22. Stop Running
STOP RUNNING
AIDAN — LONDON
After lunch with the group on Friday, Liam and I found a quiet corner of the InterContinental London’s lobby.
Every few seconds the revolving door delivered another story.
A Formula One driver I vaguely recognized from television hurried toward the lifts with his manager.
A Gulf family shepherded three sleepy children past an arrangement of white orchids.
Two executives argued quietly in German over tablets full of spreadsheets.
A woman in a scarlet dress and heels sharp enough to qualify as weapons crossed the marble floor as if it were her own runway.
London gathered the world into places like this.
I pulled up the tour schedule on my laptop. At least this job kept us moving from one luxury hotel to another, unlike some of the places we’d stayed on other jobs where we were lucky to get weak Wi-Fi and hope there were no bedbugs.
The London concert would take place in a half-dozen hours, and then we’d leave the next morning for New York. The usual run of technical rehearsal followed by media interviews, then the performance at Madison Square Garden. S?o Paulo after that. Seoul to close out the tour.
Eleven more days. Eleven more opportunities for something to go wrong.
I looked over at Liam. “You’re getting that look again,” I said.
“What look?”
“The one where you’re three steps ahead and none of them are good.” I closed my laptop. “Talk to me.”
“Professional operation,” he said quietly. “This isn’t some obsessed fan. Someone’s running assets, positioning people, spending money. That takes organization.”
“And patience. That series of payments to Tran means this started before Cannes.”
“Which means whoever’s behind it knew the tour schedule months in advance. Had time to research, recruit, place people strategically.” He frowned. “Inside job. Has to be.”
My phone rang with a call from Jason, and I held it up so Liam could hear.
“We have a problem,” Jason said without preamble. “Makeup assistant, one of the local hires from Paris, posted rehearsal footage to social media.”
“What kind of footage?”
“Backstage. Costume changes. Close-ups of Jin between takes.” His voice was tight with controlled fury. “Deleted it as soon as I contacted her, but it was up for forty minutes. Long enough for screenshots, downloads.”
“Was it malicious or stupid?”
“She says stupid. Says she didn’t realize it violated the NDA, thought it was just behind-the-scenes content fans would love.” He paused. “But the footage included the dressing room layout. Clear shots of Jin’s private space.”
My blood went cold. “She could have sold that to whoever delivered the gift.”
“Exactly.”
“Where is she now?”
“Marseille. She’s shooting another concert tomorrow.”
I was already typing notes as Liam said, “And I want to know who hired her. Not just the agency. Who specifically recommended her for this job?”
Liam ended the call and turned to me. “I’ll bet you it’s the same agency,” he said quietly.
I’d been so caught up in our conversation that I hadn’t realized that Jin had come to stand beside me. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
I turned to look at him. “Someone posted footage from Paris backstage. We’re handling it.”
“What kind of footage?”
There was no point lying. “Dressing room layouts. Costume changes. Enough detail to be a security concern.”
“So someone’s mapping our movements,” Jin said. His voice was steady, but I saw fear in his eyes. “Building a plan.”
“That’s our assessment.”
“When do we stop running and start fighting back?”
Good question. “When we know who we’re fighting. Right now we’re still gathering intelligence.”
“How long will that take?”
“We have people working on a variety of different angles,” I said. “In the meantime, we do whatever we can to protect you.”
Jin nodded. “Okay. But Aidan?”
“Yeah?”
“I need to know the truth. All of it. Not the sanitized version you think I can handle.”
I studied his face. Young, scared, but not backing down.
“There’s something you should know,” Jin said. “I got one of those threatening messages myself.”
He showed me his cell phone. I took it and forwarded the message to myself, then returned it to him. “Tell me about any more of these as soon as they come in, all right?”
He nodded, and then turned and walked back toward where the rest of the group was clustered beneath a chandelier of vertical glass panes suspended on nearly invisible wires.
I took a deep breath, then looked at Liam. “He’s falling apart,” I said. “Even though he’s been trained to function under pressure.”
I thought about Jin’s question—When do we stop running and start fighting back?
I didn’t have an answer yet.
Eun-ji had commandeered a hotel meeting room. Windowless, soundproofed, designed for conversations no one else should hear.
She waited at the head of the table when Liam and I arrived.
“Close the door.”
I did.
“The emails,” she said. “You’ve seen them.”
“All three.”
“They’re coming from inside Starhouse.” Her voice was flat, controlled. “Either someone with access is doing this, or someone is using stolen credentials.”
“That’s our assessment.”
For the first time, some of her executive composure cracked. “I built the international division from nothing. These artists, these staff? They’re my responsibility. And someone I trusted may be trying to kill one of them.”
She sighed. “There’s something else. Even though Sang-hoon has left the tour, the incident shows how much people can see.”
I had watched Jin stumble, miss cues and stop in the middle of a song at the rehearsal. “Do you think Jin’s performance at rehearsal was off because Sang-hoon left?”
“Probably.”
“Could he be the leak?” Liam asked. “We know he had backstage access. Maybe his work is done and he’s leaving to avoid suspicion. Does he have the server access to send those emails?”
“Liam,” I said. “You saw how they looked at each other. If Sang-hoon was faking that he deserves to be on stage himself. And we did a full background check on him. He’s not the leak.”
“I agree with Aidan,” Eun-ji said. “I’ve had my suspicions that Jin and Sang-hoon were involved for a long time but I didn’t have any evidence to confront either of them.
And he’s only a staff member, and doesn’t have the kind of access to the Starhouse server necessary to send emails the way those were sent. So I don’t believe he’s the leak.”
She took a deep breath. “If someone releases the information, it could ruin both of them. They’re both in violation of the contracts they signed. Sang-hoon told Sunny that he was leaving to protect Jin. He has a very sizeable female fan following. They might feel betrayed to discover he’s gay.”
Silence settled over the room. Then Eun-ji said, “The O2 seats twenty thousand. Security is difficult even on a normal night.”
“Jason and I are coordinating with venue security,” Liam said.
“And if that’s not enough?”
“Then we cancel.”
She stared at him. “We can’t.”
“Would you rather explain a canceled concert,” Liam asked evenly, “or a dead performer?”
For a long moment she stared at us. Then, surprisingly, she smiled.
“You two are lucky to have found each other,” she said. Her smile turned sad. “I’ve seen a lot of partnerships in this industry. Professional, romantic, everything in between. Most of them are transactional. What you two have? That’s rare.”
I thought about Liam in our kitchen in Banneret-les-Vaux, lining up electronics like surgical instruments. The way he’d looked at me that night, possessive and certain.
“Sixteen years,” I said. “Twelve of them married. Hasn’t been easy, but it’s been worth it.” I reached out and took Liam’s hand, and he squeezed mine.
“Jin and Sang-hoon have five years of wanting and only a few days of actually having.” She stood, collecting her tablet. “I hope they get the chance to have more. When this is all over.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” I said.
After Eun-ji left, Liam stayed where he was, leaning back in his chair with the thoughtful look that usually meant his mind was racing ahead into unpleasant possibilities.
But the first thing he said was, “Have we been outed? As a gay couple?”
“Eun-ji’s a smart woman. She signed a contract with Agence that had a full background check on us, including the fact that we’re married. And neither of us has been hiding anything.”
“You’re right. Part of my brain is still back in the SEALs, stuck in that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell mentality.
I forget that the world has changed.” He stretched his shoulders and rotated his head, a sure sign that he was tense.
“What’s your instinct?” he asked. “Not who. Just what kind of person does this?”
I was feeling the stress too. I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to organize thoughts that refused to line up neatly. “Someone with resources. Patience. Access. This wasn’t improvised.”
“You still think Starhouse?”
“Maybe. Or someone using Starhouse. A fan with money. A disgruntled insider. Someone with a personal obsession and enough discipline to turn it into an operation.”
“What about Park Min-woo?” Liam asked.
I checked the message Richard had sent earlier. “Busan. Conference room, badge logs, CCTV, expense receipts for the company he’s contracting with. Unless he’s developed the ability to bilocate, he wasn’t setting fires in Cannes.”
“That doesn’t rule out hiring someone. He has a motive, doesn’t he? Fired employee seeking retribution.”
“And he’s acting out by making a lot of online complaints. It’s a big jump from saying nasty things on Reddit to carrying out an elaborate plot that might involve murder.”
“Well, I’m not crossing him off the suspect list yet. But it drops him from prime suspect to supporting cast. We still have far too many possibilities.”
“Richard says he found some online chatter about the movie’s showing at Cannes, but nothing that would indicate the concert was targeted as part of that.”
I was already reaching for my phone. “It’s good to knock out the movie.
But we still need to understand if these attacks are new behavior or an escalation.
I’m sure that Jin’s dealt with obsessive fans before, and Sunny will know who crossed lines, who made threats, who kept showing up when they shouldn’t.
” I pulled up her number. “Patterns matter.”
Liam gave me a faint smile. “You always did like patterns.”
“Only when they lead somewhere useful.”