The Farther I Fall (18 page)

Lucas let him check the suite, then wished him good night.

When there was a knock on the door two minutes later, he rolled his eyes. “What did you forg—oh, hey Sally.”

“I was on my way back to my room,” she said. “I wanted to see if you were okay.”

“Yeah, just tired,” he said.

“Can I come in a minute?”

He wasn't really in the mood for company. The problem was, the idea of tracking down a dealer was developing more pull by the hour. Maybe talking to someone would do him some good. “Sure.” He swung the door wide and let her in.

“Heard anything else from Gwen?” she asked, staying near him as he shut the door.

“No, not since this afternoon.”

“I'm so sorry, Lucas.” She touched his arm. “You deserve so much better than this.”

He grinned at her wryly. “A lot of folks think I deserve a lot worse.”

“It's not true though.” Her fingers curled around his bicep and tugged him toward the couch. “Come sit down. You need to relax.”

Sally had never showed much concern for his well-being before; did she feel sorry for him?

“I've been waiting for you,” she said, once they'd sat.

“Waiting?” He shifted away; she was sitting too close, and still holding his arm.

“It should have been me,” Sally said. “After London.”

“London? I'm sorry, I'm not—” His memories of the night he overdosed were hazy at best. He remembered taking someone back to his hotel room along with an eight ball of coke. It hadn't been a groupie, it had been—oh shit.

“London,” she said. “You remember now, don't you? You made love to me, and then I saved your life.”

He'd known someone on his team had called the paramedics; he'd assumed they'd found him after. “Sally . . . that was shitty of me, I know that now, I'm sorry—”

“I'm done waiting.” Her tone sharpened. “I know you like to keep your tour managers in line, but that's done now.”

“What do you want?” Lucas asked. They'd been so busy looking for someone outside the tour—nobody thought to check inside. Why would they?

She tilted her head. “I only want what you want: for us to be together. We can now. There's no one to get in our way.”

“Did you—did you take the money?” Lucas swallowed against a dry mouth, hearing the click in his throat.

“We can't talk here. Too many people can listen here. I'm taking you somewhere safe, and we're going to work this out.”

Lucas fought the dread in the pit of his stomach at the thought of going anywhere with her. Where was the security Sam had arranged? They should have been here by now. “Can we just—”

She stood and produced a small handgun from behind her back, cutting off his words. “Don't make me hurt you.” Her voice took on a pleading note. “I don't want to hurt you.”

“Then why—why are you holding a gun on me?”

“I need you to
listen
.” Her voice rose sharply on the last word. “You've been rotten to me, Lucas, fooling around with another woman, and now you're going to come with me and you're going to listen, and we're going to talk this out.” The hand holding the gun had picked up a tremor.

“Okay, okay.” He held up his hands. Stall. He needed to stall long enough for security to get here.

“Now, Lucas. I need to get you somewhere where they can't influence you anymore. Turn around and walk.” Sally gestured with the gun toward the door. “I'm putting the gun in my pocket,” she said, “but if you say anything or try to run, I'll use it. On you and on anybody nearby.”

Lucas walked toward the door.

Her second night in jail—the first full night—was a little better than the first. She was exhausted enough to fall asleep, despite the regular noises of guards' footsteps, other inmates, keys rattling. She woke feeling grimy and in desperate need of a shower. By now the ugly orange jumpsuit that had replaced her clothes had mostly stopped scratching, but the color was still bilious.

She stood in line after breakfast to use the pay phone to call Lucas. After waiting twenty minutes, she got to the phone and dialed his number. It went to voice mail. It wasn't impossible that he was still asleep at ten AM, so she tried again. Still nothing. Aware of the grumbling line behind her, she dialed Craig's number.

Once Craig had accepted the charge for the call, the operator let her know she had three minutes.

“Morning, sunshine,” she said. “Looks like you're going to need to go wake up Lucas, he's not answering his phone.”

“Gwen—” For a heartbeat or two that was all he said.

“What?” she finally prompted.

There was another long pause.

Gwen's heart started beating painfully in her chest as she imagined a hundred different scenarios, each worse than the one before. “Tell me.”

“Our new security staff went to Lucas's room last night after the show. He wasn't there.”

She took a deep breath, then another.

“Gwen?”

“I'm here. Signs of a struggle?”

“No, and his jacket was missing, like he'd gone out for a walk, maybe.”

“Sure,” Gwen said. Her hands were tingling unpleasantly. “Because after everyone telling him not to go anywhere alone, the first thing he's going to do after a show is take a walking tour of San Jose at one in the morning.”

“Gwen . . .”

“Come on, you know what happened.”

“I don't, and neither do you,” Craig said. “He took everything with him, keys, wallet . . . Honestly, this isn't the first time he's gone missing on tour.”

“You think he's using again?”

“No,” Craig said immediately, then amended it. “Not really. But we can't rule it out entirely. I hate like hell to say it, but him vanishing after a show like this . . . it fits his old pattern.”

“Have you called the police?”

“Yeah, but you know as well as I do there's nothing they can do yet.”

“So what are you doing, just sitting on your arse?” Gwen was louder than she meant to be, earning her a look from one of the guards. Her time was almost up.

“We've got extra security staff now, they're talking to hotel staff and looking for surveillance footage. We'll find him, Gwen.”

“Shit. I'm out of time.” Gwen dug in her shirt pocket (her only pocket) and found Harrison's card. “If anything else happens, call my lawyer, Alesha Harrison.” She gave him the number. “She'll be able to get in touch with me.”

“Try not to worry. We'll find him, I swear,” Craig said.

“Yeah. Keep me posted.”

Try not to worry.
Honestly, had anyone ever said anything more worthless to her? Two possibilities cycled through her head on endless repeat as she walked back to her cell. One, Lucas gave in to his demons and had left the hotel to find a dealer. He was under a strain right now, but Gwen remembered the look on his face when he'd talked about getting clean.
What about Christmas, though?
He could have. She didn't want to believe it, but he could have.

Two, the stalker finally saw her chance. Gwen could think of any number of scenarios where Lucas might have left without a struggle. If the woman had had a gun, or if she'd threatened someone else on the crew . . .

Yeah, Lucas would have left with her under those circumstances.

She was useless, utterly fucking useless. It was like the whole situation was bleeding out under her hands and there wasn't a damned thing she could do about it.

Panic glittered at the edges of her vision, wanting to steal her breath and make her heart race.

She noticed her cell mate glaring at her again, so she threw herself onto her bunk and focused all of her energy on remaining completely still, on breathing. One breath. Then another.

It was hot, she was sweating beneath her uniform shirt—no, not her uniform, it was the jumpsuit. The desert heat had always got to her. It had been hot that day. The war was starting to wind down, but they were still active. She'd been sitting outside the mess with Janet drinking tea and hoping for a breeze. Janet was bitching about paperwork.

A pair of Humvees drove by, and one of the men stuck his head out the window. “Oi! Sergeant Tennison!” His red hair and broad Northern accent had always made her smile. “When are you going to let me buy you a pint?” He'd been flirting with her ever since she'd treated him for a sprained wrist earned while pranking his tent mate by moving all the tent mate's furniture onto an airstrip.

“Soon as we're somewhere you can buy a pint, MacEwan,” she teased. “I promise.”

He settled his flak helmet securely on his head and pointed at her. “Gonna hold you to that, Sergeant. I'll look you up.”

“I'll be in Hampshire, Lieutenant.”

He winked at her as the Humvees rolled out, and she wanted to tell him no, to come back because she knew what happened next.

Then came the explosion. She could smell the burning gas even though she knew she was lying on her bunk in a jail cell. They ran, she and Janet. She'd stopped to grab her kit and her flak jacket.

The Humvees had only made it about two hundred yards from the camp before hitting the IED. The front vehicle took the worst damage; men from the second piled out, weapons drawn, scanning the area for enemy targets.

Janet climbed up to look in the cab of the first vehicle after clearing it with the demolitions expert, and Gwen was right behind her, dropping her kit and flak jacket to climb up.

The driver was dead; the explosion had been on his side of the vehicle. MacEwan was in the passenger side, moaning.

“We have to get him out,” Janet said.

“MacEwan?” Gwen said. “Lieutenant? Hold on, all right? We're gonna get you out of here.” They pried open the door, and between the two of them were able to ease him down to the ground, well clear of the vehicle.

Gwen pulled away his armor to get to the worst of the bleeding from his neck. That was when the bullets started flying. She crouched over him as the other soldiers started firing back at the armed men hiding behind a ruined building. Her flak jacket. She cursed and tried to reach for it.

One of the gunmen took aim at Janet. Gwen screamed at her and reached for her service pistol instead.

It happened fast. Janet was knocked back by the shot, blood spattering from her belly. Gwen fired a single round in the man's direction before crawling over to her. She didn't see if she hit anything or not. She was too slow, she was too fucking slow.

She grabbed the heavy gauze pads from her kit. “Janet? Come on, open your eyes.” Training took over as she peeled back blood-soaked uniform fabric to reach the wound. Part of her mind shut down, the part that was screaming at her now that it was all over. She stripped open packet after packet of the gauze, yelling over her shoulder, “Medic down!”

She rolled Janet over to check for an exit wound. There was none; she focused on slowing the bleeding until they could get an evac. She pressed down with the gauze, drawing a low groan from Janet. “I know,” Gwen said, “I know it hurts. Focus on that, come on. Stay with me.” The words flowed out of her, from too much practice at giving a patient something to cling to.

“You gotta hang on. You still owe me for finding you some real shampoo.” The firefight behind her wasn't going well. She yelled over her shoulder again, “Did someone call for a bloody evac or not?”

Janet's eyes fluttered open. “MacEwan—”

“He's fine,” Gwen said. “The bleeding is slowing down.” Janet's wasn't. There wasn't enough gauze, maybe not in all of Afghanistan. “You had to be a prima donna and get hurt worse, didn't you?”

“Am not,” Janet croaked.

“Yeah, you argue with me.” Gwen blinked her suddenly stinging eyes. “As long as you can tell me how wrong I am, then you'll—” Something or someone punched her in the back of the shoulder, stealing away her breath. This was going to hurt, it was going to hurt so much. There was a floating sensation at first, until she looked down and saw the blood pouring from the exit wound in her shoulder.

It wasn't fair at all, not when she fainted, not when she might've been able to keep Janet alive if she'd just fired a little faster. If she'd just put on her damn flak jacket like she was supposed to.

The feeling of salt water dripping into her ears brought her back to the here and now, her first hint that she'd been crying. She hadn't had an honest to god flashback before, not like that. It had been so real, she was left with the same sick feeling of utter helplessness and failure rolling through her gut. Now she was helpless again, and this time she didn't even have a handful of gauze.

This time there was nothing she could do but sit and wait.

***

Lucas was dreaming. He was in the passenger seat of an armored Humvee driving through the desert. Gwen sat behind him, and Lee was driving. The road was littered with body parts, human, but bloodless, like one giant doll after another had been dismembered and tossed into the road. Gwen made Lee stop and she went out and gathered each and every piece. “We can make new ones,” she said. “Come help me, Lucas. Don't worry. The IEDs won't go off for musicians. It's in the Geneva Convention.”

The dream slowly faded, and Lucas grew aware of a terrible pain in his throat. That was enough to bring everything back. They'd walked to a nearby parking garage. She'd made him open the back door of her car, then tied his feet and hands before making him lie down in the backseat. He slowly opened his eyes to see a dimly lit but otherwise perfectly ordinary-looking bedroom. He was tied to a heavy iron bedframe with his knees and ankles tied together.

After she'd tied him to the bed, Sally had left him, saying she still had a job to do. He'd shouted for what felt like hours, but there was no response. Finally the exhaustion had been too much, and he'd fallen asleep.

“Oh good, you're awake. I was beginning to get worried.” Sally was sitting across the room, cross-legged in a battered armchair. “How are you feeling?”

“My throat hurts a little,” Lucas said. His voice was raspy and rough from shouting.

She stood up and walked over, sitting next to him on the bed. “I'm sorry I had to leave you for so long. Things are going crazy at the hotel. I had to talk to the police. They think you're out looking to score.” She reached up and brushed his hair back from his face. He resisted the urge to flinch from her touch. He could picture her calmly talking to Craig, Cathy, the police, lying about him. They thought he was out getting high. Worse, they'd tell Gwen he was out getting high. He couldn't let himself think about her, sitting in a jail cell convinced he'd betrayed her. That feeling got swallowed down, along with the tears threatening to sting his eyes.

“Wait here,” she said—as if he had much of a choice. She left the room, and a moment later Lucas heard the sound of running water.

She came back with a glass of water. “Nothing tricky, I promise. Just water.” She held up the glass for him, and he drank. It was uncomfortably intimate, more so than when she'd touched his hair.

“Thanks.”

A quick look around the room showed almost no furniture other than the bed he was lying on; no personal objects at all. Just an armchair, a small television. No one lived here, not really. Stayed, maybe. But not lived.

Sally sat the glass on the floor and smiled. “So, alone at last.” When Lucas didn't reply, she pursed her lips in a pout. “I thought you'd be pleased.” She was
flirting
, he realized.

Play the game.
He'd played it before: managers, journalists, fans. Before he did it to get a better contract, to get a good story written about him, to get someone in bed. Now he had to play it like his life depended on it—because it did. He looked, really looked at the woman sitting next to him. The notes said she thought she'd had a mutual connection with Lucas beyond what he felt. Well, he was used to that. This was more . . . extreme. Her attitude projected confidence, but there was uncertainty in the slight tilt of her head. There. That was a weakness he could possibly use. He smiled, a mirror to hers. He turned toward her as best he could, twisting his shoulders. “I am, I'm just surprised.” Now it made sense, how the stalker knew so many details about the tour, like where they were staying and how to find them.

She laughed, and even though it was a laugh he knew, had heard hundreds of times, he had to fight a shiver. “You liar. All those times you sang to me, and you're still doing it, right under Gwen's nose, singing my song for me.”

Sound check, trying to get a rise out of her by playing “Mustang Sally.” “I, um, I knew that song had a lot of meaning for you.”

“You were so alone, Lucas, and so was I.” She trailed a finger up his arm, and he fought back another cringe. She tilted her head and looked up at him, coy. “And then we finally managed that one amazing night. The next day you were in detox, then straight into rehab.” She leaned in to whisper in his ear. “You got clean for
me
, Lucas. I was so proud of you.”

A chill went through him, and he passed it off as a different sort of shiver.

“I'd been waiting for you for years.”

Lucas swallowed and tried another smile. “I'm a shit. Forgive me?”

The charm worked. She reached up and touched his cheek, and he forced himself to lean against it. “This time,” she said.

Oh Gwen. How am I going to get out of this?