Page 64 of His UnBearable Touch

Footsteps splashed through a puddle and came to stop at her side. Fingers dug in to her arm and she groaned as he lifted her up onto her feet. “The last thing I’m ever going to do is let you go.”

Chapter Fifteen

The street out in front of the theater was choked with traffic. Cars and their angry drivers, mulling people, scared patrons and musicians struggled through the cars and other vehicles, trying to get as far from the building as possible.

Valerio and Salvatore abandoned their car at the end of the block, and used their earpieces and lapel microphones to communicate with their men. The building, as far as they could determine, was completely evacuated, but there was no way to tell who had been inside at the time.

“Who has Allegra?” Valerio asked the question out of desperation. If someone had her, they would have said so, but he still had to ask. “Well?”

Jane, the pianist and Allegra’s friend flagged him down as he rushed toward the building. He vaulted over the hood of a cab to get to her side. “Where was she?”

Jane swallowed, her hands pressed to her cheeks in a helpless gesture. “I left her in her dressing room.”

Valerio started to move away toward the building.

“Wait!” Jane called him back with the desperation in her tone. “When the alarm sounded I went back. She wasn’t there.”

A quick look out of the side of his eye told him that Salvatore was speaking to several of the men.

“Where would she have gone?”

A young man was running in their direction, skidding to a stop beside Jane. “I’ve been looking through the crowd. Allegra’s not out.”

Valerio wanted to shout at the boy, but he held his anger barely in check, especially because it was directed at himself. “Where could she have gone?”

A queer look passed over the younger man’s face and then he rose up on the balls of his feet to look at the crowd as sirens blared through the air, cutting through the excited babbling of the onlookers. “She was with Linda. Or rather, Linda was in Allegra’s dressing room with her when I left.”

Linda. The image from the artists file popped up in his head. Tilting his chin down, he spoke into the lapel microphone, and cut in on the other conversations. “Who has eyes on Linda Overmeyer?”

One by one the men checked in, all of them had the same answer. Valerio felt his heart stop in his chest. His instinct was to rage and tear the building apart brick by brick, but that wasn’t going to help Allegra, not at that moment.

“Hey, hey…” a man dressed all in black waded through the crowd that had only grown in the last few minutes, “you looking for the Rossetti woman?”

Valerio heard the man and nodded. “Yes, what do you know?”

“I passed them on the stairs.”

“Them?” Apprehension crawled over his skin.

“Yeah. She was walking with that cold bitch,” he turned to Zack, searching for a name. “You know…”

“Linda.”

“Yeah,” he snapped his fingers, “the oboe player. I asked them if they needed help. Linda told me where to step off but the other lady, she didn’t even seem like she heard me.” He frowned and his eyes narrowed as if he was searching for the right words. “Every time the alarm sounded, she seemed to tense up. Her shoulders…” he shook off the thought. “I didn’t want to argue. I just thought it was weird that they were headed down toward the sub-levels, but-”

Valerio’s hand shot out and fisted in the man’s shirt, how do I get down there?”

The stagehand turned to look over his shoulder as firefighters rushed in through the stage door.

“There could be a fire-”

“There is no fire.” Valerio felt the man tense as his tone sank in and the man paled, blood draining from his face. “Tell me.”

A hand clapped down on his arm and Valerio turned to the younger man standing beside him.

“I’ll take you.”

Valerio’s eyes narrowed on his face. “How do you know where it is?”

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