“Are we holding off taking Ghost to the vehicle?” Marco’s voice came back.
“Yes. Bring him back to the VIP lounge until we clear the building,” Nash said.
“No,” Tanner retorted. “Take Ghost as scheduled.”
“Guess what, asswipe?” Nash’s voice was cold. “Your little stalker has just changed your plans. Everybody back to the VIP lounge.”
I pushed away from him, but Nash pulled me back. “Don’t move. She could still be somewhere in the building.”
And that stilled me again. The knowledge she’d been there, on the same floor as me, while I was playing football and smiling at the VIPs. While I was doing my job…the one that had been hers.
Marco, Trevor, Brady, Lee, and two more of the detail returned to the lounge. Brady and Lee took in the jacket and the note with horror-struck faces. Nash moved the three of us into a booth while he gave orders for the team to clear the floor and the building.
Brady slung his arm around me, and the heat of his body did nothing to center me the way Nash’s had. I almost pushed away. I almost took off running but choked back the stupid fight-or-flight reaction I was having. I wouldn’t give in to it.
“Dani, I’m so sorry,” Brady said, regret in his voice. “I had no idea she’d come after whomever replaced her. It’s so irrational.”
It took a long time for the team to clear the building. Nash never left the room, eyeing the doors with a scowl on his face until the majority of the detail made it back into the lounge, and then he stormed over to the table.
“NDA or not, someone needs to read me in on this entire situation.” It wasn’t a request. Everyone was quiet, uncomfortable.
Nash eyed me, and I said, “Don’t look at me; I know as little as you.”
“As you know, Fiona was my PR manager before Dani,” Brady said with a sigh, removing his arm from my shoulder and putting his head in his hands on the table, dragging his fingers through his hair. “Originally, because I was so small, Fiona was both my PR and business manager. Lots of artists have people with multiple roles when they’re starting out, but as my career took off, we had to add more staff. About six months ago, the new business manager approached Lee with some anomalies. There was money going out to some accounts in the Caymans that we didn’t know about.”
“She was stealing money?” Nash said, surprise registering in his voice.
Lee nodded and took over for an upset Brady. “We thought it was her, but we needed proof. We set up some scenarios and watched what happened. At about the same time, Alice came onboard, and she said items were disappearing. Guitar pics. Brady’s red, white, and blue mic he used on special occasions. Clothes he wore during concerts. She blamed herself at first then thought someone was stealing them to resell—which happens more than you know. One day, she walked into a dressing room to find Fiona with a bunch of items in her hands. When Alice called her on it, Fiona said Brady had sent her to collect them.”
“She started showing up in my hotel room.” Brady dove back in with a shiver. “I mean, she had a key everywhere we went, just like Lee. But this was weird shit. Like, I’d wake up in the middle of the night, and she’d be lying in the bed with me.”
“Holy hell!” I breathed out.
“Worse, we discovered she’d taken pictures while I was passed out, making it look like we’d been…”
“Fuck,” Nash said, and Brady grimaced.
“We negotiated a settlement. She returned a portion of the money she’d stolen, deleted the pictures, and we let her go with our nondisclosure agreement in place,” Lee finished the story.
“I guess she didn’t like your terms,” Nash said dryly right as the police showed up.
“She’s lucky you didn’t have her arrested,” I said, indignant on the behalf of my friend but silently hoping someone would arrest her now.
The number one thing the police wanted to know was how she’d gotten past our security, and I could read Nash’s face clear as day, even though most in the room probably couldn’t. She’d gotten past him, and he was pissed as hell about it. He felt responsible. He felt like he failed—and SEALs never fail.
But there was no way this was his fault. He’d been with Brady, who we’d all thought was the main target. It was impossible to secure every door and every access point in a venue this size without an entire Secret Service team at your disposal. He couldn’t have known, and there was even less likelihood he could have stopped it. I didn’t think it would matter to him, though. A fail was a fail in his eyes.
Nash
STOP CRYING YOUR HEART OUT
“Hold on.
Don't be scared.
You'll never change what's been and gone.”
Performed by Oasis
Written by Noel Gallagher
The entire security at the arena had been a clusterfuck from the get-go. Far too few untrained assholes to cover everything that needed to be protected. I’d sent off a string of angry texts to Garner, and he’d come back with something about the economics of running a for-profit business and a reminder that he’d never lost a client. And I’d responded with, “Not yet.”
What had made my mood even worse was the fact that I didn’t have eyes on Dani the entire concert. I’d been stuck at the side of the stage, watching Brady as he plucked his guitar, waggled his butt, and sang to the nearly fifty thousand people who’d filled the arena to hear him. It had been eye-opening in a way it shouldn’t have been. But it had me adding to the list of strategies and items we’d need to bring this team up to par
