Diva (Ironclad Bodyguards Book 2) (2 page)

“I know, right?” The screams had tapered off to the point Ransom could just about hear him. “She’s crazy. Stage diving is risky, and the tour company doesn’t like risks.”

No, a tour company investing millions of dollars in an entertainer generally didn’t like risks. Now that he was here, Lola wasn’t going to stage dive anymore, or perform while she was high, or let dozens of people molest her through her golden shorts. Fuck no. He threw his shoulders back, trying to shake off the shock of seeing his client dive headlong into a roiling mass of strangers who were most likely as high as she was.

Fuck. This one was going to be more trouble than he’d anticipated.

“Her set’s winding down,” said Greg. “Let’s head backstage.”

*

Lola shoved her
hair out of her eyes and grabbed the water bottle Greg handed her. Thirsty. So thirsty. She tugged her bikini straps into place as she tipped back her head and chugged. The set was amazing and she was still buzzing hard. It wasn’t a huge crowd, but they had a great vibe, and the small white pills Marty had given her only made it better.

As she guzzled the water, Greg waved his hands for her attention. His lips moved as he gestured to a giant, dark-haired guy behind him. Nice suit, but man, she was fucked up. She couldn’t hear a word. Her manager frowned and pointed at his ears. Huh?

Oh, her ear plugs. She took them out and tried to shove them in her pocket, but she was wearing shorts with no pockets, so she held them instead and stared at both men, trying to focus. She was on some new designer drug, something Marty had described as “related to ecstasy.” She felt like she was swimming through warm glue. It was loud behind the stage, almost as loud as out front.

“What?” she asked, squinting at Greg.

“This is Ransom. Ransom Gutierrez.” He pointed again at the man in the suit. That’s when she noticed the badge clipped to his waistband. Holy shit. A cop. Was he one of those DEA undercover guys? Why had Greg brought him here? She thought in a panic of all the drugs stowed in the tour bus.

Oh.

No.

No, the stash wasn’t there anymore. Marty had decided it was safer to buy small amounts on the way, rather than drive around holding a bunch of stuff the way they had during the U.S. tour. There were always pharmaceutical pipelines at these festivals, not that it was all about the drugs.

It didn’t used to be all about the drugs.

Lola had always been a “Just Say No” type until she’d taken her first dose of ecstasy midway through her last tour. She’d done it so she could better understand what her audience was feeling and hearing when she played her sets, and she’d decided she really enjoyed the high. Now Marty, her assistant, acquired pills to keep her energy up, to keep the party rolling while she was onstage. He took care of everything, kept her from taking too much, kept her from sleeping too much, kept her safe when she went flying too high.

Where the fuck was Marty? She was flying pretty high right now on whatever he’d given her. He must be cleaning the drugs out of the bus.

She eyeballed the suit guy. Did they have DEA agents in Europe? Fuck. She reminded herself again that there were no drugs on the bus. But maybe he had other evidence of her drug use. Maybe she was about to be arrested. Maybe Marty was already in jail. Fuck, why were the cops here? And why pick on her when ninety percent of the people at this festival were wasted off their faces?

“I’m totally clean,” she said. She reached to turn out her pockets but she didn’t have pockets, so she ended up pulling at the crotch of her too-tight shorts. “I’m clean, officer.”

Greg rolled his eyes and took her elbow, and led her through the chaotic backstage area to the much quieter bus paddock. The tall man in the suit followed behind them. Fuck.

“There are no drugs on the bus,” she whispered to Greg.

“You and your fucking drugs.”

“At least, I don’t think there are.” Her voice trembled with anxiety. “But maybe there are. You’ll have to distract the cop while I take a look.”

“He’s not a cop,” Greg said in an exasperated tone. “He’s a bodyguard.”

A bodyguard? Lola sometimes used bodyguards in L.A., but she didn’t need one now. Marty provided all the security she needed for this tour. She opened her mouth to say that, but then she thought she better not lose her shit in front of this fucking cop.

No,
bodyguard.

They climbed onto the bus and she backed away from the two men. The bodyguard looked even taller here, where everything was scaled down to create more space. She’d let Greg handle this. That’s what tour managers were for. She headed toward the back, to the private compartment that served as her bedroom.

“Lola!”

She only stopped and turned because Greg sounded so angsty. “What?”

When she said “What?” it slurred out into a long, distorted sound that confused her. Shit, shit, shit, she was coming down too fast, considering what she’d paid for these “designer” pills. The dark-eyed giant stood with his arms at his side, assessing her with a frown. She didn’t like his scary looking badge or his menacing shadow of stubble.

“Sit down,” Greg said, pointing at the sofa. “We need to talk.”

She sat where he indicated and stared at both of them. In the distance she could make out the faint disco beat of the next set. She’d had a good set though. Yeah.

“This is
Ran-som Gu-ti-er-rez
,” Greg said, speaking to her as if she was three years old. He pointed to the giant, who folded his outsize frame into the seat next to her manager. “He’s the bodyguard from Ironclad Solutions. The one the tour producers hired for you.”

Ransom?
she thought. Like, the thing people demand for kidnap victims? What kind of name was that for a bodyguard? Wait, was he a cop or a bodyguard? Was he here about a kidnapping? Her brain wasn’t working so great.

“What?” she asked. “Who is this again?”

“The tour producers hired a bodyguard to look after you. He’s going to stay with us until the final venue.” As Greg’s features wavered in and out of focus, he turned to the kidnapper and frowned. “This might not be the best time for this conversation.”

Oh. Lola knew how to make conversation. She could be a great talker when she wanted to be. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said, because…politeness. She meant to offer her hand but it wouldn’t move. Fuck, she was winding too far down.

“It’s nice to meet you too,” he replied. His voice sounded low and growly. Greg said something else but she didn’t hear it, because the bodyguard’s deep, thick voice was still traveling through her brain like syrup. The edges of her vision started to flame.

“I’m so high,” she said, and then wished she hadn’t, because there was a cop on the bus. She was going to pass out, she could feel it.

Ugh.

The Bodyguard

W
hen Lola woke,
the faraway beats had stopped. It was quiet and dark, and she wasn’t on the bus anymore. She was in a bed in a hotel room, in some unknown European city. A sliver of light shone through a gap in the curtain and bisected the wall across the room.

Scary that she didn’t remember how she’d gotten here. What the hell kind of shit had Marty given her last night? They must have driven here and checked in while she was dead to the world. That wasn’t good. Too much lost time she couldn’t account for. At some point, she must have put a tee shirt over her bikini and gold shorts. Her eyes felt crusty with makeup, and a dull pain throbbed in the middle of her skull.

“Fuck.” She sat up and passed a hand over her face. “Fuckity fuck.”

She had to stop with the party pills. She said that every time she woke up feeling like this. Her empty stomach rolled over, and then
she
rolled over, grasping the sheets. As she stared into the darkness, two eyes stared back at her. There was a man in a chair by the window, and he was too big to be Greg or Marty.

She didn’t know whether she should scream for help. Maybe she’d invited him to her room the night before. She tried to call up a memory, a name, but her stomach revolted before she could find it. She pushed back the sheets and stumbled in the dark for the bathroom. When she found it, she hunched over the toilet, hacking up dry coughs and cloudy spit.

Gross. She hated throwing up. She hated that the bathroom spun like a planet off its axis. She wanted everything to be still. She closed her eyes tight, pressing her fingers to her lids, trying to calm the nausea. Her head pounded with unbearable pressure. She’d need to have a talk with Marty about the shit pills he’d given her, because “related to ecstasy” felt more like “related to brain damage.” The high had felt incredible while it lasted, but now…

She cringed and coughed, heaved again, and realized the man from her room was standing behind her.

“Tell Marty I need him,” she said over her shoulder. “Get Marty for me.”

“Marty’s gone.”

“Gone? Where…gone? Who the fuck…?” Questions sputtered out, none of them complete. “What?”

She wanted to ask who this dude was and why he was here, but she couldn’t seem to string together a coherent sentence. He looked too old to be a groupie, and too grim to be a gigolo, but she’d been with enough of both to know they came in all shapes and sizes.

Had she picked him up backstage last night? Or in some bar? Blackouts terrified her. She might have done anything while she was out. She peered at the guy from between her fingers. Tall, muscular, dark, just the type of guy she’d pick up for drug-fueled sex. Had she fucked him?

Two-day stubble. Strong jaw. Those hands. If she’d fucked him, she’d probably enjoyed it. She was sad she couldn’t remember.

“Did we fuck?” she asked, because she was tired of feeling confused.

“Excuse me?”

Great. Now he was offended. Whatever. He looked so uptight, he’d probably never fucked anyone. He wore a dark red tie and a starched white shirt, like he’d gotten lost on the way to Wall Street. Maybe he was a preacher or drug counselor. Maybe he was trying to stage some kind of intervention.

“Go away,” she said. “Close the door. Can’t you see I’m sick?”

“What can I do to help you?”

Through the blackout haze, she remembered the sound of his voice from yesterday, the low, liquid growl.

“You can help me by going the fuck away. Where’s Marty? Go get Marty.”

“Marty’s gone,” he said in a patient, fuck-you voice, and that’s how she remembered he’d told her that already.

Why was Marty gone? Where the fuck was he? He was her paid assistant. He was supposed to help her. “Greg, then,” she groaned. “Tell Greg I’m sick and I’m not going to be able to perform tonight unless…”
Unless Marty comes back here with some new, different pills to make me feel better.

“Your next show isn’t until tomorrow, and your manager knows you’re sick. We were both with you last night when you passed out. And you’re not really sick. You’re fucked up from whatever drug you ingested. What were you on last night?”

“Some ecstasy thing.” She rubbed her temples and sat back against the tub, and pulled the white hotel shower curtain around her. There. No more guy in a red tie, asking her irritating questions.

He yanked the curtain back and crouched in front of her, and held out a bottle of water. She took off the lid and drank. It tasted weird.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Electrolyte water. Do you remember passing out?”

His curt question triggered delayed memories, backstage bustle and distant music, a suit jacket. An ID badge. This guy wasn’t a gigolo or groupie. Greg had told her he was a bodyguard.

But why was he here in her room, peppering her with questions? She didn’t need a bodyguard, even if he was handsome as fuck. The festivals were huge and she was surrounded by tons of strangers all the time, but they were ravers, not criminals. The only thing they were violent about was dancing. The man had a ridiculous set of muscles under his pristine white button-down. Huh. Overkill, those muscles, cause no one was after her.

He nodded at the bottle. “Drink some more water. You need to rehydrate.”

She took a sip and grimaced, feeling trapped between the tub and the man’s large frame. Why wouldn’t he leave? Why was he looming over her and staring at her that way?

And what the fuck had he been doing in her hotel room while she was sleeping? She felt violated. Or pissed off. She didn’t actually know how she felt. At least the room had stopped spinning. She drank more water and sat up straighter.

“Ready to get up?” he asked.

She glared at him. “I like sitting on bathroom floors.”

He took her arm and dragged her to her feet. “Keep drinking the water. I’ll order us something to eat.”

Order us something to eat?
That sounded awfully cozy. Maybe she
had
slept with him. No, she’d remember if she’d gone to bed with this monster. He was built like a fort.

He dropped her off at the chair by the window and drew open the drapes, causing her to shy away like a vampire. He frowned and drew them half closed again. There was still too much sunlight. How long had she slept? What city were they in? Marty usually answered all those questions, but her assistant wasn’t here. What had the guy said? Gone. Marty was gone. Gone where?