Page 75 of Knox
All Knox wanted to do was go home. To be in the audience, for her to wink at him as she sang. To sneak backstage and maybe give her a good luck kiss. Or a hug. Or even just a high five, but yeah.
By one look at Tate’s expression as he took back the phone, he wanted to suggest the same thing.
“We have to find him,” Knox said.
Tate nodded. Sighed.
They finished the pizza, then took a subway to their hotel right off Times Square. Knox stood at the window, watching as theatergoers emptied into the square. Tate was channel surfing the late-late shows.
They should go home. Because what if Russell wasn’t here, but somehow had found them in Montana, and was right now sitting outside, in the parking lot, waiting to, as he put it, finish what he’d started.
Knox pressed a hand to his gut. That pizza wasn’t sitting right.
Especially when Tate’s phone buzzed again, this time on the nightstand next to his bed. He picked it up, and his gut knotted when Tate’s eyes widened, his mouth opening.
“What—?”
Tate looked up. “We’re going home. Right now.” His face turned grim and hard as he stood up and stalked over to his suitcase. “Their tour bus was bombed.”
9
She simply had to figure out how to breathe.
“Kelsey, are you okay in there?”
The knock came through the closed bathroom door to where Kelsey sat on the edge of the bathtub, wrapped in a clean bathrobe, courtesy of Kacey King, super country star Benjamin King’s wife. The tub had filled, the steam rising off it, lavender lifting from the scented oils Glo had insisted on adding.
She should be sliding in, closing her eyes. Trying to let go of the trauma.
And most of all, thanking God that they hadn’t been inside the bus sleeping when the fire started.
Instead, they’d been onstage at a country-western bar and grill, Kelsey singing her heart out to a sold-out crowd, feeling like she might actually find her feet again. Not a huge crowd, but enough for her to step onstage without the panic of the big stage. No special effects, just Kelsey and Glo at the mics, their voices mingling in a set of their favorite singles.
She remembered wishing that Knox sat in the audience, grinning at her, and hoping that she hadn’t scared him off.
Then, right during their last song—boom!
The propane tank that fueled their stove had shot out of the top of the bus, landing in the parking lot, setting off car alarms.
Thank God no one had been hurt.
“Kelsey!” More banging.
Kelsey sighed, looked at the water. The temptation to sink under the depths felt too powerful for her to risk it. She pulled the plug. “I’m fine.”
“Hurry up. There’s a cop here and he wants to get your statement.”
The one she didn’t give last night as she’d stood hollowly staring at her home, the flames curling around the bus, licking into the sky.
The Mercy Falls fire department showed up to douse the travesty, but Kelsey couldn’t move, the realization finding her bones.
Russell had found her. This was no random event—how could it be? But how had he tracked her down in Montana?
Except, and of course—because it came to her as the crowd spilled out of the bar, snapping pictures on their phones.
Instagram. Didn’t Glo say fans had found and tagged them at the Bulldog? And probably Glo, in her usual social media PR, had invited people to come out and see them at the Gray Pony.
It wasn’t Glo’s fault that a murderer wanted Kelsey—and by proxy, Glo—dead.