Run Rose Run(74)

So who could it be? A fan with stalker tendencies? A crazy ex-boyfriend?

Who is it, AnnieLee? he thought. And why won’t you tell me?

Still he drove, turning here and there, as if he hadn’t already driven six hours today and then played part of a show he hadn’t been expecting to play. The yellow lines wavered in front of him. His eyeballs felt as dry as dust.

Finally he couldn’t take the slow-speed car chase any longer. He pulled into the parking lot of a Pizza Hut and waited to see what would happen next.

The car behind him—a Chevy Impala—slowed, and then it stopped in the middle of the road. Ethan tensed, waiting for it to follow him into the lot. He started to reach under AnnieLee’s legs for the knife he kept in the glove compartment. But then, with a squeal of tires, the car sped off, its brake lights disappearing into the darkness.

Ethan sat back with his hands gripping the steering wheel. Maybe, he told himself, it was just a pair of teenagers having their dumb idea of fun.

Maybe.

Beside him, AnnieLee stirred. “Are we at the hotel yet?” she asked.

Ethan put the van back into gear and pulled onto the road. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. And he was there to protect her.

“Almost, AnnieLee,” he said. “Almost.”





Chapter

63


Take a picture of me, will you?” AnnieLee asked, whipping her knitted cap off her head and holding out her phone to Ethan. She’d stopped on the sidewalk in front of the State Room in Salt Lake City, Utah, beneath a sign proclaiming in big black letters TONIGHT ANNIELEE KEYES. “It’s my first actual marquee,” she called. “Come on, cowboy! Cheese!”

Ethan dutifully took a few photos with her phone and then looked down at the screen. “You’re squinting in every single one of them,” he said.

“That’s okay,” AnnieLee said, cramming her hat back onto her head. “When Eileen told me to send her pictures for my so-called tour diary, she forgot to say they had to be good.”

“You might be the least vain person I’ve ever met,” Ethan said. “Dudes included.”

AnnieLee took this as a compliment and told him so. “I’m trying to sing the truth, aren’t I? So it’d be weird if I didn’t show it, too.”

“But you could keep your eyes open in a picture,” Ethan said, sounding ever so mildly exasperated. “No one would say that’s not telling the truth.”

AnnieLee laughed. He had a point, of course, but she didn’t have any interest in looking good in the photos. Her voice alone mattered to her. As far as she was concerned, beauty was little more than a liability.

AnnieLee spun around on the sidewalk with her arms out. It was so good to be out of the van that she felt like bursting into song. Salt Lake was a nice town. Hell, every town was a nice town. It was the highways in between them that were driving her crazy.

That, and the deep, unwelcome feeling that she should always be looking over her shoulder.

She worked hard to ignore that feeling. Most days, she was successful. She’d played ten good shows, and Jack said ACD was very happy with their decision to send her out. There’s nothing to worry about—that’s what she kept telling herself.

“So what’s in this tour diary?” Ethan asked, bringing her back to the present moment. “You written anything about me yet?”

She stopped spinning, and the world tilted around her. Was she crazy, or was Ethan looking at her as if he hoped the answer was yes?

“It’s just photos,” she said. If he’d asked her whether she’d written any lyrics about him—well, that was a different story. “Love or Lust” was straight up about that man, not that she’d cop to it. “But I’ve taken a lot of pictures of you. Take a look if you want.”

Ethan held out her phone. “I’m not going to just scroll through your photos.”

“Why not? I’ve got nothing to hide.” But this was an outrageous thing to say, and they both knew it. “At least not on my photostream,” she added.

“Right,” Ethan said. “You’re a regular open book.”

AnnieLee flinched a little at the hurt she heard in his voice, but she didn’t protest. She took the phone back and tucked it into her pocket. What I’m not telling you? she thought. Believe me, you don’t want to know.

She hunched her shoulders against the cold wind blowing up State Street. There was new snow in the Wasatch Mountains.

Ethan saw her shiver. “Well, we should probably go on in and make nice,” he said.

“I guess we should,” AnnieLee agreed.

She followed him through the door, politely shaking hands with everyone as Ethan introduced them both, but her thoughts had already turned toward the upcoming show: how big was the room, how were the acoustics, and how many of the seats would be filled?

But Ethan was naturally gracious, and he never seemed curt or hurried. He easily ingratiated himself with all the promoters and managers, and he’d dealt with their road troubles—a flat tire outside Wichita, a mild bout of food poisoning somewhere in rural Colorado—with good humor and patience. He was the steadiest man AnnieLee had ever known.

She glanced down at her phone, wondering what Ethan would do if she showed him all the threatening Instagram comments. There were new ones every day now. Would he call the police? Try to cancel the tour? Find the nearest Cabela’s and buy a gun? She’d brought her own Smith & Wesson, hidden inside the makeup kit she barely ever opened, but that was another secret she was keeping.