Marco’s eyes slid from Brady’s to mine and back again.
Brady wrapped an arm around his shoulders, and Marco stiffened, but Brady eased his body into Marco’s side. “Spill the beans,” he half-whispered into Marco’s ear.
I rolled my eyes and pulled Brady away. “Stop torturing the man. Not everyone is as comfortable as you with their sexuality, and I don’t want to deal with the publicity of a sexual harassment case. There’s nothing to spill, anyway.”
Marco choked, and I wagged a finger between the two of them as I opened the door. “You two play nice, or I’ll sic Lee on both of you.”
Brady smiled and headed toward one of the bedrooms in the suite, and I swore Marco’s lips were twitching.
Hours later, it was my lips that were twitching as I scrambled to catch a soft football with Brady’s name and the Ghost tour logo on it. The kid playing with me was trying desperately to make sure I couldn’t catch it, but I was keeping up halfway decently, considering I was in wedges. We’d been tossing the ball in the stadium’s VIP lounge for the last thirty minutes of the concert after his parents had asked me to show him around while they watched the concert unhindered from the balcony of their cushy box.
After a handful of throws, I’d discarded the lemon-colored jacket I’d worn for its shade of optimism and debated taking off my shoes. Not knowing what was on the floor of the room had me leaving them on.
Down onstage, Brady’s final song came to a crashing close. The crowd below was chanting and clapping, hoping Brady would come back onstage even as the overhead lights came on, signaling it was time to leave. I handed the boy back the football.
“Hang on to this, and I’ll have Brady sign it when he gets up here,” I told him.
He shrugged as if he didn’t care either way.
Tanner began letting people into the room who’d paid or been invited to see Brady after the show, and I went to work as we waited for Brady’s arrival. When he did show, Nash, Marco, and Trevor were with him. Nash’s eyes searched the room until they landed on me. He dragged them over my whole body, logging every detail of me again as if to see if anything had changed in the couple hours since he’d last seen me. His eyes lingered at the top of my flowered tank, and I reflexively pulled at it to make sure it hadn’t slid down to expose anything while I’d played catch.
I directed Brady to the worst of the privileged guests first. It allowed him to end his night on a good note as well as let the most decent people have more time with him. Tonight, the last couple Brady greeted had a child in a wheelchair with them. She had a cast that went from the bottom of her foot almost to her hip bone, and Brady knelt to talk to her. Everyone smiled while she told a very animated version of how she’d gotten the cast, waving her hands as if she wasn’t starstruck at all. Brady signed the cast and then gave her a sweatshirt which was a dozen sizes too big. It wasn’t until he kissed her cheek that the little girl flushed a thousand shades of red and almost keeled over.
Once the room was vacant of everyone but Brady’s team, Nash started a rolling check-in to ensure the path down to the bulletproof SUVs was clear. The limousines were a thing of our past due to Nash’s new measures. The team sent their responses back through the echo of the walkie-talkies, but I was positive they were also going off in the earpieces most of the team wore.
Marco and Trevor were cleared to leave with Brady, and I went to gather my things. As I went to pull my jacket off the leather chair where I’d left it, I froze. I blinked to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, but then my breath caught somewhere in my chest. My beautiful jacket had a knife sticking out of it. A long knife embedded so harshly into the chair that I could see the tip sticking out of the other side where a piece of paper dangled.
I wrapped my arms around myself, turning to search the room with my eyes. They landed on Nash, and he frowned before following my gaze back to the desecrated chair and jacket. I backed farther away from the table, and then he was there, arms around me, pulling me to his muscled torso. Holding me, soothing me, while at the same time talking into his mic.
“Tanner. We have a problem. Get your ass up here, and call the police while you’re at it.”
I hadn’t even registered that Tanner had left the lounge. I swirled my eyes around the space, and they settled on the paper sticking to my jacket. The words in dripping red ink read:
No one replaces me. Daniella Whittaker, tag you’re it.
I gasped, and Nash’s arms tightened around me, turning me so I could no longer see the chair or my jacket, but it was too late. The words and the image were burned into my brain. A new attack. A new assault I hadn’t been prepared for, couldn’t control, and would never forget. My heart was pounding at a pace I wouldn’t be able to sustain without keeling over.
“Say that again?” Tanner’s voice sounded bored as it came over the walkie-talkie. It was an attitude he was trying to perfect after Nash had been pissing all over his detail for over a day.
“Get up here and call the police,” Nash said.
I tried to focus on the voices and the bodies in the room instead of what I’d seen. I tried to feel the push of my toes in my shoes and the hardness of the floor below them. I focused on the heat
