Ravensong (36 page)

He waited in the silence while she
hunted for his brother.

“
Josh?” James’ voice was
immediately alarmed. Joshua wondered what Margaret had said to
him.

“
Hey, James, it’s good to
hear your voice.”

“
What’s up?”

“
Nothing. I just wanted to
touch base.”

James didn’t answer for a moment.
“Josh, don’t shit me. I can hear the strain in your voice. What’s
going on?”

Joshua exhaled. “I need some
help.”

“
Tell me where you are and
I’ll catch a flight out tonight.”

“
No,” Joshua said, sitting
back in alarm. “I didn’t mean that. I just need to run some things
by you and get your impression, that’s all.”

“
Josh.” James had always
used that tone with him, half-chiding, half-concerned. “Tell me
where you are, damn it. You promised me.”

Joshua’s eyes drifted to the backpack.
He had promised, but it was so hard to live by that promise. It was
selfish to expect his brother to bail him out, selfish to take him
away from his family now, when they needed him more.

“
I just need you to do some
snooping around from where you are, use your police connections,
something…”

“
Joshua, please. You made
me a promise, damn it. Now stick with it. Tell me where you
are.”

“
I don’t want to take you
from Margaret and the baby. Your job.”

“
I can get a leave for
family issues and Margaret understands.”

For some reason, that statement made
Joshua hunch his shoulders. He didn’t want Margaret to understand,
or pity him. James’ poor, pathetic, screwed up brother. God,
sometimes he hated himself.

“
Josh, please?”

Joshua exhaled again. He knew he’d
lost the fight, and he knew he needed his brother. “Boston. We’re
in Boston,” he said.

* * *

Elena and Evan stood in the
wings, watching
Avalanche
perform. Joshua had moved out onto the walkway and
the crowd was lifting their hands, trying to touch him as he
serenaded them.

A motion in her line of sight drew her
attention and she looked up to see a tall, blond man step up on the
other side of Evan. Evan reacted with a laugh and turned, embracing
the man.

“
How the hell are you?”
said the lead singer.

“
Good. What the hell is
this get-up?” The man motioned at Evan’s zoot suit and
hair.

“
Part of the gag, brother,
part of the gag.” He turned to Elena. “This is Elena Harris. Elena,
this is James Connor, Joshy’s brother.”

Elena shook hands with him. “Nice to
meet you.”

“
Same here.” He looked out
at the band and whistled. “Can you believe this?”

“
I know,” laughed Evan. “I
keep pinching myself. We never dreamed this was possible back in
the old days.”

“
Not even a
bit.”

Evan turned to Elena. “I
played in James’ band,
Blazes
, when we were a lot younger.
That was my first band.”

She smiled at him, but her attention
was caught by James. He was staring at Joshua intently.

“
He’s got so much charisma.
It’s like a force.”

“
Yeah,” remarked Evan,
watching him as well. “I keep remembering him as this scrawny kid,
sneaking in to our rehearsals.” He glanced at Elena again. “We’d
rehearse in James’ basement and he’d sneak down the stairs and
watch us. James always caught him and told him to get the hell
out.”

Elena smiled once more.

“
But he’d be back the next
day,” finished James. “I ever tell you about the time I caught him
down there. He was messing on the keyboard. I was all set to storm
in and beat the crap out of him, but then I heard what he was
playing.”

“
One of our
songs?”

“
Yeah, and no. He’d changed
some of the chord progressions and tweaked the melody. When I went
down, he stopped playing and almost bolted. I told him to keep
playing and I picked up my guitar. I took one strum on those
strings and knew he’d done something to it.” James laughed. “It had
never been in such tune before.”

Evan joined him. “He tuned all our
guitars. We’d line them up for him and he’d go down the line.” He
punched James’ lightly in the stomach. “I’d have him do it for me
now, but he’s a bigger star than I am.”

“
Yeah, me too.”

“
So, what happened after
you found out he’d messed with your guitar?”

“
We fixed the rest of the
song, then I sat down with him and we changed the lyrics. If you
remember, I took the credit for the new arrangement, but I felt so
damn guilty about it. I never chased him off the stairs
again.”

Elena waited for them to continue the
story, but when they didn’t, she couldn’t stop herself from asking
more. “Did he eventually play for you?”

“
Yeah,” said James,
glancing at her. “That was Evan’s fault. I was determined no stupid
kid was going to be in our band. Shit, he was thirteen and we were
in high school, but Evan thought different.”

“
I talked James into
letting him join us for a set.”

James rolled his eyes. “The audience
fell in love with him. When we tried to play the next set without
him, they started chanting his name.”

Evan laughed. “James was so pissed
that he forced us to continue playing, but you could hardly hear us
over the crowd. And there was Joshua, waiting in the wings, with
this grin on his face.”

James shook his head in
memory. “That was that. I had to call him out and from that point
on,
Blazes
was
just the backup for Ravensong.”

Evan smiled in memory. “We got record
deals out of it, man.”

James’ face grew serious. “Yeah, and I
almost lost him too.”

Evan’s smile faded. “Yeah, that
too.”

Elena looked away. She didn’t want to
hear any more. It made her feel sick inside to think of what had
happened, especially now. Especially with Joshua acting so odd
lately.

The song trailed off and
Elliot launched into his solo. The other band members headed for
the wings, giving him center stage. A roadie stepped forward and
handed Joshua a bottle of water and a towel. Joshua downed half the
bottle in one swallow and reached for the towel, wiping his
forehead. His eyes came to rest on his brother and he handed the
towel to the roadie, moving toward him.

James caught him in an embrace,
placing his hand on the back of Joshua’s neck and saying something
in his ear that Elena couldn’t catch. Then he held him away and
took a good look at him. Joshua reached for Elena’s hand and pulled
her to his side.

“
James, this is Elena
Harris,” he said.

James nodded. “We’ve met.” His eyes
narrowed on Joshua. “What the hell happened to your
face?”

Joshua looked away. “It’s
nothing…”

“
Josh!” came the stern
command and Joshua’s eyes snapped back to his brother’s intense
scrutiny.

With an exhalation, he capitulated.
“Ray showed up at the concert a few nights ago. He wanted money and
we got into it. Then he let me have it.”

Elena knew something silent and
profound had passed between the two of them. Joshua had never given
up information that easily to anyone before. She studied his
brother with renewed respect.

James was frowning. “He’d better look
worse than you do.”

Joshua shook his head.

“
How did that bastard know
where you were?”

Joshua shrugged. “He said a neighbor
told him. The stage manager let him in because he recognized the
name. He didn’t know any better.”

“
You need to get a
restraining order against him.”

Joshua’s gaze dropped. “I took care of
it. It won’t happen again.”

James started to say something more,
but Joshua’s attention snapped back to the stage. Elena knew Elliot
was winding down.

Joshua hugged his brother quickly
again. “I’m glad you’re here,” he muttered, then bent and kissed
Elena before hurrying back into the spotlight.

Elena watched him go, but she felt
James’ eyes on her and when she looked up, he was giving her that
same speculative look that he’d given his brother.

* * *

Joshua tilted his head back, closed
his eyes, and let the hot water run over him. He enjoyed the
post-concert shower, when his body was exhausted, but the roar of
the crowd was still echoing in his ears.

“
Who’s the woman?” came his
brother’s voice from the doorway.

“
She was the assistant
manager, until a few weeks ago,” said Joshua over the drumming of
the water.

“
That’s not what I asked
you. Who is she to you?”

Joshua turned around and shut off the
faucet, then snaked his fingers through his hair, squeezing out the
excess water. He opened the glass door and nodded at the towel.
“Hand me that,” he said.

James tossed it to him, then moved out
of the doorway and back into the main part of the dressing
room.

Joshua dried himself, then dressed in
a pair of jeans. Pulling on a sweat shirt, he combed out his hair,
then padded into the dressing room and sank down on the couch.
James grabbed the chair from the dressing table, turned it around
backward, and straddled it. He studied Joshua a moment in silence,
then nodded.

“
You gonna answer
me?”

“
What do you want me to
say?”

“
This the one Mom told me
about?”

Joshua nodded.

“
The serious
one?”

“
Yeah. We’re moving in
together after the tour.”

“
You said she
was
the assistant
manager. What happened?”

“
She couldn’t work for
Julian anymore.”

James simply nodded. Then he smoothed
a hand over his moustache. “She’s not why I’m here?”

“
No, why you’re here is
another matter entirely. And you didn’t have to come. I just needed
you to see if anything made a connection for you.”

James frowned. “Why don’t you tell me
what’s going on?”

Joshua leaned forward and braced his
forearms on his thighs. “If I tell you, James, you’ve got to
believe me. You’ve got to know that I’m really not responsible for
any of this. I’m going to tell you everything and you’ve got to
believe me that none of it is a lie. Can you do that?”

“
Of course.”

“
You’ve also got to promise
me that it stays between us.”

“
I’m not going to keep
things from Mom and Dad, Josh. They have a right to
know.”

“
Let me tell you, and then
we can talk about that. I don’t think they need to know much right
now.”

James sighed. “All right, but if it’s
anything…”

“
I know.” Joshua stopped
him. “I understand.”

“
So, tell me. What’s going
on?”

Joshua reached for the bottled water
on the table and took a swallow. “I wish I knew. Strange things
keep happening to me. Very strange things. At first I thought
Julian was behind it, but he’s denied everything.”

“
So tell me what’s been
happening.”

“
It started with a magazine
article, after I got the concussion. It speculated that I was using
again.”

“
We saw it,” said James
with a nod.

“
The reporter knew about
the fight Elliot and I had over Elena. That was something we tried
to keep out of the news, and yet it was leaked.”

“
Okay.”

“
Then, there was a woman in
my dressing room a few nights later. She got by Dominic and the
rest of the security detail. She kept claiming that I invited her,
she even had a note with my writing and my signature on
it.”

“
What?”

Joshua nodded. “I confronted Julian
about it, but he said he didn’t know anything. He swore up and down
he had nothing to do with it. You should have seen the way Elena
and the other band members looked at me. Like I’d been caught
stealing.”

“
What if she’d been a head
case, Joshua? Why didn’t you tell me about this? I could have run a
background check on her, see if she had any prior
arrests.”

Joshua pushed a hand through his damp
hair. “She really believed I had invited her. She wasn’t
dangerous.”

“
She could have been!”
snapped James.

Joshua held up a hand in capitulation.
“There’s more.”

“
Go on.”

“
I got a package. In the
dressing room. It was addressed to me and had a return address of a
company called BPI. When I opened it…” Joshua’s voice trailed off.
If he told James what was inside, he would react one of two ways.
Joshua was terrified it might be the wrong reaction.