37. Ghost Protocol
GHOST PROTOCOL
LIAM — S?O PAULO
I still didn’t trust any of it.
“Run it again,” I said to the venue’s head of security, a former police captain named Rodrigues who’d seen everything from championship boxing matches to papal visits.
He pulled up the venue schematic on the massive display screen in the security operations center.
“Crowd has been assembling since before dawn, and all public entrances are locked down. Bag checks, metal detectors, wanding—standard protocol. VIP and press enter through the main entrance, separate screening. Performers and crew through the loading dock, credentials verified against our master list.”
“Who controls the master list?”
“My office. Updated daily, cross-referenced with your tour manager’s submissions.”
“I want to see every name on that list. Personal verification for anyone added in the last seventy-two hours.”
Rodrigues’s eyebrow went up slightly, but he nodded. “You expecting someone specific to try breaching security?”
“I’m expecting professionals who’ve been planning this for months. Which means they’re not going to walk through the front door with a sign that says ‘threat.’ They’re going to have credentials, backgrounds, and a plausible reason to be here.”
I’d said a version of that sentence in a dozen security briefings across fifteen years, and it had been true every time.
In Tunis, the man who’d killed a Swiss commodities trader in the Hotel Africa had spent forty minutes in the business center afterward.
He was dressed in the man’s polo shirt, using his laptop, looking exactly like someone who’d woken up early to check his email.
The real guest had been killed in his sleep and never knew his key card had been cloned. Nobody gave the killer a second look. By the time the body was found, he was on a ferry to Palermo.
The man’s company had hired us to track the killer to Palermo and retrieve that laptop. That investigation had taught me that the threat you caught was rarely the threat you were actually worried about. It was the one standing at the business center that mattered.
Rodrigues pulled up another screen. “We’ve got two hundred and thirty crew on the list for tonight. Lighting, sound, rigging, catering, venue staff, medical—”
“Medical?”
“EMTs, standard for any event over ten thousand capacity. Two-person team, stationed backstage.”
“Who hired them?”
“Venue contract with a local service. Same team we use for all events.” He pulled up their profiles. “Both paramedics, backgrounds clean, been working Allianz Parque for three years.”
I photographed their credentials with my phone, sent them to Richard with a priority flag. “Verify these. Full background, not just what the venue has.”
My phone buzzed within seconds. Richard’s response: On it. ETA 30 minutes.
Aidan appeared at my elbow, coffee in each hand. He passed me one, then studied the screens. “How’s it looking?”
“Tight. Rodrigues knows his business.” I inhaled before taking my first sip. Dark chocolate. Toasted nuts. A hint of caramel. The espresso was rich without being bitter, smooth enough that I drank it without adding sugar.
“Now that’s coffee,” I murmured. I looked up at Aidan.
“We’ve located every operative we know about.
Sophie Tran is in Marseille. The makeup assistant is still in France.
The pyrotechnician is cooperating with French police.
Which means if Sara moves tonight, she’ll do it through someone we haven’t identified. ”
The operations center hummed with activity as Rodrigues’s team started executing. I stepped away, pulled out my phone, called Jason.
“Update,” I said when he answered.
“All members are downstairs with our two regular security watching entrances and exits. Nothing unusual.”
I glanced at the security monitors showing different angles of the stadium. “What’s the backstage setup?”
“Individual dressing rooms with a single point of access. Venue security stationed there.”
Jason paused. “Liam? Do you actually think Sara Yoon will attempt something tonight? Here, with this level of security?”
“I think she’s desperate and cornered. She’s got millions in stolen money she’s trying to protect and a limited window before Interpol freezes her accounts. Desperate people don’t make rational calculations about success probability—they just act.”
“So we prepare for the worst.”
“Always.”
Richard responded then; all the paramedic credentials were clear.
With my phone beside me, I turned back to the monitors.
Aidan had moved to the other side of the operations center, coordinating with the S?o Paulo police liaison.
I watched him work—calm, professional, that easy charm he used to make people want to help him—and felt the familiar mix of pride and concern that came from loving someone who was very good at a very dangerous job.
My phone buzzed. Text from Richard: Problem. Sara Yoon’s gone completely dark. No company system access for 48 hours, no credit card usage, no phone activity on her registered number.
I told Jason. “She may have another identity, credit cards and phone under another name,” I said. “The fact that she’s dropped out probably means she knows we’re on to her.”
“Every indication is that she’s smart, and an excellent manager. So she’s running her operation remotely, staying invisible. It keeps her hands clean, maintains deniability.”
“Until one of her assets gives her up,” I said.
“Which is why she’s using people with limited information. They only know their specific task, not the larger plan.”
I looked at the security monitors again. Thousands of seats, hundreds of crew members, dozens of access points. A massive space that would be packed with forty-three thousand people in a few hours.
“One show at a time,” I said, more to myself than Jason. “That’s all we can do.”
As soon as we hung up, my phone rang. Sunny.
“What’s wrong?” I answered.
“Jin cornered me. Demanded to know what we’re not telling him.” Her voice was tight. “He refused to do the show unless I told him the truth.”
“What did you say?”
She sighed, and I heard the exhaustion in her voice.
“I told him everything I know, which isn’t much.
That Sara Yoon has it in for Pryzm to cover up other crimes.
Nothing personal, as far as we know. That hurting any member of the group could cause the kind of chaos she needs.
That Jin may be the center, and that’s why it looks like he’s the target, but he’s not the only one. ”
“What did he say?”
“I guess he was satisfied. These kids have been training for this their whole lives. They’re not going to back down from one show.” She paused. “But I told him, and I’ll tell the others, that if they do want to cancel, we support that decision. Their safety is more important than any performance.”
After she hung up, I stood in the operations center, surrounded by security monitors and threat assessments and the machinery of protection.
I wanted to feel reassured. The security was tight, the protocols were solid, the venue was as locked down as any space hosting forty-three thousand people could be.
But Sara Yoon was still out there. Invisible, untraceable, running an operation we only partially understood.
Aidan appeared next to me. “What’s your gut say?” I asked.
He was silent for a moment, watching the action around us. “My gut says Sara Yoon has been ahead of us this whole time. Cannes, Paris, the barricade breach in New York. She’s patient and methodical and she’s not going to waste an asset on a low-probability attempt.”
“So tonight’s a feint? A distraction?”
“Or she’s gathering intelligence. Watching how we respond, learning our patterns, preparing for the real attempt later in Seoul.” Aidan met my eyes. “That’s when she’ll move. When the tour’s almost over and she’s running out of time.”
My phone buzzed. Text from Richard: Interpol update—they’ve issued a red notice for Sara Yoon. But with no confirmed location and multiple possible false identities, it’s not worth much. She could be anywhere.
I showed it to Aidan.
“Anywhere,” he repeated. “Fantastic.”
“We work with what we have.”
“Which is what, exactly? A name, a motive, and a ghost we can’t track?”
“We have the members secured, the venue locked down, and eyes on every identified asset. That’s not nothing.”
I squeezed his shoulder. “Aidan, I know you’re worried. I am too. But we’re doing everything right. Sara Yoon’s invisible because she’s scared—she knows we’re onto her. That makes her dangerous, but it also makes her reactive instead of proactive.”
“Unless she’s better at this than we are.”
“She’s not,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “She’s smart, but she’s made mistakes. We’ll find her.”
“Before or after she hurts someone?”
“Before. Because we’re not going to let her win.”
Aidan held my gaze for a long moment, then nodded. “Okay. We stay sharp, watch for patterns, and trust the protocols.”
“Exactly.”
We went down to the talent level, which was controlled chaos. Final costume checks, last-minute vocal warm-ups, the members gathering near the stage entrance for their pre-show ritual. I watched from a distance, giving them space but staying alert.
Jin looked focused, the fear from earlier buried beneath professional discipline. Sang-hoon stood just off to the side, close enough to be available but far enough to maintain the fiction that they were just colleagues.
But I caught the moment their eyes met. The brief, silent communication that said I love you and be safe and I’ll see you after.
Forty-three thousand people started filing into the stadium. The sound built—conversations, laughter, the growing excitement of a crowd that had been waiting months for this moment.
Aidan joined me near the security station, and we watched the monitors. Crowd shots, entrance checkpoints, backstage corridors. Everything normal. Everything routine.
“Why do I feel like we’re missing something?” Aidan said quietly.
“Because we probably are. We always are.” I squeezed his hand briefly. “But we catch it before it matters. That’s the job.”
The lights dropped. The crowd roared. And Pryzm took the stage.