Free Tudor Reunion Tour by Jamie Salisbury Page A

after party. The rest of you? You’re on the bus to
our next stop in Medford. Damien and I will meet up with you in the morning.”
    I wanted to say something, but I didn’t
like the way the conversation seemed to be headed and didn’t want her rattled
any more than we’d just made her. Nope, save it for later.
    A few hours later, we reached Medford.
Dog tired from the grueling schedule Julia kept us on, with all the interviews,
rehearsals, and no off days, all any of us wanted to do was sleep. I thought of
Damien and felt sorry for him. Julia, I was sure, probably gave him a verbal
beat down after we left. Angus and I were sharing a room this time. The hotel
evidently didn’t have all the rooms Julia required at the time she made the reservation.
So we took advantage of her being gone and decided to bunk together.
    As we settled in, Angus grabbed us each
a beer out of the mini-bar. I sat back on one of the beds and checked my iPhone
for messages. One from Joe Franco, returning my earlier one. His message read
that he was working on things and would be in touch.
    We were almost three and a half weeks
into the tour, and I had not had any contact with Zara. Mutual agreement. The
band did have two days off after the Medford gig, our first. I texted Peter to
see if he could contact Zara and set up a time for us to talk via her sat
phone. I really, really needed to hear her voice and hear Elizabeth’s, too.
    “What’s up, A?” I heard Angus ask as I
finished my text to Peter. “You look as though you lost your best friend.”
    “Nothing, I was just missing Zara.”
    “No word on where she is?”
    “No,” I lied. “None. That’s what I was
doing. Trying to find out if anyone has heard from her.”
    “And?”
    “Oh, I’ve got to wait for an answer.”
    “Tell me something, A,” Angus began,
taking a long pull off his beer bottle. “You don’t really buy into all that
crap that Zara was losing it mentally and took the baby and ran, do you?”
    I shook my head. I could at least let
him know my feelings. To a point. “No, I don’t. I think she saw where
everything was headed. Zara’s smart enough to know that all Julia wanted was to
get her out of the way for the duration of the tour.”
    “You know where she is?”
    “No, I don’t, and that’s the honest to
goodness truth, Angus. I don’t have a clue as to where she is. None.”
    “Well, I don’t know about you, but I
wish Julia would reveal herself if she’s got a hidden agenda.”
    “The only hidden agenda Julia has is
money. It’s why she teamed up with Don Roberts, and it’s where he is that
concerns me.”
    “I’m sure between your friend, Franco,
and Red, we’ll expose them. I just hope Damien doesn’t get hurt too bad.”
    “So do I, Angus, so do I.” I tipped my
beer up and drank the remains.

Chapter Five
     
    Zara
     
    Impatiently, I moved the sat phone from
one side of the table to another, secretly afraid the signal would not connect
and my first conversation with Amadeus in weeks would be lost. I paced around
the cottage, the phone never out of my sight.
    Unable to keep Elizabeth awake, I gave
in and let her take her nap, hoping she’d either wake up or I’d be able to wake
her up long enough for her daddy to hear her voice. It might have seemed silly
to some folks, but not to me. She was the apple of Amadeus’s eye and I knew he
missed her as much as I was missing him.
    My round of the cottage once again
complete, I sat down in front of the black sat phone to wait. Any time now.
Come on phone, ring!
    Then it happened, the phone rang. I
grabbed it on the first ring and pressed the button connecting us. “Amadeus? Is
that you?”
    “I’m here, Zara! It’s so good to hear
your voice, babe. How are you? How’s Elizabeth?”
    I was on the verge of letting the
waterworks go. It was going to be hard to stop them. “It’s good to hear your
voice, too. We’re fine. We both are.” I almost said something about acclimating
to