Diva (Ironclad Bodyguards Book 2) (21 page)

Ransom gave her a fist bump. “Kill it,” he murmured.

“Like you with my pussy,” she murmured back.

It was fun being his naughty girl. It was fun being a highly paid, famous DJ who dropped beats for a living, so she took the stage in high spirits, eager to do her best show yet. She wouldn’t let the drizzle and mud get her down. She walked across the platform to the sound console. One of the tech guys pressed a microphone into her hand and she shouted a greeting to the crowd.

“
Hola
, you dirty motherfuckers.” She laughed as she took in her audience. The irrepressible Spanish ravers were making the most of the mud. Most of them were covered in it, painted like cavemen. The mud layers didn’t manage to blot out the neon glow sticks, necklaces, earrings, hats, pacifiers, and other luminescent accoutrements that elevated this gathering from concert to rave.

She waved her arms as she started the first track. The entire crowd jumped in unison to the driving beat as she shouted the rest of her introduction. “I’m Lady Paradise, and we’re gonna get even dirtier together. How about that?”

At their enthusiastic scream, she cued up a second track and prepared to mix it with the first, creating a seedy, sexy beat that sent the audience into ecstasies. The mud, the neon, the craziness, it was all so silly, but it was fun. After the rest and the rain—and the sex—Lola felt ready for anything. She played a couple popular tracks from her last album, then started experimenting. Harder beats, sultry drops. When she danced, the crowd danced with her. When she screamed into the microphone, they howled back and danced harder.

One of the security guys at the front of the stage looked back at her and gestured with a grimace. Was he telling her to tone it down? This was a rave festival—it was supposed to be loud and frenetic, and everyone had come out in the rain, so she was going to give them a show. The sound was shit tonight, but she could make up for it with good mixes.

She leaned over the console and started a slow build to a drop. The lights flickered and the crowd went wild, losing their fucking minds. They thought it was a strobe effect, but no, there was a problem with the floodlights, probably because of the weather.

As long as Lola had sound, everything was all right. She jumped up on the console, clutching the mic and moving her arms to the music. The crowd shouted as the mix thumped to a fever peak. She bent down to crank up the bass, waving her ass at the audience as the drop arrived on a nerve-throbbing down beat.

“Holy shit, that’s hot,” she screamed.

She turned to face the audience. The whole crowd was moving in one body, back and forth, like a human tide. The security guys were shouting to each other, pointing out at the kids.

Then the lights went out, all the lights. The music kept pounding, a waterfall of sonic bliss, but the field went black, lit only by neon and moonlight. Shrieks rose over the beats, and shouts intensified from the front of the stage. Lola jerked as someone grabbed her leg. It was Ransom, gesturing for her to jump down from the console.

“The lights,” she said.

“I know.”

She went around to check the sound board, which was illuminated by faint light from a battery. She heard something pop behind the stage. An electrical breaker? Shit, that’s all they needed, a fucking fire.

But it was too wet and muddy for anything to burn. She looked over at the shadow of Ransom’s face, then out at the black shrieking sea of the audience. She leaned to cue up another track, because that was show business. You kept playing, no matter what happened.

Then her beats were gone too, turned off. No juice. “Shit. This rain! My set is fucked.”

She went to the front of the stage and Ransom came too, squinting out at the audience. A man rushed toward her in the dark, then another. One was from the audience, covered in mud. The other was with the tour. Ransom got in their way, so they screamed at him instead, one in English, one in Spanish. After a minute, he took out his ear plugs and moved closer, and they screamed again.

“There’s a situation,” she heard. “Tell them to stop moving, to stop pushing.”

The men turned to her. The tour official pointed at the microphone. “Tell them to step back,” he yelled over the roars and screams of the audience. “People are being trampled. They’ll listen to you. Tell them to step back.”

Oh, no. The screams that had sounded like excitement now took on a horrifying trill. She stood on the sound console with Ransom’s help, and waved one arm as she yelled through the mic. “Listen, people. You have to step back.”

Nothing. No sound. She looked out at the audience in dismay. In the moonlight, in the mud, people had gone feral. They were pushing and shoving, trapped by an undulating mass of human aggression. “Stop,” she cried. “Step back. People are crushed up here. Give them some space!”

Ransom reached up. “Give me the microphone.”

He took it and yelled in Spanish, a rough, authoritative bark not unlike the one he’d used with her a few times. As he exhorted the crowd, the lights came back on, flashing at first, then glaring steadily in the dark. The speakers came back online too, blasting his voice. At last the frantic crowd paused to listen. She motioned for them to back up as Ransom repeated the directions.

Finally, instead of moving side to side, people moved backward. More tour officials and security guards crowded onstage, gesturing for the audience to step back, to step back. A gap formed along the front barriers, toward the middle where Lola and Ransom stood. It was like the lip of a volcano, with ravers standing on the edge, looking in.

All along the gap was mud and…holy fucking shit. People. Motionless, glowing kids sprawled on the ground, some of their limbs twisted at unnatural angles. Lola stared with her hand over her mouth. They looked like they’d been beaten, or felled by some bomb. Security continued to gesture,
back up, back up, back up
. Lola couldn’t look away from the sprawl of bodies. Ransom handed the microphone to someone and reached for her.

“There are people down there,” she sobbed. She meant
there
, in that horrific seam of destruction in front of the stage. “They need help. They’re hurt.”

He didn’t answer, just hurried her down the stairs and through the melee of activity backstage as the squeal of emergency sirens pierced the air.

“Ransom. Ransom!” She kept calling his name even though he had her by the hand. “What happened? What happened to those people?”

“They fell.” His voice was tight. “They slipped in the mud when everyone was…”

His voice trailed off but her mind finished the thought.
They slipped in the mud when everyone was dancing.
She’d been the one playing the music, waving her arms and yelling at everyone to move their asses.

“I should have stopped.” The words choked in her throat. “I should have stopped before—”

He halted and turned to her. They huddled in the corner of the backstage area as security personnel and EMTs pushed by. He took her by the shoulders and made her look at him. “This wasn’t your fault. Do you understand me? It wasn’t you. It was the lights. The sound problems. The rain. The lights went out and people got disoriented.”

“I saw them pushing back and forth. People were stampeding. I should have stopped.”

“The mud made people slip,” he said. “It was the rain.”

“It was the music.”

“No.”

“I didn’t know there were people under there.” Horror and panic twisted inside her, stealing her breath. “I didn’t know they were getting trampled.”

“No, you didn’t know. It wasn’t your fault.”

The first stretcher passed behind them. Lola buried her face against his chest. She couldn’t imagine what it felt like for those kids to die down there in the mud. They were probably screaming for help, but they wouldn’t have been heard over the music.

Her music. She was the one who’d played it. “I was making them crazy. I did it,” she said as another stretcher rolled by.

“No.”

“I should have stopped playing.”

“Damn it, Lola.”

A sharp voice interrupted them, speaking in English and then Spanish. “Clear this area now. Everyone must leave.
Rápido.
”

Ransom picked her up, braced her against his chest, and made his way through the crowd. She heard crying and shrieks, and frantic chatter. A woman shouted, “They’re dead. Oh my God, they’re dead.” The confused hysteria in that voice echoed her emotions. How could this happen? How was this horror possible? These festivals were supposed to be an escape, a joy, a place to let go of your worries.

She kept thinking of those poor kids screaming, and no one being able to hear.

*

The police boarded
the tour bus within an hour, a pair of poker-faced officers working on the accident report.

“This is not Miss Reynolds’ fault,” said Don, shaking a finger between the two men. “Tell them,” he said to Ransom. “Explain in Spanish. The field was too muddy, too crowded. The lights went out and caused a panic. MadDance leased this festival site from Danzamia, S.A. If they want to know who’s accountable for this, it’s Danzamia. They should have cancelled the show.”

Ransom spoke to the officers in Spanish as Lola huddled beside him in her damp, muddy clothes. Due to the police vehicles, fire trucks, and ambulances, they’d been unable to leave the festival site for the hotel. Lola wondered if her next stop would be jail.

Don broke into Ransom’s explanation with another torrent of belligerent English. “Danzamia didn’t cancel because they wanted MadDance’s money. This is about greed overwhelming common sense.”

Ransom held up a hand and Don fell silent. For once, Lola was glad her manager was so argumentative. She didn’t want to go to jail, because she’d never meant for anyone to get hurt. She’d played music and told everyone to dance because she’d assumed they would be safe. She hadn’t thought about the mud making things slippery, or the fact that they’d set up the festival stage at the bottom of a slope. In good weather, it would have been ideal. In the rain…

Fourteen people dead. Fourteen. Dozens more had been injured, some seriously. She kept repeating it in her mind, because she couldn’t wrap her brain around it. Fourteen people had lost their lives during her set. For fourteen people, her performance had been the last thing they were to experience in life.

She made a soft, grieving sound, and Ransom touched her knee to steady her. She felt on the verge of disintegration. The officers gave her a hard look and stood, and said something to Ransom in Spanish. He nodded and walked them to the door. As soon as they left, Don pelted him with questions.

“Well? What did they say? Are there going to be charges?”

“Not for Lola.” He returned to sit beside her on the couch. “If there’s negligence, it falls to the venue and organizers. Even then, I don’t know if you can say they’re to blame for the audience’s behavior. It’s going to be a huge legal mess, but Lola was only performing as required by her contract. She can’t be held accountable for crowd control.”

“It was my set,” she said. “I told them to get excited, I told them to danc—”

“Stop it.” His stern voice silenced her. “You did the same thing tonight that you do every night you perform. The difference is that the field was slippery and the electrical problems made the crowd panic. It was nothing you did. It just happened. In the end, it’s no one’s fault.”

“But people died. So many people died while I stood up there playing stupid music.”

“It was an accident.”

More tears came, more aching pain in her chest. She’d cried so long and so hard, but it couldn’t change anything. It couldn’t take that limp, lifeless pile of bodies away. It couldn’t erase the stretchers and sirens from her memory.

“It’s not your fault.” He rubbed her back. “Do you understand me?
It’s not your fault.
The officers said we’re free to leave once the emergency vehicles clear out.”

“And that’s the end,” said Don.

Lola wiped her eyes. “The end of what?”

“The end of the tour,” the manager repeated, throwing out his arms. “That’s it. Kaput. They’re not going to put on any more shows after this. They’re out of business. People died.”

Ransom once again held up his hand to silence Don. “You don’t have to tell her people died. She was there.”

“Yes, she was there,” said Don. “And I’m going to lose my job, and you’re going to lose your job, but Lady Paradise will be just fine on the other end of this.”

“Maybe you should go somewhere else and calm the fuck down,” suggested Ransom.

“Gladly. I’m sick of this tour bus and this goddamn festival shit.”

“He’s such an asshole,” said Ransom as soon as Don stormed off. “Good riddance.”

But Lola hadn’t even been thinking about Don. Her mind was stuck on the tour being cancelled. “Do you think he’s right? That’s it? We’re not going to the U.K.?”

“I don’t think so, baby.”

His voice was gentle. Regretful.
Oh, no, Ransom…
It wasn’t just death and sadness. This would mean their parting too.

“I think I’m going to go lay down,” she said. “I can’t… I have to…”

“Yes, go rest.” He ran a hand down her arm. “Try to sleep, if you can. I’ll wake you when we get to the hotel.”