Bodyguard: Target (33 page)

Charley knew if Geoff stepped out of that
door they’d never see him again and Ash would forever be in danger.

So would she.

As the roadie limped past, the malice in
his steel-blue eyes
was terrifying. Compelled to act, Charley ran to block the
doorway but stopped as Kay marched into the room.

‘What’s this about
Ash’s attacker being caught?’ she demanded.

‘Afraid not, Kay,’ said
Terry, still supporting Geoff, who had his head bowed and a hand to his fractured
jaw. ‘It’s yet another false alarm from your pet bodyguard.’

Kay glanced at Charley, raising
an
eyebrow at her split lip and bruised throat. She turned to Big T.
‘What’s going on here? And what’s happened to Charley?’

Big T glared at the roadie in
Terry’s arms. ‘I just managed to stop that man strangling Charley with a
wrench.’

‘My God!’ gasped Kay.
‘Why would he do that?’

‘Charley didn’t realize he
was carrying out a safety inspection of the toaster
lift,’ explained Big T.
‘It seems a case of mistaken identity. Things got out of hand and
–’

‘NO!’
shouted Charley. ‘That man was sabotaging the lift to kill Ash. Why
won’t anyone believe me?’

Big T laid a hand on her shoulder.
‘Charley, enough’s enough. You’ve already accused one innocent
person today.’

‘And you’re always crying
wolf,’ Terry added. ‘Kay,
I can vouch for Geoff’s innocence. In my
opinion, Charley is the paranoid lunatic that should be locked up.’

‘Well,
I
don’t
trust any man who beats up a girl.’ Kay’s eyes blazed. ‘Vince,
radio a technician to check the lift.’

Vince nodded, thumbed his mic and made
the call.

‘I was in the middle of fixing
it,’ protested Geoff, his hand still pressed to his bearded
jaw.

‘He’s lying again!’
cried Charley. ‘Look at him! He’s got guilt written all over his
face.’

For the first time Kay properly looked
at the roadie’s face. Her eyes widened. ‘I know you! Your name’s
not Geoff!’

Dropping his hand from his face, the
roadie snarled, ‘Screw you, Kay!’

Shrugging off Terry, he pounced on the
music manager. His fingers dug into
her throat as he slammed her against the wall.
Big T and Rick were on him in seconds. But the roadie refused to let go. Charley
stepped in and side-kicked his kneecap, targeting the same one as before. There was
a sickening crunch and the roadie shrieked as he dropped to the floor.

‘Good kick, Charley,’
grunted Big T as he and Rick pinned the man down.

Running a trembling
hand through her red hair and flattening her creased blouse, Kay looked scornfully
at the squirming roadie. ‘You can tell that to the police when they arrive
…
Brandon
.’

‘Brandon?’ said Charley,
staring hard at the roadie. Now that Kay had said his name Charley vaguely
recognized the man. She’d downloaded his picture into the operation folder.
He’d been slimmer, blond-haired
and with stubble, unlike the dark-haired
bearded man now writhing on the floor at their feet. But his steel-blue eyes were
unmistakable. This was Brandon Mills, the songwriter who’d accused Ash of
copying the hit ‘Only Raining’.

Brandon squirmed in the
bodyguards’ grip, spitting at Kay. ‘Ash stole my song! My
life!’

Kay regarded him with contempt.
‘And you broke
my heart, among other things.’

As she strode out of the room, her sharp
stiletto just happened to stamp on his hand.

‘I blame myself,’ admitted
Kay, standing with Charley and Big T at the side of the stage as Ash prepared for
his encore at the Oakland Oracle Arena. They’d all been unnerved to discover
Terry’s trusted roadie was Brandon Mills. However, since his arrest by the San
Franciscan police, it looked as if Ash would be safe from any further murder
attempts. ‘If I’d joined the tour earlier I might have recognized that
psycho songwriter!’

‘None of us did,’ said Big
T, ‘and he was right under our noses.’

Kay rounded on the veteran bodyguard.
‘Perhaps you should
get your eyes tested?’

Big T’s jaw tightened and his
nostrils flared.

‘Brandon was well
disguised,’ said Charley, coming to Big T’s defence. ‘He fooled us
all.’

Charley cast her mind back. She
remembered the bearded roadie descending the wire-rope ladder just before the bomb
scare and spotlight accident. And he was the one who’d yelled at Jessie for
handling
the microphone before he set it up himself on stage. After seeing the
‘ashes to
ashes’ death threat, the police were
going to review the hotel CCTV footage for any sign of Brandon before the fire.
Charley had no doubt they’d find that evidence, just as they’d be able
to link him to the ‘No more encores’ letter and the backmasking threat
on Ash’s last single. Nor would she be
surprised if the tyre blowout that
caused the coach crash had been another of his deliberate accidents. Brandon was a
nasty piece of work.

A technician had inspected the toaster
lift’s hydraulic unit and discovered that it was primed to go off like a
cannon. On its next use, the central piston would have shot straight through the
platform and speared Ash like a harpooned
whale. It would have been a gruesome and
very painful death.

Charley wondered how anyone could become
so deranged over an Ash Wild song that he wanted to kill not only Ash but anyone
else who got in the way.

A single glance at the hysterical
audience clamouring for an encore answered that question. There didn’t appear
to be a sane person in the whole venue. With mad
eyes, wild hair and mouths fixed in
permanent screams, everyone was going crazy for the rock star as he walked out on
stage and began playing his worldwide hit ‘Only Raining’.

The familiar chimes of the song’s
opening riff filled the massive arena and as the crowd roared their approval Charley
thought her eardrums might burst.

‘Ash is on fire tonight!’
remarked Kay,
tapping her thigh in time to the beat of the music.

She was right. This had to be one of the
best concerts of
the whole tour. And, though she’d missed
most of it, Charley could finally enjoy Ash’s performance without worrying
that some tragedy was about to hit him.

Ash was safe now, his stalker destined
for a lifetime in jail.

The threat of ‘no more
encores’ was
no more.

Leaning close, Kay spoke above the music
into Charley’s ear. ‘You certainly lived up to your word and protected
Ash. In fact, I intend to speak with Colonel Black at the end of the tour about
extending your –’

From the opposite wing, they both saw
Ash dash on to the stage.

But that was impossible since Ash was
already performing.

Before Charley or anyone
else could
react, the new Ash shoved his other self violently off the stage. The assaulted Ash
flew through the air and disappeared into the security pit. It happened so fast that
many fans wondered if they’d seen it at all – especially since the band
played on and their idol still stood on the stage, haloed in a spotlight, no break
in his performance. But when the new Ash
began singing it was obvious to everyone
that he was a fraud.

Sprinting over, Charley leapt down from
the stage, reaching the real Ash at the same time as the other security guards. He
lay in a heap, having fallen head first more than two metres on to the concrete
floor.

‘I think I’ve broken my
neck!’ Ash gasped.

Charley knelt down beside him.

‘Keep still,’
she whispered.
‘We’ll call an ambulance.’ Tears clouded her vision and her throat
choked with a sob.
After all she’d been through that
night, she’d failed to protect him from the forgotten threat – Pete.

‘I don’t need an
ambulance,’ explained Ash. ‘I need a new guitar.’

He held up his busted instrument, its
neck cocked at a severe angle, only held on by the steel strings.
‘I had to
let it go to break my fall.’

Charley burst into relieved laughter and
hugged him. ‘I thought you were really hurt.’

‘Nah, I’m fine,’ said
Ash, sitting up.

She helped the dazed rock star back to
his feet. On stage Big T had seized Pete in a headlock and the band finally stopped
playing.

‘I
am
Ash!’
declared the boy, struggling in Big T’s crushing
grip.
‘
He’s
the impostor!’ He pointed an accusing finger at
Ash in the pit with Charley.

‘Save it, Pete. We all heard your
lame attempt to sing,’ said Big T.

‘But … I’ve got a sore
throat from the fire,’ Pete pleaded as he was dragged away.

Ash clambered back on stage to the
rapturous applause of his fans. Shouldering a new guitar, he joked to them,
‘Fame must
have gone to his head!’

As the audience laughed, Charley called
up from the pit, ‘You sure you’re OK to go back on?’

Ash nodded and grinned.
‘You’d have to
kill
me to stop me doing an encore.’

As the tour bus headed south on Route 101
to Los Angeles the following day, Kay called a meeting in the upper-front lounge.
Ash, Charley, Big T and Terry settled themselves into the leather
sofas while Vince
and Rick stood with the band to hear the update on Ash’s demented double.

‘The doctor says Pete is suffering
from grandiose delusions,’ Kay explained. ‘The boy is convinced
he’s Ash Wild. No one can persuade him otherwise.’

‘What if he is? And we’ve
got the wrong one?’ The bassist scrutinized the Ash sitting beside Charley on
the sofa.

Ash’s lip
curled. ‘Ha ha!
We’d soon know if
you
were replaced. The bass playing would be
better!’

‘Dissed!’ The drummer
laughed, punching the bassist’s arm at Ash’s joke.

Kay silenced them with a glare.
‘According to the doctor, Pete has a history of mental health issues, usually
kept in check with medication. But it appears he’s been forgetting to take
his.’

‘Where’s
Pete now?’ asked Charley.

‘He’s being held in a secure
psychiatric clinic,’ Kay replied. She turned to Ash. ‘The question is,
do you want to press charges?’

Ash gazed through the window at the
passing traffic. ‘Pete did me a favour. As my decoy, he gave me the space that
I needed.’ Ash glanced fondly at Charley, who felt an unexpected flush rise in
her cheeks. She still
wore the white-gold bracelet he’d bought her in Las
Vegas. ‘Besides, I wasn’t hurt badly. Let’s call it
quits.’

Kay looked surprised.
‘That’s your final decision?’

Ash shrugged a yes. ‘He’s a
super-fan, and they can all get a little crazy sometimes.’

‘Fine. I’ll let the clinic
know, so he can be sent back to the UK.’ Her tone hardened. ‘But what
I
want to know
is how a mentally disturbed fan was allowed backstage in
the first place?’

Her eyes raked across Vince, Rick and
Charley before settling on Big T. Just as she was about to rip into the veteran
bodyguard, Ash cut in. ‘That was my idea,’ he admitted. ‘As I
said, Pete made a great decoy.’

‘Still,’ said Kay, her glare
returning to its original target, ‘it was Big T’s responsibility
to
security-check
everyone
on the tour.’

‘I did do a background check on
Pete. It came up with nothing,’ said Big T.

‘Well, you obviously didn’t
do it thoroughly enough,’ said Kay. ‘How could you miss
–’

‘I got the same result when I ran
a separate check,’
Charley interrupted, trying to take
the heat off Big T as he’d so often done for her. ‘There’d been a
huge database crash and Pete’s medical records were corrupted. From what was
available, he appeared normal, aside from his obvious fixation on Ash.’ She
held up a picture on her phone of a room wreathed from floor to ceiling in Ash Wild
memorabilia. ‘Pete posted this online. As you can see, his bedroom’s a
virtual shrine to Ash.’

‘Jeez, that guy is beyond a
super-fan!
It’s creepy,’ remarked the bassist. ‘He’s even
got Ash Wild duvet covers! Now that
is
terrifying.’

Kay stabbed a gold-ringed finger at the
photo. ‘Shouldn’t
that
have rung alarm bells?’

Charley winced at the sharpness of her
tongue. ‘Like Big T, I was always suspicious of Pete, but his room isn’t
any different from countless other fans’ bedrooms around the world.’

‘That may be so –’ Kay
turned on Big T again – ‘but Pete was the
second
danger to slip
through your fat fingers last night.’

The bodyguard puffed up his chest.
‘Kay, we
all
missed Brandon. Terry hired him! Even defended him, for
heaven’s sake!’ The tour manager said nothing, but shrank into the sofa,
hoping not to attract Kay’s wrath. ‘Brandon was a devious psychopath. He
altered his appearance, faked his ID and credentials, and even fooled
you
for a while.’

‘It still amounts to a major
oversight in security,’ snapped Kay. ‘You and I will revisit this issue
at the end of the tour.
In the meantime, please reassure me
that it’s within your capability to keep Ash alive for the final two dates in
LA.’

Big T bristled, but he kept his
cool.
‘Yes,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Ash is safe as
houses.’