Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Tonight’s venue’s in-house security team had arranged themselves along one side of the conference table like they were expecting a fight, and Isaac was starting to think they might get one.
Endicott had changed his plans two hours ago. A last-minute pivot that had sent Zodiac scrambling to cover a venue they hadn’t advanced, working alongside a security team they hadn’t vetted. Not ideal under any circumstances. These circumstances were worse.
Six men. All built like bouncers because that’s what most of them probably were before this job. Thick necks, crossed arms, the collective posture of men who’d been told someone else was running their building tonight and weren’t taking it well.
Isaac kept the brief clean. “Zodiac will handle close protection on the principal and manage the floor. Your team holds the perimeter—entry points, service corridors, loading dock. Comms channel seven for coordination. Any contact with the principal or his wife goes through my team first.”
The biggest one—crew cut, tribal tattoo crawling up the side of his neck—stopped chewing his gum. “So we’re doormen.”
“You’re perimeter security. It’s the backbone of any operation like this.”
“Sounds like doormen with extra steps.”
Another one—shorter, red-faced, arms that strained the seams of his too-tight polo—snorted. “We’ve been running security at this venue for three years. Never had an incident. We don’t need self-proclaimed bigwigs trying to tell us how to do our jobs.”
Isaac didn’t take the bait. He pulled up the floor plan on his tablet. “Primary entrance, secondary entrance, kitchen corridor, loading dock. Each one staffed, each one covered by comms. Zodiac runs the interior. Your team holds these four points. Positions in twenty minutes. Channel seven.”
He turned to his own team and dropped his voice. “You guys know where you’re supposed to be. Keep comms tight. We’re guests in their house tonight, so let’s not make it worse than it already is.”
The room cleared. Crew Cut shouldered past Isaac on the way out, close enough that the intention was obvious. Isaac let it go.
One night. Do the job. Never see these assholes again.
Ryder fell into step beside him as they moved toward the main event space. “Those guys are a liability.”
“They’re a nuisance. There’s a difference. Ignore it. We’re here to keep Endicott safe. How they run day to day stuff isn’t our problem.”
“Agreed.”
They split at the main corridor. Ryder headed south. Isaac did a final walk-through, checked in with the close protection detail. Endicott and his wife were in a private room off the main hall, relaxed, unaware of the tension that had just played out down the corridor. Good.
He was heading toward his position near the main entrance when he passed two of the venue security guys in the service corridor. They were leaning against the wall, radios clipped to their belts, talking low enough that they probably thought no one could hear.
“—guy at that Dallas event last weekend. Same company runs that venue, too. They caught some dude going through coat pockets during the reception.”
“No shit. What’d they do?”
“What do you think?” A phone came out. The man tilted the screen toward his buddy, and Isaac caught a flash of it as he passed—a photo, close-up, a hand swollen purple-black with two fingers splinted and taped.
“Took him out back. Broke two fingers, then told the guy if he showed his face again they’d finish the set. ”
The other man studied the photo with the mild interest of someone looking at a sports score. “Nice.”
“Bruce sent it to the whole group chat. Said the guy was crying before they even started.”
“Before? That’s pathetic.”
“Right? Like, at least make us work for it.” He pocketed the phone. “Man, I hope someone tries that shit here tonight, especially since management approved of what Bruce did. I’m bored.”
“If I catch someone working pockets in my section, I’d be happy to handle it myself. No need to call the cops; by the time I’m done fingers won’t ever work right enough to steal again.
“Same. Give me five minutes alone with them. That’s all I need.”
“Fuck yeah.”
That wasn’t just bravado. These two weren’t just fantasizing. They were hoping.
Isaac kept walking. His pace didn’t change. His expression didn’t shift even when they nodded at him before putting away the phone. He rounded the corner and stopped.
His first thought was clean and immediate: Fallon better not be here tonight.
She’d been tracking Zodiac’s schedule somehow—he still hadn’t figured out how—and staying clear of events his team worked.
But Endicott’s last-minute change meant this event wasn’t on anyone’s schedule until two hours ago.
If Fallon had planned to work this room, she wouldn’t have known Zodiac was coming.
He pulled out the burner phone and typed fast.
If you’re anywhere near the Austin Heritage Center tonight, leave. Now. Don’t ask questions.
He stared at the screen. No reply. No read receipt. She could be across town. She could be in this building. He had no way to know. They’d been texting for the past three days but sometimes responses from either of them wasn’t immediate.
He pocketed the phone and got to his position. Guests were already in the room and more were entering with the practiced ease of people who attended these things for a living. Isaac managed the floor. Checked sight lines. Ran comms.
“Zone Two, service corridor clear. Catering rotation on schedule.”
“Copy.”
Thirty minutes into the event, he was stationed near the east wall with a clean sight line across the room. The crowd had settled into its rhythm. Endicott was at a table near the stage, deep in conversation with two donors, Laura beside him. Everything quiet.
The burner phone was in his jacket pocket. He pulled it during a lull and checked the screen. Nothing new since the message he’d sent about keeping away from here.
Ryder’s voice came through the earpiece on a private channel. Low, casual. “Hey, Baxter. Quick question.”
“Go.”
“Whatever you’ve got going on with that burner phone which generally causes you to smile when you look at it—are you going to let me in at some point, or do I just keep pretending I don’t notice?”
Isaac’s hand stilled on his lapel. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The phone checks. The lost focus during briefings. The punch you took during sparring because something buzzed on your bag. Whatever this is, it’s been going on the entire time I’ve been here.”
“There’s nothing going on.”
“Okay. Then there’s nothing going on, and I’ll keep pretending I don’t notice nothing going on. Just wanted you to know the door’s open if that changes.”
Isaac exhaled. He wasn’t wrong. The phone checks, the drift, the distraction—all of it had been accumulating for days, and Ryder was too sharp to miss it. The fact that he’d waited this long to say anything, and framed it as an offer rather than a confrontation, was exactly why Isaac trusted him.
“I appreciate that,” Isaac said.
“Any time.” Ryder switched back to the main channel. “Zone Two, south corridor still clear. Resuming regular check-ins.”
Isaac adjusted his earpiece and swept the room again. His gaze reached the northwest corner, near the bar, and stopped.
Fallon. Fuck.
His whole body went cold. Every nerve lit up at once, his vision narrowing to the one point in the room that mattered.
She was standing at the edge of a group near the cocktail tables, champagne glass in hand, her hair pinned differently again, her dress a deep emerald that made her pale eyes catch the light from ten yards away.
She was here. At an event where the security team was hunting for someone exactly like her. And he had no doubt that her being a woman wouldn’t stop the violence they were craving if they caught her. If anything, a female would encourage it.
He pulled the burner phone out of his pocket again. His earlier warning was still sitting there, unread. He typed again.
You’re here. I can see you. Get out NOW.
She didn’t reach for a phone. Didn’t check a pocket or a clutch. Her attention was on the group beside her, her body relaxed, peripheral, positioned near a mark.
She was about to work. And she had no idea that the guards were actively looking for someone doing that. Part of the reason she was always so successful was because rich people didn’t suspect other rich people of petty theft, and honestly most of the security at these places didn’t either.
But not tonight. Tonight these assholes were just waiting for a reason to beat the shit out of someone.
Isaac looked past her. One of the venue security guys—Red Face from the briefing—was posted up twenty feet from Fallon’s position.
He wasn’t watching the perimeter. He was scanning the crowd.
Slowly, methodically, his eyes moving from guest to guest with the specific alertness of a man looking for exactly what Fallon was about to do.
She didn’t see him. She was operating at her normal level of caution—the level that would have been more than enough at any event that didn’t have men prowling the room hoping to catch someone.
She was reading the crowd, mapping her approach, doing the work she’d done dozens of times.
And she had no idea that the man twenty feet to her left was hunting.
Isaac watched the geometry. Fallon’s trajectory toward a man in a blue suit who was holding court near the bar. Red Face’s sight line, sweeping the same section. The distance closing between them, and neither of them aware of the other.
Fuck. Fallon was going to make her move. Red Face was going to see it.
Every instinct he had said go. Get to her. Now. But Endicott was his responsibility here, not Fallon. Three hundred guests, a credible threat, a client paying Zodiac to keep him alive. If he left his position, the operation had a gap.
Fallon took a half-step toward the man in blue.