The Protector (Lone Wolf, Book 1) (15 page)

The music began to build, and I
skated my bow across the strings, closing my eyes as the humming of the violin,
the great passion of the melody, began to build in me.
 
All around me were masters of their craft,
playing their instruments for all they were worth.
 
Before me danced and played a star of our generation.

I still remember how happy I was in
that singular moment…

And then the lights went out,
plunging the world into darkness.

The lights in our hallway backstage
were timed with the performances and manually flickered to announce that we’d
better have our butts in the chair right that instant.
 
The lights for the stage and the concert
hall itself were run by Frederic, the sound and light guy who’d picked up
Mikagi from the airport, and who ran all sorts of odd errands for Amelia.
 
The lights were, of course, supposed to go
out at the end of the performance.

But this was in the middle of the
last song.

It was pitch black on the stage and
in the audience—not even the emergency running lights along the edge of the
stage were on.
 
The audience knew
something was wrong, and a frantic murmuring was spreading like a virus across
the rows of seating before us.
 
The
music had cut off when the lights went out because all of the musicians had
stopped playing almost at the same time from the shock of the anomalous
darkness.
 
But now a few thrums from
shifting fabric against strings or a thumb against harp made for an odd backdrop,
and a very eerie soundtrack, to the beginning panic in the audience.

I sat in my chair in the dark
patiently and waited for the lights to go back on.
 
It must surely be something technical.
 
It was bad timing, but there was nothing wrong.
 
There couldn’t be anything wrong.

But the lights didn’t go back on.

And, in the dark, something brushed
against my hand.

I was surrounded by people—of
course someone would touch me by accident if they were moving about on
stage.
 
It was crowded with an entire
orchestra’s worth of people on stage, so of course you would run into someone
in the dark if you were trying to make your way toward the exits.
 
I’d had my violin on my knees, and my hands
resting against the instrument, but I drew my violin up closer to my chest to
protect it in case anyone ran into me again.

But that same feather-light touch
followed my hand.
 

My ponytail at the back of my neck
was brushed aside, then.
 
Instantly, I
was covered in gooseflesh as a skating of fingertips brushed down the skin of
my neck.
 
I shuddered against that
touch, so light, so ephemeral, I wondered if I was imagining things.

But no, I wasn’t imagining it.

I gasped as I felt a mouth press
against the skin of my neck.

I
couldn’t
be imagining
this.

I turned my head quickly, bending forward and
brushing my hand against my neck, like you do when you’re brushing away
cobwebs.
 
It was an instinctual
reaction, something I didn’t even think about.
 
But there was nothing and no one there.

Could it really have been a mouth
against me?
 
A
kiss
?
 
I was so confused, and as the hair on the
back of my neck stood to attention, I began to feel…well…

Afraid.

Out in the darkness, the furtive
voices were completely silenced when a
snarl
echoed around us.

It was a snarl, a snarl like a
vicious animal makes.
 
It echoed in the
silence, and my entire body shivered.

And then, at that instant, the
lights came back on, stuttering and flickering to life.

I turned quickly to look behind me,
but there was only Tony, holding tightly to his violin and several feet behind
me in the next row of violinists.
 
Tony
was still sitting with wide eyes, talking to Emily, next to him, with fear
blatant on both of their faces.

There was no one
there
who
could have touched me, who could have kissed me.
 
I must have imagined it, the lips against my neck, the caress along
my hand.
 
But it had felt
so real
.
 
How could I have
possibly
imagined
something so real?
 
I brushed my
fingers up to the back of my neck and grew cold again as they encountered a bit
of dampness…exactly as if someone had placed a kiss against my neck.
 

I furtively glanced around, trying
to find and place everyone in the orchestra.
 
But I knew everyone here.
 
They
were my friends and my deeply esteemed colleagues, people who would never
randomly
plant a kiss
on me, and anyway—everyone was distracted, upset
and tense.
 
No one had grappled toward
me in the dark to
kiss
me.

So, then…what the hell had just
happened?
 

Audience members started to stand
and try to make their way to the exits, but they paused as Mikagi strode to the
center of the stage.
 
Where had she
been?
 
I hadn’t seen her when I glanced
across the stage a heartbeat ago.
 
She’d
completely disappeared…

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said
with a wide, gleaming smile, holding up her violin in one hand, and her bow in
another as she held her arms out to the audience in a gesture of sympathy.
 
“Please return to your seats—it was just
technical difficulties.
 
We would now
like to give you the finale of a lifetime!”

There was a smattering of lukewarm
applause, but at least the audience members were obeying her request, and were
actually returning to their seats instead of swarming the exits.
 
They even seemed to be warming back up as
they sat down, the panic from being plunged into darkness forgotten when Mikagi
pressed her bow to the strings.
 
People
began to applaud her as she started the last song of our set again.

But Mikagi hadn’t waited to see if
the rest of the musicians were ready to continue.
 
She’d just started without us, plunging headlong into the song as
we were still adjusting our sheet music or taking our own seats.
 
Again, I glanced around furtively as
everyone scrambled to accompany her, adjusting their instruments and launching
into the song somewhat unceremoniously.

My eyes were drawn back to an
incongruous spot in the orchestra.
 
That
was odd.
 
The wind section didn’t look
normal.
 
I glanced again as I raised my
bow to the strings.

Wait.
 
Bob wasn’t there.
 

I stared in shock at his empty seat
and missed an entire measure before my body switched to autopilot and kept
playing the violin.
 
I wracked my brains
trying to think of the last time I’d seen him.
 
Yes, that was right—Bob had gone back outside for one more quick
cigarette when I’d come into the building.
 
But surely he’d gotten up to the concert hall since then.
 
Surely Amelia wouldn’t start the concert
without him, that would be ludicrous.
 
He was our
principal flutist
.
 
You couldn’t have a concert without the principal flutist.

I glanced at Maria, one of our
other flutists.
 
Her face was screwed up
with concentration as she played her heart out.
 
I hadn’t been paying much attention to the wind section in
rehearsal, but I remembered that she didn’t have much of a part.

It dawned on me with a cold
realization that Maria was playing Bob’s part.

Bob had not shown up to his chair.

Okay.
 
There was a perfectly logical explanation for this.
 
Maybe he’d had a family emergency, one of
his kids had called him, something important or terrible had happened.
 
But unless one of his kids was dying—and I
desperately hoped that wasn’t the case—I couldn’t imagine a strong enough
reason that Bob would miss such an important concert.

Dread began to fill my heart as the
music swelled around us.

He’d had a bad feeling.

No.
 
That was just a superstition.
 
It couldn’t mean anything.
 

I gulped air and swept my bow
across the strings.
 
Around me, everyone
put their heart and soul into the music.

The crashing waves of sound were
silenced as the last note was played together.

The audience roared in
applause.
 
We achieved a standing
ovation almost instantaneously as Mikagi glanced back at the orchestra,
beaming, sweeping her violin and bow up in each hand and turning back to bow
low to the audience.

The orchestra members stood, too,
but as I held my violin under my arm, all I could think about was getting off
this stage as quickly as possible and going to figure out what had happened to
Bob.
 
Figure out where he was, if he was
okay.

Because of course he was okay.
 
Why wouldn’t he be okay?

The audience began to time their
clapping to an insistent beat, practically demanding an encore.
 
We’d prepared one of Mikagi’s most iconic
songs for this eventuality, “The Dream Suite,” and as we began to play the
piece—it begins with a mournful bit of strings and builds eventually to something
triumphant involving the whole orchestra—I shivered a little as I drew my bow
across my violin.

We played through three
encores.
 
By the fourth demand for an
encore, Mikagi only blew kisses to the audience, bowed low, and the curtain was
mercifully dropped.

“Tracy.”
 
I turned to her immediately, my heart in my throat as she glanced
up at me, her eyes widening at my expression.
 
“Have you seen Bob?” I asked her.

Tracy was grinning from ear to ear,
and that expression faltered for half a heartbeat as she tried to compute my
response to the standing ovations and multiple encores…as fear.
 
“Um…”
 
She glanced to the wind section, and then her eyes got wider.
 
“What the hell—he didn’t play with us?
 
Where is he?”

“I don’t know…”
 
I tried to rise, but the multiple times that
I’d stood and sat back down after the performance and during the encores had
made my leg begin to scream.
 
I needed
to get back stage to where I’d set my crutches leaning against one of the
walls, but the wide floor separating me from backstage was suddenly looking
very daunting indeed.

Mikagi turned and glanced at
me.
 
It was a surreptitious glance over
her shoulder, one I might not have even noticed if I wasn’t looking in her
direction.
 
I caught her gaze and held
it for half a heartbeat.
 

And she came over to me, gliding
over the floor like she was grace personified, her high heels clicking
impressively against the hardwood.

She held her violin and bow
effortlessly in front of her.
 
I hadn’t
had a chance to really appreciate her outfit before, as it’d been under the
trench coat, but she looked so flawlessly beautiful this evening, wearing a
daring black dress that clung to her upper arms and chest, but plunged
incredibly low in the back.
 
The collar
was a boat neck, and the skirt itself was a very pretty knee-length
a-line.
 
It looked like the type of
dress that an actress from the forties would wear.
 
With her severe chin-length haircut and her flawless pale skin,
wearing so much black made her look like she was glowing.

Her eyes flashed as she took me in,
as she smiled widely at me.
 
“What a
lovely concert!” she said, tossing a glance back at the curtain.
 
Then the euphoria seemed to fade away from
her, because she was looking back at me, her chest rising and falling quickly
as she licked her lips.
 
“Would you…like
some help?” she offered, holding her elbow out to me, like she was a gentleman
in a top hat from another time, ready to escort me down the boardwalk.

“That’d be lovely, yes,” I winced,
threading my arm through hers.
 
I held
my violin against my body and did my best not to lean on her as we began to
walk across the stage.
 
She was a slight
woman, but even though I’d wanted to try and support my own weight as much as
possible, by the time we reached back stage, I was leaning heavily on her.
 
But she didn’t even seem to notice.
 
She strode confidently forward, practically
holding me up.
 

“Did you enjoy playing?” she asked
me, then.
 
It was a hushed question that
she practically whispered in my ear.
 
I
glanced up at her quickly.
 
Her eyes
were unreadable.

“I did very much—it was very
wonderful of you to come play with us,” I told her distractedly, all in a
rush.
 
I should have been deeply
flattered that Mikagi Tasuki, world class violinist, was helping me to my
crutches, but really—all I could think about was Bob.

That was odd…there should have been
a clatter of voices, of laughter.
 
When
we reached the back hallway, there should have been a hubbub of activity,
flowers being delivered, family members allowed backstage, the press…

But there was only silence.

“Oh, my God, Elizabeth…oh, my God,”
said Tracy, running up to me and flinging her arms around my neck as she buried
her face in my shoulder and began to sob.

There was a stretcher, out by the
back door to the hallway.
 
The flashing
lights of an ambulance made the corridor glow as red as hell as two of the
ambulance crew helped each other lift the body that was lying on the back steps
up and on the stretcher instead.

Even though I was quite a ways down
the corridor, even though it was now dark outside, the light from the ambulance
and the light from inside spilled over the concrete steps.

They illuminated, clearly, the
blood spattering the sidewalk and the steps.

Bob lay on the stretcher as they
buckled him to it.
 
As they drew a sheet
over his face.

I went cold as ice, my heart in my
throat.

“He’s dead,” Tracy moaned,
dissolving into sobs against me.

Chapter 8:
 
Trust

It’s hard to describe what it’s like, staring at a
murdered man’s dead body.
 
Especially
when the murdered man was someone you knew, someone you cared about, someone
who showed you all of the five-hundred photos from his Caribbean vacation every
year, beaming over the pictures of his kids—even though they were all grown
up—because they were the most important parts of his life.
 

Someone you shared jokes and coffee with, someone
you worked closely with.
 
Someone you’d
known and laughed with and shared parts of your life with for years.

And now he was dead.

Bob was dead.

I think I was in shock as I stared
at the grisly scene before me.
 
We were
far enough down the corridor that extreme, close-up specifics evaded me, but
the blood was still so evident on the concrete steps, on the door, no matter
how far away we stood.
 
There was too
much blood.
 

Tracy sobbed against me so hard, I
was almost pushed off my crutches.
 
Absent-mindedly, I brought an arm up to her shoulder, tried to rub my
hand in small, soothing circles against her as she wept, but I was a million
miles away.
 

The corridor, though it was full of
people, was eerily silent.

There were several police officers
down by the door, talking in low, hushed tones with Amelia, who had her arms
folded and a stony expression on her face, and a few men in plain clothes,
suits, jackets, staring down at the blood with frowns…I guess they were
detectives.
 
One of them, an older man
possibly in his fifties, with a graying handlebar mustache and bright blue
eyes, stepped forward, then, edging past the blood to stand in the center of
the hallway as he cleared his throat.

“Folks, if you’d indulge me for a
little…” he began, his voice booming down the corridor.
 
“I’m just going to ask you a few
questions.
 
I realize you were all just
up there—” he pointed with his pen to the ceiling, and to, presumably, our
concert hall, “—playing your little hearts out, and I realize you’re tired and
want to go home after a job well done.
 
But this’ll only take a moment.”

“Elizabeth!”
 
I turned just in time for my father to fold
his arms tightly around me and pull me close.
 
He smelled so comforting, like his expensive cologne and coffee, that I
buried my nose in his shoulder and, for a moment, I was worried that I’d lose
it, start crying and never stop.
 
But I
took a deep, quavering breath, and then I stepped back from my father’s tight
embrace.

“Hi, Dad,” I said woodenly as he
searched my eyes, gripping my shoulders tightly with strong hands and holding
me out at arm’s length, as if he had to look me over to make certain I was
still there, still standing right in front of him.
 

Still alive.

In the back of my head, an odd
thought surfaced:
 
his companion that
I’d seen him talking to in the concert hall’s seats, the beautiful woman with
blonde hair, was no longer with him.
 
Maybe they hadn’t even come together, had only been talking together
because they knew each other.
 

“I’m all right, Dad” I told him
quietly when he drew me in for another embrace.
 
“But Bob…”
 
My voice
quavered on his name, and I took another deep breath.

“We need to get out of here,” said
my father flatly, in a strong growl that brooked no argument.
 
“You’ve been through a lot these past few
days, and you need to rest.”

I was about to protest a lot of
that:
 
I could take care of myself, it
wasn’t
me
who’d been murdered, I was fine, and anyway—we’d been told to
stay put for questioning.
 
But then the
man who’d told us to wait to be questioned, the man with the large handlebar
mustache, strode up the corridor and stopped beside us.