Man Made Murder (Blood Road Trilogy Book 1) (10 page)

Beyond the reach of streetlights, the yard was black. He stepped in a gopher hole. His ankle started to buckle. He caught himself with his arms out and whipped his head toward the house, in case anyone had seen.

Still. Silent.

He checked the neighbor, a light on, bleeding through thin curtains. No one watching.

He left the hedge, crouching low, making his way toward the corner of the house. When he got there, he leaned a shoulder against it and peeked around the edge. The shape of a porch in the back. At the top, a door hung open.

One more glance toward the road, then he moved to the bottom of the steps, staying at the far edge of them so he wouldn’t be visible through the open door. He came up carefully, the skin behind his ears tight, his eyes darting.

The porch creaked. He held his breath, took the final step, and peered inside, his arm against the outside wall, his other hand gripping the doorframe. Just inside was the edge of a counter. Soft sounds came from within, things moving, being shifted.

He slipped his hand behind him, under his jacket.

When he pulled it free, his arm was heavy with the weight of the gun. A good, solid feeling. He stepped inside.

A wall faced the back door. He thought he could make out a table pushed up against it. He glanced over his shoulder before moving slowly across the kitchen, to the doorway pointing toward the rest of the house. Other doors came off from it—pantry, he guessed. Basement. Around the corner, probably a bathroom. Something banged a wall near the front of the house.

Carl ducked his head, standing against a wall again. His lips moved in a short, silent prayer. Then he swung through the doorway, arm outstretched.

The front door was wide open, light from the street ghosting in.

Shit
.

His arm dropped as he jogged across the room. The throat of the bike’s engine sounded before he reached the door. He got there in time to watch the bike speed through the cross street.

Shit!

His legs wanted to run down the steps and get to his car—but what was the fucking point? In just the time it took for him to think that thought out, the bike had probably gone a quarter mile.

By
now
it was probably a half mile out.

Just keep standing here thinking about how you lost him. That’s helpful.

The biker would go back to the bar eventually. Carl would start up the watch all over again. And next time—
next fucking time
—he wouldn’t be so cautious. Caution was getting him fucking nowhere.

He started to step onto the front porch.

Stopped.

What the fuck had the biker been doing here anyway?

Carl pulled the front door closed, shutting himself in darkness. The street was quiet with the motorcycle gone. He’d have to figure out where he was, then how to get back to where he wanted to be, but it could wait a second. He brushed his hand along the wall, his thigh bumping a table. His fingers found the switch. A ceiling light came on.

All the odd shapes whose contours had been ghosts when the front door was open snapped into clear focus. The expected stuff—the couch, the coffee table, the chair and the TV on a brown metal stand—barely blipped as his gaze crawled over practice amps, a couple guitars, odd electronic boxes here and there, some of them with their guts open. Stereo components were racked against a wall between crates full of record albums. Two hip-high speakers angled out from the corners of the room. Ashtrays, emptied but not washed, except for one that held a single butted-out stub. Tour flyers, rock magazines, receipts and papers of all kinds bulged from boxes.

The table he’d walked into in the dark, papers were spilled across it, some of them scattered on the floor. He hadn’t heard paper falling when he’d knocked it. In fact, it looked like a hand had swept them across the table to get a look at them. With the gun in his hand, he pulled them together, scanning the top page as he dropped to a crouch, feeling with the tips of his gun-holding fingers for the others.

Revelations popped into place in his head: the guy who lived here was in a band.

The band was Man Made Murder.

And the invoice he was picking up from the floor said this guy was Dean Thibodeaux.

His heart raced in a mix of awe and excitement and confusion. Why Man Made Murder? What was the connection there? (And, farther back in his head:
Holy shit. I’m in Dean Thibodeaux’s house.
He wouldn’t have guessed it from the look or location of the place. Didn’t stars have mansions? Garages full of cars?)

The deejay on WHAK, he’d said they’d just headed out on tour.

He looked up, his eyes crawling the equipment again but not really seeing this time. What was Man Made Murder to his biker? What had the biker come here for? What had he left with, and where was he going?

Did he know the band was gone, is that why he broke in tonight?

The papers in his hand, one of them was the second page of a tour itinerary, put together by a typist who’d had to backspace and change a letter every couple dates. That was to say, a not very good typist.

All he had was the second half of the tour here, the half that ended with them back in New Hampshire in six weeks.

He shuffled through the pages again. Equipment list, radio stations in the markets they’d be playing, a couple press releases, confirmed interviews, interviews yet to be confirmed, special appearances—apparently there was a meet and greet in Pittsburgh. No first page of dates. He looked under the table. He walked around the room, dipping and crouching, moving stuff, poking into boxes, his heart ticking away the seconds.

List of radio stations. Phone numbers included.

Stuffing the gun behind him, he went to the kitchen and dialed WHAK on a phone mounted to the wall. Waited forever for someone to pick up. Asked them where Man Made Murder was playing tonight. Stood on hold while the info was dug up.

The kitchen was clean. He stretched the cord over to the fridge, looked inside. No perishables. He twisted a can of Coca-Cola free of its plastic, clamping the phone against his shoulder.

“New York City tonight,” the phone said.

“Where in New York City?”

He got a venue name and hung up.

North or south? Check the bar first, or go with the hunch?

Why the fuck was the biker interested in Man Made Murder?

Because he was cleaning up his mess, the one he’d mentioned outside the bar early this morning. There was a mess that was all his to clean up.

Like Carl, and the mess
he
was cleaning up.

New York was a long shot. A long fucking shot.

You know where the bar is. You know he’s coming back to it
.

Right. Even if the biker went to New York, he’d be coming back to the bar eventually.

But Carl couldn’t sit and wait; he’d done two years of that.

And the Man Made Murder thing made trying to catch the biker in New York all the more irresistible.

T
he crowd had seen
the shapes of them emerging from the shadows at the back of the stage, Jessie first, grinning as Nick slipped behind his kit. They yelled as Shawn walked out with that self-satisfied smile he got when he could tell a show would be good. Dean took a step half out of the shadows, and the sheer presence of the audience hit him like an anvil to the chest. He staggered, and Teddy caught him under the arm, Dean’s guitar ready to go in his other hand.

With his eyes pinned on the dark crowd beyond the stage lights, Dean got his guitar strap over his shoulder.

The shouts and whistles were distant, like they were coming from a can at the end of a string, but the
thud-thud-thud
of twelve hundred hearts pumping…

He glanced toward Shawn, panicked, and Shawn shot a smile back, oblivious.

His fingers vibrated as he stepped up to his pedals. He ducked his head. The crowd had a smell—sweat and alcohol and cigarettes. Hairspray and aftershave. And under that, something rich and enticing. Something that made him dizzy.

A girl reached over the edge of the stage, her fingers straining toward him, her arm white and delicate and breakable as bisque.

For a split second, he could hear
her
blood, over all the others thudding in his ears.

Nick counted them in with his sticks.

Dean tore a look toward the set list, his mind a cliff, his thoughts falling off it. “Boiler Room” was scrawled at the top of the sheet. He gripped his pick and tamped down on the fret board. The roar of the audience’s pulse drowned under the sound blasting from the monitors at his feet, the stacks at his back. He slipped his eyes closed and hit the opening chords, curling his lip back, his body holding to the guitar like it was the only thing keeping him in the real world.

An hour later, he stumbled backward, his eyes somewhere above the audience, Shawn waving like it was good night, Nick already halfway out the stage door.

He felt stunned, like he’d been hit in the back of the skull and was only now just waking up. He dragged his head over to see Jessie give a wink to two girls in the front row. Dragged his head over more to see Shawn throwing a look back from the doorway, raising an eyebrow at him. Him just standing there with his fingers wrapped around the neck of his guitar.

The audience stomped. Teddy eased the Les Paul from his grip, and Dean fought dueling urges to grab his arm, hard, or duck and run.

Free of his instrument, he spun on his heel, nearly tripping over the drum riser before making his way around it and off the stage. Where he bounced off Shawn’s chest, Shawn still waiting for him.

He threw a hand out to the wall to steady himself.

“Are you all right?” Shawn asked.

“Yeah.” He dug his fingers against the cool cement. “Yeah, I’ll make it.” His throat was so dry it hurt to swallow.

Shawn crooked a finger into the collar of his jacket—“Come on”—and dragged him along. “Sit,” he said when they got to a metal chair in the back room. He pushed Dean a little to get the message across.

Dean dropped. Leaned forward and scrubbed his face while Shawn fetched water.

Dry as his throat was, he didn’t touch the water, reaching instead for cigarettes, finding the pack empty. Crushing it, he looked around. All these people. All these fucking people. He shot to his feet.

Shawn caught him by the arm.

“Bathroom,” Dean said.

Shawn let go.

He wasn’t all right, not by a long shot. Someone pushed past him on their way out the mens’ room. Another Bus Rolls At 2 sign was pasted to the goddamned door.

What he wouldn’t give, though, to be on that bus right now, rolling away.

The door fell closed, and he didn’t have to look under the stall doors to know he was alone. The layers and rhythms of all the pulses in the building were muffled through the bathroom’s walls.

He gripped the sink, the porcelain solid and cool. He rocked on his feet. Clenched his teeth together.

Under his gums, the roots of his teeth throbbed, top and bottom, beating in time with his heart.

Three more songs.

He swiped his forehead against the sleeve of his shirt. Clutched the sink harder. Just three more.

He needed a good night’s sleep, that’s what he needed. And maybe antibiotics. He should have gone to the ER, gotten antibiotics at least.

The face in the mirror was pale. Purple smudges darkened the skin under his eyes. The bandage at his neck wasn’t pristine anymore; sweat and skin oils had turned it gray. Letting go of the sink, he straightened, swallowing, fingers trembling as they reached for the tape. He peeled some of it up, lifting the bandage back.

The door flipped open behind him.

Nick appeared in the mirror, an apple in his hand, his jaws working a bite. He looked over Dean’s shoulder, into the mirror, meeting Dean’s eyes before dropping his gaze to what Dean was looking at.

“Holy shit,” he said, a chunk of apple lodged in his cheek.

What had been raw and red in the morning was gray now, like old meat. The edges of the skin around it were jagged and blueish.

“What the fuck happened?”

He didn’t know. He had no
fucking
idea. His lips tingled, numb and cold. His knees started to buckle. The mirror fell away.

Nick caught him, the apple thunking to the grime-streaked tiles. Helped him, half dragging, half stumbling, to the floor where he could lean Dean against the wall, the bandage flapping from his neck like one of the perforated all-in-one envelopes their checks came in.

Nick set a foot between Dean’s shins, his hands under Dean’s armpits, his hair falling in front of his face. His dark eyes peered through it, searching Dean’s. “You are so not okay.” His voice sounded like it was coming through a conch—far away, lost in the rush of Dean’s pulse. Or Nick’s. Nick’s pulse.

God, his teeth hurt. It was the one brightly shining spot in the fog. He clutched Nick’s shirt as Nick smoothed the tape back in place.

The door popped open, Jessie swinging in, saying, “Hey,” before looking—his gaze sweeping before dropping.

His brow furrowed. Words came out of his mouth—the ones he’d no doubt had in mind when he pushed the door open: “Time to finish it. Is he okay?”

“I don’t know.” Nick untangled Dean’s fingers from his shirt.

Jessie stepped closer. “He’s kind of glassy-eyed.” He waved his hand in front of Dean’s face.

Dean turned his head away, blinking.

“What happened?” Jessie asked.

“I don’t think he’s okay,” Nick said.

“Should I get Mike?”

“No,” Dean managed, putting a hand up, leaning his weight on his other hand to push himself up.
Don’t fucking get Mike
. “Give me a minute. No—don’t”
touch me.
“I’ve got it.” He waved them back. “I just can’t handle the sight of my own insides is all.” He meant looking under the bandage, which had been bad, but it was only the cherry on top of the pile of shit he was worried about at the moment.

Right now this second he was worried about how enticing the sound of Jessie’s pulse was.

“Well, it was pretty fucking gross,” Nick said.