“You don’t have any rules?” Irina asked.
“Rules for what?” Tanner asked.
“Uh-huh, same question,” Sam said.
“Why would I need rules?” Mach asked. “It’s a simple PR stunt.”
“You don’t do stunts without permission,” Hans said, way too relaxed for Sam’s comfort. Given that he never relaxed, this seemed like a decoy.
“What’s the stunt?” Tanner asked, carefully.
“I opened my account. I posted on my socials with a link that the thousandth person to match me gets the Mach exclusive Dimefront experience,” Mach announced.
“What does the experience include?” Bax asked, more cautious than Tanner.
“Depends on who I get matched with.” Mach grinned big at that. “But the minimum is dinner, tickets, backstage passes, meeting all you assholes.”
“That’s how he wrote it.” Courtney pursed her lips. “Word for word, that’s how he wrote it including the ‘all my asshole bandmates.’”
“It could be anyone!” Irina tossed her hands to the side. “Put limits and fine print on this kind of thing.”
Courtney and Hans did the mind meld thing once more, where they seemed to have an entire conversation without saying a word.
“It could be anyone,” Mach said with a sly grin that made Sam scoot a little closer to Tanner. “Like that woman from Amsterdam with the tongue ring. Could be her? That wouldn’t be bad.”
“Or it could be a serial killer Ten!” Courtney pressed her fingers against her eyes.
She was going the migraine route, it seemed.
“I’m choosing to be positive. I posted and I’ve already got like five hundred matches to go through.” He held up his phone. “It’ll be fine. Lucky one thousand wins the prize, and it takes some heat off of Sam.”
“I would like to point out that Twitter is reporting an uptick in the number of people who are hoping Mach matches with Sami Jo,” Becca said. “That could be fun.”
“I’m not on that Nocturnal site.” She wasn’t.
“Also, you’re with me,” Tanner pointed out.
That, too. “Yes, mostly that,” Sam agreed.
“This is all remarkably unhelpful,” Hans said, his glare fixed on Mach. “You had ten minutes before the show.”
“I can get a lot done really quick when I need to.” Mach shrugged. “And Sam, if you wanna join the site, I’ll tell you when I’m ready for the winner. You click the match. Boom. Done. You and me go to dinner.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Hans said. He turned and left the bus.
“I’m going to go talk to him.” Ashley scurried after him.
Everyone took that moment to let it sink in that someone wanted to follow Hans when he was in one of these moods. Usually he needed a long breather and then he’d craft the perfect plan to extract them from whatever mess they’d created.
“I’m going to go stop Ashley from pissing him off too badly,” Sam said, standing and heading after her friend. “Give me a sec.”
Hans and Ashley stood super close to each other by a stack of the black equipment boxes. The big ones made of plywood with wheels and silver clasps to keep things inside.
She started toward them, but they headed around to one of the other buses. Was that Bax’s or was it Linx’s? Crud, she didn’t know.
Following them, she stopped at the first step. They were arguing.
That wasn’t good. Ashley could argue with anyone, but arguing with Hans was as bad as arguing with the photog fromRolling Rock. Both were poor decisions.
