Chaos at the Concert

Chapter 2 The VIP Room

The room smelled of expensive leather and the sharp bite of charged air. The man behind me was burning hot. His heart raced against my back even though the rest of him held rigid.

I could not see his face or tell whether he had a weapon. The hand around my wrist was large enough to close over the bracelet, and each breath struck my hair in a rough burst.

Chloe's meltdowns and Liam's calculated tantrums had taught me the cost of panicking around an angry person.

I let my body go slack and counted my breathing: in for four, hold for seven, out for eight. It was the exercise I used before a difficult mix.

His breath scraped through my hair. A tremor ran through his arms and came back stronger. Something in him was feeding on itself, building toward a crash.

I knew that pattern from damaged equipment. Once the feedback found its own signal, more force only made it worse. The body pinning me felt close to the same kind of overload.

He shifted, his grip tightening as if my surrender was an invitation to crush me.

I started to hum.

I held a low G-sharp, almost down in the sub-bass. I used that frequency to test a studio's structural integrity because it settled loose vibrations before they distorted the result.

The note was quiet enough that I felt it in my chest more than I heard it. I held the pitch and let my counted breaths set its length.

The man’s body went rigid. The frantic drumming of his heart faltered.

I kept the note steady. The bitter-orange-and-cedarwood scent I'd worn for years warmed between our bodies.

His breathing caught twice, then slowed. The tremor weakened, and the pressure around my waist eased.

It was working.

He lowered his face to the crook of my neck and drew in a shaking breath.

His grip loosened. His hand slid down and laced through my fingers while the arm around my waist held me closer. The violence had gone out of it. He was using me to stay on his feet.

The change frightened me in a different way. A moment earlier he had been ready to crush my wrist.

Now his thumb rested against my knuckles, intimate and strangely careful, though he still had me trapped.

His heartbeat settled into a hard, steady rhythm against my spine. We stood in the dark, strangers locked together, while I waited for a chance to move.

A flicker.

Red emergency light flashed under the door and vanished.

I stamped on his foot and drove both hands into his chest.

He grunted and released me. Something tugged at my wrist, followed by the snap of metal, but I was already reaching for the handle.

I burst into the flashing hallway and ran without looking back.

The alarms hit me at full volume. Stagehands shoved past in both directions, and somewhere behind them Liam was still calling my name.

I stopped in an empty stairwell and leaned against the concrete until I could breathe again. Liam. Chloe. The master files. The man in the dark.

My favorite silver bracelet was gone.

Something hard and cold dug into my palm. I opened my hand.

A heavy black obsidian cufflink rested there. A platinum serpent coiled across its face, with two tiny emeralds for eyes.

Whoever he was, the cufflink would lead back to him.