Rock Star: The Deal (Book 3 of a Bad Boy Romance) (3 page)

T
he next morning
Chase wasn’t to be found on the bus. Luke and I went on a coffee run for the crew, even though they would have done it for us. I couldn’t get used to having anyone else waiting on me. In many ways I had got so used to serving coffee in the mornings. It had become habit.

Carrying two trays back to the tour bus, Luke was telling me a story from growing up in Kentucky. How he’d first got into singing and experienced his first moment of humiliation. I knew he was trying to encourage me, but I let him go on.

“It was a talent contest at school, except they let everyone in. I kid you not. Everyone was green-lit to go ahead and share something with an entire assembly. Magicians, tap dancing, a ventriloquist and then me, on a guitar. You could have heard a pin drop when I stepped on that stage. Thing was they had this backup track that was meant to be like my band. Halfway through singing, someone hit the wrong button and it switched to a completely different track for a girl who was going to sing later. After that it just went downhill.”

“What did you do?”

“What any professional would. I changed the song on the fly and played out like a pro.”

“Really?”

“No. I ran off crying. But it would have been great if I had done that.”

I slapped him on the arm.

When we made it back to the tour bus, there were two more tour buses that had pulled in. One of them had a big image of a woman with blond flowing hair. Everyone knew her. Taylor Wade. She had risen to stardom almost overnight. Any album she put out sold in a flash. It was hard to believe that we were going to be playing with the likes of Taylor.

Piling back into the tour bus, I nearly dropped the coffee all over the floor. It wasn’t because I had stumbled. But because Chase was lip locking with the woman herself — Taylor.

“Excuse us,” Luke said, turning around and trying to push me in the opposite direction in hopes that I hadn’t seen them. But it was too late. I had.

“Oh, hey, this is Taylor,” Chase said. His face went a deep shade of red. In that moment I had several options. I could get all up in his face about it, or I could act like it didn’t bother me.

I chose the second.

“Nice to meet you.” I extended my free hand to her. She shook it and looked me up and down.

“Heard a lot about you.”

“Really?” My eyes darted between Chase and her.

“We are going to go out for some lunch, you are free to join us if you want?”

“Actually I had a few plans today. But thanks.”

We weren’t going to be playing until the evening. The bus had arrived in the early hours of the morning. So the day was ours. The crew were snoozing away, sleeping off the large amount of beer they had been drinking last night. Mia was lingering around like a fly over shit. She looked pleased by what was taking place.

“Chase is going to be singing with Taylor tonight. Isn’t that right, Chase?” Mia said.

Oh it’s going to be like that, is it? “I didn’t know you were down to play tonight,” I said.

She smiled sweetly. “I didn’t either but your lovely manager arranged it all.”

“We like to make it happen.”

I glared at Mia. She knew what she was doing.

Not wishing to stick around to see how this was all going to play out, I placed the coffee on a counter, took mine and exited the bus. I heard Chase come up from behind me. He caught up with me.

“Where are you heading?”

I didn’t want to show how annoyed I was, even if he could sense it.

“I think I’m gonna go into the city today.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No, it looks like you have your hands full there.”

“Meghan. We’re just old friends. I dated Taylor for a while. But that was then, this is now.”

I shrugged. “I’m fine with it. You do whatever.”

“You’re mad.”

“No. No, I’m not.”

“You’re also a bad liar.”

“Let’s not talk about lying, shall we.” My eyes narrowed and I pursed my lips. He honestly didn’t think he was just going to walk away from this by offering me one of his cheeky, sexy smiles. Not this time.

I turned away and walked off. I knew he was still looking at me, as I could see his reflection in the window. I didn’t bother to turn back. I just needed a bit of a break. This was going to be the second venue and already I was thinking that maybe I wasn’t cut out for this. No one ever tells you what life is going to be like on the road. Toss in a relationship that you’re not too sure where you stand and it’s a recipe for disaster.

I kept walking until I saw several cabs. I hopped into one and asked to be taken to West End Music Store. It was a famous store in the Birmingham area. Numerous artists had been there, bought guitars. Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, June Carter and many others. I couldn’t think of a better place to kill time than in the place where legends had visited. It was also give me time to phone Sophie and catch up on how things were going.

What I didn’t know was Luke had been following me.

When I got out of the cab and entered the store, I heard someone coming up behind me.

“You weren’t going to scoot away without me now, were you?”

I was startled to see Luke. He held the door and I went in.

“Do you have a habit of following women?”

“Only the beautiful ones.”

Inside it was a guitar collector’s dream. Every inch of the walls was filled with acoustics, electrics and bass guitars. On the ground speakers divided up the large rectangular room. Black-and-white photos adorned the walls displaying images of famous singers. They went right back to the 1950s.

“Well, look who it is.”

We both looked behind us expecting to see some well-known star.

An old man came towards us. A patch over one eye and a white beard that looked as if it hadn’t been cut in two decades.

“Luke Claybourne, and Meghan Sullivan.”

They said it was strange when people began to recognize you for your music, but I didn’t expect it to be someone in their sixties.

“You know us?” Luke asked.

“Know you? My kid watched that competition you were in, every damn week. I had no other choice but to get to know you. Now where’s that other fella? Chase Bryan?”

“At the arena.”

“Ah, too bad for him. Come on in, let me show you around. We have some great equipment here. Did you know Willie Nelson visited and bought three guitars, and that Elvis, yes, the King, visited here? He bought ten guitars that day.”

He pointed to a photo that backed up everything he was saying. It was an old picture of Elvis in his thick-rimmed glasses standing beside a younger version of…

“Mack Burns. That’s what they call me, but you can call me Macky. All my friends do. Now what is your demon?”

“What?”

“You know. Electric? Acoustic?”

“Neither. I can sing. Well, I try to.”

He took a hold of my arm. “Listen up, missy, I heard you sing and you have the voice of an angel. Don’t doubt it. All the best who have come through these doors have their insecurities. It’s OK. Just don’t let it get the better of you. You understand?”

“Loud and clear, Macky.”

“Good. Now let’s get you hooked up with some equipment.”

Over the course of an hour he took us around this massive shop. He told us tales of artists he’d sold to, and at the end he handed each of us a guitar. He wouldn’t take a penny. He just asked that we play it at one of our shows. The fact that I didn’t know how to play guitar didn’t matter. He said I could give it to a friend. I had already made up my mind who that was going to be — Spike.

While he continued showing Luke around, I made a quick phone call to Sophie. She answered immediately.

“Ready to come home?”

“Not yet. But missing you.”

“It’s not the same without you here.”

“How’s Spike?”

“He’s doing well. He’s really got this coffeehouse running like a charm.”

“Good, good. Hey, can you tell him I have a gift I think he’s going to love when I get back?”

I brought up her up to speed on our trip. The latest goings-on. My flub in South Carolina and meeting Taylor. When I got off the phone, Luke and I made our way back to the tour bus.

The evening was set to start at seven. There were preparations to be done before then, setting up and testing everything. A quick run-through of the set for that night and we were ready.

I think Chase was feeling guilty as he had made a point to pull me aside. He wanted to take me out after the show, but I told him it was fine. Honestly I think he got a little jealous when he saw me and Luke return from a day out in the city. Luke was talking it up inside the tour bus about the store with all the crew.

Taylor Wade wasn’t around. I was told she was in the process of going through a vocal routine that she did before every live performance. Vocal warmups? It was new to me. I just went out there and hoped to God I sounded good. I was more worried about choking up again.

* * *

T
hat night
we played in front of over fifteen thousand people. It was breathtaking and an experience I would never forget. The place held over seventeen thousand. I had to keep pinching myself to remember that I was just a girl from a small town in Oregon. It didn’t seem real. However what came next did.

The evening had worn on. Taylor and Chase were on stage. I had retreated to the tour bus to get some rest. Luke had gone up to watch the show from the VIP booth. I told him I would join him once I had got rid of a headache that had begun to form.

I had taken a few Advil and passed out on one of the leather couches.

When I came to, I noticed I was no longer in the tour bus. I was in a dark enclosed space. It was tight. But I could move around. I could hear the sound of a radio playing. The noise of vehicles going by.

I was in the trunk of a car. What the hell? I started banging on the roof, on the back of the rear seat. “Let me out!”

That’s when I noticed my hands were bound, and so were my feet. I could feel fear creeping over me as I tried to make sense of it. It felt like a bad dream that I couldn’t wake up from. I did what I remembered a TV show on survival had instructed in the event someone kidnapped you. I was able to wiggle my hands just enough to pull the plastic from the corner of the inside of the car. Just around the taillights. I then pulled out the light. I searched around inside the truck with my hands, but couldn’t find anything. So I began to punch the plastic glass as hard as possible. I could feel my skin beginning to tear on my knuckles. It was agonizing but I wasn’t going to end up in a ditch somewhere with a bullet in my head.

I kept hitting it as hard as I could until I finally cracked it and I found my two hands were now sticking out of the back. Cold wind whipped against my skin. It was pitch-dark outside. There was no way anyone was going to see my hands unless a car pulled up behind. I continued to bang against the top of the trunk door, hoping that I might be able to unlock it. It was futile. The thing wasn’t going to move.

Suddenly the car swerved and came to a halt. It was still idling. This was it. I braced myself for the moment the person unlocked the trunk. I was going to try and kick them. I heard the door on the car open, close and footsteps came around. Then the door unlocked and there they were.

“Shut the fuck up.” She punched me several times in the face.

It was a woman’s voice. I didn’t know it. But it was definitely a woman.

“Let me go. I will give you money if that’s what you want. Just don’t hurt me.”

She laughed and slammed the trunk closed. I was bathed in darkness again. Her door slammed and the car pulled away. I don’t know how long we drove for. It could have been an hour or more. I had always heard people saying in movies how they were able to trace their way back to where they were taken by remembering the turns that the car took. Who were these people? There was no way you could do that. I hadn’t a clue where I was right now.

I suddenly remembered I had my phone on me. It was in my back pocket. I shimmied onto my side and put my hands back through the hole that I had created in the taillight. Whoever had tied my hands had only used a piece of cloth. It was in strips. I began rubbing it against the metal. Back and forth until it began to tear. Then I was able to pry my hands loose. Once I had them loose I reached for my feet and undid them. Then I grabbed my phone out. The light filled the inside of the trunk with light. I tapped in 9-1-1, but there was no signal. Wherever they were taking me obviously was out of range of any towers. I couldn’t even get one bar on this damn thing. I had to know where I was. Get to somewhere where I could make a phone call. Was Mia behind this? My mind started rushing through all the people I greeted at the last event. Was this lady from South Carolina? Was she from Alabama?

The thought of my life ending this way was something I could have never imagined. I didn’t want to die at the hands of some deranged woman.

I wouldn’t. As soon as she opened this trunk again, I was going to fight for my life.