Page 42 of It Happened on a Sunday

Sloane

“You were amazing!” Lucinda tells me as she gets me out of the last costume of the night.

“They were a great crowd.” I grab my T-shirt and yank it over my head. “A lot of fun to perform for.”

As I say the words, I realize that for the first time in a long time, I actually mean them.

Before the concert, I was too busy thinking about Sly—and everything that happened in Griffith Park this afternoon—to get myself as worked up as I usually do.

Plus, when the crowd started chanting “Sloaney” halfway through the concert, I didn’t try to ignore it.

Instead, I went with it, and we all had a surprisingly good time.

Not to mention, the signs were fabulous tonight. My personal favorite read i love you more than chocolate chip cookies , but all of them were cute or hilarious.

I shimmy into my track pants, then give Lucinda a quick smile before heading out the door.

I’m dying to get back to the hotel. Sly’s melody—I’ve given up trying to call the notes that have been running through my head since I first met him anything else—has been playing on repeat in my mind, and I’m dying to play with it a while before I try to sleep.

“Hey, aren’t you forgetting something?” Lucinda calls when I’m halfway out the door.

“What’s that?” I ask, brows raised.

She nods to my flask, which is lying on its side on my dressing table.

It’s the first time I’ve forgotten it in forever, and it shakes me more than I like.

I don’t need it—there’s just tea in it, after all—but it’s what the flask stands for that makes me nervous about leaving it.

It’s one more level between the Black Widow and the real Sloane.

One more layer to keep people from seeing the real me.

When I ate that concha with Sly, I allowed him to peel back a corner of that hard outer shell.

I let him and the world see just a tiny bit of the real Sloane.

And when I decided not to worry about those girls taking pics, I chose to let the rest of the world see that part of me, too.

Part of me still can’t believe I let that happen.

And now I was about to walk out without one of the most basic parts of my Black Widow uniform?

Is it any wonder my stomach is churning? I don’t know what’s happening to me. And worse, I don’t have a clue if I want to stop it.

“You okay?” Lucinda asks, and she looks uncharacteristically uncertain.

“Yeah, I’m good.” I grab the flask with a quick thanks, then hustle out the door. That song won’t write itself.

Marco meets me in the hallway. “Ready?” he asks. I do a double take because his voice is serious and his normally dancing eyes look grim.

“What’s wrong?” My stomach clenches as a dozen different scenarios flash through my head. All of them dealing with Sly. All of them awful.

“There was another mutilated doll onstage tonight.”

Relief floods me. “Is that all?”

“What do you mean, is that all? This is the second dead Sloane doll someone’s thrown at you in a week—and what they did to this one was…disturbing. Plus, it’s in a different city than the first, which means whoever is doing this might have followed you to L.A.”

It takes a second for his words to hit, and when they do, my already unsteady stomach threatens to revolt. Whatever positive energy I had from the concert and my time with Sly evaporates as I look into Marco’s concerned face.

“Another stalker?” I ask, swallowing down the nausea. I can puke when I get back to my hotel room. For now, no one gets to see how much this shit affects me, not even Marco.

“I don’t know yet. I just know the coincidence makes me wonder if there’s a connection.”

“Don’t you think you might be jumping to conclusions?” I ask as we walk toward the exit. “The first doll literally crashed into me onstage, which means a ton of people filmed it happening and probably put it up on their socials. Especially if this one is different—”

“I said disturbing, not different,” he clarifies.

“So what are we dealing with here? A copycat? Maybe some obsessed fan of Jarrod’s who wants to freak me out? The anniversary of his death is in a couple of weeks—”

“This seems more deranged than obsessed,” Marco says as he holds the door open for me.

“Fantastic.” I breeze through the door. “Well, it takes all kinds.”

G, one of my other guards, has already pulled the SUV up to the door, and I start toward it. But Marco gently grabs hold of my arm to stop me.

I freeze, shock ricocheting through me as my gaze locks on his fingers circling my wrist. Marco knows I hate being touched, so for him to do it now must mean he’s serious about getting my attention.

The feeling is underscored when he continues. “I’m worried, Sloane. My gut is telling me something is wrong here.”

Well, shit. At this rate I might just puke right here on the curb and to hell with whether it makes me look weak.

Marco’s been with me since I was sixteen, and his gut has never been wrong.

Not about anything . It’s one of the many reasons he heads up my security team.

If he’s this worried, there’s real cause for concern.

I take a deep breath to give myself a chance to think and settle, then blow it out slowly. “So do you think I’ve picked up another stalker?”

He drops my wrist now that he knows he’s got my attention, but he doesn’t take a step back to give me room. Instead, he stays within a few inches of me as he shepherds me toward the car.

“You don’t actually think they’re waiting out here for me, do you?” I ask as he opens the door for me.

I mean it as a joke, a way to relieve a little of the tension turning my insides to molten lava.

But he’s deadly serious when he answers, “I don’t know what the hell they’re capable of.

Tonight’s doll had a letter pinned to its chest, and it wasn’t pretty.

I don’t say this to scare you, but I’m not taking any chances. ”

He closes the door on me before I can ask anything else.

I fasten my seat belt, concentrating on swallowing the bile currently burning its way up my throat as I wait for Marco to slide into the front passenger seat. “We get fucked-up letters all the time,” I say once he’s in the car. “How bad could this one possibly be?”

The look he shoots me over his shoulder tells me I don’t want to know. “You know I usually take this shit in stride, but this one’s got me freaked out, Sloane. Some sick asshole has you in his sights and apparently knows exactly what he wants to do to you.”

He keeps his voice low and calm, but I can hear the tension in it. “I’ve already notified Olivia and Jace, and I’ve got a call in to Bianca. I’ve also reached out to my friend in the FBI—”

“The FBI? Seriously?” A chill works its way through me. “You think it’s that serious?”

“I think we need to pay attention. I hope it’s nothing, but you pay me to ferret out threats and keep you safe.

I’m telling you, I think this is a threat and I’m going to treat it accordingly.

Namely, I’m adding two more guards to the rotation.

I want a second car with us wherever we go, and I want another person stationed on the floor when you’re in your hotel room.

” He turns around in the seat so I can see his face as he continues.

“Also, your days of running down hills with Sly are over for now—unless you’ve got one of us running right along with you. ”

I want to argue with him, but he knows his job a lot better than I do. “Okay,” I tell him with a sigh.

“Okay?” He looks shocked, which I take some offense to.

“I’m not reckless. You’re the best in the business, and if you think there’s a threat, then I believe you. I get that you feel the need to sound the alarm. I’ll go along with whatever you want. But I would like to keep things as normal-looking as possible—at least from the outside looking in.”

“I’m not planning on wrapping you in Kevlar,” he says back, but his frown has softened now that he knows I’m not going to fight him.

“I’ll try to keep things as natural-looking as possible, for now.

But if the threat escalates any more, there’s something to be said for people on the outside seeing that we’ve got a fortress around you. ”

It’s not quite the concession I wanted, but it’s the best I’m going to get. “As long as it prevents another jerk from masturbating all over my panties, I’m good with whatever you think we need.”

I ignore the gross feeling I get from just saying the words, tell myself they don’t matter. That they don’t have any meaning to my life and neither do the sickos who do shit like that. Some days I even believe the lie—too bad today isn’t one of those days.

“Don’t remind me.” He grimaces. “Though I think we’d both rather it be underwear in your empty apartment than you in your hotel room. Which is why we’re going to take this shit seriously.”

Since I wholeheartedly agree with him on that, I just nod and keep my mouth shut.

And try not to think about any part of this coming to pass.

It hasn’t been long since someone last tried to break into my place in Chicago—I sold that apartment after the break-in, because I couldn’t stomach going back—but it has been a while since anyone’s been able to get close to me .

Marco and his team have made sure of that.

We don’t talk for the rest of the drive to the hotel. It’s late, so traffic is light and it doesn’t take very long before I’m back in my room. My freshly swept and cleared room, it turns out, courtesy of my night security.

I take a quick shower to get the sweat from the concert off, do the lengthy skincare routine that keeps me looking “dewy” and mostly blemish-free despite the heavy makeup I wear onstage every night, then settle down on the couch with my guitar, my sketchbook, and my phone to record.

In the back of my head is all the stuff Marco told me, but I block it out and focus on the only part of this job that has ever mattered to me.