Page 46 of Illusive
The bassist stood and went to the toy box. Straightening and turning, he tossed the instrument to Ronan. Then he looked into the control room. “Let’s run back that last take.”
A moment later, the song piped through the overhead speakers. Ronan’s foot began to tap. Catching the rhythm, the rest of his body began to sway. He lifted the harmonica to his lips and waited. When melody warranted, he added to it.
“Yeah,” Rumsfeld said, moving over to his drums.
The lead guitarist grabbed his instrument and slung the strap over his head. He picked up the chords but lengthened them.
They went through the whole song.
“I’m feeling it,” Kline said, bobbing on his feet. “Let’s go from the top.”
They played it through again, pausing frequently to make adjustments.
“Try adding more rasp,” Ronan suggested after the third take. “Give the words more grit. This guy’s got what he wants, right? Heaven in his grasp. But hell is around the corner, and he sees it comin’, so there’s also anger and grief. Denial.”
From the look on the band’s faces, he was maybe saying too much. “And maybe adding female vocals to the last line of the chorus. It might up the angst.”
Rumsfeld drummed his sticks into his thighs and then nodded. “Like she’s haunting him. I’ll ask Chantal if she’ll lend us her voice for a minute, just to see how that might fit.”
“Let me know if you decide to keep it in,” Ronan said as he started toward the toy box. “And if you don’t already have someone in mind, I’ll get to work finding you guys a producer.”
“Oh no, dude,” the lead guitarist said with a shake of his head. “You’re staying right here.”
Ronan held up his hands. “Amateur, remember?”
“You own a record label, Ronan. You’re a professional now.”
Dozing, Ireland was clinging to the imagined warmth of a sultry Southern voice when the door to the box opened again. She blinked rapidly, dazed and watery-eyed, so fogged with confusion and the remnants of her dream that the fear slipped in like tendrils of smoke.
Falling unconscious was happening too easily and too often. She suspected she was concussed. Certainly dehydrated. The violently throbbing headache felt like her skull was going to burst.
The dark figure shadowing the doorway shifted deliberately, so that the too-bright overhead light outside the box stabbed pain into her brain and brought her fully awake. He stood just inside the opening for a long minute, staring at her with near-tangible malevolence. The hairs on her nape stood on end. Then he stepped inside, and she tried to scramble away, only to be trapped by the plywood wall at her back.
He wrapped his hand around her arm and yanked her roughly to her feet. “Come on.”
Crying out at his vicious grip, Ireland stumbled, and he shoved her the rest of the way out of the box. She sprawled onto the cold black tile floor with a muffled thud that rattled her aching body. He followed her out, kicking her where she lay. Eyes stinging with a wash of tears, Ireland struggled to get on her feet, her sweaty palms sliding along the slick floor.
She looked around, trying to get her bearings, but it was hard to keep her eyes open against the profusion of light after what felt like an eternity in the dark. The sheer curtains covering the floor-to-ceiling windows revealed deepening twilight. She wasastonished to see they were in a modern, stylish condo. Beyond the windows was the dusky sky, and below was the city.
Am I still in Manhattan?The thought came with the threat of hysteria, her mind unable to fuse her life before with her ordeal now. She was not even the same woman.
It felt like days upon days had passed, locked in the utter darkness. She’d tried to gauge time by how often she had to pee in the paper cup they’d left her, but she hardly felt the urge to relieve herself. Lacking food and water, wounded, she was a shell of herself.
When did I last eat or drink?
The floor’s high shine revealed shards of glass and splinters of wood scattered across the living room, the destruction wrought by his earlier outbursts. She looked at him, the man who’d ripped her from everything familiar and known, and her female intuition screamed in alarm. Every hair on her body stood on end. The way he looked at her had an unmistakably sadistic gleam, ravening and cruel with a high sheen of madness that sent chills burrowing deep into her soul.
He was small in stature, shorter than her but heavily muscled, with big-knuckled hands that betrayed a liking for using his fists. He wore his dirty-blond hair in a severe crew cut and had a day’s stubble on his square jaw. His nose had been broken more than once, by the look of it, and a nasty scar ran down one cheek.
“Keep moving,” he ordered. “Down the hall.”
Ireland hesitated. Her instincts screamed for her to keep the man, whom her mind registered as a vicious animal, in sight. But then he took a menacing step forward, and she turned abruptly and started walking as quickly as possible. He followed closely. Too closely.
She was drawn up short by the brutal yanking of her hair that ripped strands from her scalp. Ireland shrieked with pain. Withhis hand wrapped in her hip-length hair, he wrenched her back, bowing her spine.
His mouth to her ear, he snarled, “This place is soundproofed, so I expect you to scream.”
The pounding of her heart was fast and erratic, skipping beats and racing through others. When he shoved her away from him again, she fell to her knees with his fingers still tangled in her hair. The sobs that left her were deep and hoarse, her throat dry from lack of water, her tongue swollen and throbbing. She crawled forward, her cheekbone hitting the floor when he kicked her in the ass.
