she mumbled. The first of many to be sure. She squashed the urge to ask if it hurt—because of course it did—and searched for something else to say. “So just now…you were kind of zoned out. Was that just shock or something?”
He avoided her gaze as he sat next to her. “Yeah. Shock.”
Bogus. He really was a shitty actor… A shitty liar too. Fine, he didn’t want to come clean and she didn’t plan to press him. Brendan shifted and winced again. He had very little color in his face and despite the tone in his voice, he didn’t look that great. He made it hard to stay mad at him for yelling at her the way he did.
Even though he sounded a lot like Jeff, she refused to compare the two. This was a dangerous situation, and Brendan was clearly beyond stressed. Casey clenched her jaw hard enough to crack a walnut, but said nothing.
A few tense minutes passed before sirens got louder and stopped in front of her building. Cops didn’t have too much trouble finding her apartment. The bullet holes gave them away.
“In here!” Casey called as pounding feet got closer. “We need help.”
The cops went into rescue mode, making sure paramedics and ambulances were on the way. She explained how quickly it happened. A couple of the officers recognized them from the show, but other than that, no one paid any special attention. A few minutes later more sirens blared outside just before two gurneys rolled over the threshold and they were each strapped into one.
“You sure the coast is clear?” Brendan asked.
“We’re canvassing the neighborhood,” one officer said. “We’ve got more units on the way.”
“Take me out first,” Brendan said. “I want to make sure Casey’s safe.”
Just like Jeff. No one was allowed to hurt her, but him. The pain in her head intensified. Casey pressed her fingers on her forehead and tried to think clearly. Be fair. He’s not Jeff. So many things raced in her head and she couldn’t make sense of any of it. She was pissed off at getting shot and having to face Brendan with the show mess between them and angry at the way he spoke to her. Still, the sane part of her brain screamed out loud. I didn’t give you away. She wanted to tell him, positive that was the reason he’d knocked on her door in the first place, but couldn’t say a word with all these people around.
They went to the hospital in two different ambulances. Casey psyched herself up for the inevitable confrontation. It seemed as if the shit between them just kept piling higher and higher and she didn’t know how to clean it up. Or if she wanted to clean it up. At the hospital, they were each whisked into their own treatment room. One of the officers from the scene came in and took her statement. Not that she had much to tell. It didn’t take long and he left soon after.
The nurse—Peter, a thirty-something guy in green scrubs and with a dark goatee—actually had to shave a small chunk of her head to treat the wound. Had the bullet been a fraction more to the right she probably wouldn’t be alive to talk about it. That news sobered her pretty friggin’ fast. So did the mountain of a headache that throbbed behind her eyes. She was pretty damn tired of emergency room visits and white sterile hospital walls.
“How’s Brendan,” she asked as the nurse readied some nasty looking instruments on a small silver table. A needle and a big syringe made her stomach queasy.
“He the one you came in with? Guy with the shoulder injury?” He glanced at her.
“Yeah. Is he okay?”
“I’ll check on him for you as soon as I’m done here. He was alert when I passed by his room. Seems pretty tough.”
He was tough. One of the toughest men she’d ever met. He deserved some slack. “He was bleeding a lot.” What if the bullet had hit an artery or major vein? God, how often had he tried to protect her, tried to keep her safe in the short time she’d known him?
“Yeah, well, bullet wounds tend to bleed. Not surprising. But he’s young and strong. He’ll probably bounce back without too many problems.” He leaned closer, peering at her scalp. “This is going to sting.”
Whatever antiseptic he used on her scalp burned like a lightning strike and Casey gasped and pulled away. “Ouch! Jeez!” She didn’t think her headache could get worse. Wrong.
“Sorry about that. Just need to clean this up. Most of the bleeding has stopped, but it’s still oozing enough. I think the doctor will probably want a stitch or two in this.”
Naturally. Because she couldn’t catch a break. “Really? I need stitches?” She’d finally gotten the stitches removed from her hand a few days ago and now this.
“Just a couple. Small ones. Just think of it as something for you to write a song about.”
Brendan kept an eye on the hallway, hoping to spot Casey in case she got out before him. Despite being totally pissed that she’d left him out in the cold all week, he was all kinds of w
hipped because he hated not knowing her condition…almost as much as he hated blacking out after getting shot.
The white treatment walls closed in on him and he squeezed his eyes shut. The same memory assaulted him. Lying on a cold basement floor with his wrists handcuffed behind his back and his shoulders burning hot from fatigue. He couldn’t move, could barely take a breath without fire eating his chest. Pain consumed him from everywhere. The blood caked along his neck and shoulder itched something fierce while his ear throbbed like a relentless drum in his head.
He wasn’t sure what brought him out of it. Casey’s screaming or the gunshots…maybe both. But his shoulder pain hadn’t mattered once he saw her long hair dripping blood.
The whole thing had been triggered when the bullet had slammed into his shoulder and brought back the same burning agony. Casey probably thought he was nuts. How long had he been frozen like that? Instead of coming to her rescue, he’d folded like a useless puppet.
He also didn’t like the way they’d left things when the police came in and they’d been taken to the hospital. It reminded him of Hawaii. The way her gaze hardened and her jaw tightened. She was pissed. Well, that made two of them.
He still hadn’t talked to her about the show. He didn’t really believe she’d gone to the producers about his job with Seger, but he had to ask. Just because they had some serious bone melting attraction didn’t mean he knew her or what she was capable of. The rational part of him understood this, but the part that had serious feelings for her refused to believe she would’ve outed him at this point.
On top of it all, he really wanted to know who the hell was shooting at him and why? Or was it someone after Casey?
Shit! Of course it was someone after Casey. Whoever had tried to kill her during the show was now intending to finish the job. Had anything been attempted during the week he’d been gone? Was it coincidence that he happened to be there at the same time? Did someone want them both dead?
Just like his brother, Blake, Brendan didn’t believe in coincidence. Thinking his brother’s name actually conjured the man himself and his twin stepped into the room.