Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It was almost showtime. Roy made his final rounds, noting everything was as it should be, and everyone was in place.
DJ had had a succession of people going through his dressing room. Reporters granted a pre-show interview, a visit from some record execs, plus a meet and greet with a fan, a ten-year-old girl with end stage cancer, in a wheelchair.
DJ hadn’t allowed any reporters to be present, but he let the parents and the girl take a bunch of pictures, including a selfie of DJ and the girl doing the “rock on” hand gesture, with tongues stuck out and eyes rolling wildly.
Dory was a good man, through and through.
He’d have a packed schedule, before and after this show.
The loss of the band and DJ’s startling “comeback” made him ratings gold, and everyone wanted a piece.
Tonight he’d been willing to let Moss capitalize on that in limited ways, since the exposure would be good for Hal, Sy and Trey, their career tracks.
By the time the arena was full, the energy pumping in the air was off the chart, that earthquake of noise and movement a constant vibration through Roy’s feet, no matter where he was on his patrols.
But he’d been doing this long enough to look for and find his own calm center.
Tonight, he’d need it more than ever. He was going into battle, and his wits needed to be sharp.
You’re out there, asshole. I can feel it.
The major advantage the stalker had was Roy didn’t know what he was going to do.
He didn’t have long to wait to find out.
On the fourth song of the setlist, DJ was doing a guitar solo at the end of the center extension, the rest of the band backing him up on the main stage, when a ripple went through the crowd, and cheers turned to alarmed cries.
Since it was standing room only, rows were a fluid or totally absent thing, but the disturbance was impossible to miss.
Several feet away from the left diagonal stage arm, a line of flames shot up, as if the ground had broken open to invite the fires of hell to the metal concert.
But unlike what was flashing on poles around Sy’s drum kit, it wasn’t special effects.
“Fire! Fire! Fire!”
Fans scrambled, all hell breaking loose as the dreaded word was shrieked by dozens of voices. People whose clothes had caught fire stumbled into others, spreading the contagion.
Meanwhile, the line of flames raced toward the other diagonal arm, the accelerant poured to create a half circle of fire between those two points. In a matter of seconds, it had trapped over a thousand panicked people between it and the most obvious escape route.
The main stage and three extensions from it.
The fans rolled toward them like an ocean wave, gathering force and intensity.
Roy had leaped from the main stage onto the highest platform built upon it. He smelled acrid smoke, and noted it billowing out from the backstage area. Shit. The bastard had set more than one fire.
DJ, his guitar abandoned, was on his belly at the end of the center arm, pulling up people in danger of being trampled by the mass of those fighting forward behind them.
Sy had done the same, skidding to the edge of the stage closest to his kit. A couple roadies were with him, though Roy noted Trey and Hal had been corralled by Henry’s guys and ushered out of the chaos.
Roy jumped down and headed for DJ, but as he charged forward, he used his thunderous vocal range to direct the people rushing past him toward marked exits. The stalker’s target might be DJ, but hundreds could be killed if they didn’t manage the crowd.
Roy’s people had realized the same thing. Roy saw Johnny shoving people back so he could get a limp and bleeding man up onto the stage. As long as they were able to keep DJ in their sights, they had to stop to help those in imminent mortal danger.
The sprinklers had thankfully turned on, and a voice over the loudspeaker was exhorting for calm, directing people to exits.
Roy’s radio was beeping in his ear. Probably G or Warren, but he wouldn’t be able to hear it, and he wasn’t wasting time checking texts.
This psychopath couldn’t give a shit how many he killed to reach his target, but he knew the terrible prospect of it would slow down the people charged with protecting DJ.
It wasn’t going to slow Roy down. The rest of his team would work on saving people. Roy embraced ruthlessness, shoving people from his path, plowing forward into the hole he made for himself.
He could still glimpse slices of DJ through the people running past him. He was continuing to assist fans onto the stage.
Though he could see him, Roy wasn’t reassured. His instincts said a countdown was happening, and it was fast reaching zero.
He was within thirty feet of his objective when he was proven right. An anguished scream had DJ leaving the stage and landing in the sea of moving bodies. DJ likely hoped his presence on the ground would help whoever was being trampled or crushed down there.
People did give him a slightly wider berth, though one girl grabbed DJ like the swooning heroine of a Victorian novel. Someone else shoved her off, starting a fight between two males.
Roy didn’t let any of that pull his gaze from the short starting-to-curl head of hair and slim body he was determined to reach. But then DJ dropped out of view and didn’t come back up, a swimmer swallowed by turbulent waters. Fucking hell.
Caring little about who he had to hurt, threaten or maim, Roy fought to get to that spot where DJ had vanished. Yet even before he succeeded, he already knew.
DJ was gone.
Roy jumped off the stage deck. An unconscious girl was lying on the ground just under its cover, blood and bruising on her face and neck, probably from where she’d been pinned against the scaffolding.
Two friends, a teenage boy and girl, squatted over her.
Roy folded his six-foot frame the amount needed to scramble past them, into the maze of scaffolding.
Even when they saw he was security and tried to wave him down, he didn’t stop.
She had her friends. She had help.
DJ didn’t.
He reached the lift that brought a performer up on stage. It was no longer locked down, the way he’d required it to be, and the controls had been smashed. He couldn’t use it to follow.
The layout of the arena scrolled through his mind faster than a search engine. How would the stalker exfil DJ without being seen? He’d have studied all the exits and routes, just as Roy had. Roy got on his radio.
Please God, don’t let me fail him.
DJ had a hazy memory of dropping to the ground and freeing a girl from where she’d gotten pinned against a stage support. A big man was beside him, helping him keep people back. The girl collapsed into his arms, likely concussed.
“Get her underneath. She’ll be safer there until the EMTs arrive.”
Not if the fire kept spreading, but as a temporary measure it was better than letting people treat her like a doormat. DJ helped the man drag her under.
Then there’d been a stabbing pain in his neck.
The drug action was immediate, making him stumble, his vision hazy.
DJ spun, both fists clenched, but they didn’t seem connected to his body.
He almost fell, and the man grabbed his arm, put it around his shoulder, and pushed them even further under the stage.
He took them to the underground lift, used for stage acts to appear amid the fog machine and flame effects.
Since they weren’t using it for their show, Roy had had that disabled, DJ remembered. It wasn’t any longer.
Weirdly, the darkly whimsical opening to “For Your Entertainment” was in his head. Adam Lambert was on a carousel horse, going by him again and again. Hold on until it’s over… Hold on until it’s over… Do you know what you got into…
Shit, Adam had written a soundtrack for being kidnapped by a stalker. DJ would have to send him a fruit basket or something. Some part of his brain knew he was in deep shit, but when he tried to shove away, to fight, nothing was happening.
If he didn’t have the coordination for a fight, he could at least be a problem. DJ let his feet go out from under him, not a difficulty in his current state.
The man “helping” him stumbled, but recovered fast. He hiked him up over his shoulder.
He was a big bastard. Like Roy. Broad-shouldered.
But he wasn’t Roy. DJ grabbed at his belt and would have given him the world’s biggest wedgie, the best weapon he had in his current state, but he was wearing coveralls like a maintenance guy.
The belt held a flashlight, though. DJ yanked it off and slammed the end into his ribs.
It was a glancing blow, but it was a distraction.
He was dropped. Then he was kicked in the stomach, driving the air out of his lungs.
“I’m sorry,” the man said plaintively. “I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t make me hurt you anymore, Dorian.” He hauled him back up, DJ’s arm over his shoulders.
The drug wanted him to lose consciousness.
DJ fought it like a tiger. Just call him Raggedy Andy, flopping this way and that, trying to grab onto equipment cases in the hallway, the railings on steps they took.
He wasn’t very successful, because his kidnapper didn’t try to admonish him this time. Just kept moving forward.
Smoke was filling the hallway. Terror shot through DJ, for the band, the roadies, the fans.
Security would get them out. They would. And while they did, his stalker would spirit him away to that basement Roy had promised he intended for DJ.
His know-it-all bodyguard just had to be right, didn’t he?
But if he had to end up in a basement so hundreds of people didn’t die, he could live with that. And if he got the chance to end this fucker for Steve, Lonnie, Pete and Tal, all the better.
His hazy brain also reminded him the hourglass only had to have enough sand to give Roy and whatever resources he could command—which were reassuringly considerable—time to find him.
“Help,” DJ said, coughing. “Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe.”