Little Hand Grenade

Phoenix was a nice place, but the way the fans lurked by the door of the venue hours before we arrived, the fans that found their way into our hotel lobby and the ones that followed us in their cars made me nervous. High alert didn't begin to define my vigilance today. I wore my hair in a ponytail tonight, with a tank-top and skinny jeans that were a little baggy, so that if I needed to jump into action I could.

"Alex, I need you to be honest with me," I said seriously as the stage manager shouted at a new roadie who wore too many tour laminates. "Do you have any ex-girlfriends or messy endings in Phoenix?"

"Not that I remember," he said slowly, scratching one of his sideburns as he looked off to the side. "Well..."

"What?" He looked way too guilty to have anything good to say. Despite the possible danger associated with Alex's guilt, I felt a twinge of excitement. This information could take me one step closer to the root of this problem.

"Jenna's family has property in Phoenix," he said, and I could almost see the steam coming out of his ears from the hard thinking he was most likely doing. "We were together for a year. I left her on Christmas Eve. She wanted me to meet her parents in Phoenix, and we were living together in Baltimore at the time."

"Good thing I have my 1911," I mumbled, digging through my suitcase for my belt holster and the black hard-case that held my gun. It wasn't military issue; I bought it on my last visit home. Alex watched as I loaded my two extra magazines and checked the chamber to make sure it was empty before holstering it. "Do you try to get yourself killed or what?"

"I had a good reason for this one," he said, plucking one of the .45 bullets from the box. "She's gorgeous; not in a normal way, either. Anyone would have mistaken her for a movie star. At first, I thought I was going to marry her, and she knew it. Then, everything went downhill."

"I see." I loaded my gun and turned on the safety.

"If she's behind all of this...you aren't going to kill her, are you?" Alex asked nervously, eyeing my hip.

"I'm not going to let anyone hurt you," I answered simply. The idea of someone attacking him infuriated me more than ever. "It doesn't matter who it is."

"Look, you don't have to kill anyone, Vanessa--"

"Yes, I might have to," I snapped, feeling my entire personality at war with itself. The urge to remove my emotions from it all mixed with these new feelings associated with Alex, and it resulted in irritability. "This isn't my first rodeo."

"So, how many people have you killed?" he asked, and I softened my glare when I saw the simple curiosity on his face. "It doesn't seem to bug you very much."

"Let's get through this concert and the after-party, and I promise to have an accurate number for you," I said, and tried not to laugh at the incredulous look he gave me.

"You can't remember! Vanessa!"

"We're going to be late, come on."

We met up with Jack, Rian and Zack backstage, their instruments already warmed up. He barely had time to artfully mess up his hair before going on stage. I took my place on the far left in the very front, replacing one of the provided security guards. The guards themselves made the hair on my neck rise. Wrinkled uniforms, unpolished shoes and no weapons; a yawn here, a stain from a recent meal there; they didn't bother to stop a small argument until it turned into a fist fight. After the first song, I gave Alex a significant, worried look as I placed my hand on my gun. If someone so much as touches a single hair on his head, they had better hope that there is a God out there to save them. He nodded, and walked over to me while Jack told the crowd a story.

"Do you see her?" I asked, scanning the crowd for the millionth time.

"No, not even her friends," he said, shaking his head. "She would never stand in the crowd. If she's here, she will want backstage."

"Keep playing," I ordered, and before he stepped away, I grabbed his shoulders tightly. "If you see anything out of the ordinary, and I mean anything, get off this stage. Do you hear me?" He blinked a couple times and his eyebrows drew a little closer together.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm sweeping the venue, the security here is awful," I said, and loosened my grip so he could return to his fans. "I'm serious. I don't care if it ends up being nothing. You will dive out of sight if you feel like you need to, alright?" Panic finally edged its way into my voice, and I turned on my heel before he gave me another sympathetic stare or hugged me or something. I broke out into a jog and shoved everyone who stood in my way.

It was too easy. The very first place I checked, the boys' dressing room, wasn't empty. A young woman of an age with Alex and I sat with her back toward me. Her ash brown hair curled perfectly past her shoulders; smoky eyeshadow surrounded a pair of blue-green eyes; her outfit made her look girlish, but something about the way she sat on the leather sofa said otherwise.

"Ma'am, you aren't authorized to be here," I said loudly, employing the voice I used for the soldiers beneath me in rank.

"Yes I am," she replied plainly, and rolled her eyes when she looked at me. "Seriously? He can't do better than you?" Well, Alex was right about one thing; she really was gorgeous. I couldn't fight the embarrassed blush that rose to my cheeks and she laughed.

"I need to ask you to leave the premises," I responded to her belligerent attitude, and aimed my gun at her head. "Or I will have to use force." So. She thought she was all that and a bag of chips, did she?

"You'll go straight to prison if you shoot me," she scoffed, stood up and fluffed her hair.

"I'm a senior Colonel of the United States Army, and you're a silly girl begging for a booty call. Who you do think the police will believe when they drag your bleeding carcass into an ambulance?" Anger was dripping out of my every pore, and a hint of fear crept into her eyes.

"Alex always calls me when he comes here," she said, suddenly nervous. "When I didn't hear from him, I thought I'd stop by to meet his new...play thing."

"I'm not his play thing, I'm his body guard," I snapped. "What do you know about the shooting in D.C.?" She sat back down, looking confused.

"Oh, that? Nothing, other than it was Kailey who did it," she said, shrugging. I'm not sure if I imagined the smug smirk or not.

"Then tell me what you know about all of Alex's indiscretions, Jenna." I didn't lower my gun, and the muscles in my arms began to protest.

"He dumped Kailey for me, and he dumped me for some other crazy bimbo," she said defensively. "If anyone would want to kill him, it would be Carissa."

"Keep talking, I still haven't decided if you should live or not."

"Okay, okay! Carissa is an old friend. She was a virgin when she met Alex, so when he inevitably left her for Kailey, she was devastated. But the last I heard she was studying abroad in London!" I shouted wordlessly and let off a shot near Jenna's feet. Her scream was so loud and blood-curdling you would have thought it was her and not the floorboards that I hit.

"Nothing! Abso-fucking-lutely nothing useful!" I paced angrily around the sofa and a sobbing Jenna. "Ugh, Christ, get out of here. As long as I'm around, you'll never see Alex again." She quickly gathered her things and ran out of the room. A pair of security guards stormed inside with their batons, approaching me warily. After determining no one was injured, they spotted the now destroyed floorboard.

"Would you like to explain the hole in the floor?" asked the larger guard. I shook my head and shouldered past them. Alex was still singing, so no one else heard the gun shot. I went back to scanning the crowd, still feeling the aftershocks of the fury that was coursing through my veins mere minutes ago. Nothing strange happened in the crowd, and soon enough the show was over and all I had was a rotten mood to deal with. No leads, no nothing. Jenna was useless, and while I didn't have to explain myself to the security guard, I did have to explain myself to Alex.

"Alright, so the party is already going, we just need to show up--what the fuck is this?" He toed the nice sized hole with the tip of his shoe, and immediately turned to me. "Jenna was here. I can smell her perfume. You tried to kill her, didn't you?"

"I don't try to kill people, I just do it," I retorted, feeling ornery. "I scared information out of her. She doesn't know anything."

"That's because there is nothing to know!" Alex shouted, throwing his arms up into the air. Rian and Zack quietly mentioned that they would be in the tour bus if anyone needed them. "No one other than Kailey has tried to kill me, and no one other than Kailey will!"

"You don't know that!" I shouted back. "I will not lose anyone else because I didn't know enough!"

"Vanessa, calm down," he said, panting from his shouting and the exercise he did on stage. "I'm not going anywhere and no one is getting--" BANG. Time froze. My eyes scanned Alex, who appeared to be fine, but my heart stopped when they landed on Jack's motionless figure on the floor. Blood bubbled out of his abdomen at a horrifying rate, and I yanked Alex's shirt right off of his back.

"Call 9-1-1," I choked as my shaking hands tried to stop his bleeding. More calmly than I could have imagined his death-white fingers dialed the number and gave the details to the operator. "Security! Bar the doors! Don't let anyone out and only let the paramedics in!" I fumbled with a plastic baggie that I kept in my back pocket that held the remainder of my field medicine. We were a long ways away from the nearest hospital, and it was a Saturday night in Phoenix.

"Jack," Alex said, holding onto his best friend's arm with a death grip. "Jack, wake up, please wake up..." He babbled incessantly as I opened Jack's mouth and forced him to swallow the pills. His eyes fluttered open, and started cussing like a sailor in a hurricane. He must have passed out from shock.

"Jack, I need you to listen to me," I told him, trying to sound confident but the tears that wouldn't stop falling out of my eyes diminished my attempts. "Can you feel your toes?

"Yeah, yeah...I feel fine, except for well, you know..."

"Whatever you do, stay awake until the paramedics get here," I explained. "Alex, make sure he doesn't fall asleep." I needed to step out of the room. I would be no help to them if I couldn't get a rein on my emotions. "Breathe, Vanessa...he's going to be fine..." When I opened my eyes, I positioned myself in the hallway in multiple places where I could see Jack. A surveillance camera watched me from above, and another from my right. Whoever shot Jack would be on those cameras.

Next, I scanned the room while Alex held onto the t-shirt staunching Jack's wound. Other than the hole I made in the floor earlier, there were no others. My stomach wanted to fall to my feet. I still couldn't hear the ambulance, and he was losing blood too fast.

"Alex," I said, and swallowed when I saw his puffy eyes. "We need to roll him over to see if the bullet passed through or not." He nodded silently, and we lifted him up gently. Nothing.

"Is he going to die?" I didn't want to answer that question. If the shooter used hollow point bullets, the answer was yes. Judging by the hole-size, it could have also could have been a smaller caliber, and it simply couldn't pass all the way through. "Jack! Keep your eyes open, you idiot!" Alex was inconsolable. I marched to the back entrance of the venue and found a handful of policemen arresting a woman in the parking lot. Thankfully, an ambulance pulled in and I directed them to the room Jack and Alex were in.

"Excuse me, officer," I said, and the policeman with the handcuffed woman gave me a weird look. "Is this woman the alleged shooter?"

"Alleged? Our investigators have already found her guilty. Her prints are on the gun, we found the shell in her pocket and she has gun powder residue all over her." He turned her around and saw the grinning face of Jenna.

"Did you really think that second-rate performance in the dressing room was enough to scare me off?" she sneered. The officer did nothing, and I don't blame him. I'd want to hear this conversation, too. "You're next, Vanessa O'Connor. Alex Gaskarth has to die for what he did to us, and there is nothing you can do about it."

"We'll just have to see about that." It was my turn to smile when the same fear I saw in the dressing room glinted in her eyes a second time.