Page 1 of Naughty Dreams
CHAPTER ONE
“Why does DJ need his own personal detail? Tal throws himself in front of any hot women who want to attack his skinny ass.”
Steve chugged on the E string of his guitar to annoy Tal, stretched out on the floor behind his drum kit. While his eyes were invisible behind dark sunglasses, even his eyebrows looked tired. They barely twitched when he spoke in a froggy voice.
“It’s the least I can do for him, bro. No sacrifice is too great for the band.”
“It’s awake,” Pete observed. The stocky bassist with a short crop dyed wheat gold, and a tat of musical notes covering the hazelnut-colored skin of his right arm, strode onto the stage carrying a flat of coffee. He eased behind the drums to sit a cup by Tal’s shoulder. Then gave the shoulder a kick with his thick-soled biker boots. “Drink this shit and get your ass up. We gotta do a run through.”
“DJ’s not ready yet. I’ll get up when he is.”
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Steve said.
He’d directed it toward Grant Moss, their manager. The thirty-something freckled redhead with a compact boxer’s frame sat on a folding chair on the far side of the arena stage. His PeterMillar camel-colored boat shoes were propped on a black and silver amp head road case, his laptop balanced on his knees.
“DJ is getting more security because he’s the one being sent fentanyl-laced chocolates,” he said without looking up. “With a love note that says, ‘I can help your pain.’”
“Why’d you turn those over to the cops?” Tal complained. “They didn’t need all of them. You’re supposed to look out for us, Moss.”
Moss rolled his eyes. He, Steve and Pete looked toward the subject of their conversation, but DJ, lead singer, songwriter and lead guitarist for Survival, didn’t appear to be listening.
He was, but participating wasn’t a priority. He sat cross-legged on the floor, his back against a pole as he plucked at the acoustic guitar in his lap and hummed under his breath. The song they intended to debut tonight was bugging him, for several reasons, so he’d told the band he wanted to run through it one last time. But he needed a few minutes of normal to figure out what kind of energy he wanted to bring to it.
Steve offered Pete the opening to Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone,” and Pete took center stage, gyrating his hips Elvis style. A smile touched DJ’s lips. Yep, normal.
The smile disappeared as he re-thought his agreement to meet with the security firm Moss had hired. Having a protection detail solely committed to DJ’s well-being made him uncomfortable.
No one band member was more important than any other. Every song DJ created was made better by tossing it out to the three men and letting them work their magic on it. Together they came up with the bones, and the producers and engineers fleshed it out. Then Moss got it to the people who helped the fans fall in love with it.
The fentanyl thing had been bad. Sometimes roadies brought their kids to the shows, and if one of them had gotten hold of it…But why not just beef up the current band security and add more people?
In fairness, Moss had addressed that with DJ.“Our band security is good. But Henry, the head of that very security, says we need a specialist until the cops figure it out, or this nutjob moves on to his or her next obsession.”
Case in point. As his gaze lifted to the cheap seats in the arena, DJ found some random guy sitting there. With very little lighting in that section, he was mostly in shadows.
It did look like he was wearing one of the fire engine red visitor passes on a lanyard. He might be a lighting or sound guy on the arena payroll, waiting for them to clear out so he could do some more tweaks to the in-house equipment. There were always a bunch of such people around, anywhere they played.
Which admittedly made it pretty easy for the wrong person to be part of them.
DJ drew Moss’s attention. “Who’s that up there?”
Moss squinted in that direction and grunted. He closed his laptop and slid it into its case. “That’s the security specialist we’re meeting to determine if he’ll take the job. Roy Bloodwell. He’s early, probably just scoping things out.”
“He hasn’t agreed to take the job?” Pete asked.
“He doesn’t agree until he meets the client.”
“Well, that’ll be the end of that, then,” Steve noted. “You’re a pain in the ass, DJ.”
DJ gave his rhythm guitarist a beatific smile and the bird. Steve, who had electric shocked brown hair and deep-set blue eyes that barely saved his angular face from being butt-ugly, bared his teeth in a grin.
DJ shot a sour look at Moss. “I’m not cutting this short because he’s early. I want to get this song right, and we need the practice.”
“Speak for yourself,” Tal drawled, executing a drum sequence on the floor with the palms of his hands, his arm muscles flexing beneath two angel wing tattoos, one on either arm. Tal could land his sticks like feathers or beat the stupid off a clown’s face, depending on what the song required.
He was one of the best drummers in the business, when he wasn’t fucked in his buzzcut blond head. Which was happening far more often lately.
“You missed the bridge last time,” DJ responded.
