She left Marci, aware that activity was already happening on the stage, with sound and mic checks. They’d be ready for her.
She paused. Brandon was next to Chris, listening to all last-minute instructions from his father. Nathan was working on something with the keyboard. Joe and Mark were both strumming guitars, talking about chords. Charlie and Justin were working on something with an amplifier and the drums.
But she wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been on stage.
Chase wasn’t there.
Frowning, she looked around and saw he was in the audience. He was engaged in conversation with an audience member.
Andy Wellington. She knew Chase: while it might appear the two men were having a casual conversation, she could tell he had just learned something. Something that brought a furrow to his brow. But Brandon approached the two of them, and Chase quickly smiled and introduced the two men.
“Sky?”
She spun around. Nathan was there. “Mic check?” he asked her.
“Um, yeah, sure, of course!” she replied.
She went through the motions. And she hoped she’d get a private minute with Chase again before they plowed straight into tech...
And the performance.
One that might be far more than anyone involved had begun to imagine.
“BOBBY HAS BEEN GREAT, amazing, really,” Wellington told Chase. “Of course, we have some great people working for us who can crack almost anything ever done on or with a computer.”
“They found the source?” Chase said.
Wellington nodded, smiling, as if they were speaking about songs or the weather. “The signal bounced all over, from here to Asia, Europe, Africa...South America, and back here. But in the end, the origin was right here, in Orleans Parish. Finding the actual physical place where the initial site was created is proving a bit difficult—personal computers move all over the place, and registrations can be as false as anything else. But someone here is being played by someone bigger. What I’m trying to figure is why? We’ve checked the financials on the band. You know yourself every member does well enough. No one is in this for the money, so...”
“But you think it is someone with the band.”
“Someone close. The band or the roadies.”
Chase had nodded, then lowered and shook his head.
Who? Why? None of them needed money.
“So,” he said, “no one with a gambling problem, no one who lost big in cryptocurrency or anything of the sort?”
“We have truly had people all over this. I’m convinced they are working through one of the cartels. But again, why is a mystery. These guys don’t need money.”
Chase knew they didn’t have much time for a private conversation. As others moved near them or passed by, he introduced Wellington, who behaved like the perfect—if slightly reserved—fan.
He glanced on stage, wishing that his heart didn’t skip a beat as he watched Sky at the mic.
She wasn’t touching it, she was standing back, singing a few bars, doing a sound check. They were testing just her mic, she was singing a cappella, and he was touched by the song she had chosen, her dad’s ode to the beauty of life once one learned how to live it.
“The sun so bright, such a promise, beauty and light,
Yet those same lights can turn to night,
Darkness deep, with just a blaze, one that burns,
While it promises to amaze,
But the pain sets in, and there seems no hope,
Tangled there in a million ropes,
Just broken bits and pieces of me
Pieces longing again to see...
Find the freedom in true light,
Seek the stars in the darkness of night,
And finding the light is hard, so hard,
But it can be captured if you fight the fight,
And once again, you’ll find true light,
Hold it loose and hold it dear,
and you’ll discover that the light is near...”
There were choruses that came in, harmonies, and it was an amazing song, both beautiful and with a rock beat that had made it an instant success. But that day, listening to Sky, knowing what it had meant to her because of what it had meant to Jake, was beautiful.
