Chapter 11
Chapter eleven
Carter
“Where is she?!” I bellow as I finally make my way into the hall with Jaxon’s dressing room.
It has been utter chaos since that damn woman started live streaming her attempted break-in.
“The police took her to the precinct two minutes ago,” one of the men guarding Jaxon’s dressing room—I can’t be fucked to remember his name right now—says.
“What?” I ask.
“The police on-site took her to the station,” the man on the left side of the door tries, like maybe saying the same thing with slightly different words will make it clearer.
“Why would they take Kelsey to the police station?”
“Oh. No. She’s in here,” the man on the left—Nash, that’s his name—says, his brows pulled together in confusion.
My heartbeat is an erratic mess, the same way it’s been since Kelsey ran out of the security room earlier, leaving me to handle the logistics while she physically confronted the intruder.
I know she can hold her own, but, goddamn it, I explicitly told her not to put herself in danger, and then she goes and apprehends the woman on her own.
My hand on the knob, I force myself to calm down before I enter the room. Finally, I push open the door to Jaxon’s dressing room. My eyes find her instantly. She’s sitting on the makeup chair, her eyes bright as she presses a white tissue of some kind to her head.
Her long blonde hair is starting to come out from the knot she has it captured in at the back of her head. Fiery blue eyes track my movement, a hint of pain flashing through them. It breaks my heart, which in turn brings my rage roaring back to life.
“What the fuck, Kelsey?” I snarl at her, crossing my arms across my chest in the hope of physically restraining myself from pulling her into my arms and inspecting her injury.
My eyes can see clearly enough that she’s fine, but my soul needs more reassurance.
Reassurance that it is neither entitled to nor likely to get.
“I think the words you’re looking for are good job,” she says, as if we’re having a fun chat while out at dinner.
Not like she just put her life in danger while I sat in a fucking room and made phone calls, watching her sprint through the stadium as her team worked to keep eyes on her from the sky.
The sheer dread I felt when the door to the storage room closed and I lost all sight of her will haunt me for a very long time.
“That was stupid. If you were anyone else right now, you’d be fired,” I say from the spot I’ve taken up next to the door. I want to tell her to lie down on the couch, but I’m smart enough to know that will go over poorly.
“Excuse me?” she asks, her voice dripping with venom. “I did exactly what I should’ve. And I did it successfully, might I add.”
“Successful? You call getting injured on the job successful?”
“I call taking down and apprehending an intruder who was attempting to break into our client’s dressing room a success.
Taking a paint can to the side of the head is a minor inconvenience.
Plus, it’s just a scratch,” Kelsey says, pulling the tissue off her forehead to reveal a half-inch-long cut running parallel to her hairline.
It’s not quite a scratch, but it’s far better than the image Lila had sent through to me of her leaving the storage room minutes ago. Logically, I know head wounds bleed a lot, but knowing it and seeing blood dripping down her face in a grainy image are two different things.
“How did you even know I got hurt?” she asks after a pause.
“Lila sent me an image of you leaving the room.”
“She’s not even supposed to be working on this.”
“Did you really think your team would keep this quiet—at least among themselves?” I ask.
She rolls her eyes, swiveling in her chair to look into the mirror behind her. I watch as she looks around for water and, finding none, spits on the tissue before scrubbing at the dried blood on her temple.
“I’ll get you some water,” I say. “You’ll get an infection that way.”
“I think I’ll manage,” she says. “Why don’t you focus on something actually important, like what the fuck happened out there.”
“She had a security badge,” I tell her, summarizing what little we know.
The woman, Juliet Osmond, had flashed a security badge to the stadium security officer to get back here.
She came in before the show finished, so the full backstage team wasn’t down here—just the few men guarding the important doors.
It’s unclear what she was after, other than the picture she claims she was trying to take in Jaxon’s dressing room. Not even with Jaxon. Just in the room.
“Did you hear what she said when I asked her why?” Kelsey asks, the first she’s interrupted since I started the debrief. Her eyes are filled with a mischief I feel is unwarranted at this specific moment.
“Something about losing a bet,” I say, my eyes still scanning her for signs of any other injury.
“She told me she lost her fantasy football league, and this was her punishment.”
“She’s American?”
“Hard to say. I didn’t notice an accent, but I imagine Canadians play fantasy football too. At least a few of them. It doesn’t matter, though. It’s clearly a bogus story.”
“Why do you say that?” I ask as I mentally review everything I know about the break-in. “Fantasy punishments have gotten out of hand. Apparently, SAT proctors don’t even blink an eye at middle-aged men showing up to take the test with a bunch of high schoolers anymore.”
“Yeah, but the season doesn’t end until next week.”
“Maybe she’s really bad?” I suggest.
Kelsey shrugs, using the toe of her right foot to spin herself side to side.
“I’m more worried about the comms,” she says, her tone indeed carrying a hint of concern in it.
“Do you think Juliet had something to do with them going down, or do you think she just got exceptionally lucky?”
Her eyes shift away from my face before she says, “No. I think she got lucky. I think…”
I wait for her to finish, but she just starts twirling that piece of hair, a dark one that she’s pulled from the back of her neck.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I’m…I’m worried my team did something wrong. The comms were our job. We checked them and doubled-checked them, but, no, I don’t think it was her.”
“It’s an awfully big coincidence. Too big of one for my comfort. Plus, I was with you when you checked everything. We never had one outage the entire last week.”
“Even if it was her, we clearly should’ve had a backup plan. It’s my job to make sure we have a plan for every contingency, and I didn’t even have one for the communication system with the guards going out.”
An ache grows in my chest with her admission.
I know she guards that vulnerable part of her as closely as her clients.
I push my hands through my hair, forcing myself not to go to her.
Instead, I drop onto the edge of the couch that takes up one wall of the room.
My eyes drift over Kelsey’s shoulder, staring at her highlighted profile in the mirror.
“You did have a plan, though,” I say. “You gave the order to reach out by phone. You made sure Jaxon was nowhere near here. You handled an unfortunate situation like a pro. And we both know you can do as much advanced planning as you want, but unfortunate situations are still going to happen.”
We’re interrupted by a knock on the door, and a second later, it opens to reveal Jaxon, Henry, and, as luck would have it, Trent. Of course this would happen while he’s here.
Jaxon’s hair is still sweaty, his shirt damp from the workout he gets running all over the stage during his performance.
He sits down next to me, one ankle crossed over the other knee, the arm away from me resting on the back of the couch.
Henry stands against the wall near Kelsey in her chair.
Trent stays in the middle of the room, spreading his feet and generally taking up the most space possible.
“Are you all right, Kelsey?” Henry asks.
“Fine,” she says, quickly dropping the tissue into her lap. “Just a minor scratch from an errant paint can.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“What happened out there?” Jaxon asks from next to me.
“The comms went out,” Kelsey says before giving a brief, professional recap of the events of the night.
“It never should’ve happened,” Trent chimes in when Kelsey reaches the end. “Maybe we need to handle the comms portion of the contract. We’ve never had earpieces go out before.”
“Well,” Jaxon says. “Kelsey’s team did handle the situation. She even took the woman down herself.”
As much as it made me want to strangle her for it.
The admiration in Jaxon’s eyes as he takes in Kelsey could be construed as platonic, but my gut doesn’t get that memo and starts churning with something that feels a lot like jealousy. I dismiss it. It must be the spark of rivalry Jaxon has forced between us.
“Yes,” Trent says, a fake mask of concern for Kelsey crossing his face.
“A very valiant effort for sure. But the truth is, we should’ve never been in that situation.
If the communications devices hadn’t short-circuited, there never would’ve been an issue.
Our men”—I want to punch his face in for the emphasis, as if Kelsey took a paint can to the head because she was a woman—“are equipped to handle apprehension. But they can’t do that if they don’t know about the breach. ”
“That’s true,” Kelsey says, looking past Trent to where Jaxon sits on the couch next to me. “I have no idea what caused the comms devices to go down, but I assure you I’ll look into it and have a solution before tomorrow’s show. This won’t happen again.”
Jaxon and his manager make eye contact, and it pains me to see Kelsey’s mask of calm professionalism slip briefly. In that second, I swear I see every one of her doubts cross her face. I know she’s questioning if she just lost the deal for her team.
I take a deep breath as if to say something, and Trent cuts me a look that clearly says “Stay the fuck out of this.” It crushes a piece of my soul, just like working at Mitchell Security every day does, but for my mom, it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
So I say nothing—I don’t defend the fiercest, most intelligent woman I’ve ever met.
Rivals. That’s all we are.
After an extended silent conversation between Jaxon and his manager, Jaxon finally says, “We’re not changing anything up at this point. Kelsey, I trust you to get this handled before the show tomorrow.”
“Of course,” Kelsey says.
“This is just the first night, and mistakes are bound to happen.”
I don’t miss Kelsey’s flinch at the word mistake.
“The concert went smoothly, and besides being taken to somewhere other than my dressing room—which no fans would’ve known about—the experience was exactly what it should’ve been.
Henry will work with the PR team to get something released to the press to get ahead of the story, leaving out the part about the saw in her shoe. ”
“It was more like a serrated butter knife. Kinda like one of those little pumpkin-carving knives you get in the kits at Halloween. I don’t think she could’ve injured anyone or anything but some flimsy drywall with it,” Kelsey tells Jaxon.
“She really didn’t make it that far as it was,” she says, pointing to the thin line running about two feet from top to bottom in the middle of the wall.
“I was worried she was going to have a whole hole popped out by the time I got here.”
“Regardless, let’s not give people ideas,” Henry chimes in.
We finish debriefing the incident, both Kelsey and I promising a full report by noon tomorrow. Finally, Jaxon and Henry leave, Trent going with them to “confirm Jaxon’s personal guards are doing what they should be.”
Kelsey lets out a long sigh before pushing to her feet.
“Want me to drive you back to the hotel?” I offer, watching her for signs of concussion, even though I know she allowed the on-site EMT to at least check her for that, even if she didn’t let him bandage her head.
She scoffs. “No. I’ll be spending my night checking earpieces.”
“Want some company?”
Her weary eyes hold mine, searching for something—I don’t know what.
“No. That’s okay. It’s going to be a long night. There is no way I’m going to lose this contract because of one tech issue.”
That might not be the reason why, but I’m feeling more and more confident that Mitchell Security might actually stand a chance of winning this contract.
She stops in the doorway, holding on to it with one hand as she turns back to me. “What happened to ‘You did have a plan’?” she asks, the bite in her voice cutting through me. “Didn’t think that’d be something Jaxon would want to hear?”
“I…”
She raises her eyebrow, waiting for me to finish. But what can I say? No matter how I feel about Kelsey or her work, securing the long-term contract with Jaxon—making sure my mom is cared for—is the most important thing right now.
“Got it,” she says before walking out the door.