Playing Dirty (Stargazer #2)(86)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Nine Lives scratched his cheekbone with one pointed fingernail, leaving a red mark. Then he looked at his watch. “Fred,” he called, “the concert will be over in a few minutes. Let’s go get him.”

“What do you mean, ‘go get him?’ ” Sarah asked, trying her best to sound calm. “Do you mean the singer? What do you want with him?”

“He’s got a little coke problem, right?” Nine Lives asked. “OD’d recently in Thailand? If you’ve been on his ass, he hasn’t done it since. I’ll bet he’s really bluesing for some coke. It just so happens that I have some coke. I thought I’d get him good and hopped up. And then I’ll let him watch while I show you what really happens in a Brazilian prison.”

Sarah looked at Goonie. Goonie smiled at her.

She watched trees and buildings and signs spin by out the windows of the limo for a few moments while it sank in.

She said quietly, “The thing is, Bill, he’s not really on coke. You know how you’d collapse at nightclubs in Rio and I’d start a rumor in the press that you had diabetes? Well, the Cheatin’ Hearts are the opposite. Quentin has asthma and allergies. He doesn’t do coke.”

“Wow, you can lie with a straight face,” said Nine Lives.

“Bill, you have to believe me. Quentin’s never done drugs. He was in the ICU in Thailand because of an allergy. If you coke him up like he’s an addict, he really will OD. You’ll kill him.”

“Sarah,” Nine Lives said condescendingly, “if we don’t give him enough, he won’t get off.” He pointed to the TV. The camera focused on Martin’s hands as he played the intricate guitar solo in “Heavily Sedated.” Black track marks marred both arms. Nine Lives said, “The Cheatin’ Hearts don’t do drugs. Right!”

“Allergies,” Goonie said, shaking his head and laughing.

Sarah recalled what Quentin had told her: Be careful what you say to the press. It might come back to sting you. She’d better keep her mouth shut. Nine Lives had become an avid news reader of late. Cocaine was bad enough, but if she wasn’t careful, she’d persuade Nine Lives to feed Quentin an almond.

It was difficult to act alluring to a greasy rock icon while she was having an allergic reaction, but she gave it a go. She leaned over to him and whispered in his ear, “We don’t have to do it like this. It’s no fun if we’re angry with each other. Do you have your plane here?”

He nodded.

“You and I can ditch Goonie and Fred and fly to Monte Carlo. Or Cannes. Monaco.” Sarah tried to think of more resort towns where French was spoken. She was fluent in French, and she didn’t want to get stuck in another Portuguese situation.

“No dice,” he hissed. “You’d just be trying to get away from me the whole time. No, I think I’d rather get revenge.”

“Me, too,” said Goonie.

Fred leaned through the window between the front and back seats. “Me, too,”

“Turn around and drive the car, Fred!” Goonie boomed. “That’s how we wrecked this morning.”

“How do you feel after that shot?” Nine Lives asked her.

“Itchy.”

“How about some more?” He patted her in a friendly way on the shoulder where he’d injected her. “I don’t think I gave you enough before.”

Not even Natsuko could see her way out of this now. When Sarah showed up at the concert with Nine Lives, Quentin would come to rescue her, and Goonie and Fred would take him. She had to keep him out of this. It wasn’t his fight. She couldn’t go to the concert. She would let them kill her instead.

“Holy shit,” Nine Lives gasped. “Goonie, give Fred his fifty bucks back. Sarah’s crying.”

“That’s what we like to see,” said Goonie. “Don’t wreck, but you gotta look at this, Fred. There’s a girl in there.”

Fred glanced through the window between the seats. “There’s a bitch in there, more like it.”

“There, there,” Nine Lives purred, rubbing Sarah’s knee. “We don’t want to hurt you, Sarah. Not unless you make us mad. We just want to soften you up for our big night. Or do we? Goonie, maybe you like a fighter.”

Goonie said, “I want her softer than that.”

“Okay,” she said, sniffling and dabbing carefully under her eyes with her fingertips. “Do you mind if I lie down?”

Nine Lives patted his thigh amiably. Sarah stretched out across the seat with her head in his lap. Goonie rubbed her feet in the high heels soothingly. Out the sunroof, the clouds were violent pink with the sunset, and so clearly defined. The sunroof was open, she realized. The ultimate opulence in Alabama: windows open with the air-conditioning on.

“I made up this song a couple of days ago,” Quentin said on the TV, “watching Sarah work out in the gym of the hotel at the Galleria.”

He’d been watching her? Sarah had some hard questions for her creepy fiancé.

He had better be glad she would never see him again.

If she turned to look at him on the TV she would cry harder, so she stared out the sunroof and let his voice soothe her as Nine Lives felt around in his pockets for the little bottle of venom.

“Now I wish I hadn’t written this one,” Quentin said, “because I’m trying to get Sarah back, not make her run some more. It was supposed to be a surprise for her, and she’s not here. But Erin’s giving me that look. It’s next on the playlist, so I guess we have to do it. ‘Pink-Haired Sarah.’ ”

The easy, funky little beat was unlike anything Sarah had heard the Cheatin’ Hearts play before. She thought analytically that Quentin might get his first Grammy from this one.

Pink-haired Sarah in the sun.

I wonder what makes Sarah run?

Or not, Sarah thought. Sun and run. Good one.

Nine Lives had found the bottle.

What does Sarah have to lose?

Pink-haired Sarah has the blues.

Sarah thought about Wendy. She thought about her mother.

Nine Lives unwrapped another syringe.

What does Sarah know is coming?

What keeps pink-haired Sarah running?

She thought about Quentin standing with his father in the gravel parking lot of the Highway 280 Steak House, which rarely served steak. Quentin and his father opened the hood of his truck and peered into the engine. They straightened and laughed together, and Quentin looked so proud. Then he saw Sarah watching from the doorway of the restaurant. He gave her the lopsided grin. Quentin would be fine without her.