Time Out (Foolish Games Series)

by Leah Spiegel

  It wasn’t long before Riley and Harlow found themselves in another deep conversation about what lighting arrangements they were planning to do for the show and what arrangement went with each song on the set list.

  Harlow, who used to never make an appearance before the show, was a veteran at this kind of stuff and could probably maneuver the lights in his sleep, but he was obviously taking the time to teach Riley everything he knew and that made me happy.

  By the time the entire lighting crew were in there designated spots around us, the arena below was nearly filled. I scanned the sea of faces, and could almost feel the crowd start to come alive with the anticipation for Hawkins and the rest of the band to finally cross the stage.

  We didn’t have the closest view of the stage because the lighting platform practically sat overtop of the last seats in the venue, so I was able to see what I couldn’t quite understand. There, in upper pavilions seats, was one of the trader’s recording devices connected to a seat. The placement was weird because they usually put them in the front when suddenly another thought popped up in my mind.

  “Riley, I thought they weren’t letting in any electronics?”

  “They aren’t. With Vance’s security, you can’t get anything in.”

  “Well, isn’t that a trader’s recorder?” I said pointing to the microphone sticking up above the rest of the crowd in the second pavilion seats below which were the furthest from the stage.

  Riley just stared at it before finally saying, “That shouldn’t be there.” I could hear the fear creeping into his voice, and I didn’t know if all of the threats were making us paranoid or not. That was until I spotted a blonde headed girl in a short green sundress work her way down the row of seats until finally coming to a stop in front of the equipment.

  I felt myself suddenly go cold inside as if frozen to the spot like in a nightmare when I couldn’t spring to action fast enough because standing there in front of that microphone was Gweniverie Warren.

  “Shit,” Lizzie and I said together as Riley gasped.

  I quickly turned around and nearly collided into another guy from the crew on my way to the platform’s ladder. I knew that it wasn’t just a coincidence, especially when I knew the makeshift bomb had been placed under her seat that night in Chicago. Except this time, I knew that it wasn’t our government who had rigged the equipment.

  “Joie—wait!” Riley called after me as I climbed up the ladder and then ran down the hallway.

  “I don’t have time to wait!” I shouted frantically over my shoulder as I grabbed onto the other ladder that dropped down to the side of the stage.

  When I finally landed on the ground, I overheard Riley shout, “Joie, if it’s really what we think it is,” he quickly climbed down the rest of the ladder. “Then it could be triggered by a number of things, like a person in the crowd. If they see you messing with it, they might detonate the thing.”

  “Well they’re going to do it one way or the other,” I insisted as I quickly looked around for any sign of the band, but couldn’t find Hawkins anywhere.

  “But you could be killed,” he pleaded for me to stop.

  “Listen,” I turned to Riley and explained. “I’m short. I’m a girl. They’ve never seen me before so they won’t have any reason to become suspicious. Stay here and try to get ahold of Vance.” But before Riley could say another thing, or grab me up like how he was about to do, I turned to race down the side of the stage and to the steps below.

  No one stopped to check to see if I had a ticket on me in the orchestra pit because security never seemed to care about the people moving further away from the stage. Except I knew that everyone might be in danger, no matter how close they were to the band or not, especially if the real terrorists had succeeded at creating what appeared to be a recorder but was really a bomb. I assumed they must have, if it got past Vance’s security at the gates which meant we were all in trouble; the kind of trouble that blasted out a chunk the size of a crater in the 02 Arena in London.

  My heart was practically racing outside of my chest, but I acted nonchalant as I walked up the steps toward the second pavilion seating. I scanned the crowd looking for anyone who didn’t seem to belong as I closed in the distance between Gwyneth and me.

  For the first time, being short was actually a plus as I turned down Gwyneth’s row and shuffled past the other tall frat boys. I eyed the black microphone over her chair as I watched her sip on her beer, completely unaware that I was steadily approaching her. A part of me was seriously praying that I was just being paranoid as my eyes drifted down to the small box positioned underneath her seat.

  The crowd suddenly roared to life as Hawkins crossed the stage solo tonight. The sight of him alone reminded me of the night the stage collapsed, and for a second I froze as if waiting for the world to cave in. Thankfully, Gwyneth did a double take in my direction before her eyes finally locked with mine. I tilted my head in the direction of the recording equipment behind her and mouthed, “We have a problem.” She followed my gaze and quickly snapped her eyes back up to mine with alarm.

  Gwyneth took a quick glance behind her before turning to smile at me. I didn’t understand at first what she was doing until she began to gush a bunch of nonsense like we were long lost friends but I didn’t catch a word of it because of all the shouting and hooting going on around us. I quickly realized she was putting on the show for anyone who might be watching us.

  She then squeezed my hand and guided me down to the seats below now that everyone was standing. Not having enough time to chitchat, I slid the bomb forward with my foot and in the process, the ‘recorder’ part came out halfway from the carrying case around it. Sending a sickening shiver into the pit of my stomach because there on the top of it was a timer that indicated we had less than three minutes to figure out what we were going to do with it. Something about the timer though immediately changed Gwyneth’s whole demeanor. She dropped her shoulders in relief; in fact her whole body looked a fraction more at ease, but I had no clue as to why.

  Gwyneth reached up to rip the locket off of her neck before lowering it discreetly into my hand. We exchanged a brief but haunting look. I had seen the expression before when Hawkins had made the decision to sacrifice his life for mine though I didn’t get a sense that’s why she was giving me the locket now. I knew that she felt responsible for everything that had happened in her past and what was happening right now.

  “Tell Warren that I love him,” she mouthed and before I could stop her, she quickly picked up the ‘recorder’ and took off down the aisle in the opposite direction. I closed my eyes for a second, half expecting to get blown into pieces since Gwyneth had clearly moved the bomb. When it didn’t go off, I realized what she must have understood when she saw the timer on the bomb seconds earlier; that the person who had rigged it was probably long gone by now.

  Finding my feet again, I took off after her down the row of people.

  “Out of my way!” I shouted as I rounded the end of the row and rushed down the second pavilion pathway toward the steps facing the lawn. The walkway in front of the lawn was packed full of people, and I only caught a few glimpses of her blonde hair flying in and out of the crowd up ahead.

  Once I was out by the vendors, I shoved the locket in my pocket as I looked back and forth, but I didn’t see her anywhere. I turned to my left and raced up toward the amphitheater gates in the direction of the parking lot. It was the only place I figured she would go to protect everyone else. I skidded through the exit to the pavilion seconds later and scanned the parking lot looking for her until my eyes fell on the back of her blonde hair and petite frame as she sprinted for the woods in the distance.

  “Gwyneth!” I shouted as I ran after her. I understood that she wanted to protect as many people as she possibly could but there couldn’t have been that much time left before the bomb detonated.

  “Throw it and run!” I hollered at the top of my lungs because she was at least the length of a football f
ield away from me by now, but she didn’t even look back as she continued to race away. “Throw it and run!”

  Flooded with emotions, I choked back a few tears when suddenly a white heat seared along my skin and an invisible force tossed me back through the air causing my body to land with a crashing blow on the ground before everything went dark.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Albert Pike once said about death, “What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.” If Gwyneth scarifying her life to save twenty thousand others wasn’t immortal, I didn’t know what was.

  When I came to again, I was in the hospital bed, and judging by the thin gown I was wearing and the IV hooked up to the back of my wrist, I knew that I must have been there for a while.

  I sat up, and quickly regretted doing so, because my back felt as if a layer of skin had been scraped off of it. Grimacing, I slowly adjusted until the pain wasn’t completely unbearable. The sudden movement caused Hawkins to stir in the hospital’s recliner beside my bed.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Beat up,” I smacked my dry lips but was too tired to tell Hawkins not to fuss over me as he poured me a glass of water.

  “Thanks,” I took a sip and felt a moment of relief.

  “Riley and Lizzie stayed by your side the entire night, but I told them to go back to the tour bus and rest up until they heard from me. Your mom’s here though. You just missed her. She went to get a cup of coffee.”

  “My mom? How long have I been out?”

  “Not that long, all of last night and most of today.”

  “Then how—”

  “I sent someone to pick her up with my jet.”

  “Well, she must have liked that,” I emphasized.

  “I think she liked the gesture,” he flashed a smile as if winning my mom over was a part of his plans. He then cleared his throat, and asked more seriously, “Do feel well enough to tell me what happened with Gwyneth? I only ask because I don’t know when we’ll get a chance to be alone again, and Vance has been going nuts trying to reach me; I had to literally turn off my phone.”

  The mention of Robert Vance’s name made me quickly grab at where my pockets had been last time I was conscious, but after quickly realizing that someone had changed me out of my clothes, I was frantic that I might have lost the microchip.

  “Where are my clothes?”

  “I already packed them with the other clothes I brought for you to leave in,” he explained.

  “And the locket was it in my jean pocket?” I kept my voice down so no one would overhear us as Hawkins’ eyes darted over to mine.

  He seemed surprised, “Did she give it to you?”

  “Is it still in my jean pocket?” I repeated, not having the patience to wait for answer.

  “Uh, I dunno know,” he sat up and walked around my bed. He opened a thin closet and bent down to sift through the bag of clothes he brought for me.

  Once he found my jeans, he searched the first pocket, but didn’t find anything, causing my heart to suddenly race. What if someone had lost it in the process of changing my clothes? It was a very small piece of jewelry after all. My growing anxiety was short lived though, when he pulled out Gwyneth’s thin gold necklace from my other jean pocket and the perfect circular locket dangled free in the air.

  “It’s crazy how something so small could cause so much damage,” Hawkins muttered, and I realized how difficult this was for him. Gwyneth wasn’t just his best friend’s sister, she was also his ex-fiancé, and knowing Hawkins he probably blamed himself for what happened to her. “So why do you have this locket?”

  “She passed it to me before she made the decision to take the bomb and run,” I explained to him how it had really happened. “She died saving god knows how many lives. She’s a hero. I just wish I had her same courage…”

  “Don’t say that,” Hawkins snapped lightly. “All I kept thinking when I heard the explosion, all I kept praying for was…please, God don’t take her. You don’t know how helpless I felt…”

  “I’m sorry that I scared you, but once I realized what was happening I had to stop it. I couldn’t lose you either. It’s just the last thing I remember was being thrown through the air. I haven’t had the time to completely wrap my head around it yet.”

  “No, I’m sorry,” his blue eyes suddenly softened. “I know this is a lot to process at one time.”

  “It’s just that I keep thinking maybe Gwyneth did what she did to make everything right again,” I remembered the look in her eye as if it was seconds ago. “She had said that she felt lost from helping the terrorist, to killing Kumar, to watching Ted get blown up, but this Gwyneth,” I stressed. “This Gwyneth was the same girl who talked a grieving brother down from retaliating on a bunch of doctors at the clinic. This Gwyneth was the girl that I had only heard about in her stories and honestly, that’s how I’d want my brother to remember me. I don’t think you should tell Warren the truth.” I finally got to the point I was slowly building up to because for the first time I wanted Gwyneth to appear to be the person she may not have always been.

  “Well, we haven’t talked much since the incident because he’s inconsolable right now, but,” he nodded. “It’s best that he never know what really happened with her, that is if Vance doesn’t blow the case wide open.”

  “Yeah, well I have my own bone to pick with him,” I was just about to continue to explain when my mom walked in causing Hawkins to quickly tuck the locket inside his jean pocket and close the closet door.

  “Thank god,” my mom breathed a sigh of relief as she came to a stop halfway into the room. For someone who wasn’t usually emotional, I watched the tears well up in her eyes. “You’re up.” Once she wiped away a few tears that had escaped down her cheeks, she came over to kiss me on my forehead and take my hand in hers to squeeze it.

  “Are you mad?” I asked.

  “Not right now,” she brushed back my hair and smiled. “Will get to the reckless and scared part later,” she nodded assuredly and I started to laugh, but flinched from the jarring pain in my side causing both my mom and Hawkins to rush closer. There was a long pause before my mom spoke again.

  “For now, let’s just focus on the fact that you helped save thousands of lives last night, from what I understand from Hawkins,” she smiled over at him and I could tell how much it meant to her that he had thought to include her in my recovery. “Being brave and a bit of a dreamer is a trait you share with your father.”

  I groaned, and she shook her head, stopping me. “No, Joie, when I met your father I loved that he was a dreamer, it was what attracted me to him. But often in relationships, the things you love the most about a person can be the hardest to understand. And I know if he were standing here today, he’d be extremely proud of you.”

  I felt my heart swell with love because I knew he’d be proud, but mostly because I knew my mom was healing too.

  “Good, I see that you’re up,’ a blonde female doctor dressed in light pink scrubs with teddy bears on them approached us. She introduced herself as Dr. Penelope Cross. ‘You know they’re calling you a hero around the office,” she smiled down at me as she began to check my stats by placing a stethoscope over my lungs to listen to me breathe and then moved it down around my abdomen.

  “Yeah well, I’m not the real hero,” I remembered Gwyneth sprinting away from me.

  “You raced toward a bomb when most people would have been running away from it. If that’s not a hero,” she looked down at me as she pulled the stethoscope out of her ears and placed it around her neck. “Then I don’t know what is.”

  I just gave her a half smile, because honestly I didn’t think about it when I did it. I think a person just acts when things like that happen.

  “Well, we got your blood work back and your cat scans,” she nodded. “And everything looks good. No internal bleeding or head trauma. The most damage you sustained was to the skin a
long your back, but the cuts and scrapes should heal over time. I’m going to prescribe an antibiotic ointment for you to apply on the wounds twice a day for the next two weeks or until they heal.”

  Once the doctor seemed done updating us, my mom gushed, “That’s wonderful news.”

  “Yes it is,” she took a tentative glance in my mom’s direction before turning back around to face Hawkins and me. “You know my daughter is such a fan. I’m embarrassed to admit that I get daily updates on your relationship status,” she half laughed. “She thinks the two of you should get married and have lots of children.”

  “Someday, hopefully,” Hawkins quickly replied, causing me to smile over at him in surprise.

  “Right—well,” the smile quickly faded from her face as she glanced over at my mom again, who was busy texting someone on her cell one key at a time. I wondered why the doctor seemed so fascinated with her, when she politely informed her, “I’m so sorry, but cell phones aren’t allowed in this wing.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” my mom apologized as she went to put the cell phone back in her purse. “Everyone just uses the lounge down the hallway instead,” she quickly added. “I can show you where it’s at if you like?”

  “No, I’m sure I can find it on my own,” my mom insisted as she got up to leave. “I really need to tell all your aunts and uncles that you’re going to be alright,” she explained with a guilty look on her face, but I just nodded and said, “It’s okay, mom.”

  I didn’t need the heart monitor to know my heart rate was picking up because the doctor was starting to scare me. What did she not want to say in front of my mother?

  The doctor waited until my mom was out of earshot to turn back around to face us again. “I don’t know if you knew or had told your mother yet, but that someday…is here now.” She looked from Hawkins back to me. “That’s why I’m really here. I’m a pediatric doctor.”