“Why? If everything was so innocent—”
She was startled when he winced and slammed a fist on the table.
“Sky! Listen to me, damn it! Don’t you understand? If any of this was real, anything you suspect at all, then you’d be putting yourself in danger. Honor your father, Sky! How the hell do you think Jake would feel if you died because of him?”
Chapter Three
Chase had tried. He had tried everything in hell and in his legal power.
He couldn’t just knock her out, kidnap her and keep her away until after the show.
Well, he could. But it wouldn’t be legal. And that would definitely be something that she wouldn’t forgive.
“Chase,” Sky said, looking steadily at him, “trust me. I have no intention of getting myself killed. And the fact that you’re here tells me something.”
“That I’m a glutton for punishment?” he said dryly.
She let out a sound of exasperation. “No! You think that something is off-kilter, too. You know that what happened to my father was not an accident. You don’t know what happened, but you know that something was wrong. Very wrong.”
“Sky—”
“What? It’s okay for you to be there and suspicious as all hell but not me?”
“Sky, first—”
“There is no first.”
“Well, yeah, there is,” he told her. “You know what I’ve been doing. I got my major in criminology and I’ve kept at it—”
“Professional student, yeah, I got it.”
“No, you don’t. Yes, I’ve taken a lot of classes about poisons, blood spatter, DNA and fingerprints. But I’ve also spent hours upon hours at a shooting range. I know how to use a gun. I know how to aim. I’ve taken classes in self-defense—”
“And would a gun have protected my father from an amp that had been purposely set up with a frayed wire, something timed to go off after the show started? Was he going to shoot at the electricity?” Sky demanded.
“Okay, no,” Chase agreed. She had a point.
“I’ll be on stage, you’ll be on stage,” she reminded him passionately.
He sighed, looking down, shaking his head.
“Look at me, Chase, please!” Sky begged. “I know you, too, remember? I know that you suspect that someone on the stage that night—or near it, someone with easy access to the instruments and the amps—meant for my father to die. I can’t begin to understand why anyone would want to kill him. Everyone loved him—seriously. He—”
“Sky, stop. Yeah, he was one of the nicest human beings I have ever encountered. One of the best. But he was no doormat. He held his own when he had an opinion. And he was always a staunch defender of anyone he saw as downtrodden.”
“So,” she said slowly, studying him, “you do know that he was killed.”
“Sky, I don’t know—”
“You suspect. And you’ve figured out what I hadn’t—that he was probably killed because he was going to do something for someone and someone else didn’t want him doing it, or—”
“Sky, don’t you understand? That’s why it’s dangerous.”
She nodded. “I repeat. I’ll be on stage. You’ll be on stage.”
“I’m not going to talk you out of this,” Chase said.
She shook her head.
“All right. Then, do me a favor,” he said.
“Of course.”
“You let me know anything that you think, feel or suspect,” he told her.
“On one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“You let me know anything that you think, feel or suspect,” she said sweetly.
He let out a sound of aggravation.
“That’s the deal,” she told him.
“All right, then, I have another idea,” he said.
“Let’s hear it.”
