Chapter 7 #2
“Let me ask you,” Kline began, following. “Are you a paper pusher, Ronan, or do you actually like music?”
Brows raised, Ronan faced the singer. “I’m a musician myself. An amateur, but…” He shrugged. “I play the trumpet.”
“Okay.” Kline extended his arms wide. “Sitting upstairs alone, working on…whatever…you’ll just be in your head.
Music will get you out of it for a while.
And whatever your opinion is, we need to hear it.
Because if you’re not one hundred percent in with this single, you’re not gonna give the support needed to make it a hit. ”
The lead guitarist sized him up. “You’ve got thoughts. Spit ‘em out.”
“All right.” Ronan walked back. “You said it’s got soul, and I hear that. But what I wanted to hear was the blues.”
Kline’s brows went up. “The blues,” he repeated.
“Soul is uplifting,” Ronan explained. “Romantic. You’ve got a heartbreak song, ergo the blues.”
Rumsfeld scratched his jaw. “Huh. You think it needs brass?”
“No, that would still lean toward soul. I’m thinking heavier guitar. And maybe a harmonica.”
“A harmonica.” Kline’s foot tapped restlessly. “Can you play one?”
“Mais yeah,” Ronan answered offhandedly. Then more clearly, “Yes.”
The bassist stood and went to the toy box. Straightening and turning, he tossed the instrument to Ronan. Then he looked into the control room. “Let’s run back that last take.”
A moment later, the song piped through the overhead speakers. Ronan’s foot began to tap. Catching the rhythm, the rest of his body began to sway. He lifted the harmonica to his lips and waited. When melody warranted, he added to it.
“Yeah,” Rumsfeld said, moving over to his drums.
The lead guitarist grabbed his instrument and slung the strap over his head. He picked up the chords but lengthened them.
They went through the whole song.
“I’m feeling it,” Kline said, bobbing on his feet. “Let’s go from the top.”
They played it through again, pausing frequently to make adjustments.
“Try adding more rasp,” Ronan suggested after the third take. “Give the words more grit. This guy’s got what he wants, right? Heaven in his grasp. But hell is around the corner, and he sees it comin’, so there’s also anger and grief. Denial.”
From the look on the band’s faces, he was maybe saying too much. “And maybe adding female vocals to the last line of the chorus. It might up the angst.”
Rumsfeld drummed his sticks into his thighs and then nodded. “Like she’s haunting him. I’ll ask Chantal if she’ll lend us her voice for a minute, just to see how that might fit.”
“Let me know if you decide to keep it in,” Ronan said as he started toward the toy box. “And if you don’t already have someone in mind, I’ll get to work finding you guys a producer.”
“Oh no, dude,” the lead guitarist said with a shake of his head. “You’re staying right here.”
Ronan held up his hands. “Amateur, remember?”
“You own a record label, Ronan. You’re a professional now.”
Dozing, Ireland was clinging to the imagined warmth of a sultry Southern voice when the door to the box opened again. She blinked rapidly, dazed and watery-eyed, so fogged with confusion and the remnants of her dream that the fear slipped in like tendrils of smoke.
Falling unconscious was happening too easily and too often. She suspected she was concussed. Certainly dehydrated. The violently throbbing headache felt like her skull was going to burst.
The dark figure shadowing the doorway shifted deliberately, so that the too-bright overhead light outside the box stabbed pain into her brain and brought her fully awake.
He stood just inside the opening for a long minute, staring at her with near-tangible malevolence.
The hairs on her nape stood on end. Then he stepped inside, and she tried to scramble away, only to be trapped by the plywood wall at her back.
He wrapped his hand around her arm and yanked her roughly to her feet. “Come on.”
Crying out at his vicious grip, Ireland stumbled, and he shoved her the rest of the way out of the box.
She sprawled onto the cold black tile floor with a muffled thud that rattled her aching body.
He followed her out, kicking her where she lay.
Eyes stinging with a wash of tears, Ireland struggled to get on her feet, her sweaty palms sliding along the slick floor.
She looked around, trying to get her bearings, but it was hard to keep her eyes open against the profusion of light after what felt like an eternity in the dark.
The sheer curtains covering the floor-to-ceiling windows revealed deepening twilight.
She was astonished to see they were in a modern, stylish condo.
Beyond the windows was the dusky sky, and below was the city.
Am I still in Manhattan? The thought came with the threat of hysteria, her mind unable to fuse her life before with her ordeal now. She was not even the same woman.
It felt like days upon days had passed, locked in the utter darkness. She’d tried to gauge time by how often she had to pee in the paper cup they’d left her, but she hardly felt the urge to relieve herself. Lacking food and water, wounded, she was a shell of herself.
When did I last eat or drink?
The floor’s high shine revealed shards of glass and splinters of wood scattered across the living room, the destruction wrought by his earlier outbursts.
She looked at him, the man who’d ripped her from everything familiar and known, and her female intuition screamed in alarm.
Every hair on her body stood on end. The way he looked at her had an unmistakably sadistic gleam, ravening and cruel with a high sheen of madness that sent chills burrowing deep into her soul.
He was small in stature, shorter than her but heavily muscled, with big-knuckled hands that betrayed a liking for using his fists.
He wore his dirty-blond hair in a severe crew cut and had a day’s stubble on his square jaw.
His nose had been broken more than once, by the look of it, and a nasty scar ran down one cheek.
“Keep moving,” he ordered. “Down the hall.”
Ireland hesitated. Her instincts screamed for her to keep the man, whom her mind registered as a vicious animal, in sight. But then he took a menacing step forward, and she turned abruptly and started walking as quickly as possible. He followed closely. Too closely.
She was drawn up short by the brutal yanking of her hair that ripped strands from her scalp. Ireland shrieked with pain. With his hand wrapped in her hip-length hair, he wrenched her back, bowing her spine.
His mouth to her ear, he snarled, “This place is soundproofed, so I expect you to scream.”
The pounding of her heart was fast and erratic, skipping beats and racing through others.
When he shoved her away from him again, she fell to her knees with his fingers still tangled in her hair.
The sobs that left her were deep and hoarse, her throat dry from lack of water, her tongue swollen and throbbing.
She crawled forward, her cheekbone hitting the floor when he kicked her in the ass.
“We don’t have all day,” he said snidely.
Ireland spat out the bile that filled her mouth, gagging as the action made her stomach turn. It felt as if she had no strength; her arms and legs were shaky and weak. The hallway was long, and he was right there behind her, taunting and hurting her.
“Whatever you want,” she managed hoarsely. “My family will pay it.”
“You better hope that’s true, bitch, because it’s the only reason why you’re still alive.”
How was it possible that Gideon…Mom and Daniel…anyone…
Why haven’t they paid for my release?
WHY?
The hallway seemed as endless as her ordeal, her body so tight with expectation of the next kick or blow that every contact reverberated through her very bones.
When she finally reached the one open door, Ireland pulled herself up by gripping the doorjamb, leaning heavily against it as she panted desperately for air.
Her hot forehead against the cool wall was the scarcest relief.
He came up behind her, crushing her brutally into the jamb’s grooves.
She whimpered as he compressed the air from her lungs.
His fevered breathing in her ear made her skin crawl.
His tongue licked a long, slow lap up the side of her face as Ireland felt his erect penis slide between the seam of her buttocks.
Horrified revulsion made time stop. She became a statue, so repulsed that her limbs were locked with shock.
Trapped in a moment of disbelieving awareness, Ireland was unable even to blink. A scream erupted from her soul, threatening to shatter her mind.
Where was the woman?
Reaching around her, he turned on the light, sending an ice pick of pain straight into her temple. Her watery, blinking eyes struggled to focus on the room they were entering.
It was a bedroom. A perversely, beautifully decorated bedroom.
Ireland found herself in a terrifying bubble within a world she recognized, one her mind identified as harmless. The condo was far larger than her own, the view worth millions. It seemed impossible that her torment and this space could coexist.
There was a phone on a tripod at the foot of the bed, ready to film whatever took place there. Handcuffs with oddly long chains draped the footboard.
Awareness penetrated her stupefied mind in a nauseating flood.
The man was rutting against her ferociously squashed body, grunting with excitement as his erection rubbed furiously between her butt cheeks.
His hands pawed, squeezed, and twisted her small breasts through the bodice of her dress.
He sank his teeth into the shell of her ear so hard that it felt as if he bit through it.
The pain galvanized her, bursting the bubble. Ireland began to struggle, pushing away from the jamb. Her bare heels stomped ineffectually into the tops of his booted feet—the only part of him she could reach.