Traitor Read online

  But Ash no longer responded. Charley looked to the medic for help.

  “Possible internal bleeding,” he said, noticing the saline solution was already three-quarters empty. “Little we can do until we get him to a hospital.”

  He took out the other saline pouch in the med-kit, but as he was attaching it to the drip, Charley noticed Ash had stopped breathing altogether. The medic checked his pulse. “His heart’s stopped!”

  The two of them immediately commenced CPR, the medic administering chest compressions while Charley delivered the rescue breaths. They were still going when two paramedics arrived on the scene.

  Exhausted and emotionally drained, Charley didn’t put up any resistance as the paramedics took over.

  Not long after their initial assessment and attempts at resuscitation, the older of the two spoke to his colleague: “Record time of death as twenty-sixteen hours. Cause of death: gunshot trauma.”

  The words hit Charley like a punch to the guts. For a moment, she simply stared at the paramedic, imagining . . . hoping . . . praying she’d heard wrong. Ash couldn’t be dead.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” said the paramedic as he ran through the routine death-declaration procedure.

  As Kay stifled a sob, her knees went weak and Terry had to support her. Big T stood motionless and silent as a rock. Charley clutched Ash’s lifeless hand in her own and wept.

  Gradually she became aware of a heartless photographer snapping away right next to her, capturing her grief from every angle.

  Charley could take no more.

  “You vulture!” she spat at him. “Have you no respect?”

  Zooming his lens in on her tearstained face, Gonzo answered with another flash of his camera.

  33

  Big T wrapped Charley in one of his massive arms and led her away from the frenzy of photographers that had now descended on the stage.

  “Charley, you did all that you could for Ash,” he said, his voice on the point of cracking. “But we still have a job to do.”

  Stunned with grief, Charley barely heard him. Ash was unique among all the boys she’d ever met. And only now did she realize how much he’d worked his way into her heart. She felt another hole of grief open up next to those for her parents and Kerry.

  “Brandon’s somewhere in this building, and we have to hunt him down,” said Big T fiercely. “We owe it to Ash to find his killer.”

  Charley gazed at the white-gold bracelet on her wrist, now glittering against the blood from Ash’s wound. Her sorrow turned to anger: Brandon would pay. He couldn’t be allowed to escape. Leaving the stage, she took a last glance back at her rock star. The paparazzi buzzed like flies over his dead body as the paramedic removed the cannula from Ash’s tattooed arm.

  Then it hit her. “That’s not Ash!”

  “Charley, don’t fool yourself,” said Big T softly. “Denial is a natural stage of the grie—”

  “Ash’s phoenix tattoo is on his left arm, not his right!” she cut in.

  Big T’s bald head swiveled around like an owl’s, and he stared at the body lying on the stage. “Sweet Mother of Mercy!”

  “That’s got to be Pete,” said Charley, at once saddened and elated at her discovery. “Which means . . . Ash must be at the psychiatric clinic.”

  Big T’s thick brow creased into a frown as he tried to get his head around this. “Keep it quiet until I’ve got confirmation from the clinic. We don’t want to raise anyone’s hopes . . . or alert Brandon to his mistake.”

  As Big T stepped away to tell Kay, Charley spotted Gonzo heading backstage. She wondered what the little creep was sticking his nose into now. Then a thought struck her. On his camera he probably had photos of the moments running up to Ash’s—or Pete’s—murder. This might give vital clues about where the gunshot had come from and Brandon’s location, even his possible escape route.

  Maybe Gonzo could prove useful for once.

  “Hey, Gonzo!” called Charley, hurrying after him.

  But he didn’t seem to hear. Pushing through the blackout curtains, she saw his wiry figure disappear down a corridor. Why is he in such a rush? she wondered.

  She chased him through the warren of backstage tunnels, always several steps behind. He rounded a corner, and when she reached it, Gonzo was nowhere in sight.

  Then she heard a door click shut at the far end of the hallway. Dashing down to the door marked BAY D: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, she barged her way through into a darkened loading bay. Gonzo was scurrying across the concrete toward an as-yet-unsecured exit.

  “Hey, Gonzo, hold up!” she shouted.

  Startled, the pap guy froze and turned, as if caught in the beam of a searchlight, but immediately relaxed when he saw Charley. “If it isn’t Ash’s guardian angel,” he sneered. “Not much left to guard now, huh?”

  Charley ignored the cruel taunt. “Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded, running over to him.

  “None of your business.”

  “I think it is. The venue’s in lockdown.”

  “I’ve got to take these photos to my agency right now,” he snapped. “If I don’t, I’ll miss the scoop of a lifetime.”

  “Can I have a look first?” Charley asked.

  Gonzo blinked. “Not on your life.”

  “I’m not going to delete them,” she said, reaching out to the camera dangling around his neck. “They could hold clues to identify the gunman.”

  Gonzo clasped the camera to his chest as if she were asking him to hand over his own baby.

  “I only want to look,” insisted Charley. “Surely you owe me that.”

  “I owe you nothing!” he spat, turning to leave.

  Big T’s voice sounded in her earpiece. “Charley, where are you?”

  “In loading bay D,” she responded into her mic.

  “Security upda . . .” Interference broke up the signal. “Caught . . . in San Jose . . . killer is . . .”

  “Say again,” said Charley, clasping a hand to her ear.

  “The killer isn’t Brandon.”

  34

  “Stop!” Charley cried as Gonzo reached the emergency exit. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Gonzo swiveled around to face her.

  “How about a last shot?” he said, pointing his camera at Charley. “The grieving girlfriend.”

  “Gonzo, I don’t have time to play games,” said Charley. “You might have evidence of the killer. Hand it over.”

  Gonzo adjusted the flashgun on his camera. “Smile for the birdy!”

  Charley noticed the little red laser dot on her chest a moment too late. The flashgun was a real gun!

  Gonzo’s finger pressed the shutter button. Charley braced herself for the impact . . . There was a click but no flash.

  With a blast of expletives, Gonzo furiously tapped away at the button.

  “Run out of film?” asked Charley, diving forward to tackle him before he could clear the jam.

  Gonzo tried to bat her away with his camera. The flash caught her a glancing blow on the cheek, but she managed to pin him against the wall. As she tried to wrestle the lethal camera off him, Gonzo grabbed her hair and yanked her head backward. She gave a shriek as he tugged mercilessly. Before she could tear herself free of his grip, he whipped her head to the side and she collided, bone to brick, against the wall. Stars burst across her vision, her skull rang like a bell and she was forced to let him go.

  Taking advantage of her dazed state, Gonzo swept her legs from under her. Charley fell to the floor, where he roundly kicked her in the stomach. Winded and retching up bile, Charley lay gagging for breath, pain racking her body. She heard the scrape of metal and saw Gonzo picking up a crowbar from the top of a crate.

  “I said you’d live to regret your actions, angel.”

  As Gonzo raised the crowbar to
deliver a killing blow, Charley gasped, “Ash isn’t dead!”

  “What?”

  “You shot his decoy.”

  “You’re lying.”

  But the hesitation in his attack was all she needed.

  Fight smarter, not harder.

  Charley drove her fist into his groin—always a woman’s smartest move in self-defense.

  Gonzo yelped like a wounded puppy and dropped to the floor, the crowbar clattering to the concrete. As he knelt with his hands clasped between his legs, she slammed her palm into the bridge of his crooked nose. There was a satisfying crunch, and blood streamed from his nostrils. Stunned and in obvious pain, Gonzo hissed and bared his teeth like a cornered rat. He lashed out at her with a fist, but she caught his hand and spiraled it into a wristlock. Applying pressure, Charley forced him to the ground, where he lay squirming like a pinned beetle.

  Though restrained, Gonzo still struggled and spat at her. Charley took hold of his index finger. Any further injury, she reasoned, could be blamed on his own force in resisting.

  “I assume this is the trigger finger you use to take your vile photos?” she said coolly. “So I suggest you keep still.”

  She applied an extra-hard twist to his wrist to drive home her warning.

  Wincing, Gonzo glared up at her and snarled, “Shove it, Wildcat!”

  Charley smiled, then wrenched the finger all the way back. A sickening crack resounded through the loading bay, swiftly followed by Gonzo’s agonized scream, just as Big T and two other security guards burst through the door.

  “I told you to keep still,” she said, confident her action was necessary, reasonable and proportional to the pain and suffering he’d inflicted on her and Ash.

  Big T came running over, stared at the deformed finger, then smirked at Gonzo. “Well, you won’t be taking any shots for a very long time!”

  35

  “It’s an impressive piece of equipment,” remarked the officer in charge, inspecting the flashgun weapon before it was bagged for evidence. “Criminals are becoming more inventive every day.”

  He sipped from a coffee cup and grimaced at the taste. “Man, that’s gross! Don’t they have any decent coffee in this venue?”

  Tossing the cup into a nearby trash can, he turned to Charley and Big T in the loading bay. They’d given their statements and were just waiting to be dismissed. “I think we’re done here. That was pretty brave of you, young lady, to tackle the suspect alone. But next time leave it to the professionals, like your bodyguard friend here. Without proper training, you could easily have been killed.”

  Charley said nothing. Big T suppressed a knowing grin.

  “She’s a psycho! A wildcat! She broke my finger!” bawled Gonzo as he was bundled into a police car. “You should be arresting her, not me!”

  The officer in charge snorted. “Why is it that killers always think they’re the victims?”

  He shrugged and strode away to his car.

  Charley glanced up at Big T. “Leave it to the professionals? What am I, then?”

  “You’re the real thing,” Big T replied. “Just a pity you didn’t break all his fingers.”

  Charley responded with a strained smile.

  “Hey, I certainly would have!” admitted the veteran bodyguard. “Now, come on—we should update the others.”

  Charley followed Big T back through the maze of corridors to the artists’ lounge. The atmosphere among the band and road crew was subdued, though there was a buzz as Charley entered the room. She heard whispers of “Did she really catch the killer?”

  Kay, Terry and Zoe were embroiled in a heated discussion in the tour manager’s office.

  “It could so easily have been Ash!” said Kay fiercely. “I’ll have Big T’s head for this.”

  “Just be thankful Brandon’s been recaptured,” replied Terry. “At least he’s no longer a threat.”

  “But we were looking for the wrong guy! And now Ash is locked up in a mental ward! How did we ever make that mis—” She broke off as Big T knocked at the door and entered.

  “Charley! Are you all right?” Kay asked with genuine concern, ignoring Big T as he closed the door behind them.

  “Just about,” Charley replied, still feeling the throb in her gut where Gonzo had kicked her. “That rat Gonzo tried to shoot me with his camera, literally.”

  “Gonzo’s a murdering scumbag,” said Big T. “But he’s now where he belongs. Behind bars.”

  Kay shot him a fierce glare. “Only thanks to Charley here. I thought you promised to protect Ash with your life.”

  “It wasn’t Ash,” argued the bodyguard, folding his arms defensively.

  Kay sneered. “Lucky for you.”

  “What I don’t understand is why Gonzo would want to kill Ash in the first place,” said Zoe, frowning.

  “He needed the money,” replied Big T.

  “What money?” asked Terry.

  “The fees he’d earn from his photos to pay off his gambling debt to the mob.”

  “If that’s the case, why didn’t you identify Gonzo as a threat before?” demanded Kay.

  “He was,” said Big T, holding her accusative glare. “None of us ever imagined, though, he’d go to these lengths to engineer a ‘unique’ photo. He’d bugged Ash’s hotel room, tried to incite him to violence, even caused our car crash in New Orleans—I traced the registration plate of the motorbike back to him. These tactics are typical of the paparazzi. But after photographing the fire in San Francisco, it seems he was inspired to murder by Brandon.”

  “Brandon?” exclaimed Kay.

  “Yes,” said Charley, joining in the discussion. “It bothered me that Gonzo was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was as if he knew about the accidents in advance. We suspect he and Brandon made a deal. Brandon set up the accidents, and Gonzo captured them on film.”

  “So, when Brandon was caught, Gonzo took things into his own hands,” continued Big T. “You see, to kill Ash would be the ultimate payoff in terms of a money shot. It would be like catching the moment John Lennon was murdered.”

  “But he’d be killing the golden goose,” remarked Terry.

  Big T nodded. “Yeah, but he’d have made his fortune. Photos of Ash dying would have been sold around the world and earned him millions.”

  “And how is Ash?” asked Charley. In all the craziness, she’d yet to ask about him. “I need to see him.”

  “I gave the clinic a call, but it’s past office hours,” replied Kay. “The night-duty nurse had an emergency number for the doctor in charge, so I’m waiting for a call back.”

  At that moment her phone rang. She snatched it up and listened. “You’re absolutely certain?” she asked, before listening some more. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  Frowning, Kay put her phone down. “The doctor says the client was escorted to the airport, checked in and taken through to the departure lounge. But it appears he never got on the flight to England. What’s really odd, though, is the doctor insists the tattoo was on his right arm. They definitely had Pete, not Ash, in their care.”

  Charley stared at Big T. “So where’s Ash?”

  36

  “No more encores? You’ve got to be kidding. This is my third!” yelled the teen rock star, running back onstage to earsplitting screams and thunderous applause on the final night of the Indestructible tour.

  And what a perfect name for the tour it is, thought Charley. For someone who’d been threatened with death, almost crushed by a spotlight, nearly electrocuted by a mic, trapped by a hotel fire, thrown off the stage and, finally, tied up and blindfolded by his doppelgänger, Ash had an amazing resilience—fueled, it seemed, by the undying devotion of his fans.

  After a frantic search of the Staples Center, they’d found Ash bound and gagged inside a locked wardrobe in his dressing room. He’d been in th
e venue the whole time. According to Ash, Pete had caught a flight down to L.A. and then taken a taxi to the Staples Center. After conning his way into the venue as Ash, he’d waited in the dressing room. Ash had been taken by surprise, tied up and shoved in the wardrobe by Pete.

  On his release, Ash had been furious. But when he discovered Pete’s fate, he was first shocked and then thankful that his decoy had saved him from that fatal shot. After hearing about Charley’s encounter with Gonzo, his concern focused on her, but Charley assured him she was fine. She was his bodyguard, and it was all part of the job.

  Kay had launched a demonic investigation into how Pete slipped past security, but gradually calmed down once she knew that Ash was alive and well. With Brandon back in custody, Gonzo behind bars and Pete lying in a morgue, Ash was no longer the target of any known death threats. All the same, everyone on the security team remained alert and on edge for his final concert.

  Miraculously, the gig went well—with just one small hitch at the end.

  “I’ve got no more songs!” Ash admitted, spreading his arms wide in apology to his insatiable fans.

  There was an arena-sized groan.

  He smiled. “Perhaps . . . I do have one more.”

  A huge cheer rocked the venue.

  “It’s brand-new. Not even my band has heard it,” said Ash, perching on a stool and taking an acoustic guitar from a roadie. After a strum to check that it was tuned, he reached out to adjust the mic stand . . . and stopped himself. He glanced offstage at a small group of sound technicians. “This one’s safe, isn’t it, guys?”

  Like a group of dutiful meerkats, they all nodded their heads, then laughed at Ash’s joke.

  “This song is inspired by a very special girl in my life,” Ash announced. “It’s called ‘Angel Without Wings.’”

  The audience hushed into near silence as Ash plucked a bittersweet melody from his guitar. With a soulful voice that belied his young age, he began to sing. “Time will heal, yet memories scar, when the hurt’s so deep, a bridge too far . . .”