Foolish Games (34 page)

Halfway through the concert, Riley motioned for me to get up so that we could leave. I felt nauseous with anxiety. What if our great plan backfired somehow? Hampton began to tag behind us to Riley’s dismay.

“We’ll be right back,” Riley yelled over the music.

“Yeah, like I’m going to walk away from you again.” Hampton didn’t budge.

“Why bother now?” Riley glared at him and quickly led me away from the bodyguard. We zigzagged back and forth through the crowd in an attempt to lose Hampton until we reached the steps. We hopped up them in groups of two with the bodyguard not far behind us. Riley turned right when the stadium leveled out and passed by a couple of t-shirt vendors. Hampton probably should have led the way since it was harder for his wide frame to maneuver through the crowd, but since we wanted to drop him, this was perfect. It only took a quick moment for us to walk around the bend of the stadium seats to lose Hampton. Riley gently jerked me into the narrow space between two promotional tents. Ironically, one of the tents was for Nicholas Johnsons’ campaign. It instantly made me think of my mom. God, she would pull her hair out if she knew the kind of trouble I was in.

Hampton came to a stop just across from the tents and we cowered further down. The bodyguard scanned the opposite side from where we were. If he continued his search he was eventually going to see us. Riley pulled me over behind the nearby table with a plastic drop cloth that touched to the ground.

A girl with short, dark hair pulled halfway back with a sun visor was sitting in a fold out chair behind the front table. She looked over her shoulder at us with alarm when Riley flashed a sexy smile, as if he were straight, and playfully put a finger to his mouth. It was obvious that we were hiding from someone. The girl smiled at Riley and played along by turning back around to face the crowd again.

“How come I can’t pull that type of shit off?” I whispered hoarsely. “I swear between Lizzie and you.” I rolled my eyes.

Riley stole a glimpse around the corner before he waved for me to follow. We tentatively inched along the narrow space in between the tents while looking down the crowded strip. There wasn’t any sign of Hampton so we took off with the crowd again.

Ahead of us, vendors lined the walls on either side down the length of the stadium. Bright fluorescent lights washed over the ground intermittently from one vendor to the next. The stadium loomed and curved above us in the night sky.

“Okay, so how does this work? What am I supposed to do?” I asked as we approached the restrooms not far from the tents.

“You are going to quickly go in and pick a stall. Drop the tracking device on the ground. Not in the toilet since it might not work any longer if you do that,” he explained while scanning the area for Hampton.

“And then rush back over to that Reverb tent, right there.”

“What are
you
doing?”

“Oh,” he said lightly. “I’m going to flirt with the girl working the booth.”

“Why does this sound like I got the bum end of the job?” I grinned.

“Because you did.” He patted my back with a smirk across his face.

“Right, well at least we’re in an agreement.” I smiled and took a step in the direction of the girl’s restroom. Glancing over my shoulder, I realized that Riley was already backpedaling away from me.

“Let’s just get this over with,” I muttered to myself while putting my head down and quickly walking the rest of the way. There was a long hallway to the stalls that lightly stunk of sewage. Trying not to gag, I crossed the end of the tight hallway and walked into a space that opened up to a row of sinks lining the wall just to my left with mirrors above them. To the right were two corridors of toilets so I headed to the nearest corridor. Scraps of toilet paper and soiled marks littered the gray concrete floor. Walking down the line of muted brown stalls, I pushed back a random door and gagged at the sickening sight of left over waste in the toilet. Gross! Backing up, I headed down a bit further and pushed in a door on the opposite wall. The stall was as decent as a disgusting place had to offer. I pulled the small round coin-like tracker out of my jeans pocket. Not wanting to get any closer to the toilet than I needed to, I dropped it to the ground and kicked it back towards the wall. Exiting the stall, I decided to round the corner at the back of the restroom that connected to the other corridor of stalls since it was closer.

Halfway down the row, I realized I was carrying a line of toilet paper behind me that was stuck to my flip flop. Nasty! Gross! Flicking it away with my foot, I thought, this better be worth it. All of a sudden I heard someone shuffle into the small hallway to the restroom. Looking up, I froze. I caught a glimpse of someone who quickly passed by through the reflection in the mirror. Not just someone, I stood in shock, but Cyrus. He walked down the corridor of stalls that I had just left. I wanted to bolt, but if I ran to the exit he would see me. The hallway was very long. Long enough, that if he was carrying a gun I wouldn’t get out of here alive. Quickly, I backpedaled into the nearest stall and quietly shut the door.

There was a banging of opening doors from the other side. My only chance was to clamber up onto the toilet, not caring what nasty stuff was below me now. Another door banged open coming from around the same place I had left the tracking device. Then I heard a faint grunt like Cyrus was bending down to pick it up.

Biting my lip, I couldn’t decide if I should bolt or not. Just when I was about to jump off the toilet and make a break for it, I heard him come around the corner. Nervously, I looked across at the thin metal stall door. “Joie…” Cyrus sang. “Don’t you know that it’s not safe to leave your bodyguard?”

A scream climbed up my throat, but I knew no one would hear me, not in time anyway. Where the hell was Riley?

Jumping, I was so startled when he slammed open another stall door. Just then I heard a group of girls enter the restroom.

“You all can refer to me now as Mrs. J.T. Hawkins,” a girl’s voice said smugly.

“Girl, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” another girl interrupted. “He’s my man.”

Cyrus backed into a stall two toilets down from me. This was it; I wasn’t going to get a better chance to leave. Reaching across, I unlocked my door, but couldn’t step down with my flip flops on since they would make too much noise. Trying not to think about it, I took one flip flop off at a time and collected them in my hand.

“Wooho, okay.” A third girl laughed. “This Lizzie girl is just a rebound,” she continued. “I bet he’ll ditch her when all this press dwindles down.”

Stepping down with my flips in my hand as the girls continued to rattle a bunch of nonsense. When opening the door, it creaked so I waited, but nothing happened. Determined to get out of there, I hurried out of the stall when a hand jetted out and wrapped tightly around my mouth. I screamed, but it came out in a gargled mumble as Cyrus pulled me back into the stall.

“Did you hear that?” one of the girls asked.

Screaming again, Cyrus shook me like a rag doll. He tilted my head back just enough for me to understand that if I continued he would snap my neck. Fighting back tears, I went completely still.

“It’s probably nothing.” The other girl dismissed it.

“Oh well, let’s go.” I heard them continue to fight over the title of Mrs. Hawkins while probably not envisioning this along with it. When alone again, Cyrus grabbed up my hair into his fist and whacked the front of my head against the metal stall. For a couple of seconds all I saw were stars. If it wasn’t for the fact that he still had my hair gnarled up into his fist I probably would have fallen down.

“That’s for the other night.” He whacked my head again. “That was just for the fun of it.”

The sharp, searing pain made me cry out. It felt like my head was going to explode. A metallic taste crept onto my tongue and I began to feel dazed. Blood trickled down from my eyebrow and my knees went all wobbly underneath me.

“Stand up,” he roared, but my body slumped down. In the distance were loud tin-like voices coming out of a radio and Cyrus stiffened next to me.

“I’m in the girl’s restroom,” Hampton explained. “He said that The Grimm Reaper followed in behind her.”

Cyrus lifted me up from under my shoulders and pressed me against the stall with his hand firmly over my mouth. His expression said he wanted to bolt, but we both knew that I was too weak to walk at the moment. I noticed that Cyrus looked terrified, truly terrified for the first time. The doors banged open in the next room. It was loud enough for Cyrus to whisper to me without being overheard. “Here’s how this is going to go,” he growled in a low voice. “You explain to him that I left. I roughed you up and then I left. And I’m telling you it better be Oscar-worthy.” He paused when the doors stopped banging for a moment.

“Joie?” Hampton called out.

Bam!
Another door banged open.

“Tell him I left, or else,” he pulled his shirt up revealing a gun tucked into his jeans, “you both die.”

“Go!” He pulled back the door and pushed me forward. Stumbling away from the stall, I understood that my best chance of making it out of here alive was to move away from where Cyrus was hiding. I believed him when he said he would kill the both of us. His eyes were wild and crazy with fear. Running for the sinks, I stumbled and slowed.

Grimacing, I belly flopped on the floor making the sharp pain explode into my head again.

“Joie?” Hampton ran down the aisle with his gun out and the radio in the other hand.

“I need back up!” he shouted.

“Are you okay?” Hampton bent down on his knee over top of me.

“He ran off. I’m fine!” I winced while trying to form words when I felt so dazed. I needed to get us out of there
now
.

“Here, let’s get you out of here.” Hampton helped pick me up.

Hobbling out beside Hampton, I thanked the Lord that he let me live to see another day. Hampton radioed, “The suspect is on foot. Secure the area.” When we exited, Riley darted across the pavement in our direction.

“Joie, I’m so sorry, but I couldn’t get to you.” He glared over at Hampton. “Someone dragged me back to the lighting section.” Riley looked suspiciously at the bodyguard. “It only took another ten minutes for him to believe my story.”

“If you just would have stayed where you were supposed to,” Hampton shot back.

“Yeah, but we didn’t. I told you that so you should have believed us!”

“Cyrus.” I tugged Hampton’s arm. “Cyrus is back in the restroom.”

“What do you mean?” The fierce expression fell from his face.

“He only let me go if I could convince you to leave.”

Hampton quickly radioed to the rest of security and turned to run back into the restroom, not drawing his gun until he got to the door.

Riley took one look at me and said, “We need to get back to the lighting section. I’ll feel better when we’re far away from the bathroom, can you walk?”

Staring at him, my head had a heavy feel to it like I was woken up in the middle of the night after taking too much Benadryl. “Yeah, I think so, it’s just my head that feels funny,” I explained.

“We need to go now,” he urged.

Riley quickly held me up as we made our way back through the crowd and down the steps to the packed lawn. The encore just ended as we approached the makeshift lighting section. The stadium lights suddenly blinded me causing a sharp pain when they turned on around us. Harrison was waiting for us by the gate. After assessing the blow to my head, he radioed the paramedics.

“There isn’t any need to do that,” I insisted. In fact, I was feeling better by the minute, but Harrison only gave me a gruff grunt. Soon after, a lady with long, chestnut brown hair, pulled back in a ponytail, came to tend to me. She flashed a small light in my eyes and had me follow her finger to check my vision. The cut over my eyebrow was superficial and I didn’t even need stitches. She warned that I might have a slight concussion, but otherwise seemed fine. She did caution me that if I became sick or the pain increased that I should call 911. That scared me, but I felt better once she put a Hello Kitty Band-Aid over my right eyebrow and passed me a red Gatorade to sip on.

Harrison’s radio cracked and then a voice came on stating Hampton found the restroom empty. Probably around the same time things got heated between Riley and the bodyguard, I assumed. After the paramedics left, Harrison personally escorted us to the side of the stage. We climbed up the small stairs, past the stage and sound equipment. We followed Harrison to the back of the stage where a door opened up to the back hallways.

“Swear to me that we will never do anything this stupid again,” I said to Riley. “No more vigilante type shit.”

“Promise,” he agreed.

We knew we were heading in the right direction when we heard Lizzie shouting around the corner.

“We had a deal,” Lizzie shouted. “I’m supposed to be your muse.”

Hawkins looked over in my direction, clearly bewildered to be cornered by Lizzie. His astonishment turned to rage.

“What were you thinking?!” His eyes grew as he pushed off the wall.

“It sounded good in theory?” I grimaced.

“Very funny,” he said flatly. “And you,” he turned to Riley, “you were supposed to be watching her!”

Riley looked truly ashamed beside me. “Someone had to do something,” he muttered.

“That’s not your call to make,” Hawkins snapped.

“Hey, hey, if you’re going to blame someone, blame me. It was my idea.” Well, half of it, I thought to myself.

“What were you thinking?” he asked tenderly while he gently shook me.

“Ow,” I winced and touched my head. “Slight concussion here.”

“Sorry.” His eyes quickly softened. “Are you okay?” He lifted his hand to cup the side of my face as he rubbed his thumb gently back and forth across my cheek.