With the bus underway and Skyler and Micha fast asleep in
their bunks getting some much-needed rest before they rolled into Tallahassee,
it was a simple thing to sit across from Dominick with a cup of coffee and
touch base. With the band having not one, but three different radio stations
they were scheduled to drop in at when they reached town, lining up where they
needed to be when it was time to hand over responsibility for their primary was
one of the many things they needed to discuss before getting some sleep
themselves.
“How’d it go this morning, any issues?” Christian asked.
The first sip of coffee was like ambrosia, usually, but
whatever this new blend was, it was bitter as fuck, even with Christian’s customary
three spoons full of sugar.
“Not a one.”
Judging by Dominick’s reaction, he was having a similar
experience and immediately reached for the creamer, dumping enough in to nearly
overfill his mug.
“Who the fuck made this?” Dominick asked when the second sip
still left him wrinkling his nose.
“No clue. The coffeemaker was already running when I got on,
so I’m guessing Skyler,” Christian admitted, “Though he’s usually way pickier
about his blends.”
“Must have been some desperate grab and go shit then,”
Dominick said, not that it stopped either of them from finishing what was in
their cups, though neither went back for a second one the way they usually did.
“So, what all did you two get up to?” Christian asked,
passing the mug back and forth between his hands and listening to the soft
slide of it over the tabletop.
Dominick chuckled. “Well, we grabbed a couple bagel
sandwiches on the way to the Illuminarium and spent a couple hours taking in
some seriously badass visuals.”
“That’s it?”
“They were pretty cool. I was skeptical at first, but the
first room we walked into was a full-scale African Safari and when that virtual
lion leapt, man I thought I was a dead man. There was a moment when it was so
real my fingers flexed and I had to dial back the instinct to draw my gun.
“I’m glad you didn’t, Sully’s got enough to deal with right
now, he doesn’t need the added headache of trying to explain that away.”
“Yeah.”
“Still. Five hours seems like a long time to stare at a bunch
of illusions.”
When Dominick blew out a breathe and glanced towards the back
where their principal slept, Christian knew there was more to the story that he
wasn’t sharing.
“Look,” Christian began, “we’ve got to work together if we’re
going to keep him safe, which means you can’t keep anything from me. If he’s
meeting with people he shouldn’t be…”
“It’s nothing like that,” Dominick said, glancing back and
forth again before lowering his voice. “He wanted to go to this puppet museum,
but he umm, didn’t want anyone to hear about it and give him shit.”
Frowning, Christian stared down into his coffee cup, trying
to recall any instance of Micha sharing with his bandmates anything about how
he spent his time when they weren’t in the studio together or onstage, and he
couldn’t remember a single one. In fact, he’d been guarding Micha for almost
two years and never once he had ever escorted him to anything that wasn’t band
related.
Yet Dominick had been here less than 48 hours and discovered
more about Micha’s life outside of the stage then Christian had learned about
in two years.
That was a problem.
One Christian had clearly caused somehow.
Damn.
Now the question was…what the fuck had he done?
It had to have been something right off the bat for him to
not know that Micha enjoyed visiting the types of places Christian would have
been pleased to spend a morning in.
Well…
Maybe not the puppets…that wasn’t a place Christian would
have picked out among a list of options but that Immaginariam would have been
interesting.
Thinking back to how annoyed Micha had been over that stuffed
animal, him planning a visit to a puppet museum wasn’t so farfetched…which
reminded him...
“Has that toy turned up yet?” Christian asked.
“Nope, and both times I asked about it he managed to change
the subject,” Dominick said.
“And you just let him? That’s not the way this needs to work.
We can’t afford for you to be another Tomas.”
Instead of annoyance, Dominick fixed him with a bemused look
and raised an eyebrow at him. “And how’s that worked out for you so far?”
“Excuse me?”
“Pushing him for an answer hasn’t exactly been a successful
method of getting a response now has it?”
Okay, so he might have a point, as much as it rankled
Christian to admit that to himself, it had been a struggle to get Micha to
cooperate with him and getting answers out of him was next to impossible at
this point. Clearly a shift in approach was exactly what was needed here.
“I’m still certain he has it if that’s what you’re wondering,”
Dominick said. “But it’s not in his travel bags, of that I’m certain.”
“Yeah? How so?”
“Watched him pack it,” Dominick said. “He had so much he
wanted to talk about before both museums that he just had me come in and sit
while he was getting ready to leave. Worked out better than waiting around
outside the door and making it obvious that someone who required a guard was on
the other side of the door.”
“And eliminated the most obvious place it could be,”
Christian said. “At this point, I’m thinking it’s a moot point. I saw him head
in the direction he kicked it in, but I couldn’t see if he found it or not.”
“With the way he was wandering around backstage like he was
deliberately trying to delay heading to the autograph booth, I got the feeling
he was hiding something. If he stashed it somewhere, he had to have found
someone else to retrieve it from him because I never saw him with it.”
“But there was enough time for him to hide it before
you caught up with him?”
“Yeah,” Dominick said. “I didn’t expect him to go that way
when the rest of the band came off on the other side.”
“Yeah, he shocked me with that one too,” Christian admitted.
“We might want to each take a side for tomorrow night’s
show,” Dominick suggested.
“Might as well. I was planning to be in the wings again
anyway to see if I can spot anyone who was at the Atlanta show. I took a few
photos of people who stood out in that crowd. If Micha’s admirer is
following the band, then there’s a chance he’ll be in Tallahassee.”
“What I don’t get is why he’s so opposed to letting us have
the clues we need to figure this out,” Dominick said, voicing a thought
Christian had already had several times himself.
“Unless he already knows.”
“In that case, why not just tell us?” Dominick asked.
“Now that just might be what we need to find out.”
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