Page 18 of Crazy Love
I check in the closet and under the beds, but no joy.
Fuck!
I pick up my phone, and try calling him, but Teddy is obviously off having a picnic somewhere and doesn’t pick up. Another scope of the adjoining room reveals his smartphone on the bed stand chirping merrily to itself. He’s not been back here. If he had, the device would be gone, as Dane and Joel’s are. We all left them up here rather than risk stowing them in the dressing room—too many thieving bastards about. No, I do not trust the venue staff, the other bands, or their groupies. Most of them don’t have a decent bone in their bodies, and labour under the misinformed impression that because Paradise Kiss are more popular, and frankly better than they are, that we’re raking it in. I wish…But getting back to my quest for Knox, I head out into the corridor again.
I doubt he’s in the bar, it was all shut up, and what’s the point of hanging there if you can’t procure hard liquor? If he’s found his way into one of the other bands’ rooms, I’m stuffed, because I have no idea what their room numbers are, and the desk staff won’t hand them out, especially at this hour of the night. I’m pretty certain I’m not going to find him in the gym, but that could be where Joel’s lurking, given he fancies himself as a sprinter.
I plod in that direction anyway, because even though it’s going to necessitate another round of snarky comments and arm-twisting, two of us conducting a search and rescue should theoretically double the odds of locating Knox.
Only the gym’s locked up tighter than a virgin’s snatch.
I’m about ready to admit defeat and wind my way back to the function room, when a clatter from the direction of the emergency exit makes me pause. Who the hell uses the stairs in a hotel? Seriously, it’s the lift or nothing. I mean, most hotels don’t even bother to prettify the alternative. It’s purely functional magnolia on the walls and heavy duty lino under foot.
I head through the door, this place entirely lives up to my expectations, bar some fancy fleur-de-lys shit above the dado rail. I find Knox slumped against the wall part way between the second and third floors. It takes approximately three milliseconds to realise he’s utterly wasted. There’s not a hope in hell’s chance that I’m going to get anything useful out of him tonight. Actually, I’m not sure he’s even going to be in a fit state at six ‘o clock.
My priorities adjust accordingly, to get Knox straightened out, and then give him the bollocking of the century.
“Iz’at you, Nate?” Knox tilts his head to one side, so that it hits his shoulder and squints up at the dazzling overhead light.
“What are you doing here?”
“Finding you.” His mouth forms a slack grin that fails to contain the drool which leaks from one corner. “Guess I did it.”
“Nope, this is me finding you. I was where we played the gig. All you needed to do was meet me there.”
“Yeah…guess,” he slurs. “But I got switched around in all the corridors. It’s like a maze.”
Seriously, the average lab rat would mind map this hotel in about fifteen seconds. The problem isn’t the lay out of the building, but that Teddy-boy here has no control over his addictions, the memory of a sea cucumber and an idiot mate that’s prepared to put up with him. The latter being me.
I hunch down beside him and take proper stock of what I’m dealing with—a cocktail of alcohol and hash, based on the smell, and most likely something else too, given that when I practically kneel on him, he neither murmurs in pain or attempts to move.
“Have you been dropping tabs?”
“Nah,” he sighs, still grinning like a village idiot, and giving his chin a slow wash.
I’m not sure I trust his memory, but hey, maybe we’ve progressed to something worse. I push up his sleeves to look for needle marks. Nothing and nothing, but it’s not just weed that’s got him in this state. “What the hell have you taken, Knox?”
He flaps a hand before me. “It’s all good, Nate.” He simulates inhaling. “The stuff was seriously smooth. You should try it.”
Smooth? I’ll accept it might have taken him halfway to paradise while he was inhaling, but it’s shit, whatever the laced weed has done to him. “Knox, your frickin’ legs aren’t working.”
“Are you sure?” he asks.
Sweet baby Jesus, he doesn’t know? How can you not know if your legs are working?
Knox screws up his mellow face a little, in what I assume is concentration, but if what he’s doing is attempting lower-limb engagement, then it’s a complete and utter failure.
“Okay,” he admits, slurring even those two syllables. “They might not be wholly under my control right now.”
No kidding?
“Knox, I’m not sure any of you is under central control right now. What the fuck were you thinking? We have to impress Graham Callahan tomorrow morning. Weren’t you listening? Didn’t that little nugget sink in?” I shouldn’t say this stuff, because I know he has a genuine issue that he can’t do a damned thing about, but smoking himself into oblivion sure as hell ain’t helping any.
“Graham who?” he asks.
I slap my forehead, because if I slap his, I might do some actual damage.
“Oh right, the suit. He got me rattled, Nate. I needed to take the edge off. I was going to hang with the boys, but Joel stormed off and Dane…” He shrugs, because neither of us need him to finish that sentence. I can imagine all too vividly where my brother is right now, and what he’s up to. I’m going to bang his and Joel’s heads together later.
