Brady saw the welt at the same time as I did. He opened the limousine’s small refrigerator, coming up with a soda can he placed on the burn for me. The cold metal brought me further back to the car and the people I was with and away from the last time my body had been pummeled unexpectedly.
Marco and Trevor were talking back and forth into their mics with someone on the other side. Either Tanner, the person in charge on-site, or their boss in their office in New York.
“Well, that wasn’t quite the planned pyrotechnic finale we wanted,” I said, trying to lighten the mood and Brady’s worry. It worked on Brady but not the others in the vehicle.
He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. “That was a fucking nightmare.”
It was bad. Pretty damn bad.
When we pulled up to the hotel, we waited with Marco and Trevor while two more guards took off into the lobby to clear the way. They were also in communication with the team waiting at Brady’s hotel room. Everything was calm and quiet.
They hustled us out of the vehicle and into the lobby to where they had the elevator already standing open and ready to go. Alice, the road manager, appeared from nowhere and shoved my keycard into my hand. I noticed that, tonight, her hair was almost pink. It had changed almost every time I’d seen her.
Alice and her team had checked us in hours ago, making sure our luggage made it to our rooms. She coordinated and juggled more items daily than I had room for on my checklist. And she never missed a beat. Tonight, with my emotions strung tight, I was grateful for the ability to go to my room and crash.
“Thanks, Alice,” I said. She nodded.
It wasn’t until two bodyguards hauled Brady into the open elevator and the doors shut, leaving me in the lobby, that a new tremor went through me. While tonight’s fireball ending wasn’t what anybody had expected, I should have anticipated this part of the job. I would be traveling around the U.S., and eventually the world, with a country rock star. We would be staying in hotels. Lots of them. Hotels that didn’t like their guests using the stairs as I’d used around The Capitol. I was pretty sure if I opened one of the stairwell doors, an alarm would sound, and these two hulks, Marco and Trevor, would be all over me, hustling us from the building.
As I waited with Alice and the two bulky men for the next elevator, I pulled my earbuds from my handbag with trembling hands and put them in. It took me three tries to open the meditation app I had on my phone, but by the time the doors slid open, I was listening to the soothing sound of the ocean waves. Marco and Trevor held the door for Alice and me, which meant I was not only in an elevator, but I was at the back, trapped behind male bodies.
I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on the sound of the waves, but my mind kept jumping to my pounding head which matched the pain I’d faced over a year ago in another elevator. My heart rate was not decreasing. Quite the opposite. It was thrashing around in my chest at such a fast pace that my breath was uneven and harsh.
I opened my eyes and saw Marco staring at me, brows drawn.
“You okay?” he asked. This caused Alice to turn and look with a similar frown.
“I’m fine. Just a little shaken,” I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice.
I was pretty damn sure I hadn’t convinced anyone, but just as my lungs got to the point where they were actually burning, the elevator dinged on my floor.
Marco got out so I could get past.
“Do you need me to come with you?” he asked.
I shook my head. I wasn’t the one needing security. I needed to get to my room and break down in solitude. The last thing I wanted or needed was someone thinking I was just going to be a liability on the tour.
I headed down the hall, searching the numbers on the doors. I realized about halfway down that I’d gone in the wrong direction. I headed back the other way, and by the time I locked myself into my room, my vision was beginning to blur.
I let myself drop down on the bed, my shoulder hissing as it made contact with the comforter, but it was good. It allowed me to come back to where I was. To the chemical, cleaning-product smell of the hotel. To the noise of a TV on in the adjoining room. To the fact that I was thousands of miles away from D.C. in a totally different space.
Eventually, the tremors stopped, and my heart rate slowed. My breathing evened out, and I was hit with waves of exhaustion. I would have been dead on my feet regardless of how our evening had ended, but the attack and the elevator had drawn every nerve to its endpoint.
I undid the zippers on my boots, slid my feet out, and then slipped under the covers. I left the lights on and just let myself drift away.
♫ ♫ ♫
“Shake It Off” was blaring on my phone and vibrating against my butt cheek. It took me a few minutes to adjust to where I was and why my alarm was going off in my back pocket. I pulled the phone from my jeans and groaned when I saw the time. It was 4 a.m. I’d been out for less than four hours, but I knew there would be no going back to sleep once the alarm sounded.
I pulled myself to
