by Cindy Dees
“Ask to speak to a cop named Natalie Rothchild,” he advised grimly. “Tell her how Sampson hired you to stalk Silver and cooperate your ass off with her, and maybe she’ll cut you a break.”
“What the hell did Sampson do to bring all this heat down on him?”
“He messed with the wrong girl.”
“Looks to me like he messed with the wrong guy,” Dingo grumbled.
Austin laughed shortly. “That, too.”
He turned and headed for his car. He pulled out his cell phone and called the LVMPD to tell them about the little fish he’d caught and left all tied up with a bow for them to come collect. That done, he climbed into his car. What the hell was he supposed to do now? The idea had been to catch Sampson before he hassled Silver again.
Silver.
Austin swore violently. Her show was about to start. And Sampson was still on the loose. Three guesses where the bastard would be right now, and the first two didn’t count.
Austin gunned the engine and pointed it toward the Strip. As he drove, he checked his cell phone to see who’d called him earlier and nearly screwed up his ambush. This was a work phone, and he didn’t get social calls on it.
Warren? What was Bochco doing calling him?
Panic leaped in his gut. Oh, crap. Had something happened to Silver?
He punched out Warren’s number fast and plastered the phone to his ear. It rang. And rang. And rang, dammit. Warren either couldn’t hear the damned thing…or worse, he was too occupied to answer it.
Austin stood on the gas pedal. Hard.
His thoughts devolved into complete turmoil. What would he do if something happened to Silver? He couldn’t lose her!
Hang on baby, I’m coming.
Chapter 14
Through the scaffolding and the fireworks, Silver made out the cheering crowd. The lift had about eight feet to go and then she’d begin to rise out of the top of the stage set. The violins started on cue, buzzing like a swarm of hornets. Six feet to go. The guitars wailed a chord. The audience cheered even louder, all but drowning out the drums. Four feet to go. The hiss of Roman candles all around her started up, their heat enveloping her. And then her head cleared the floor. Her claustrophobia subsided and a single thought filled her head.
Showtime.
She spread her arms, welcoming the wildly screaming mass of humanity below her. It was a heady moment. Silver, the rock star, was back.
Too bad Austin wasn’t here to share it with her. It would’ve been perfect then.
Get your head back in the game!
On cue, she stepped off her mark and commenced the dangerous race down a narrow set of steel stairs in her high stilettos. The backup singers laid down the introduction, and Silver launched into the first song.
She reached the stage and danced over toward stage right. Quickly, she scanned the faces backstage. Maybe she did it out of habit, or maybe desperation. But there was no sign of Austin’s familiar features.
Singing gustily, she and the dancers spun their way across the stage so she could wave at the left side of the audience. No Austin in the front rows of the crowd.
Stop that.
Throughout the entire song, she searched for him. She’d been so sure he’d be here. After Warren admitted how unhappy Austin had been after their split, certainty had lodged in her gut that he would come. He knew how important this night was to her. He’d be here for her, to share her big moment with her.
The second song came and went with no sign of him.
Then the third.
And something went out of her. Her enthusiasm drained in a slow leak she was powerless to stop. She forced herself to keep going through the motions of the show, but it just wasn’t the same. The lovesick moron in her head had misled her heart yet again. When was she going to learn? Austin was done with her.
And something in her was irrevocably broken.
Hmm. That would be her heart.
After the fifth song, she slipped offstage while the dancers and backup singers finished the last chorus to one of her old songs with the audience bellowing it out in a giant sing-along moment. Saul had decided that instead of a traditional intermission she’d take breaks every half dozen songs or so to make quick costume changes and keep the show going in a continuous flow. It was ambitious and strenuous, but it kept the show’s energy sky-high.
She raced for the changing area, where Stella and her two assistants stripped off the first costume and crammed her into the second one. She had one minute and forty seconds to make the change, assuming the band didn’t speed up the chorus like they had a tendency to do.
Saul poked his head around the screen after she was decent again. “Pick up the energy, Silver. You started out great, but you’re losing steam.”
He was right. But she just couldn’t find it in herself to care. She closed her eyes. She could do this. If not for herself, for her baby. For his or her future.
Stella ordered, “Turn around, honey. Time to curl your hair.”
They’d rehearsed this until they had it down to a fine science, and Silver made the required one-eighty spin.
And that was when she saw him.
Standing way back in the darkest shadows at the back of the stage. Staring at her fixedly. His arms crossed, his face as potently handsome as ever. When they made eye contact, some turbulent emotion passed across his face. What was that? Anger? Relief? Anguish? Or maybe it was just the shadows and her imagination.
She jerked free of the curling irons and lurched toward him.
Stella squawked behind her, “We’ve only got fifty-five seconds left!”
She called back over her shoulder, “So my hair’ll be straight! This is more important!”
She screeched to a stop in front of him. And just looked up at him. Her vocal cords tangled in hope and fear until she couldn’t speak. Please let him be glad to see her. Please let this not be just business. Please let him forgive her. Please let this not be a lovely hallucination.
“Hey.” His voice sounded abnormally tight. Could it be? Was Warren right? Had Austin missed her, too?”
“Hey,” she murmured back.
Time stopped, and it was as if a cone of silence descended around them.
He jammed his hands into his pockets. “How’ve you been?” he finally asked roughly.
She reached out to touch his chest. He drew in a sharp breath but didn’t move away from her touch. Yup, he was real, all right. Warm and strong and as solid as ever. “I’ve been okay—” She broke off. Tried again. “No, strike that. I’ve been terrible.”
“Is the baby all right?” he asked quickly.
She blinked, startled at the depth of concern in his voice. “Junior’s fine. Still making me sick every morning.”
A frown flickered across his face. “What’s wrong, then?”
Shouting from behind her penetrated the fog that shrouded her brain. “Thirty seconds!”
She gazed up at him, hungrily drinking in the sight of his features. Lord, she’d missed him. She answered simply. “You were gone.”
The old fire leaped in his eyes, fierce and protective, for just a moment. He opened his mouth to say something.
“Silver! Let’s go! You’ll miss your mark!” She scowled as the stage manager rushed up to her and took her by the arm. She started to resist his urgent tug.
“Go,” Austin bit out.
She let the stage manager drag her away but called back over her shoulder, “Hold that thought! I’ll be back in six songs and I want to hear it!”
She knocked the next set of songs out of the park. Not a person in the house was sitting down, the crowd screamed wildly after every song and even Saul was beaming and tapping his foot with the music in the wings offstage.
Her feet barely touched the floor, and she rode a wave of exhilaration that she could hardly contain. He’d come back. He still had feelings for her. He hadn’t said anything yet, but it was written on his face as clear as day. The only problem with her
show now was that it was taking too blessed long to get to the next costume change.
But finally it came.
She jumped down a hidden hatch in the stage floor to the screams of the crowd and slid down the short slide, landing on a crash pad. She’d barely stopped moving before Stella and her girls went to work. She got decent, the privacy screen went down—
—and Austin was standing there, looking almost as impatient as she felt.
Stella looked back and forth between the two of them. “Straight hair again?” the costumer asked in resignation.
Silver answered briskly, “Yup.” To Austin, she said, “Come with me.”
She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the tiny lift that would reposition her for her next entrance. They stepped into the cramped space, and the doors closed behind them. Oh, God. He still smelled as good as ever. She hit the stop button. In deference to the show in progress on stage, the elevator had no alarm bell, and relative silence enveloped them.
They both started to speak simultaneously. Then they both laughed, which cut a little of the heavy tension between them.
“You go first,” he said.
“That day when you walked out—”
He interrupted in a rush. “About that. I’m sorry, Silver. It was selfish of me. I couldn’t handle it and I bailed out on you—”
She reached up quickly and pressed her fingers against his lips. “I’ve only got a few seconds. Let me get this out. I was trying to tell you when you left that Mark isn’t the father of my baby.”
Austin stared at her, stunned.
Urgently she pressed on. If only there was more time to explain it all. To break this to him more gently.
“I used artificial insemination. I wanted a baby, but I didn’t have a man in my life. At least, not the right man. I used an anonymous donor. But to avoid ending up in the tabloids over it, I asked Mark to pose as the father of my child.” She exhaled sharply. “I swear, I didn’t know him at all when I asked him to do it or I never would have chosen him. Candace told me he was…different…than he turned out to be. She was good at sabotaging me that way—” Silver broke off. That didn’t matter anymore.
She heard faint voices outside yelling through the elevator door, asking if she was okay and announcing ten seconds until her next mark. Reluctantly she took her finger off the stop button. The lift lurched into motion.
Austin was nodding. “So that’s what he had on you.”
She shrugged. “It wasn’t one of my more brilliant moments.”
“It wasn’t a bad plan. You just didn’t have the right man for the job.”
Her gaze snapped up at the sexy timbre abruptly vibrating in his voice. Austin was staring down at her. The elevator stopped and the doors started to open.
“So you never were romantically involved with Sampson?”
She snorted. “Hardly.”
The screams of the audience burst in on them and Austin lurched around, startled. Apparently he hadn’t realized they were riding up to the back of the stage proper. The scaffolding of the set was a steel jumble directly in front of them.
Austin swore quietly beside her. Whether he was reacting to the news that she’d never been involved with Sampson or the fact that he was practically on stage with her, she couldn’t tell.
“Gotta go,” she told him quickly. “Promise me you won’t leave again until we talk more.”
“I promise.”
Her cue sounded, and she raced forward into the lights through a shower of sparks.
Austin watched her go, dumbfounded. Son of a gun. Sampson had never been her boyfriend. Relief and exultation all but knocked his legs out from underneath him. A stagehand dressed in all black slipped into the elevator and started almost as violently as he did to find Austin in the lift.
“I’m Silver’s bodyguard,” Austin said quickly.
The guy nodded and punched the down button. Austin stepped out below. Stella and her girls were packing up. “How do I get up to the stage?” he asked the woman.
She gave him directions, and he made his way to the staircase and up into the wings of stage right. Silver was on fire out there, and he relished watching her lithe form as she performed. The music wasn’t half-bad, either. He still preferred her singing a soulful ballad, but she had a great voice no matter how she used it.
He scanned what he could see of the audience carefully. No sign of Sampson. His gut said that if the guy was still in town, he was here tonight. And furthermore, his gut said Sampson’s bag of tricks wasn’t quite empty yet.
Austin’s jaw rippled. Now that he’d found his way back to Silver, he wasn’t letting her out of his sight for any length of time. Not until Sampson was caught and his role in the Rothchild stalkings uncovered.
Had the guy actually been smarter than he seemed? Was Sampson capable of murder? Of the clever theft of the Tears of the Quetzal from a police lockup? Of the calculated and well-planned moves of the stalker?
Was Sampson so smart that he’d successfully pulled the wool over people’s eyes and convinced everyone he was a dimwit? The thought chilled Austin to the core.
He spied Warren across the stage, and the two men made brief eye contact before going back to their respective scans for threats.
Silver was a free agent. Available for the taking. He so wanted her for himself. And a baby? Did he want an instant family, too? What about his job? Was it fair to Silver and the baby to go back out in the field for months on end? To put himself in harm’s way day in and day out? How was he supposed to choose between his career—which was more than a career, more like his identity—and love? Did he have to choose? Could he have both? Possibly, but was it fair to Silver to ask that of her?
The questions continued to roll through his head, and damned few answers were forthcoming. He clenched the bulky rope beside him in frustration. He knew for sure that he didn’t want to lose Silver again. And she seemed pretty intent on not losing him, either. They’d find a way to make things work between them. They had to. He’d burn up from the inside out if they didn’t, leaving behind only a hollow shell of his former self. He’d lived that way for the past six weeks, and he couldn’t do it for a lifetime.
The rope vibrated faintly in his hand, and he frowned. Nothing had happened on stage to explain it. He looked up, following the rope into the darkest recesses of the black-painted ceiling overhead. It led to the lighting system. Each of those big spotlights up there weighed several hundred pounds, and there were dozens of them. What was heavy enough to jiggle all of that tonnage? Elaborate scaffolding suspended the entire lighting system from the ceiling, a massive affair that stretched all the way across the stage. All the way across the stage—
Ohdamnohdamnohdamn…
He looked around frantically for a way up there. He spied a narrow ladder and dived for it, swearing in a steady stream around his sudden, choking certainty. He knew exactly where Mark Sampson was planning to make his final strike at Silver.
Question was, would he get there in time to stop it or not?
Chapter 15
Silver fell backward into the arms of her dancers. They turned her in a slow circle while she gazed up at the ceiling, catching her breath. Something moved overhead, and she started. That was odd. It looked like someone was up there. One of the stagehands, no doubt. There must be a problem, because all the light sequencing was done digitally. Even the spotlights were operated by remote joystick.
The dancers put her down and she sashayed off, keeping one eye peeled on the lights to make sure she didn’t need to make any on-the-fly adjustments.
The song ended, and she made her way to the front of the stage to introduce the next song. It was actually a scheduled pause to let all the performers catch their breath after that last number. She asked the audience if they were having fun and got a gratifying scream of approval back.
She turned to face the band and cue up the next piece. As she strode to the back of the stage, she glanced up.
A
nd did a double take. There was definitely someone crawling around up there. More than one someone.
She spun to face forward and took one more look up into the rafters.
Oh. My. God.
That was Austin up there. And that could mean only one thing. He’d spotted a threat.
“Silver!” the drummer hissed.
Crud. She’d missed the cue. The band did a smooth repeat of the last few bars of the music, and she started the song on time this time. It was an effort to remember the lyrics and stop herself from looking up every two seconds. But the audience would figure out that something was wrong if she did, and it would take them out of the show.
She ran to stage left and up the ramp to the second platform and took the moment to see what was going on above. She spotted Austin immediately…and he was grappling with someone else. So not good. He was a good three stories above the stage. If he overbalanced the slightest bit, both men would crash down. And there was no safety net.
She pasted a smile on her face, prayed the audience was far enough away not to see the panic in her eyes and pressed on with the show.
Above, Austin hung on fiercely, trying futilely to get enough purchase to subdue his opponent. Sampson was fighting like a crazy man, and that made him a great deal more dangerous than he’d otherwise be. He seemed to understand that the jig was up and this was the end for him. The guy acted prepared to make a suicidal last stand.
A seam on Sampson’s shirt gave way and the bastard tore out of his grip, spurting away down a narrow catwalk. Austin gave chase, swearing. He didn’t much like how the heavy scaffold was wobbling under the force of their gymnastics up here. The planks under foot were maybe eight inches wide, and he pounded after Sampson’s fleeing form carefully. At least if Sampson was occupied getting away from him, the guy wouldn’t have time to harm Silver.
Sampson dodged to the right, down one of the side access walks. Austin skidded around the corner and accelerated hard. Time to put an end to this foolishness. Sampson reached the end of the planks and paused momentarily in indecision, looking right and left. And that was his fatal mistake.