“No, it’s all gone to hell. There’s been a pass-off, and we have to get you the hell out of here. Now. Look...look through the little hole. You can see my credentials.”
There was a peephole in the dressing-room door. She looked through it. The credentials looked real enough. But...
“I have been ordered to get you to safety!” the man said.
There had been a pass-off?
“Aw, hell, Miss Ferguson...”
She heard a key rattling.
This guy had the keys to the dressing rooms. She prayed that made him real.
The door opened. He looked enough like an agent. But maybe he looked like a drug smuggler, too.
“Come on, please, Wellington is across the stage, and he knows Chase is out and wants you with him. I’m the real deal, I swear it—”
He never finished his sentence. She never saw the person who slammed his head with a guitar, sending him crashing down to the floor.
Out like a light.
But then she did see who had wielded the weapon. And to her astonishment, it was someone who hadn’t dressed to blend in with a bunch of rockers.
It was Kenneth Malcom, and as usual, he was dressed impeccably in one of his suits.
“Skylar, that guy was a phony. He thought he’d knocked me out over there, and he stole my master key... Let me get you to Wellington before another of these perps gets over here!”
Wellington had filled the place with undercover agents.
But it seemed that head of the drug cartel or whoever was pulling the strings had filled it with his own people as well.
“Come on!” he told her anxiously. “Skylar, hurry, I owe it to your dad to make sure that you’re safe!”
She looked at the man on the floor; he was out.
If nothing else, Kenneth Malcom knew how to play the guitar as weapon.
“Skylar!”
She followed him out. The dressing rooms were stage left while most of the workings of any show there took place stage right.
“We’ll head around the back. You don’t see anyone, right?”
She shook her head, hurrying by him, ready to run across the back of the stage until she met the one man that she knew Chase trusted entirely.
But she had barely gotten around the back before she saw Chris Wiley coming her way, looking anxious.
“Skylar! Thank God. Brandon is going around the other way for you. Seems Chase headed on out, getting himself involved in all this—”
“Chris,” Kenneth Malcolm exploded from behind her. “You! You’re the one. You saw to it that Justin was played because you knew that he loved his wife and kids more than his own life. Get the hell away from her now, Chris.”
“What?” Chris demanded.
“You heard me, move aside. I’m getting her out of here!”
Brandon appeared then, coming from the other direction. “Thank God! You found her. Skylar—”
“Both of you! Back off, you bastard pushers, get away from her.”
“Kenneth, what in God’s name is wrong with you?” Chris demanded. “Leave her alone. Let Skylar come with us right away, and go and do whatever the hell you need to be doing—getting out of here yourself, getting to safety—”
“Move. Now. I don’t trust you—either of you,” Malcolm said.
“Malcolm!” Brandon exploded.
Sky stood there, torn, incredulous.
And not at all sure who to trust.
“Let me just go back to the dressing room!” she said. “All of you, leave me alone. I’ll be with Chase soon enough, and you guys can argue this out with the agents—”
“Where’s the agent? The guy who was going to get Skylar?” Chris demanded.
“There was no agent—just another pusher who was better disguised,” Malcolm said. “Now, I mean it, you two, get the hell out of the way.”
Chris Wiley shook his head. “Jake Ferguson was my best friend and, however it played out, you had something to do with him dying. You get the hell out of my way, and you get the hell away from Skylar!”
Chris and Brandon stood together, staring at Sky and Malcolm, hands on their hips, determined.
