Chapter 21: Words and Music

Linnea's POV

Abel stood at the center microphone in a crew shirt too small for him, and he did not look at Dax.

He looked at me.

Eighteen thousand people sat in the dark and waited, and a camera swung around to catch him.

He played one chord on the Martin.

It was my chord, the one that opened the song.

Then he leaned toward the microphone and sang the second verse of "Paper Moon."

I had heard that voice from a pair of headphones in a garage.

I had heard it in my head for six years.

I had never heard it in a room.

It filled the arena without trying, rough and quiet and full of breath, and it cracked on the same word in the same place.

My mother's hand went tight on mine.

Beside me, a stranger in a sequined jacket put her fist against her mouth.

Up on stage Calla sat very still at the white piano, and tears ran down her face.

Dax stood a yard behind him with a dead microphone.

Abel finished the verse, and the last chord rang out, and for a long moment nobody in the building moved.

Then the arena came apart.

People were on their feet, clapping and shouting, and a woman in the second row was crying out loud.

Dax grabbed the microphone from the stand beside Abel.

"This man is a hired guitarist!" he shouted. "He's mimicking my voice. He's been stalking my wife!"

Nobody was clapping for him.

"Security," Gil said, standing in the third row. "Security!"

I stepped out into the aisle with notebook thirty-one against my chest.

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