Incendiary by Kathryn Kelly

Author:Kathryn Kelly [Kelly, Kathryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Makin' Groceries Media
Published: 2015-06-17T07:00:00+00:00

Mr. Dalton, the following issue has come about. Trouble1 received a threat against her life. Mrs. Sanderson was informed, but she didn’t want to alarm the subject. We’ve confirmed the threat.

I re-read the message. “Georgie is code named Trouble1?”

No response from anyone. This can be manufactured, too.

Kiln snatches his phone away. “Believe me now?”

I fucking fought to stay in my band. I put up with their no drugs and no fighting rules. I wonder if it was just a ruse, and they’d never had any intentions of releasing me.

“Get him on the phone,” I order. “I want the facts and the details first hand.”

“Are you willing to risk her life?” Jaeger counters.

No, I’m not, and we all know it.

“You still have statutory rape charges pending, boy,” Dad reminds me. “You need to put a lot of distance between you and the McCall girl, once you obtain custody of my granddaughter.”

“Bryn stays with her mother,” I say flatly. Had I intended to seek custody, I wouldn’t have allowed my father to come anywhere near my daughter.

“You two are better off apart,” he insists. “She has to go with or without the child.”

Maitland shakes his head in disagreement. “I think they love each other, Rand. Sloane was at his best when she was with him.”

“His muse?” Dad asks.

“No.” I skim a cold glance between my former bandmates. “That’s why you’re all here? You believed Dad had found a way to force me back in?”

“No, we were upstairs in the music room,” Quint answers tightly. “Kiln told us what was going on about the threat at the hospital before calling you on the phone.”

“Don’t rejoin yet,” Maitland suggests, ever the diplomat. “Just think about it.”

“Yes, think about it, Sloane,” Kiln warns. “If the threat is real, imagine what will happen to Georgie if you quit the fucking band? Go ahead. Find out. We need to handle this, so you don’t go back to fucking jail for statutory rape. Everyone will know she’s telling the truth. And she’ll either be at Helen’s mercy or out on her own.”

Yes, because if I’m sent back to jail they won’t lift a finger to protect her. Worse, she’ll be caught in the middle of a custody battle. Not between her and my father, but my father and her grandmother, neither wanting to be outdone by the other.

“You really want to protect her, get back in the fucking band,” Dad says in a hard voice.

“You want your motherfucking sons to have money, write them a fucking check,” I snarl.

“Don’t you miss music?” Adam asks.

“Fuck, yes,” I respond, without even considering my answer. It’s right there, brewing within me. What my music once meant. Not what it’s become. “I miss it for the sake of art and because we enjoyed bringing words to life. What we’ve become over the last twenty-five or thirty months? No. I don’t want that.”

“I’d like to add you to the itinerary again for the trip to LA,” Jaeger says cautiously.

The one that we’d been planning as the European tour wound down.

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