Beneath the Burn

by Pam Godwin

  She reached the bend in the stairs. Halfway there. What was the question? She’d asked how he was doing it. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Good girl. To demonstrate that you’re not beyond my reach. Your punishments can be delivered anywhere, anytime. Accept my job offer immediately and a certain amount of leniency will be considered.”

  If he could break through their security, something was keeping him from just coming in and taking her. Maybe the band’s spotlight really was protecting her. If Roy kidnapped her again, Nathan and the band could hold a press conference, expose him, demand he open up the penthouse for inspection. Their fame alone could wrap him up in allegations, hurt his business, and sever his business connections. Would Roy chance that?

  Yeah. He could shut down the gossip with a flick of one of his innovative switches.

  “I’m waiting, Charlee, and my patience…well, you understand the limits of my patience. Intimately.”

  The last word slithered over her like cold fingers in the dark. She brushed it off. He was boasting his almighty power and attempting to control her with fear. “Fuck you.”

  Silence. On the phone. In the endless black suffocating her. She inched forward, straining her eyes uselessly and waving a hand in front of her.

  Her fingers bumped a shirt, a solid chest beneath. She screeched.

  “Charlee?”

  The lights flashed on, blinding and confusing, accompanied by the blare of a bazillion alarms.

  Jay stared down at her, the skin around his eyes tight and tinged pink. His arms came around her, and the tension bunching her muscles released in shuddering waves.

  His mouth moved, but she couldn’t hear him over the alarms. She slumped against him and looked down at her phone. No live calls. The call log showed on the screen, and the last call was listed eight hours earlier from Nathan’s phone. No unknown callers. Chasing ghosts.

  The sirens silenced, but the ring lingered in her ears.

  “Are you okay?” His hands moved over her, his gaze searching her face. “I was in the wine cellar. The door locked. I couldn’t get out.”

  Automated door locks. She had a sudden dislike for all things electronic. She handed him her phone, anxious to be rid of it. “Roy called.” Her voice quivered, choked. “He’s hacked your automation system.”

  74

  Five days later, Charlee rested her head against the window, the glass cool against her brow. The activity swarming around the tour buses filled her view from the rear of Vanderschoot’s warehouse loft. The bodyguard had moved the entire household—the band, her, Nathan, Faye, and the ten-man security team—into his two-thousand-square-foot building the night Roy hacked into the estate.

  Locating Roy’s RAT proved unsuccessful, so the home automation system had to be dropped offline. Every piece of software and some hardware would need to be replaced. This included HVAC, lighting, shading, security, intercoms, and all personal devices such as laptops, tablets, iPods, and cell phones. Anything with a Wi-Fi connection to the internal network was at risk of infection.

  Charlee knew she wore her guilt in dark rings around her eyes, but she tried not to let it dampen her mood and that of the others. On a bright note, the days confined in the warehouse with the band and their personnel had brought her further into their fold. They slept on cots, shared a single bathroom, and no one complained. Jay reminded her they would be living in tighter quarters for the next sixteen weeks.

  Nathan and Tony utilized the time surveying tour routes, coordinating watch schedules, and interviewing bodyguards. Once they hit the road, every member of the band would have two personal guards shadowing his every move outside the bus. The interview process was specific and time-consuming, leveraging all of their references to avoid new hires planted by Roy.

  The band spent the days practicing their set list. Charlee inked several tats for Rio and Wil and some of the men on the security team. At night, they played a lot of cards. She hoped the easy camaraderie carried over when they climbed aboard the buses.

  “Never thought I’d say this.” Nathan braced his forearms on the window sill beside her. “I’m ready to board that bus.”

  Apparently after five days in a one-room warehouse, he didn’t share her team spirit.

  Outside, roadies and security staff flurried around two sleeper buses. Four Suburbans parked at angles in the rear lot, shoring the buses and creating a barricade against traffic.

  At the edge of the perimeter, armed guards held back a crowd of onlookers. Through the duration of the tour, the protective team of twenty would stagger their sleep schedules, utilizing bunks on the second bus with the roadies and Faye, and escort the buses with a moving formation of Suburbans.

  What a cavalry they would make. That was the point. Roy wouldn’t risk a physical attack while they were in the blinding spotlight of public attention.

  “So you’re ready to get the show on the road?” She bumped her shoulder into his. “Because sixteen weeks on a bus will be better than five days in a warehouse?”

  He smirked. “There are curtains on the bunks.”

  Ah. He missed his private Tony time. The notion filled her head with images of Jay moving over her in a tiny bunk. A thrill squirmed through her. “Curtains?”

  He smiled, huge and full of teeth, prompting them both into a spontaneous burst of laughter. She jabbed him in the ribs.

  Across the parking lot, Jay leaned against one of the buses, arms crossed, and head nodding as a tall, lean woman jabbered with animated expressions and hand gestures. A breeze caught wisps of her waist-length blond hair, lifting it around her. She blew it out of her face and looked up at Jay, smiling.

  “Who is that?” Wow, she sounded bitchy. Get a grip.

  “Ella Naas. Tour manager.” He tossed Charlee a knowing look. “Better make friends. She’ll be sharing our bus.”

  Yay. Why did she have to be so pretty and smiley?

  Standing a few feet behind Jay, Tony raised a hand, palm out, and gestured with her index finger toward the window at Nathan.

  He straightened. “Ready for this?”

  Charlee nodded and followed him out, snaking around the hustle of crew and security.

  Jay stood at the rear of the bus, his back to her, his attention on Ella. Charlee gnashed her molars together and turned her head away.

  The door folded open, and she climbed stairs into the hushed cabin. No one had boarded yet.

  Nathan relieved the guard posted at the door and took his place. “Your things are already on board, Charlee. Get situated. We’re rolling out in thirty minutes.”

  “‘kay.” She moved to the center of the bus.

  Her breath swept out. Wow. Longer and more spacious than it appeared from the outside, there was so much to look at. Brown leather couches curved around both sides. Dark wood glossed the cabinets and enriched the moldings. Sliding doors covered every cranny. Strips of lighting chased the aisle and roof and reflected off the black marble floor. Stereos, gaming consoles and flat screens mounted four corners.

  It was a monstrous, eight-wheeled symbol of luxury and arrogance. She curled her toes in her Doc Martens to refrain from bouncing with excitement.

  The door swooshed behind her, followed by the steady gait she’d memorized over the past two weeks.

  “Let me show you our bunk.”

  His deep voice caressed her ear and the heat of his body enveloped her. Would he always have that effect on her?

  Hands on her waist, he nudged her down the aisle, past the sitting area. The galley nestled in a corner cabinet on the left. On the right, a bench for four wrapped a fold-out table.

  “Keep going.” His fingers tapped her hip bones.

  The door behind the galley opened to a toilet and a miniature vanity and shower.

  “The band has one rule on the road.”

  She twisted her neck and met his twinkling eyes. Oh, this should be good. “Only one?”

  “We made a second rule that required Laz to wear clot
hes in the front lounge, but it backfired. He wore banana hammocks the entire tour, claiming they were clothes by definition.”

  She turned, pressing her mouth against his chest, and muffled a half-moan, half-laugh. “Do I dare ask what the one rule is?”

  “No shitting on the bus.”

  “What?” Looking up into his face, she was sure hers was an expression of horror.

  He grinned, gorgeous and taunting, his hand clutching the door frame above her.

  “Oh my God. I thought you were serious.”

  “I am.” He was still grinning. “I mean, there’s a grinder to…you know, grind shit, but I promise you don’t want any of those guys taking a dump in here. Small space. No airflow. Dining table and kitchen a foot away. You get the idea. We make regular bathroom stops.”

  It was going to be a long sixteen weeks. She pushed a drape aside and entered a narrow corridor. Yikes. Tight squeeze. A glance behind her confirmed his shoulders fit, but they brushed the wood panels on both sides.

  Eight bunks enclosed her. Four on either side, stacked two high. “Crammed in like—”

  “Rockstars?” He cocked his head, lips twitching, and pointed. “That one’s ours.”

  She rolled into the last bunk on the bottom driver’s side and stretched out. A few inches remained above her head and below her feet, but a tall guy like Jay would have to bend. “How the hell are we going to share this?”

  He crossed his arms. “How the hell would we not?”

  Their bus would sleep the four performers, Tony, Nathan, the tour manager, and her. Eight bunks, eight bodies. There were enough beds, but he didn’t want to sleep without her. Damned if that didn’t make her insides melt into warm squishiness.

  She leaned out of the bunk. The aisle ended with a door. “Who gets the bedroom?”

  “We don’t rent the coaches with a bedroom suite. We’d just fight over it.” He squatted to her level. “There’s a second lounge back there. Gives us another place to hang out or get away so we’re not all stuck up front.” He climbed in the bunk and lay atop her, his thighs, hips, and chest flattening her into the memory foam, his mouth hovering a kiss away. “The spare bunk will be our junk bunk. Trust me, every bus needs one.”

  The weight of him combined with her accelerating heartbeat made her breath ragged and noisy. She wanted to dig her fingers into his tight ass and hold him against her. She gripped the sheets instead.

  His regret over leaving her on his veranda that night had darkened his temperament for days. She wasn’t sure if his brooding was the catalyst, but his trigger had become more sensitive. After several breakdowns in the warehouse from the casual brush of her fingers, she was hesitant to touch him at all.

  “Is this how we’ll sleep then?” She looked up to catch him watching her. “If so, you might have to massage the blood back into my limbs in the morning.”

  His laughter wrapped around her as he shifted them. A few bumps into the wood paneled wall and he had them positioned on their sides with his hips cupping her ass. “How’s this?”

  Heaven. “Pull the curtain and wake me when we get there.”

  His hand slid up her thigh and patted her butt. “I want to show you a couple things before everyone piles in.” He crawled over her and pulled her by her hand into the aisle. Reaching under the frame of the bed, he turned a crank she hadn’t noticed. A couple rotations raised the closest edge of the mattress and angled it toward the cubby’s roof.

  Oh, wow. Extra storage space. Daylight streamed from the compartment below. He gripped the wood frame and hopped in the hole. “I had this modified hatch added so we could access the storage area from inside or outside.” He ducked, closing the exterior door on the concrete landscape beyond.

  “I thought you rented this bus?”

  Standing, he rested his forearms on the top edge of the compartment. “True. After what happened at the estate, I called the bus owner and sold him on the benefits of emergency exits and flashed the almighty green dollar.”

  “Pimp My Ride, rock star style.”

  He grinned.

  Did his need for an escape hatch have anything to do with his burns? “What’s the real reason you need a secret hide away?”

  He reached behind him and removed a handgun from his waistband. “Gun laws for civilians vary by state. Some states require the piece to be separate from the ammo and stored under the bus. I don’t want any trouble with the law, and I don’t want the gun out of reach.” He twisted, bending, and tucked the gun in a pocket on the compartment wall.

  “I had a Bodyguard 380.” Used it to kill a Craig. Bile hit the back of her throat. “But Nathan confiscated it.” The bastard.

  He jumped out. “You know where mine is if you need it, but don’t shoot at the door or windows. I had everything replaced with bulletproof glass.” He rotated the crank, returning the mattress to its seated position. “Sit down. I want to show you one more thing.”

  She lay down on the bunk, and he knelt in the aisle beside her. Lifting a folder from the pocket on the wall at her feet, he opened it on her tummy and raised it so she could see the first page.

  Her eyebrows clenched as she skimmed the headers.

  Oxycontin. Recreational Uses. Side effects. Street names. Pictures.

  She flipped the pages to the next tabbed section. Heroin. Same list of headers. Next tab. Cocaine. Same headers. A numbness settled around her heart, and she wasn’t sure if it was relief or worry.

  He lifted her chin and rubbed his thumb over the skin around her mouth. “I can’t ask you to trust me. I have a long ways to go to earn that back, but I hope having this information will take some of the constant out of constantly wondering. If you know what to look for, I won’t be able to hide any of these…addictions from you.”

  The rawness in his expression tightened her chest. She pinned her lips between her teeth to hold back soothing words she might not mean. She didn’t know if she trusted him to stay clean, which probably meant she didn’t.

  He leaned in and pointed to two stars hand-drawn beside Cocaine. “I double starred my old favorites. A single star denotes I’ve used it at least once. And there’s information on today’s most common street drugs, narcotics I’ve never tried, but could easily acquire.”

  “Do you…are there side effects from coming off drugs?”

  “Some.” He swallowed. “I didn’t cling to any one chemical, so I don’t feel the usual withdrawals. Cocaine bugs was the worst, but I haven’t experienced the crawling feeling this time around.”

  “You did before? When you quit three years ago?”

  “Yeah.”

  She caught his deep brown eyes before he kissed her cheek and sat back on his heels.

  “I’m sorry you have to worry about this on top of everything else.” He stared, unfocused, at a hole on the inner thigh of his jeans, picking at the scraggly edges. Then he seemed to gather strength from his thoughts, rolled his shoulders back, and seized her with a penetrating gaze. “I won’t let you down. For what it’s worth, I’m so fucking happy you’re here with me. You make facing the crowds and the press and the long nights something to look forward to.”

  “I want to be where you are, Jay.” She loved him enough to tackle the reason he turned to drugs in the first place. “I appreciate your openness about the drugs. It helps.” And it did. He wouldn’t intentionally hide it from her. If he slipped again, it would be in an impulsive moment of weakness. Didn’t comfort the throb behind her eyes. She needed more from him. For him.

  “But?”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’re not open with me. I know nothing about your past, how you got your scars, or where you go when your memories surface. If you want me to trust you, open up.”

  His face closed off and his eyes darted away.

  “I’m no doctor, Jay, but it doesn’t take one to know your drugs, isolation, and rejection to touch and intimacy are harmful ways to self-medicate. I won’t give you my trust, or the touch
of my hands, until you talk to me.”

  75

  Dare to be vulnerable with me.

  The beautiful woman blinking up at Jay was anything but vulnerable, yet she’d spoken those words to him the day they’d reunited. She’d put up with his issues for two weeks, never pushing him beyond his limits, never demanding he open his past.

  The message was there now, but her tone was softened with concern and love. She wouldn’t judge him, not even if he cried while he walked her through that year of his life. The challenge would be recalling the things that happened to that six-year-old boy. Those memories were flashbulbs. Could he piece them together and shed light on the dark gaps between?

  “I want your trust, Charlee. And Christ, you haven’t touched me for two days.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “But that’s not why I’m going to tell you what happened. You’re right. I’m self-medicating, and it’s hurting us both.” If he talked about it, maybe it would…what? Cure him? Fuck, he was terrified to confront the issues of his past and who he was.

  The bus wobbled with the clamor of boarding bodies. Voices drifted from beyond the drape that separated the bunks from the front lounge.

  “I’m here when you’re ready.” She propped up on an elbow. “Just don’t take too long.”

  His lips burned to kiss her. She wouldn’t touch him, but that didn’t stop him from cupping her face and sealing his mouth over hers. He buried his tongue past her lips, and she met him thrust for thrust, relaxing beneath his lean as he pushed her into the mattress.

  “Hey, there.” Ella’s southern twang tumbled through the cabin. He broke the kiss and kept his eyes fastened on Charlee. Ella was nice enough, but tour managers, in general, crawled under his skin. “Well, shut my mouth. Sorry for interrupting. I…I thought you said no touching.” Ella tossed a bag on the bunk facing his.

  Charlee’s eyes widened, and he blew out a breath. “Charlee, this is Ella. Our tour manager.” He bent a knee and propped an elbow on it. “Ella, this is my girlfriend, Charlee. The only person that can touch me.”

  Charlee rose from the bunk and held out a hand. “I’m not the only person. I mean, I’m not some psycho who doesn’t let people touch her boyfriend. But let’s not test it, all right?” She grasped Ella’s hand, the threat punctuated in her none-too-gentle grip.