“Brain dead?” Miki’s honeyed chuckle should have brought Rafe’s back up, but the singer was already on the move, heading to a guitar leaning against the studio’s long wall, and his tone had been more of a tease than a cut. “Shit, I can’t even remember my name without a shot in the morning.”
Miki’s limp caught Rafe by surprise. He’d not noticed it at the Morgans’ or even at the coffee shop, but in the stark, unforgiving studio lights, the singer’s slight hitch was apparent. He took a step, nearly offering Miki a hand with the equipment, but common sense and Damien’s warning glare brought him up short.
“Plug it in, Andrade. Show us what you’ve got,” Damien ordered. “See if you can keep up.”
RAFE WAS flying. Hands down. Balls out. Flying.
An hour into the set, something deep inside all of them seemed to shift and click into place. After that moment—that wonderful, sweet pop of a bubble—the four of them simply became something else, something larger, and it was a feeling Rafe’d never quite had before, even during Rising Black’s heyday.
This, he thought, was pure playing. Flat out strings against his fingers, sliding into the groove of the music as Damien and Miki shifted them from blues to hard rock and over into a bit of funk. It was easy to find his place amid the rhythm, guiding the lower tones along and shoring up Damien when he meandered off into the upper ranges.
Miki growled, threatened, and crooned his way around the melody, dropping down into registers Rafe didn’t even know he had, and played a tight rhythm guitar, flirting with Damien and Rafe as they bracketed his singing. Forest thundered along behind him, pushing Rafe into harder streams, forcing them both to catch up with Damien in spots and reining him back in others.
He bled and sweated on his bass, the back of his hand caught by a snapped string and tearing the edge of a nail on his middle finger, but Rafe kept going. A towel and his jeans were enough to keep himself dry enough to play, and by the end of the third hour, he was hoarse from providing backup, but Damien pressed on.
Wrung dry, Rafe caught a second wind, drawing Miki out with a telltale thumping line from the Sinners’ first album. There was a hitch, something dark fluttering into Miki’s face. Then it was gone, burned away by Damien’s screaming lick, and Miki joined in, purring his way into a song about a blind man and shadowy rivers.
For Rafe, it was like coming home.
Damien came up for air about the time Rafe’s fingers were buzzing, numb from the vibrating steel strings. Catching a bottle of water Forest flung at him, Rafe heaved a sigh of relief when a shot of cold air blasted down at him from an overhead vent. Forest’d shed his T-shirt at some point during their drift into SRV, and Miki somehow came up with a few hand towels, offering Rafe one to wipe his face down with as they took time to breathe.
“Pretty decent,” Damien shouted from the mixing room as he extracted juices from a mini-fridge. Coming back into the studio, he handed one to Miki. “We should—”
Rafe’s phone sang at him from its spot in his open case, Quinn’s number flashing across the screen along with a photo he’d taken of him at the coffee shop when Q hadn’t been looking. The picture of the dreamy-eyed, angelic-faced Morgan made him smile. The panic in Quinn’s voice when Rafe answered wiped that smile clean off.
“Hey, hey. Hold on, Q. Slow down. What’s going on?” Damien was forgotten. So were Miki and Forest. The studio faded away around him, white walls and instruments becoming nothing but visual noise as he tuned in to Quinn’s heavy breathing and tightly wound nerves. “Babe, come on. Breathe, then talk. What’s going on?”
“I need you here.”
Quinn’s whisper was hot, needy, and scared. Rafe’s heart clenched in fear as Quinn continued.
“Something’s happened. One of my students… she’s dead, Rafe. Someone killed her. And—fuck—he left her on the car… my car.”
“Okay, did you call the cops?” A towel seemed to be clogging up his other hand, and Rafe tossed it aside so he could sling his bass off his neck. “Where are you?”
“I called Kane and then 911.” Quinn cursed in Gaelic. “I shouldn’t have called you. You’re playing still? Shit. Shit.”
“Q, you’re a fuck more important than anything else, okay? Stop that. Tell me where you are.” Rafe sighed when Quinn rattled off the college hall he was standing outside of. “Okay, I know where that is. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Are you going to be okay until then?”
“Yeah, one of the security guards is here. Nice guy. Got me some water. Kane’s on his way, and the cops got here a bit ago. They want to talk to me.” Quinn’s voice broke. “Suppose they think I killed her? Do you think they’ll think that?”
“Honey, anyone who knows you can vouch you’d never do that. Hang tight. I’m probably closer to the bridge than Kane is. Might beat him over. Hang tight, okay?” Rafe reassured Quinn. “And just breathe.”
“Thanks. For coming. For… everything.”
Quinn sighed, and Rafe could almost hear him card his fingers through his black mane.