Naomi followed her up the basement steps that led back into the hallway across from her office. “What if we can’t find her?” Na asked, and the worried tone to her voice spiked Fallon’s own concern.
“We’ll find her. Tell Molly to put her big-girl panties on because she’s taking the next solo.”
Naomi laughed. “You know she is going to have a fit, right? Molly’s been here, what, two months? She’s not ready for her solo.”
“Well, ready or not, if she wants to keep her job, she’s dancing. Tell her to get ready. And make sure she wears the pink lipstick—I don’t like the way the red looks with her solo costume.”
Fallon crossed the hall and stepped into her office as Naomi hurried toward the backstage dressing room.
A few minutes later, in Olympic gold medalist record time, Fallon was dressed in a simple black dress and nude stiletto pumps. As she swiftly continued down the hall that led backstage, the blended voices coming from the other end began to sound unnerved. She stumbled over her own feet as her pace quickened and she held her breath as her heartbeat started to race in her chest, constricting the amount of oxygen she was able to take into her lungs. She’d always felt that strong pull of intuition, that knowing tic that tapped along her bones as the unidentified fear she knew she was approaching came to a head. Then exploded.
She heard glass ricocheting across the floor, splintering in hundreds of pieces and scattering in every direction. Turning the corner, she stepped backstage, her eyes immediately finding Jade’s motionless body on the floor next to her vanity.
And her heart stopped.
• • •
The deafening cluster of voices penetrated the room with their drunken conversations and it beat against Rafe’s head as if someone were taking a chisel to his temple and slowly and torturously nicking away the bone encasing his brain. It was much more crowded in the club this weekend compared with last, and last weekend the place was damn near full.
The tables were all occupied and the standing room around the bar was pressed shoulder to shoulder. Rafe wedged himself next to a table of young women. They flashed appreciative smiles, welcoming his proximity, and whereas usually a smile from a group of beautiful women like them would have challenged him, tonight it only annoyed him.
“Hey, man,” he heard from behind him. He turned to see the bouncer from the other night. “You’re Graham’s friend, right?”
“Yeah. George?”
“Yeah. Good to see you, man. Graham and Dexter with you?”
“No, it’s just me.”
George nodded his head back, as if what Rafe had just said pieced some invisible puzzle together. “Keep your fists to yourself tonight,” he warned, then slapped him on the shoulder and walked off.
Rafe continued scanning the club for her, waiting to see Fallon climb up on that stage. But every time he would hear the sound of heels click across the wood floor, just before the lights came on, he got uneasy. As badly as he wanted to see her, a larger part of him didn’t want to see her up on that stage. He didn’t want to see her taking her clothes off in front of every fucking suit in that place. He’d seen the way that body could move against him, and he’d felt that beautiful body beneath his fingertips and around him as she came. He imagined that every douche bag in that room would envision her while they jacked off that night. Yeah, he’d been with her only the one time, but that shit was definitely not sitting well with him.
Given the incident from the last time he was there, it was probably best if he just left. His fuse was cut short; he was annoyed and the throb in his head only intensified his irritation.
Shouldering past the hefty guy next to him, he started for the door. But out of his peripheral vision, he saw a woman rushing down the narrow aisle between tables. He knew without needing to shift his eyes that it was Fallon. No other woman could possibly be so deft in the fuck-me heels she wore.
He turned to face her and time halted. Fear controlled her eyes, pained her expression. Even from across the room, he could tell her breathing was labored.
Rafe shoved his way through the crowd, but the bodies were compacted around him. He strained his neck to the side as she collided to a stop in front of George. George’s eyes widened as she spoke and his mouth set in a tight line, his entire demeanor shifting in the span of a second.
As Fallon pivoted around, their eyes found each other’s in the midst of mingling, exuberant bodies. He felt her sigh from across the room. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her.
She blinked, a new emotion shedding from her eyes, then rushed back toward the stairs leading backstage. He didn’t have a damn clue what was going on, but he knew that look that covered the bouncer’s face. A look of fear mixed with undeniable anger. And the emotion embedded in Fallon’s eyes was one he never wanted to see again. It was tortured, torn, scared.