Bingo.
I saunter up to him and smile, knowing what my red lips look like encased in all of that black. This isn't exactly my scene, but I know I look hot. My bodysuit is tight, basically painted on, and cut low in the front to expose a good portion of cleavage. There are cutaways on the hips to flash more tantalizing flickers of white skin, and my blonde ponytail is bouncy and full.
“What's upstairs?” I ask coyly, but the man just smiles, looks me over and then asks for my ID. I give him the fake one—the one with fucking Jezebel Linux written on it—and then watch as he pockets it.
“You'll get this back when you're finished,” he tells me and then unhooks the black velvet rope covering the stairs, ushering me up the stone steps and into a small sitting area populated with girls and boys in fetish wear. They're all young and pretty, dolled up in nightmare chic. I ignore them all, finish off my drink, and head to the small bar in the corner. This time, my drink is free and I only pretend to sip it. I'll be damned if I end up drugged and raped by Paulette's husband or anybody else for that matter.
Of course, thinking I might find him here is a long shot. There's a chance he came and left or didn't come at all. This is a big risk.
I start moving down the hallway that branches off the sitting room and try the doorknobs. Some of them are locked; others are open. I take a peek into each one and find myself face to face with themed fetish rooms—a jail cell, a courtroom, a throne room, a doctor's office. The ones that are occupied hold my attention only long enough to confirm that any man inside is not the one I'm looking for. I Googled him, found his picture. Mr. Paulette Washington is handsome, fairly young, too. He's dirty blonde with a manicured goatee and mustache, full lips, a strong aquiline nose.
“Looking for somebody?” a man asks from behind me when I near the end of the hallway.
I turn slowly and try to decide if I'm lucky … or doomed.
Standing in the center of the black and red hall is the man of the hour—with a gun in his hand.
“I asked you a question,” he says, dressed in a suit that probably costs more than my tour bus. When he smiles at me, I feel like I'm falling into an oily abyss, and my skin ripples with the imagined sensation.
“And my husband is not a man that's used to being ignored,” Paulette Washington says from beside me, turning my body to ice. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I spin slowly and catch her standing there primped and polished, brunette hair loose around her shoulders, makeup minimal but expertly applied, skirt just below the knee, jacket pressed and lint free.
I am so screwed.
“I was just looking to have a little fun,” I say, bending down to reach into my boot when Albin pulls back the hammer on his gun and I roll my eyes. “Relax, man, I'm just getting a cigarette.”
I stand up straight with a lighter and a smoke in hand, flicking the wheel on the colorful Bic and watching a flame spring to light. To my credit, my hands don't so much as tremble. Inside though, my heart is a wild horse, galloping, the sound of hooves echoing between my ears. Inside my pleather suit, I'm sweating profusely.
“Naomi Knox,” Paulette says, banishing the small hope I had that she might not recognize me, that this all might be some kind of fluke. “It took me a while to figure out where you were sneaking off to, frequenting all these clubs. It took some maneuvering to avoid my people though, didn't it? To ditch the cameras over and over again? Let me guess: Brayden Ryker's got his hands in the cookie jar, doesn't he?”
“I just wanted to do some crazy partying without the whole world watching,” I say, leaning against the wall and smoking my cigarette, wondering how the hell I'm going to get out of this one. “I don't see what the big deal is?”
“You just happened to select a few”—Paulette pinches her French manicured nails together—“choice clubs where you might happen to run into Albin? And then a few more owned by the Hammergrens? Seems a little … coincidental to me, don't you think?”
“Look, I just came up here to check out some kink. I had no fucking clue you'd be here, too. Can you put that goddamn gun away, please?”
“Didn't I just fucking warn you, Miss Knox? I should have Albin blow your head off right now,” Paulette says, her voice getting tight, scary like it was the other night. “Spatter all that pink and red across the wall the way you did to my sister.” Her words catch and her eyes close for a moment. “You shot a desperate woman that was only trying to get her child back—”
“America was anything but a desperate woman,” I say and Paulette's eyes shoot open. She stalks toward me, but I don't move, leaning casually against the wall, just a rockstar out to party. What I don't expect is for her to backhand me across one of my mask covered cheeks. The cigarette flies from my hand and skids across the slick polished wood floors beneath our feet.
“The Hammergrens killed everyone I ever loved, took a great American family and reduced it to nothing. I was lucky; I was a Washington by then. But they took my mother, my father, my little sister … and you took America. I was trying to finish this tour out, give her a legacy to live by, but you're making this really hard.”
I don't say anything. What can I say to someone as crazy as this? It's like a Romeo and Juliet thing, but instead of the two lovers killing themselves at the end, the Montagues obliterate the Capulets.
“Albin,” Paulette says taking a step back and crossing her arms over her chest. “Do you fancy a playmate tonight?”
Paulette's husband tucks his gun beneath his suit jacket and smiles.
“I'd love one,” he purrs, his expensive loafers loud as he moves across the floor to stand next to me. “Especially one of your little rockstar pets.” He reaches out to touch the side of my face, and I let him, wondering if I might still get my chance here. It's risky, but clearly, trying to follow along with Paulette is getting me nowhere. The only reason the Hammergrens ever came after us in the first place was to watch America suffer, and I'm the one that finally killed her. Maybe, just maybe, I really can walk away from this if I kill Albin for them.
Then again, maybe it's all just a bunch of hopeless bullshit?
Paulette pulls out a ring of keys and unlocks the door to my right, pushing it in and gesturing with her hand. When I glance around the corner, I don't like what I see. It's not any sort of set or fetish room like the others—just a bed with restraints and mirrors on all the walls, the ceiling. There's a chair in one corner and nothing else.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Whatever. I just came to play. I don't really care who with,” I say with a shrug, sauntering into the room like I own the place. Really, I'm terrified out of my fucking mind. I've managed to escape all these years without getting raped or molested. Fuck, I fought for that with everything I had. Right now, I'm taking a serious risk.
Paulette lets herself in after her husband and pulls the door shut behind her, locking it. There's no doubt in my mind that she, too, probably has a gun on her. If I let the two of them get established, I'm done for. I'll get one chance.
I bend down, pretending to go for another cigarette and instead slide the knife from the sheath inside my boot. Paulette's still in the process of turning around when I lunge forward and swing it hard at her husband's neck. I don't aim; there's not time. I slice him across the chin and then pull my arm back, thrusting forward and stabbing him in the midsection. There's this awful, awful popping sound and then the slick redness of blood all over my hands.
He doesn't have much of a chance to react before I'm reaching into his jacket and stealing his gun, grabbing it in wet red hands, the knife clutched awkwardly against the grip as I swing it over to face Paulette and find myself in a stand-off.
“You are going to regret that, Miss Knox. That much I can guarantee you. You've just made a terrible, terrible mistake.”
“Puh-fucking-lease,” I say, hating this outfit, this hood, the smell and the heat and the sound of this club. I just want to be sitting outside in the sun with Turner by my side and a guitar in my hands, str
umming strings and writing lyrics by the pool. And I don't care if it's at his hideous pretentious mansion or a Motel 6 with drapes and bedspreads from 1982. It doesn't matter. As long as I'm free, as long as I'm with him, as long as I can translate the music from inside my soul into art for the real world. “None of us had a chance from the start. We've been doomed since moment one, since America picked Amatory Riot up and started using us as a pawn in her fucked-up chess game.”
Paulette smiles at me, smiles as her husband flops around on the floor bleeding to death.
“You think I don't have other ways of punishing you?” she asks as I stand there, wondering if I should risk it all and pull the trigger. Paulette might get a shot off, too, but what if I could drop her here and now? Take her out along with her husband?
A fist slams on the door a few seconds later.
“Naomi!”
It's Turner, most definitely Turner. Even with the noise of the music downstairs, I can hear the faintest whisper of his words. That's how powerful his voice is, like he truly is the God of Rock.
“I'm in here with Paulette!” I shout, wondering if my own voice is strong enough to be heard over the thumping bass I can feel through the floor. Slowly, I move around her and reach down for the lock. The door opens right away and I end up backing out, closing it quickly and lowering the gun.
“Did you get him?” Turner asks, but all I can do is stare at the closed door and feel like I've made a terrible, terrible mistake.
I look up at him and then reach up and unzip the hood, pulling it from my head and feeling the hot air of the club sting my sweaty bare skin.
“I don't know,” I say, hiding the gun in the folded lump of the hood in my hand and backing away down the hall. “I have no fucking clue.” There's blood all over my gloved hands, but it's almost impossible to see in the hazy light, especially against the slick black material. I decide not to take Turner's hand, even though I really want to, and turn toward the staircase without another word.
Words can't save any of us now.
“Are you fucking stupid?!” Brayden Ryker screams, standing in the middle of the bus' small living room/kitchen area. The cameras are temporarily offline courtesy of his team and I'm standing there in a black latex bodysuit seething and wondering if I smeared blood in my hair when I raked my gloved fingers through it. “Oh Christ. Oh God.”
He puts his head in his big hand, but I'm just about done with this guy and all his crap.
“She basically told me last night that I might want to make funeral arrangements because I wasn't walking away from this tour alive.”
“So you thought you'd just murder her husband, did you?”
“He isn't dead,” I say, because I'm sure of it. I only stabbed him once and I don't think I hit anything vital. No, I'm sure the man who fucks underage prostitutes will live to see another day. What a shame. “And anyway, you're missing the point. She knows we've been frequenting these stupid clubs, and she knows it was you that was getting us there.”
Brayden curses some more, looking a little ridiculous with his two full sleeves of floral tattoos and the shock of bright red hair on the top of his head.
“So, if you really do have connections or whatever, I suggest you use them now.”
“Did you not hear what I said about my daughter?” Brayden asks, his voice eerily calm all of a sudden. “If I move on this thing too early, I will fucking lose her!” He screams this last part at me and for a second, I wonder if he's going to hit me, too. “Jesus.”
“Dude, you need to back the hell off,” Turner growls and while I appreciate the support, I've got this. I put a palm out to keep him from moving forward anymore than he already has. Ronnie, Lola, Dax, and Sydney are behind me, but there's nobody else on the bus with us. Jesse, Trey, Josh, Wren, and Kash might be trapped in this web, too, but they're not involved the way we are.
“This is a disaster,” Brayden says, running his hand over the scruffy lower half of his face. “A fucking disaster.” He shakes his head and moves for the door, pausing once to glance back at me, green eyes stark and lips tight. “Don't do another goddamn thing without talking to me first. Enjoy the next hour without the cameras. I'll call you as soon as they come back on, so keep your phone handy.”
He leaves with the sound of the slamming door to punctuate his exit.
I tear the latex gloves from my hands and toss them into the sink.
“I'm going to take a quick shower,” I whisper, my heels clacking across the floor as I head to the bathroom with Turner following along behind me. Maybe we should talk about what happened as a group? Probably that won't even matter. I feel like I'm sinking here, like I'm way out of my league.
“Just tell me what I need to do, and I'll do it,” Turner says, slipping into the room behind me and closing the door. I let him scoot past me so I can stand in the doorway and stare into the mirror above the small sink. My lips are bloodless and pale, and my skin is white as death. I'm definitely one of the whitest girls you'll ever see, but I look like a goddamn vampire right now.
“Remember that crumbling foundation I told you about way back when?” I ask, glancing over at him as he tries and fails to untangle the straps wrapped around the sexy smooth expanse of his upper body. Turner pauses to meet my eyes for a moment and then nods briskly. “Thanks for being patient while I tried to see if I could repair it.”
“Tried?” he asks, finally unhooking the right strap from around his shoulder and letting it fall to the floor.
I smile a little, but inside, I'm screaming.
“It's working,” I say, correcting myself, “the repairs. It's just … it would've taken a little more time than I think we have.”
“Don't talk like that,” he tells me and I wonder if he he knows how pretty he is in those leather pants of his? But he's Turner Campbell: of course he does. He sweeps blonde hair away from my face, the hand of my greatest enemy turned into my biggest comfort.
I close my eyes against the touch and lean into it.
“I love you so much,” I tell him, “and I always have. I don't think I ever stopped.”
“I never meant to leave you there, you know?” he says, and somehow, for the first time in forever, talking about that night doesn't hurt.
“How do you know that? I thought your memory was only bits and pieces still?”
“When the buses got flipped, a lot of the stuff we'd left on them got boxed up and sent to the house. Just before we left, the guys and I went through it together and found one of Ronnie's old cells. He's been carting it around for years, in a box with all the other phones he's had since Asuka died. He might've spent the last decade in a drug induced stupor, but he's still sentimental as fuck. Naomi, he plugged it in and powered it up.”
“And?” I ask, my eyes still closed, starting to tremble from the rush of adrenaline, the fear, the frustration of knowing that my fate isn't entirely in my own hands right now. And my heart … that's definitely not my own anymore, although that one I'm more than happy to give away.
“There was a text from me to Ronnie, from that night.”
This time I do open my eyes and glance over at him, at his brown eyes. They're so beautiful to me, the color of gleaming rosewood, polished to a shine. Like gingerbread cookies at Christmas, comfortable and familiar. But then, they're also a little bit dangerous, like the gaze of a bear that hasn't yet decided if it wants to eat you … or mate with you.
I almost smile, but my hands are curled around the sink so hard that my fingers are starting to cramp.
“What did it say?”
“It said,” he starts, peeling my hands from the sink and pulling me close, putting our foreheads together and closing those beautiful eyes of his for a moment, “I just found the love of my life—and I'm bringing her on the tour with us.” Turner pauses for a moment, resting his hands lightly on the cutouts at my hips, his palms warm and soothing against my skin. “Well, not like exactly that way because there were a lot of misspellings and acron
yms and shit, but that's the translated version.”
I suck my lower lip into my mouth and then lean back so I can stare into his face.
“I appreciate you telling me that, but … you don't have to apologize or justify what happened anymore. I'm okay with us just being this, who we are right now. For the rest of our lives, however long that might be.”
“Oh, fuck, Knox,” he says and then he kisses me gently on the lips, “I love you so fucking much. You know that, right? Like, I'm not blowing smoke up your ass.”
“I know,” I say, leaning into him, hoping at this point that we at least make it to Las Vegas so we can get married. If I die after that, well, at least I'll have gone out knowing that the last thing I did was to make the person I love happy.
I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him again, deeper this time, more intense.
I hope he can taste my sincerity in that kiss; it could be one of the last ones I ever give him.
Our evening switches from a nightmare into a dream as Naomi and I make love and curl up together in her bunk, our bodies tangled together in the tight space as we sleep away some of the eleven hour drive between Charlotte, North Carolina and New Orleans, Louisiana.
I'm the first to wake up, parting the curtain that covers our bunk slightly so I can stare at the tattoo on my ring finger, the swirls of black ink that match Naomi's. This is so much better than a stupid ring that can be torn off and thrown during a fight. This ink—like the ones on my back—is forever. So permanent that when I finally run into the girl of my dreams after six years, I still have the proof of her etched into my skin.
“No.”
I hear that word first, before anything else.
“Oh God, no. No. Fucking no. No, no, no.”
I flick the curtain back the rest of the way and swing my feet onto the floor, tearing the curtain to Dax's bunk open and finding him there shirtless with his phone in his hand and a look of stricken grief stretching across his face. He flicks his gaze up to mine, making my heart pound as Sydney shoves open the door from the kitchen and moves so quickly down the hall that she spills coffee all over the floor.
Get Hitched (Hard Rock Roots Book 9) Page 13
