Wicked Beat (Sinners on Tour 4)

The playback in his ear suddenly sounded off to his drumming. Eric stumbled over a beat as he slowed to match the track. Sed entered the song several beats off, while the three guitarists struggled to keep up with Eric’s attempts to regain control of the song.

“Marcus.” He heard Rebekah’s panicked voice in his ear. “Marcus, the playback is off. Marcus!”

She was right. That was the problem. The band was hearing the echo of the stadium sound rather than what they were actually playing.

“You’re the one who programmed the damned song,” Marcus said. “It’s your f**kup, not mine.”

Sed stopped singing and lowered his microphone, glancing to the side of the stage where Marcus stood with his arms crossed over his chest. The band followed Sed’s cue and stopped playing with a discordant ring of notes. Eric went still, sweating and panting, wondering what the f**k was going on. They’d never had this problem before. Had Rebekah really f**ked up? His first instinct was to speak in her defense, but he honestly didn’t know who was at fault.

“That’s bullshit, Marcus,” Rebekah said into the crew’s feed. “You’re the monitor engineer. You’re supposed to control the playback to the band. It has nothing to do with my program. That’s to control what the crowd hears, not what the band hears. You don’t even use my program.”

“Excuse us, folks,” Sed said to the crowd. “Technical difficulties. Bear with us until we get it straightened out.” His voice echoed through their feed a half-second later.

“Or you could bare with us,” Trey said, his voice also echoing strangely. Trey lifted the hem of his T-shirt and showed off his belly to a group of fangirls near the front of the stage.

Because of the echo in his earpiece, Eric could tell for sure that this was a monitor engineer mistake. Rebekah didn’t have anything to do with the band’s feed from the amplifiers. That was Marcus’s job. Did he think they were too stupid to realize that?

“So explain the echo in my ear when Sed and Trey just spoke,” Rebekah said, her voice breathless with anger. “How can you blame that on my program, Marcus? They might not know how this works, but I do. You’re trying to make it look like your intentional error is my fault, so they’ll fire me.”

“Bullshit, little girl,” Marcus growled. “You’re paranoid.”

“This isn’t about us, you jerk. This is about the band, the music, and the ten thousand people who paid to be entertained,” Rebekah continued. “Get your self-important head out of your ass, and do your f**king job. If you have a problem with me, we’ll take it up after the show.”

“Damn, baby,” Eric said to himself, “I love it when you exert your authority. Makes me all hard.”

The crowd broke into raucous laughter. Sed turned and quirked an eyebrow. Eric’s face fell.

“Shit, I forgot I have a live mic,” Eric said.

The crowd laughed again.

“I see the problem,” Marcus said into the feed going through everyone’s earpieces. At least the crowd couldn’t hear him or Rebekah’s hot little tirade. Marcus’s voice was significantly more humble when he asked, “Do you want to start from the top?”

“They’ve got it fixed now,” Sed told the crowd.

Jace struggled to remove his bass and get back to the piano. Jon was beaming when he returned to the stage with his bass. He got to play twice tonight instead of just once.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Rebekah said into their feed. “‘Sever’ from the top.”

The rest of the show went over without a hitch. Afterward, Eric grabbed a bottle of water and waited for the crowd to clear out of the arena before going in search of Rebekah. She was probably still upset about what had happened at the beginning of the show, and he had the powerful need to comfort her. And then to dress her up like a naughty cop so she could exert her authority over him.

He finally found her backstage cringing beside Marcus. Sed had them both cornered and was in berate mode. Eric had suffered under Sed’s wrath more than once. It wasn’t fun.

When Rebekah tried to speak in her own defense, Sed raised a hand. “I don’t give a shit whose fault it is. This isn’t going to happen again. Do you understand?”

Rebekah bit her lip, struggling to maintain her composure.

“Don’t yell at her,” Eric said to Sed.

Sed glanced over his shoulder. “I’m not yelling.”

Eric lifted an eyebrow. “Sounds like yelling to me.”

“Touring is hard enough without a feud going on between my soundboard operators.”

“It won’t happen again,” Marcus said. “I found the problem and fixed it.”

“If the two of you break into an argument during a show again, you’re both fired. Capisce?” Sed continued.

Rebekah nodded sullenly.

Marcus flung his hands out, his palms at chest level facing the ceiling. “Sed, I’ve been with this crew for four years. You can’t—”

“Marcus, I wouldn’t care if you were my own father. You f**k up another Sinners’ show, by neglect or on purpose, you’re out of here. End of story. No argument. Out of here.”

“This is f**king bullshit.” Marcus glared at Rebekah before storming off.

“Way to defuse a bomb, Sed,” Eric said.

“Do you have a better idea?” he asked.

“Yeah, don’t drag Rebekah into this when you know she had nothing to do with it.” Eric wrapped an arm around her back and tugged her closer.

“Then Marcus would think I was singling him out, and he’d get even more pissed at her.”

Eric glanced at Rebekah, and she nodded in agreement.

“Sed’s right.”

Eric sighed loudly and shook his head. “Sed’s always right.”

Sed grinned like a shark. “Well, we’re all in agreement on that.”

“I’ve got to tear down the equipment,” Rebekah said, squirming out of Eric’s sweaty grasp.

“Will you dress up as a cop for me later?” he asked.

She glanced at Sed and flushed, then turned her gaze to Eric and said, “You have the right to remain silent.”

He chuckled. “I think I want to waive that right.”

“I know a great soon-to-be attorney,” Sed said. His fiancée Jessica was in her final year of law school.

“If Jessica wants to participate in our scenario, I would not object,” Eric quipped. It earned him a thump in the forehead from Sed.