Bodyguard: Target (35 page)

‘Stop!’ Charley cried as
Gonzo reached the emergency exit. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

Gonzo swivelled round to face her.

‘How about a last shot?’ he
said, pointing his camera at Charley.
‘The grieving girlfriend.’

‘Gonzo, I don’t have time to
play games,’ said Charley. ‘You might have evidence of the killer. Hand
it over.’

Gonzo adjusted the flashgun on his
camera. ‘Smile for the birdy!’

Charley noticed the little red laser dot
on her chest a moment too late.
The flashgun was a real gun!

Gonzo’s finger depressed the
shutter button. Charley braced
herself for the impact … There was a click but
no flash.

With a blast of expletives, Gonzo
furiously tapped away at the button.

‘Run out of film?’ asked
Charley, diving forward to tackle him before he could clear the jam.

Gonzo tried to bat her away with his
camera. The flash caught her a glancing blow on the cheek, but she managed
to pin him against the wall. As she
tried to wrestle the
lethal camera off him, Gonzo grabbed her hair and yanked her head backwards. She
gave a shriek as he tugged mercilessly. Before she could tear herself free of his
grip, he whipped her head to the side and she collided, bone to brick, against the
wall. Stars burst across her vision, her skull rang like a bell and she was forced
to let him go.

Taking
advantage of her dazed state,
Gonzo swept her legs from under her. Charley fell to the floor where he roundly
kicked her in the stomach. Winded and retching up bile, Charley lay gagging for
breath, pain racking her body. She heard the scrape of metal and saw Gonzo picking
up a crowbar from the top of a crate.

‘I said you’d live to regret
your actions,
chica
.’

As Gonzo
raised the crowbar to deliver a
killing blow, Charley gasped, ‘Ash isn’t dead!’

‘What?’

‘You shot his decoy.’

‘You’re lying.’

But the hesitation in his attack was all
she needed.

Fight smarter, not harder
.

Charley drove her fist into his groin
– always the smartest move in female self-defence.

Gonzo yelped like a wounded puppy and
dropped to the floor,
the crowbar clattering to the concrete. As he knelt with his
hands clasped between his legs, she slammed her palm into the bridge of his crooked
nose. There was a satisfying crunch and blood streamed from his nostrils. Stunned
and in obvious pain, Gonzo hissed and bared his
teeth like a
cornered rat. He lashed out at her with a fist, but she caught his hand and
spiralled it
into a wrist lock. Applying pressure, Charley forced him to the
concrete, where he lay squirming like a pinned beetle.

Though restrained, Gonzo still struggled
and spat at her. Charley took hold of his index finger. Any further injury, she
reasoned, could be blamed on his own force in resisting.

‘I assume this is the trigger
finger you use to take your vile photos?’ she
said coolly. ‘So I suggest
you keep still.’

She applied an extra-hard twist to his
wrist to drive home her warning.

Wincing, Gonzo glared up at her and
snarled, ‘Shove it, Wild Cat!’

Charley smiled, then wrenched the finger
all the way back. A sickening crack resounded through the loading bay, swiftly
followed by Gonzo’s agonized scream, just as Big T and two other
security
guards burst through the door.

‘I
told
you to keep
still,’ she said, confident her action was
necessary
,
reasonable
and
proportional
to the pain and suffering
he’d inflicted on her and Ash.

Big T came running over, stared at the
deformed finger, then smirked at Gonzo. ‘Well, you won’t be taking any
shots for a very long time!’

‘It’s an impressive piece of
kit,’ remarked the officer in charge, inspecting the flashgun weapon before it
was bagged for evidence. ‘Criminals are becoming more inventive every
day.’

He sipped from a takeaway coffee cup and
grimaced at the taste. ‘Man, that’s gross! Don’t they have any
decent coffee in this venue?’

Tossing the cup into a nearby bin, he
turned to Charley and Big T in the loading bay. They’d given their statements
and were just waiting to be dismissed. ‘I think we’re done here. That
was pretty brave of you, young lady, to tackle the
suspect alone. But next time
leave it to the professionals, like your bodyguard friend here. Without proper
training, you could easily have been killed.’

Charley said nothing. Big T suppressed a
knowing grin.

‘She’s a psycho! A wild cat!
She broke my finger!
’ bawled Gonzo as he was bundled into a
police car. ‘You should be arresting her, not me!’

The officer in
charge snorted.
‘Why is it that killers always think they’re the victims?’

He shrugged and
strode away to his car.

Charley glanced up at Big T.
‘Leave it to the
professionals
? What am I then?’

‘You’re the real
thing,’ Big T replied. ‘Just a pity you didn’t break
all
his fingers.’

Charley responded with a strained
smile.

‘Hey, I certainly would
have!’
admitted the veteran bodyguard. ‘Now, come on – we should
update the others.’

Charley followed Big T back through the
maze of corridors to the artists’ lounge. The atmosphere among the band and
road crew was subdued, though there was a buzz as Charley entered the room. She
heard whispers of ‘
Did she really catch the killer?
’

Kay, Terry and Zoe were embroiled in a
heated
discussion in the tour manager’s office.

‘It could so easily have been
Ash!’ said Kay fiercely.

‘Just be thankful Brandon’s
been recaptured,’ replied Terry. ‘At least he’s no longer a
threat.’

‘But we were looking for the wrong
guy! And now Ash is locked up in a mental ward! How did we ever make that
mis–’ She broke off as Big T knocked at the door and entered.

‘Charley! Are you all
right?’ Kay asked with genuine concern as Big T closed the door behind
them.

‘Just about,’ Charley
replied, still feeling the throb in her gut where Gonzo had kicked her. ‘That
rat Gonzo tried to shoot me with his camera,
literally
.’

‘Gonzo’s a murdering
scumbag,’ declared Big T. ‘But he’s now where he belongs. Behind
bars.’

‘What I
don’t understand is why Gonzo would want to kill Ash in the first
place?’ said Zoe incredulously.

‘He needed the money,’ Big T
replied.

‘What money?’ said
Terry.

‘The fees he’d earn from his
photos,’ explained Big T, ‘to pay off his gambling debt to the
mob.’

‘If that’s the case, why
wasn’t Gonzo identified as a threat before?’ demanded Kay.

‘He
was,’ said Big T.
‘None of us ever imagined, though, he’d go to
these
lengths to
engineer a “unique” photo. He’d bugged Ash’s hotel room,
tried to incite him to violence, even caused our car crash in New Orleans – I
traced the registration plate of the motorbike back to him. But these tactics are
typical of the paparazzi. And, after photographing the fire in San Francisco,
it
seems he was inspired to murder by Brandon.’

‘Brandon?’ exclaimed
Kay.

‘Yes,’ said Charley, joining
in the discussion. ‘It bothered me that Gonzo was always in the wrong place at
the wrong time. It was as if he knew about the accidents in advance. We suspect he
and Brandon made a deal. Brandon set up the accidents and Gonzo captured them on
film.’

‘So, when
Brandon was caught,
Gonzo took things into his own hands,’ continued Big T. ‘You see, to
kill Ash would be the ultimate pay-off in terms of a money shot. It would be like
catching the moment John Lennon was murdered.’

‘But he’d be killing the
golden goose,’ remarked Terry.

Big T nodded. ‘Yeah, but
he’d have made his fortune.
Photos of Ash dying would
have been sold
around the world and earned him millions.’

‘And how is Ash?’ asked
Charley. In all the craziness, she’d yet to ask about him. ‘I need to
see him.’

‘I gave the clinic a call, but
it’s out of office hours,’ replied Kay. ‘The night-duty nurse had
an emergency number for the doctor in charge, so I’m waiting for a call
back.’

At that moment her mobile rang. She
snatched
it up and listened. ‘You’re absolutely certain?’ she
asked, before listening some more. ‘Thank you, Doctor.’

Frowning, Kay put her phone down.
‘The doctor says the client was escorted to the airport, checked in and taken
through to the departure lounge. But it appears he never got on the flight to
England. What’s really odd, though, is the doctor insists the tattoo was on
his right arm. They definitely had Pete,
not
Ash, in their care.’

Charley stared at Big T. ‘So
where’s Ash?’

‘No more encores? You’ve got
to be kidding. This is my third!’ yelled the teen rock star, running back on
stage to ear-splitting screams and thunderous applause on the final night of the
Indestructible tour.

And what a perfect name for the tour
it is
, thought Charley. For someone who’d been threatened with death,
almost crushed by a spotlight, electrocuted by a mic, trapped by a hotel fire,
thrown off the stage, and finally tied up and blindfolded by his doppelgänger,
Ash had an amazing resilience – fuelled, it seemed, by the undying devotion of
his
fans.

After a frantic search of the Staples
Center, they’d found Ash bound and gagged inside a locked wardrobe in his
dressing room. He’d been in the venue the whole time. According to Ash, Pete
had caught a flight down to LA and then taken a taxi to the Staples Center. After
conning his way into the venue as ‘Ash’, he’d waited for Ash in
his dressing room. Ash had been
taken by surprise, tied up and shoved in the
wardrobe by Pete.

On his release, Ash had been furious.
But when he
discovered Pete’s fate he was first shocked
and then thankful that his decoy had saved him from that fatal shot. After hearing
about Charley’s encounter with Gonzo, his concern focused on her, but Charley
assured him she was fine. She was his bodyguard and it
was all part of the job.

Kay had launched a demonic investigation
into how Pete slipped past security, but gradually calmed down once she knew that
Ash was alive and well. With Brandon back in custody, Gonzo behind bars and Pete
lying in a morgue, Ash was no longer the target of any known death threats. All the
same, everyone on the security team remained alert and on edge
for his final
concert.

Miraculously, the gig went well –
with just one small hitch at the end.

‘I’ve got no more
songs!’ Ash admitted, spreading his arms wide in apology to his insatiable
fans.

There was an arena-sized groan.

He smiled. ‘Perhaps … I do
have
one
more.’

A huge cheer rocked the venue.

‘It’s brand new. Not even my
band has heard it,’
said Ash, perching on a stool and taking an acoustic
guitar from a roadie. After a strum to check it was tuned, he reached out to adjust
the mic stand … and stopped himself. He glanced offstage at a small group of
sound technicians. ‘This one’s earthed, isn’t it, guys?’

Like a group of dutiful meerkats, they
all nodded their heads, then laughed at Ash’s joke.

‘This song
is inspired by a very
special girl in my life,’ Ash announced. ‘It’s called “Angel
Without Wings”.’

The audience hushed
into near silence as Ash plucked a bittersweet melody from his guitar. With a
soulful voice that belied his young age, he began to sing. ‘
Time will heal
yet memories scar, when the hurt’s so deep, a bridge too far
…
’

Once more Charley felt her
eyes well up
with tears and her throat constrict.

‘
In times of trouble, I need a
helping hand. I look for you, breathe for you, have a need for you
…
’

Ash looked in Charley’s direction.
His eyes met hers as he sang the chorus.

‘
You lift me up, lift me up.
Make all my troubles fade away …
’

For Charley, the whole arena faded to
nothing. It was as if Ash
was singing only to her. And only she mattered.

‘
There stands my angel without
wings. Who needs wings … to be an angel?
’