Prologue
Gimme Avenue A ’cause they slay.
Pleased with the rhythm in her head, Jenna Harbough rocked her hips to the beat.
They may be old, but they rock and they roll.
Probably they wouldn’t like the “old” bit, but from her sixteen-year-old perspective, anyone heading toward, like, forty or whatever hit old.
I mean, jeez, even her parents liked their music. Which was why they’d agreed to let Jenna come, with her two besties, to the club to hear them live and in freaking person.
Avenue A played twice a year at Club Rock It, and for one night in the summer Rock It locked up the alcohol and opened the club to the under-twenty-one crowd.
Anyone who knew their music history was up on how back in the long-gone day, like in the 2040s (talk about old!), Avenue A had their first real gig at Club Rock It. So they paid that back twice a year, even though they were totally rock gods EXTREME who played for sold-out crowds in stadiums and huge concert halls.
Though she’d campaigned to go on this once-a-year night for three years, she’d gotten the absolute, no-way no. Until this time!
Now she danced with Leelee and Chelsea while Avenue A slayed with “Baby, Do Me Right.”
And she danced close enough to the stage that she could see the sweat on Jake Kincade’s face. For an old guy, he was still looking frosty extreme. Maybe because he was really tall. She liked the way the lights hit the blue streaks in his black hair—and how they sort of matched his eyes.
Dr-ream-y!
But more, she loved how his fingers just freaking flew over the guitar strings.
One day hers would do that. She knew she’d improved. She practiced every day, and knew, just knew, one day she’d stand onstage and slay the crowd with her music.
She had a demo disc in her purse. Her biggest dream of the night involved finding a way to get it into Jake Kincade’s hands. She’d only put one song on it, the best she’d written, and she’d worked really hard on the demo.
Maybe it wasn’t all studio slick and professional, but you had to start somewhere. And the guys of Avenue A had been about her age when they really got going, so, maybe.
They segued into “It’s Always Now,” a classic crowd-pleaser, and more people swarmed the dance floor.
Jenna didn’t mind—the more the better. And she was so caught up in the music.
Then, just for a second, for one tiny second, Jake’s eyes met hers. He smiled; she died.
On a squeal, she grabbed Leelee’s hand.
“He looked at me!”
“What?”
Then she grabbed Chelsea’s hand as Jenna’s face flushed so deep she felt the heat in her toes. “Jake Kincade looked right at me. He smiled at me!”
“On the real?” Chelsea demanded.
“So on it! Holy shitfire!”
She bounced and bopped with her friends to the last song of the set.
“Me and a rock god locked eyes. We had a moment.”
“You’ve gotta find a way to get him your demo, Jenna. You totally smashed it,” Leelee assured her.
“Maybe I could— Ow!” When something stung her arm, she closed a hand over it. Some guy shot her a hard grin and the middle finger before he melted into the crowd.
“Asshole jabbed me!” Then forgot him and just danced.
“I’ve got to sit a minute,” she said when the song ended. “Make a plan, and— Whoa, I’m sort of floaty. That look!”
“I’m dying.” Chelsea put a hand on her throat, stuck out her tongue. “Need sweet, fizzy hydration.”
“Go, grab our seats, Jenna, and we’ll get drinks. We’ll help with the plan.”
“Solid.”
She felt a little woozy as she tried to get through to their tiny table. Floaty, she thought.
Then the heat came back, but like a million degrees. As she tried to breathe it away, she rubbed at her arm where it felt like a big, pissed-off hornet had taken a bite.
Need that sweet, fizzy hydration, she thought. But then her stomach cramped, and terrified she’d puke and humiliate herself, she tried to bolt to the bathroom.
* * *
Jake swiped at sweat as the band’s drummer, Mac, grinned at him. “We still got it, boss.”
“Ain’t never gonna lose it. I’m going out to catch some air. Jesus, you’d think Harve and Glo could get a decent temp control in here.”
“And lose this ambiance?” Renn, keyboard, tossed Jake a tube of water.
“Thanks. Back in five.”
He glanced out at the crowd as he had during the last song in the set, but still didn’t see Nadine. Probably headed for the john—and good luck with that, he thought.
She earned big points for coming with him tonight. Rock It wasn’t a dive or a dump, but as clubs went, it clung to its Alphabet City roots.
Never going to be fancy, never going upscale. And proud of it.
But his ace reporter, bestselling writer, fucking Oscar-winning lady had come on a night that remained important to him and his friends, his bandmates.
It reminded them of their roots, their beginnings. And just how far they’d come.
He made his way through the back of the house—such as it was—and slipped out the alley door.
And breathed.
Even in the sweltering summer of 2061, the air outside blew cooler than in.
He cracked the tube, drank deep.
He smelled the overstuffed recycler, but that didn’t bother him. It, too, reminded him of his roots, the skinny, gangly kid from Avenue A who’d worked after school and weekends to save enough for his first guitar.
He’d written music when he should’ve been studying because the music had been first and last for him. Always.
He remembered busking in subway tunnels with Leon, then Leon and Renn, before they’d hit fifteen. And watching Mac play the drums at their high school’s band concert. Then Art slid right in, and they became Avenue A.
Practicing in the storage room of the apartment building, then in Mac’s uncle’s garage.
Then fast-talking Harve into letting them play, just one gig, before they were old enough to buy a beer.
That one gig turned into two weeks that summer, and ended with a recording contract.
So yeah, an important night to him. Avenue A had a lot of beginnings—that first guitar, Mac’s uncle letting his nephew bang away on an old drum set. His mom telling him to grab a dream and ride it.
A lot of beginnings, and Club Rock It ranked high.
He started to turn to the door, but it flew open. A girl stumbled out.
The kid had a mass of pink-tipped brown hair and wore a tiny black skirt with a midriff-baring red top. Her face was white as chalk, her big brown eyes glassy.
She said, “I got sick.”
“That’s okay, honey. It happens.”
Glo might have been vigilant about keeping the club alcohol and drug free on the underage nights, but kids found a way.
He sure as hell had.
“Let’s get you back inside. There’s a place you can sit down in the quiet, have some Sober-Up.”
“Not drunk. Can’t breathe right. He jabbed me! He jabbed me!”
Jake reached for her arm. Then her eyes rolled up white.
He caught her before she hit the pavement.
“Who jabbed you?” As he spoke, he noted her face wasn’t white but slightly blue. She shook with cold.
A needle mark, red and raw, stood out on her left biceps.
“Goddamn it. Jesus.” He yanked out his ’link as he lowered to the ground with her. Hit emergency. “I need an ambulance.” He rattled off the address while he checked the girl’s pulse.
Weak, he thought as he struggled not to panic. And getting weaker.
“You stay with me now. Look at me, okay? Look at me.”
For a moment her eyes fixed on him. But blindly.
“Come on now, hold on. Help’s coming. What’s your name, baby? Tell me your name.”
But he felt her go as he sat on the alley floor and cradled her in his arms.
Laying her down, he started CPR.
The alley door opened again. “Hey, Guitar Hero, Mac said— Oh my God, what happened?”
Nadine dropped down beside him.
“She’s not breathing. I can’t get her back. Her arm, look at her arm. She said someone jabbed her.”
“I’ll get an ambulance.”
“On the way. Her arm. Needle mark. Only junkies who can’t score a pressure syringe use needles. She’s not a junkie. Come on, kid, come back. Fucking come back.”
Beside him, Nadine looked at the needle mark, looked at the staring brown eyes of the girl on the ground.
She didn’t tell him to stop the CPR, but laid one hand on his back as she took out her ’link.
“Jake, I’m tagging Dallas.”
When he looked at Nadine, the despair simply covered him. “She’s just a kid.”
One, Nadine thought, who wouldn’t get any older.
Chapter One
When Lieutenant Eve Dallas wasn’t working a case, Saturday evenings often meant a vid, popcorn, and sex. With a Summerset-free house, as Roarke’s major domo and the hitch in her stride had the night out with friends—whoever they were—the sex portion of the evening arrived early in the game room.
She’d bet Roarke she could beat him two out of three in pinball. She lost.
Or did she?
In any case, after dinner on the patio, a walk through the gardens, sex in the game room, they settled down on the sofa, with the cat curled at their feet.
She had Roarke, popcorn, wine, and an action vid with plenty of bangs and booms to cap off a Saturday at home.
Knowing Roarke, she expected a second round of sex as an encore.
And that suited her just fine.
He talked now and then of adding a media room to the castle he’d built in the heart of New York City. But she liked this routine, stretched out or curled up together on the sofa in their bedroom sitting area with the cat purring in his sleep and her husband’s excellent body warm against hers.
Her life had taken a radical turn when he’d walked into it, she thought. She’d never get all the way used to it. Before Roarke, her life had been the job, and the job had been her life.
Now she had two things she’d never expected, never looked for.
Love and a home.
And those two things, she’d come to realize, made her better at the job, better at running her division, better at standing for the dead.
At a pause in the action, he reached over for the bottle, topped off both their glasses.
“We’re going through a lot of wine, pal.”
“Safe and snug at home.” The mists of Ireland wove through his voice. “Something I intend to take advantage of in a bit of time.”
“Is that so? Freeze screen,” she ordered, and rolled on top of him.
So ridiculously gorgeous, she thought, with the carved-by-benevolent-gods face, the sculpted mouth, the wildly blue eyes. “No time like the right now.”
She took that sculpted mouth, slid her free hand into the mane of black that framed his face.
Roarke set his glass beside the bottle, then nipped hers out of her hand to do the same.
She laughed as he flipped her over, and with a grumble, Galahad slid off the couch.
Then his hands were on her, slipping under her baggy Saturday-at-home T-shirt. And as the kiss turned greedy, she felt her need, the wine, the moment tie together in a single perfect thrill.
Nipping at his jaw, she worked her hands between them to flip open the button of his jeans.
Her ’link signaled.
“Oh, come on!”
Copyright © 2023 by Nora Roberts
