Nash glared at him. “I’m pretty damn sure she wasn’t in that restaurant today.”
“Because you’re too perfect to have missed it?” Tanner all but snarled.
“Because it wasn’t planned, and there were six of us there in addition to Brady, Lee, and Dani in a space the size of a cottage,” Nash said, crossing his hands over his chest.
“Brady has eaten there before. Every time we hit Tallahassee,” Tanner said. “She could have easily been in the back. We didn’t check all the employees.”
Nash’s turn to scoff. “Now you’re suggesting she had a job there?”
“She didn’t have to have a real job. She could have pretended to be an employee.”
Everyone was quiet, but I could feel the doubts rolling through Nash, and it was raising my own red flags. He was right in many ways. It was almost impossible for her to have walked into that tiny space, poisoned my drink, and then waltzed out with no one the wiser. I also had a hard time buying that a small, family-owned restaurant like that one would have been duped into thinking Fiona was part of their staff. But what did that mean? It could only mean that someone in the room had been involved. It made my blood run cold. Someone here had done this to me…
“If I go home, she’ll just redirect back to you,” I said to Brady.
“You’re suggesting I should cancel three concerts? Let my fans down?” he demanded.
“Cancel, postpone, rearrange, whatever works, but yeah. I wouldn’t show up at any of those venues or hotels as planned,” Nash said calmly.
A silence settled over us as we all struggled with the consequences.
“I refuse to give her more power by letting the world know she’s sending me running,” Brady said.
“Every battle has moments where you need to withdraw. Pause. Regroup. Every damn plan I’ve ever had laid out for me has changed once we were in the thick of things. It isn’t a weakness. It’s a way to live in order to fight back with an even better plan. You don’t want to just continue to throw smoke bombs and pray for an escape route to appear,” Nash said.
Everyone knew the truth except Nash. If Brady canceled or even said he was rescheduling, everyone would think he had a drug or alcohol problem. Plus, he’d lose fans. Nothing pissed people off more than having paid good money for a concert that didn’t take place. Ducking out of the limelight would only allow anger to stew and fester into rumors we wouldn’t be able to shake.
“Can’t we just hire more security?” Brady asked.
“Throwing more bullets at the problem doesn’t always mean you’ll succeed in hitting the target,” Nash grunted.
“Sounds like ringing the bell to me,” Tanner said provocatively, eyes squinting in Nash’s direction.
Nash didn’t even flinch, but I did. I wasn’t a quitter. I’d just talked myself into being a survivor who walked up the mountain, but I also knew Nash was right. We needed a better plan of attack instead of continuing to move blindly into the fray.
“We don’t have a SEAL team here, and even if we did, putting SEALs in front of Brady while he’s trying to sing to a crowd is definitely going to get the press talking, wouldn’t you say?” I responded so that Nash didn’t say something to inflame the situation more.
Lee looked to Brady. “We’ll just say there was an unforeseen event. It’s really the best option.”
Brady tweaked his bracelets and looked out the window, frustration rippling off of him. I moved over to him, placing an arm over his shoulder.
“It’s going to be okay.” It sounded a lot like what Nash had told me just a few minutes earlier in his room.
“I hate this,” Brady said. I understood it with every inch of me. “What happens after the music awards? It isn’t like those are new events either. We’ve had those scheduled for over a year.”
“Hopefully, the police will have caught up to her by then,” Lee said.
The resignation in the room was heavy. A barbell that couldn’t be lifted.
“I suggest we split up,” Nash said.
“What?” Tanner looked momentarily thrown. “How does that help? We’ll only spread our resources even thinner.”
“Take everyone with Brady. Go somewhere Fiona doesn’t know about. If Dani is okay with it, I’ll take her with me. We’re only a forty-minute drive from my place.”
My brain stumbled over his words, causing my body to stiffen. Nash had a house? A house somewhere near Tallahassee? He’d been staying with Tristan for over a year, even when he was off. I shook my head in disbelief, and Nash mistook it for my disagreement.
“It’s better if we split you up.” His voice was calm, determined, insistent.
“I’m just reeling from the fact that you have a home.”
Nash looked uncomfortable. “It’s where I grew up.”
This was equally impossible for me to think about. Nash growing up somewhere, playing games, climbing trees, and getting in trouble. There was no way I could imagine him as a child. A laughing, carefree kid. It wasn’t him. He could be flirtatious and charming. He could even play a prank, smirking at me or his teammates. But to see him with no worries, out playing with kids his age on the street…it just wasn’t computing in my brain.
The idea of seeing this mysterious place where Nash had done this miraculous thing of growing from a baby to a man was too tempting. The ability to see it and perhaps understand him a little more. To see a part of him I was pretty sure he’d never shown anyone else, because neither Mac nor Tristan had ever mentioned him having family. It would be a piece of him only I had.
I didn’t have the energy to analyze that desire. For me to hold a part of him close to me.
“Where will Brady go?” I asked, looking back to the rest of the team, and I could almost feel the relief roll off Nash at my acquiescence.
“I have a cousin
