Page 15 of Echoes of a Muted Song

“A little help?” Draven groaned as shadows fell over us.

Batting my hair out of my eyes so I could seejust meant Jagger’s wound up tickling my nose. Before I could tickle him in retaliation, Keegan plucked him off me and tossed Jagger over his shoulder like he weighed less than a toddler.

“Let them breathe before you break somebody,” Keegan cautioned him as he swatted Jagger on the ass.

“And you put him down before we have a horny imp on our hands,” Robbie said as he helped me up and off Draven. “Dude, you got a tan.”

“That’s what happens when you spend ten days in shorts and tank tops,” Draven grumbled.

An afternoon of mostly silence, aside from the few times he’d spoken over meals, had left his voice strong enough that he didn’t need his device at the moment, but I knew he’d have to pull it out before the band meeting. We had a lot to go over, and I needed a bit of one-on-one time with Jagger to get a contingency plan in place. The thing I still needed to tell Draven, the thing I’d planned to tell him yesterday morning before we left the hotel but hadn’t had the opportunity to before we started wrestling around in the sheets, was that they were talking about revoking my bond and issuing another arrest warrant, for the new charge they were adding now that Mrs. McCall had died. If that happened and while I dealt with it, I needed Jagger to do what he’d refused to do at Rocktoberfest. I needed him to sing with my band as well as hisown. At least until the final decision regarding my fate was handed down, we knew one way or the other if my band was going to need a permanent replacement for me.

Fucking hell, I didn’t even have anyone in mind. The one person I’d have gone to, the one person who knew every song just as well as I did, was the man I’d hooked up with the gig with the Saints. Did it make me a shitty friend if I wished I hadn’t? I’d known when I’d done it what I was facing, but I’d still had faith that the driver of the green van would come forward on their own, with the way details of the incident had been circulating in the media. Naive much? I wouldn’t have thought that about myself with all the things I’d seen, but as Keegan set Jagger back on his feet, all I could think about were the bleak possibilities that awaited me back in New Bedford, and the dreams of my friends that I refused to see squashed.

This time, when we crashed together, I clung to Jagger with all the strength left in my hands after a day of having them wrapped around the throttle.

“You good?” Jagger asked, low enough that in a crowded room I knew no one else would have heard, there too manywelcome backsandyou’ll never believe what the fuck we sawsgoing around for anyone to notice our little moment.

“Not even close. Need to talk.”

“I got you.”

Sound dulled as he led me away from the community space and into one of the four rooms I knew the suite contained. When we were in town, this was always where we stayed. As Blissfully Immune, we’d written several songs here. Back when we’d first started out and it had just been me and Rebel in search of the perfect band members to complement our sound, we’d come to an afterparty here. Holy shit, it had been amazing to see Adrien Lee and his boys live and get to party with them. As legendary as they were on the stage, the things that had gone down that night would have blown the minds of the dirt rag followers. Legendary didn’t even begin to cover it.

My thoughts felt like swirling sand, grating and rough, making everything look like it was trapped behind frosted glass. Oh wait, those were my tears and there was Jagger’s face swimming into view as he attempted to brush them away with his thumbs.

“What happened?” he asked, holding my face so I couldn’t turn away from him.

“M-mrs. McCall died, t-there g-gonna revoke my bond and s-slap a second c-c-charge on me,” I wailed, collapsing into his arms.

Teeth digging into my sleeve, I stifled my sobs as best as I could, not wanting anyone to accidentally overhear and come see what the fuck was going on. Like he always did, Jagger silently gave me time to cry myself out. He neverbothered with platitude or hollow words we both knew wouldn’t bring the comfort the well-meaning intended when they uttered them. He’d told me once that in the days after his brother’s death, the words he’d come to hate most hadn’t beenI’m sorry, they’d beentime heals all things. I understood that now better than I ever had back then. Time was too unpredictable. The longest day for one person could fly by in the flap of a raven’s wing for another. Vicious and cruel, it stopped for no one, pitied no one, took mercy on no one and didn’t give a shit if you were right there, right fucking there, a fingertip away from your most precious dream. It ticked past the instant dreams were smashed the same as it catapulted us into a New Year. One second at a time. With deadly precision, from birth until they laid you in the grave.

Chapter 10

(Draven)

“What’s up with Johnny?” Rebel asked, once we’d finally stopped talking over one another.

When you damn near lived in one another’s pockets, even a day apart felt like you hadn’t seen one another in years.

“Not sure. If I had to venture a guess I’d say it has something to do with his case. He had a couple hush hush conversations in Palm Springs he promised he’d talk to me about before we left,” I conveyed through my device, “only we got too busy for conversation.”

“I can’t imagine with what.”

There were chuckles all around at that before I reintroduced Sully and the guards to the bandmembers.

“So how is this supposed to work?” Ozzy asked once we’d all settled on the sofas and popped the caps on our drinks. “Are we each gonna haveour own guard that’s with us every day, or is there just a rotating pool of guards who will be assigned depending on what’s going on that day?”

“Each of you will have two primary guards who will rotate every seven hours, day and night,” Sully explained. “If you’re in a suite, like we are right now, two guards will be outside of the door at all times. When one of you intends to go somewhere, whichever of your guard is on duty at the time will accompany you. If two or more of you go out together, each of you will have your own guard by your side. I have some questionnaires here that I will need each of you to fill out, right now, so I can match you up with the right guards. Needless to say no one is going anywhere until that process has been completed. That’s for your safety. We work for you but never forget, our job is to ensure your safety, so this is a partnership. We’re going to make sure you get to keep living the lives you’ve been living, just not in a way that’s going to get you chased all over Palm Springs.”

He eyed me when he said that, and I blew out a long breath and inclined my head. He’d warned me. Hell, he’d even offered a discount if I’d wanted to take two guards along just in case. I’d laughed it off, thanked him and joked about how I doubted anyone even remembered me. I hadn’t thought about them recognizing Johnny, not with his chameleon style and that naturalway he had of blending in. I’d almost been right, too, we’d almost pulled it off. Almost wasn’t good enough, though. Not when my arrogance had put our lives in jeopardy.

“You don’t have to convince us,” Rebel said. “My social media hasn’t stopped getting blown up by people tagging me with videos and commentary from that night and more than half of the idiots blowing up the feeds think you guys overreacted. They can’t see how badly that whole situation could have grown more out of control than it already was.”

“Because they only see what they want,” Robbie said. “Like I told Draven when he and I talked early in their Palm Springs stay. I was kicking myself for not speaking up about keeping Damage Control on after Rocktoberfest. Almost as soon as we got to Portland we were spotted and word got around that we were here. It made it tricky to take Jagger around to show him all the places he wanted to see. We managed it, but we could have managed it a whole lot easier if we’d worked with Sully beforehand and had people with us to watch our backs.”

“This is new for all of us,” Ozzy said. “We’ve never been at a place in our careers where we’re being recognized almost everywhere we go. I knew Rocktoberfest would be big for us, but this is next level and none of us are prepared for this shit. We need to leave it to the experts and let them teach us what they need us to do to maketheir jobs easier.”

“Yeah, seriously, that right there is something I can get behind,” Keegan said. “I don’t want to have to worry about fighting through a crowd the way Draven had to do. Me and Robbie can manage it all day, but while we’re pushing forward, what the hell are we supposed to do about any threat that is coming at us from the rear?”

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