Jeffery Deaver - XO

Shutting the light off, she walked to the window and looked out. It was eleven-thirty and the park across the road was empty… wait, no. Someone was in the shadows. She couldn’t make out a specific person but she saw the tiny orange glow of a cigarette moving slowly as the smoker would lift it for a drag.

She remembered Edwin Sharp’s slow, patient scan of her face and body in the restaurant that day. How he’d carefully read all the information on her ID card. Stalkers, she knew, were experts at getting information on people-both the objects of their obsession and those who threatened to impede their access. Edwin certainly had shown he was good at such research, knowing what he did about Kayleigh’s associates.

But maybe it was a coincidence. There might have been some electrical or plumbing issue and workers had had to come into the room, despite the sign on the door. She called the front desk but the clerk didn’t know if anyone had been inside.

She made sure all the windows were locked and the chain securely fixed to the door and she conducted one more examination of the park, through a crack in the drapes. The moon had emerged but it was still too dark and hazy to see much.

The orange glow of the cigarette flared as the smoker inhaled deeply. Then the dot dropped to the ground and vanished under a shoe or boot.

She saw no other motion. Had he left because she’d shut the light out and presumably gone to sleep?

Dance waited a moment more then climbed into bed. She closed her eyes.

And wondered why she bothered. Sleep, she knew, would be a long, long time coming.

REELING THROUGH HIS mind was Jackson Browne’s “The Load-Out” from the seventies album Running on Empty, the tune an homage to roadies.

A sort-of homage. You got the impression the singer came first.

But don’t they always?

Still, nobody else ever wrote a song dedicated to Bobby Prescott’s profession and he hummed it often.

Now, close to midnight, he parked near the convention center and climbed out of the band’s Quest van, stretching after the marathon drive to and from Bakersfield to pick up the custom-built amp. Kayleigh Towne preferred that her musicians use amps with tubes-like old-time TVs and radios. There’d been a huge debate about which was a better sound: solid-state amps versus the tube models, with the tube purists contending that that older technology produced an indescribable “clipping sound” when played in overdrive, which digital amps had never been able to duplicate. Not surprisingly this had been Bishop Towne’s philosophy and when the Old Man, as his own roadies called him, was performing, the stage was filled with Marshall JCM2000 TSL602s, Fender Deluxe Reverb IIs, Traynor Custom Valve YCV20WRs and Vox AC30s.

Bobby was a guitarist as well (there weren’t many roadies, techs or personal assistants in the music world who couldn’t sit in at a show if they absolutely had to). He himself thought the richness of tubes was noticeable but only when playing blues.

He now unlocked the stage door at the convention center and wheeled the big unit inside. He also had a box of light mounts and safety cables.

Thinking again of the strip light falling that morning.

Jesus…

Performing could be a dangerous business. His father had been a recording engineer in London in the sixties and seventies. Back then, the serious-minded professionals Robert Senior worked with-the Beatles and Stones, for instance-were outnumbered by crazy, self-destructive musicians who managed to kill themselves pretty frequently with drugs, liquor, cars and aggressively poor judgment. But even taking bad behavior out of the picture, performing could be dangerous. Electricity was the biggest risk-he’d known of three performers electrocuted onstage and two singers and a guitarist hit by lightning. One roadie had fallen from a high stage and broken his neck. A half dozen had died in traffic accidents, often because they fell asleep, and several had been crushed to death when gear trucks’ brakes failed and the vehicles jumped the chocks.

But a light coming unfixed? That was weird and had never happened in his years as a roadie.

And endangering Kayleigh?

He actually shivered, thinking about that.

Tonight the cavernous hall was filled with shadows cast by the exit lights. But rather than the ill ease Kayleigh had described that morning, Bobby felt a low twist of pleasure being here. He and Kayleigh had always been in near-total harmony, except for one thing. To her music was a business, a task, a profession. And concert halls were about acoustics only. For Bobby, the romantic, these places were special, almost sacred. He believed that halls like this continued to echo with the sounds of all the musicians who’d performed there. And this ugly, concrete venue in Fresno had one hell of a history. A local boy himself, Bobby had seen Dylan here and Paul Simon and U2 and Vince Gill and Union Station and Arlo Guthrie and Richard Thompson and Rosanne Cash and Sting and Garth Brooks and James Taylor and Shania and, well, the list was endless… And their voices and the ringing sound of their guitars and horn sections and reeds and drums changed the very fiber of the place, he believed.

As he approached the strip light that had fallen he noticed that someone had moved it. He had left instructions that the heavy black light fixture shouldn’t be touched, after he’d lowered it to the stage. But now it sat on the very edge, above the orchestra pit, a good thirty feet from where it had stopped swinging after it fell.

He’d ream somebody for that. He’d wanted to see exactly what had happened. Crouching down, Bobby examined the unit. What the hell had gone wrong?

Could it be that asshole, Edwin Sharp?

Maybe-

Bobby Prescott never heard the footsteps of whoever came up behind him. He simply felt the hands slam into his back and he went forward, barking a brief scream as the concrete floor of the orchestra pit, twenty feet below, raced up to break his jaw and arm.

Oh, Jesus, Jesus…

He lay on his belly, staring at the bone, starkly white and flecked with blood, that poked through his forearm skin.

Bobby moaned and screamed and cried out for help.

Who? Who did it?

Edwin?… He might’ve heard me tell Kayleigh in the café that I was going to be here late.

“Help me!”

Silence.

Bobby tried to reach into his pocket for his mobile. The pain was too great. He nearly fainted. Well, try again! You’re going to bleed to death!

Then, over his gasping breath, he heard a faint sound above him, a scraping. He twisted his head and looked up.

No… God no!

He watched the strip light, directly above him, easing toward the edge of the stage.

“No! Who is that? No!”

Bobby struggled to crawl away, clawing at the concrete floor with the fingers of his unbroken arm. But his legs weren’t working either.

One inch, two…

Move, roll aside!

But too late.

The light slammed into his back, going a hundred miles an hour. He felt another snap high in his body and all the pain went away.

My back… my back…

His vision crinkled.

Bobby Prescott came to sometime later-seconds, minutes, hours… he didn’t know. All he knew was that the room was bathed in astonishing light; the spotlight sitting on his back had been turned on.

All thousand watts, pouring from the massive lamps.

He then saw on the wall the flicker of shadows, cast by flames. At first he didn’t know what was on fire-he felt no heat whatsoever. But then the repulsive scent of burning hair, burning flesh filled the small space.

And he understood.