“Stay there,” the first guy insisted. He left his post and wandered over to the booth sat off to one side, where he asked the guy inside to make the call. Instead of doing it, the nosy sod poked his head out the window.
“Which one?” Alle heard him ask.
The first guy waved in her general direction.
“Her? That one?” the nosy guard asked. He pointed directly at her. “You’re being had, man. She’s already been ejected once. She’s nothing to do with the band. Just some sad groupie.”
“Fuck you.” Alle jammed two fingers in the air. That was not what had happened. She hadn’t been ejected. Her brother had flippin’ kidnapped her with the aid of his imbecile mates to whom he’d no doubt spun a load of bullshit. The next time she saw Flynn, she was going to dismember him with a spoon.
“Clear out, lady.”
“You need to call Spook. Or Xane. Call Xane.” He was the band’s ostensible leader, and sure, they weren’t seeing exactly eye to eye presently, but he’d sort this out, she was confident of that.
“We ain’t phoning no one. Those people don’t want to be hassled.” The nosy guard exited his booth. “All right people, you need to back up now. That’s it, back right up. We need this entrance cleared. You—” He practically barged right into her. “You need to get behind that line. There’s an ambulance on the way and these gates need to be clear.”
An ambulance? Alle froze. Why the hell were the paramedics on the way? What had happened?
Spook—she thought of the scars on his forearms, and the pain that had shredded his voice as he’d related the nightmares of his past. Had Marshall’s latest opus been a wound too much? Had his psychotic ex re-shown her face?
Dammit, she had to get in there. There had to be a way.
A girl walked in front of her wearing a Ronnie Bush T-shirt.
Ronnie. God, yes. That was it. Ronnie was her salvation. “Ewan, you have Ronnie’s number, right. You must have. You and he spoke about the Monte Carlo arrangements.”
“He called me. It was one conversation.”
“But you saved the number, right, because you wouldn’t just pack up your sister’s passport and smalls and hand them over to someone you couldn’t at least contact.”
Her big brother’s twisted lips rather suggested otherwise. Then again, Ewan was always running off at a moment’s notice to catch some plane or other to exotic locales. She was probably lucky he’d remembered to pack her any sexy smalls.
“Fine, you didn’t save it, but the record of the call will still be in your phone logs.”
“I suppose.” He scratched his beard. “Don’t think I’ve wiped them recently.”
Who the hell wiped them at all? She kept all her records. You never knew when you’d need to refer back to something. Ewan pulled out his phone and began to ponderously browse his call history. His actions were far too slow for Alle. She snatched the device. “How soon before we went did he call you?”
“I don’t know.” When Alle scowled, he raised his hands. “I don’t remember. A couple of days, maybe. It was weeks ago. A lot has happened in between.”
Didn’t she just know it?
“Okay, which of these numbers is his?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know, Alle? I didn’t make a mental note of it.”
“Well, what time of day did he call?”
“Evening. Maybe.”
It looked like she was working through them until she hit on the right one.
“What—what are you doing?” Ewan’s mouth rounded into an expression of alarm. “You’re not calling random people. Give me that.” He succeeded in wrestling the phone back out of her hands. “Look, I know you’re eager to get to him, but a lot of these people are professional contacts. I can’t have you randomly dialling and hassling them.”
“You should have thought of that before you helped fucking Flynn to kidnap me.”
“I—”
“Everyone back.” The guards hustled everyone further from the gates. Alle got prodded in the back. She was about to give the security guard an earful, but an ambulance raced past, sirens blazing. What in the hell? There was an emergency that necessitated sound and lights?
