Rock Angel (Rock Angel Series Book 1)

by Bogino, Jeanne

His grip on her throat tightened, but suddenly something flashed past and Jorge’s head snapped back. He uttered a strangled sound and the pressure on her throat relaxed as he fell off of her. Her hands shot to her throat. She looked up.

  Quinn was towering over her with a clenched fist and a dangerous scowl.

  Jorge sat up, dazed, and in a split second Quinn was between them. “You wanna play, motherfucker? How about picking somebody your own size?”

  Shan watched Jorge inspect Quinn with clear apprehension. She noted that they weren’t even close to the same size. Quinn was bigger. A lot.

  Jorge’s eyes shot back to her. “I treated you decent,” he cried. “I took care of you when you had nothin’, and now—”

  Jorge lunged. He was quick, but Quinn was quicker, lashing out with his foot. Jorge caught it under the chin and suddenly he was airborne. When he landed, his nose and mouth were bloody.

  Quinn took a menacing step closer, his fists doubling up, and Jorge scrambled to his feet. He fled across the roof, bursting through the door. His footsteps echoed through the stairwell.

  Shan didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until she exhaled, then her entire body started shaking. Quinn knelt down and put his arms around her. He held her for a long time, until the tremors stopped. “What the fuck, Shan?” he said, when she was still.

  She let him help her to her feet. “Where did you come from? I thought you left.”

  “I did, but I came back. You’ve been weird all night, then that shit backstage at the club? I knew something was up.” He knelt to examine a shiny object on the ground. Jorge’s switchblade. His face darkened. “I was about to come upstairs when I saw your guitar sail off of the roof.”

  Joanie! Clutching her side, she headed for the stairwell and hurried down the eight flights to the front of the building.

  Joanie was in pieces. The headstock was mostly intact, with part of the neck still clinging to it. The rest was destroyed.

  She sank to her knees, staring at what was left of her mother’s guitar. She touched the bridge, which had detached from the body. The strings were twisted and gnarled but some of them still connected the small piece of wood to the smashed instrument, like an umbilical cord linked to a corpse.

  “Shan.” She turned. Quinn was standing beside her. He raised his hand, showing her the switchblade. “Come inside. We’ve got to call the cops.”

  “No!”

  “But…”

  “No cops, Quinn.” She shook her head, pulling the pegs to release the strings from the bridge and taking it in her hand. “I’m fine. I just want to go to bed.”

  She marched upstairs without looking back, but he dogged her, coming up the stairs right behind her. “Fine?” he asked. “How can you possibly be fine, after that?”

  She unlocked the door to her apartment and Quinn followed her inside. “Just because I ran him off doesn’t mean he won’t come back,” he continued, turning the tumbler on the deadbolt. “You have to do something.”

  He turned and realized he was speaking to an empty room. He went into the living room. No sign of Shan, so he went to her bedroom, knocked briefly, and opened the door.

  The room was dark. His eyes adjusted and he saw that she was in bed. Her eyes were shut, her breathing even, and she looked very small under the covers. “I know you’re awake,” he said.

  She did not respond.

  He watched her for a few moments, his lips tight. “This isn’t over,” he said finally. “Not even close.” Then he left, pulling the door shut behind him.

  As the door closed, Shan’s eyes opened. She sat up and pulled her hands out from under the covers. She held the small piece of wood that used to be the bridge on her mother’s guitar cradled between her palms. “I’m sorry, Joanie,” she said softly.

  The next morning she woke to the jangling of the telephone. She waited until the ringing stopped, then rolled over and flinched. The back of her head burned as if the scalp had been torn from her skull.

  She climbed out of bed, wincing again at a sharp pain in her side, and went into the kitchen to make some coffee. While it was brewing, she returned to her bedroom, sniffling as she prepared a fix and lit the candle. After a couple of hits, she felt her morning jones begin to dissipate. Normally she stopped, but today she’d treat herself to an extra hit or two. She deserved it, after last night. She wanted to get stoned enough that she wouldn’t be able to think at all.

  Shan was floating as she went back into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee, but a knock at the door made her tumble right off her cloud.

  Jorge’s back! she thought, snatching the butcher knife from the rack on the wall.

  Another, louder knock. She crept to the door and pressed her eye against the peephole.

  It was Quinn. He was standing with his arms crossed over his chest and a frown on his face. His blue eyes were somber.

  She rested her head against the door, sensing that the protective insulation she’d woven to separate her two worlds was about to unravel. When he knocked again, pounded this time, she jerked her head up, startled, then undid the row of locks and opened the door. “Hi.”

  He looked at the knife in her hand. “Did I wake you?”

  She shook her head, half to clear it. “I just made coffee. You want some?”

  “Sure.” He shut the door as she set down the knife and took a mug from the cupboard. “I tried to call,” he said. “I didn’t want to just bust in on you at this hour. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Come on in.” She led him into the living room. She was wearing a short nightshirt, so she curled up in one of the chairs with her legs folded underneath her.

  He settled into the other chair, fixing his eyes on her. She returned his gaze impassively. She wasn’t going to speak first, not even if they sat staring at each other all day long.

  “Well?” he said. “What the hell happened last night?”

  She kept her face carefully bland. “That was someone I used to know.”

  “With a switchblade?” He looked dubious. “A little extreme for an ex-boyfriend, isn’t it?”

  A humorless laugh stuck in her throat. “He’s not exactly an ex-boyfriend.”

  Quinn’s lips twisted a little. “I didn’t really think he was. Frankly, I’d credit you with more taste. What was it about, then?”

  She didn’t reply.

  He frowned. “Look, you’re obviously in some kind of trouble, but I can’t help if you won’t tell me about it.”

  What was she supposed to say? She couldn’t tell him the truth and she was feeling a little too fuzzy to make up a plausible lie. She shook her head, cursing those extra hits.

  Quinn caught her hand. “You can trust me,” he said, his tone unusually gentle. “You know that, don’t you, angel?”

  Maybe he really would understand. Her lip trembled and she caught it between her teeth.

  He took her other hand and squeezed them both between his palms, his eyes maintaining their lock on hers. “Look, I’m not going to judge you. What are we talking about here?”

  “Well, he’s not exactly an ex-boyfriend,” she said carefully, “but I did have a relationship with him, sort of. I mean, I slept with him. Lived with him for a while, I guess. But I didn’t…I wasn’t with him because I wanted to be.”

  His brows slowly knit together. “What do you mean?”

  “I just…it was winter and I was living on the street. I didn’t have any money and I needed some. I mean, I needed…” Her voice trailed off as his face changed.

  “What are you saying?” He drew back, just a touch. “That you were a…”

  She could see the word on his lips. “No,” she snapped. “I wasn’t a hooker. I was…I was…”

  Her words trailed off. She’d never thought of it that way, but what else was it? She’d slept with a man who disgusted her in order to obtain drugs. One service for another. What was that, if not an act of prostitution?

  “I suppose,” she corrected hersel
f, “that is what I’m saying.” And she turned away, feeling suddenly ill.

  Quinn didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “Well,” he began, after a while, “like I said, I’m not going to judge you. But I take it you’re not…involved in that line of work anymore?”

  “No.” She felt a dull heat spread over her face. “Not in a long time.”

  He shifted, clearly ill at ease. “Good.” He hesitated. “Why is he after you now?”

  She kept her eyes averted. “The last time I saw him, he tried…I mean, he tried. And I wouldn’t. I fought him off and ran.”

  His voice went deadly quiet. “What you’re telling me is that he tried to rape you.”

  “I guess,” she whispered.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Last month. That first night I was supposed to meet you. Remember my no-show?”

  “And where does he live?” he persisted.

  “In Spanish Harlem, over on Second. Why?” She raised her eyes to his face and recoiled from the rage she saw there.

  “Because I’m going to kill the motherfucker.”

  “No!” She shook her head. “I don’t want to drag you any further into this, Quinn. Besides, you probably scared him off.” Her voice softened. “Thank you, by the way.”

  He shrugged off her words. “You’d better get dressed.”

  “Why? Are we going somewhere?”

  “Yes. The police station.”

  “No!”

  “You have to do something, Shan. Either you can tell me where to find him and I’ll have a talk with him or you can tell it to the cops. It’s your choice.”

  “I can’t go to the cops, and I won’t get you involved.”

  “Don’t be a fucking idiot,” he snapped. “You can’t just pretend it didn’t happen. He beat the shit out of you. And what do you think he was planning to do with that blade? Cut your meat?”

  “If I go anywhere near the cops, they’ll haul me to juvie so fast you won’t even see me going!”

  He caught her hands again. “Why?”

  “Because I’m a runaway! And I’m not going back. Never. I’d rather be dead. He’s there.”

  He tightened his grip. “Who?”

  “My father,” she whispered, “and you can pretend it didn’t happen. I always did…before. The stuff he used to do to me. He used to hit me. Beat me up. Sometimes he burned me.”

  She stared past Quinn as if he wasn’t there, back into the blackness that was her childhood. “He said it was my fault that my mother died, so he punished me for it. I just pretended it never happened.” She shifted, pulling her legs in tight against her chest.

  After a time she noticed Quinn looking at them, his eyes wide, shocked, and she realized that the scars from her father’s burns were clearly visible, blazing a white trail over her knees and thighs. She looked away. “I’ve never told anyone that before,” she admitted, wondering why she’d told him now.

  When Quinn touched her, she flinched as if he’d struck her, but he gathered her into his arms and drew her onto his lap. She let him do it, curling into a ball. He put his hand on her leg, covering the scars on her knees.

  They stayed that way for a long time. After a while, Quinn felt a crick in his leg. He changed position to relieve the stiffness and smoothed the hair away from her face, then realized she’d fallen asleep. Her head lay on his chest, her breathing was soft and regular, and her hand rested on his shoulder.

  He touched her cheek. It was dry. She hadn’t shed even a single tear.

  He gazed down at her, experiencing the most peculiar glow in his chest, then buried his face in her tousled curls and breathed in her scent, his arms tightening around her small body.

  chapter 13

  Quinn rubbed his eyes. They’d been working the same song for days, but it wasn’t coming to life and he was sick of the sound of it. Maybe they’d be better off just scrapping it and trying something new, or maybe the magic they’d found together was all used up.

  He eyed Shan dolefully. She was cross-legged on the wooden coffee table with her twelve-string across her lap. She’d been playing the same riff for twenty minutes and it was beginning to grate on his nerves.

  As she began it again, he let forth a resonant sigh. Shan leveled a coolly inquisitive look at him. “Do you have a problem of some kind?”

  “Not really. I’m just a little comatose from listening to you play the same guitar part over and over and over again,” Quinn said. “You think you could maybe change a chord in it. Any chord will do, as long as it sounds a tiny fucking bit different?”

  “I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong with it, and you’re no help. You’ve been sitting there like a lump for the last hour.”

  “Why should I say anything? You won’t listen,” he said. “I told you to leave it alone and work on a different part of the song. It’ll come to you when you stop obsessing over it.”

  “Thank you, Paul Simon. Tell me, what do you usually charge when you coach amateur songwriters?”

  “No need to get huffy. You’re the one who keeps saying you still want direction.”

  “I haven’t said that in a while,” she retorted. “Besides, it’s not like your direction has anything to do with helping me. You love having a little protégée to boss around, so you can reassure yourself how brilliant you are.”

  The annoyance simmering inside him began to reach the boiling point. “You know, I’ve had just about enough. Your raggy little tantrums are beginning to get on my nerves.”

  “Then get out of here and don’t listen to them.”

  “Fine.” He stalked through the kitchen, stepped into the hallway and got a firm grip on the door, intending to slam it hard enough to knock the plaster from the ceiling.

  Then he stopped, his hand on the knob. This kind of thing was happening with increasing frequency. They weren’t arguing any more than they always had, but the arguments had acquired a different flavor. More venomous, and the venom was coming from her, not him, this time.

  He closed the door and went back into the living room.

  Shan didn’t turn around. She knew he was still there—he could tell by the stiffness in her back—but she kept her head down and stubbornly began to play the same riff again.

  He glared at her. “Would you mind telling me what in the fuck is the matter with you?”

  She stopped in the middle of a beat and looked up, a distinctly unfriendly expression on her face. “Nothing! Just get off my back!”

  “Bullshit. You’ve been acting like a turbobitch all week. Now, I know I’m not the easiest guy to put up with, but I haven’t done anything to deserve the kind of shit you’re dumping on me. You’d better start talking. Fast. Or I will walk out of here and, this time, I won’t come back.”

  Her eyes had grown huge. The angry look melted as she set the guitar aside. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she confessed.

  He advanced a couple of steps into the room. “I just don’t understand the hostility. You’re acting like you hate me. What’d I do, for Chrissake?”

  “Nothing,” she said, “except help me. It’s just that when I’m with you now, I feel so…” she made a gesture of futility, “naked, I guess. Exposed.”

  He sat back down. “Well, you told me a lot of stuff that you’ve never told anyone else, so I can understand that. Maybe you should find somebody else to talk to about it.”

  “You mean a shrink?” she asked, elevating her chin.

  “Well, it wouldn’t hurt. Or you could talk to one of your roommates, at least. You girls are good at that, right? Sharing your feelings, or whatever.”

  “I’m not.” She frowned. “Besides, I can take care of myself.”

  He suppressed a grin. “I know, but you must have a friend you’re comfortable talking to.”

  She reached over and touched his hand. “I think I’m talking to a friend right now.”

  “I don’t know if I’m the best choice for unconditional understanding.
I’m better when there’s a problem that needs solving. And all of my friends are guys,” he added. “I’ve never really had a woman friend.”

  “Of course you haven’t.” She got up and wandered over to the window. “You’re too busy sizing up every female as a potential sex partner.”

  “Not every one,” he said. “Only the ones with the right attitude.”

  “I know. Only the ones who play by your rules.” Shan gazed out the window with her hands clasped behind her back. It was a sunny Saturday in June and Spring Street was packed with people. “Hey, let’s go for a walk.”

  “This is supposed to be a writing day,” he reminded her. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Well, writing isn’t working. We’re blocked or something.” She caught his hand and dragged him toward the door. “Maybe the air will clear our heads.”

  He grumbled as they came out into the sunshine. People milled up and down the street and the odd buildings that typified SoHo’s architecture rose above them like cast-iron sentries. “You New Yorkers sure spend a lot of time on the street,” he said. “Even at three a.m. when we get done gigging there are people out walking. You don’t see that in Boston.”

  “Well, Bostonians are supposed to be stuffy,” she said, heading down Spring Street.

  He fell into step beside her. “I’m not, but I’m not a real Bostonian, either. Just a temporary transplant.”

  “That’s right.” She glanced up at him as they cut through the SoHo Square Park, heading west toward the waterfront. “You’re from California, like Dan, aren’t you?” He certainly looked like a surfer boy, with his long blond hair and swimmer’s build.

  “Yes, and I can’t wait to get back there,” he said. “I hate the fucking winters here. One more year, then I don’t care if I never see another snowflake.”

  “Dan said he grew up in the San Fernando Valley. Do you come from that part of California, too?”

  Quinn shrugged. “More or less.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  He stopped, shooting her an annoyed glance. “Why are you so inquisitive, all of a sudden?”

  “Well, it’s just occurred to me that I don’t know all that much about you and that’s weird, don’t you think? Especially since we spend so much time together.”