15. Scott
FIFTEEN
SCOTT
“I really am sorry,” I tell Cory after a long, tense silence. “Please know that I didn’t intend to keep anything from you or anyone else. I won’t make excuses. I know I should have alerted you right away.”
Cory’s voice is flat, completely professional, and void of any emotion to key me into his thoughts or what he might do. “How long ago did the texts start?”
“Before the Super Bowl,” I admit. “I can’t be sure if all of them were from the same person. The more recent texts, the ones that started during the resistance tour, are different. They’re personal and threatening.”
“And these messages were to your personal phone, not your work phone?”
“Correct. I thought they were just spam at first, so I blocked and deleted them. I didn’t take it seriously until I received the photo of Naz from the airfield.”
“I’ll need a record of the numbers, dates, and times of all the messages you’ve received since you started working with us. Blake’s IT contact at the Waves App can hopefully pull something useful from it. And I’d like to see whatever messages you still have that you haven’t deleted.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Scott, I need you to be honest with me. When you got the message with the picture, why didn’t you tell me immediately?”
“Complete honesty? My first instinct was to make it to Naz’s side. Once I was here, I was worried about how it would look after being interrogated about the bomb threat. I… I can’t be separated from him until I know he’s safe.”
Cory sighs. “I told you this relationship was going to become a problem.”
“You also told me that this was more than a job. Not just because of the constant travel or the everyday, mundane things that can become threatening at the blink of an eye, but because this is more than just a band we’re protecting, it’s a family.
And because we live alongside them, we become an extension of that family.
I understand that I took that to another level, but by falling for him… ”
“Falling for him made you reckless, Scott. Can’t you see how negligent this was?”
His words are blunt, and the more I process them, the more the top half of my body fluctuates in temperature. It flushes hot with shame and humiliation, then cold with terror. My heart is thrumming so harshly in my chest that I can’t get a full breath.
It’s not just that I feel chastised. I know he’s right. But more than anything, I’m worried about what the fallout is going to be if I lose my job here and now.
Because I refuse to go. They can’t make me leave him. Hell, even he couldn’t force me away. I’d sleep outside in the dirt on the other side of the property line like a junkyard watch dog. No one could pull me away.
I take a slow, deep breath
“With all due respect, my job is to protect Naz. Yes, I made a mistake by not disclosing the text messages to you, but I have not once faltered in my dedication to do exactly what I was hired to do. If anything, I’m even more determined to protect him, with my life if I have to.”
“And with all due respect, you fucked up, Scott.”
“I know.”
“What did you fuck up?”
I nearly fall out of the desk chair I commandeered for this conversation. My hands shoot out in front of me, gripping the hard edge of the mahogany desk to steady myself. The heavy desk screeches forward, jostling everything on top.
Naz steadies the ornate lamp on the corner, eyes serious and unblinking as he waits for me to answer his question.
“Naz—” I breathe his name, unsure of what to say or where to start.
I’d been so wrapped up in the consequences of my stupidity that I hadn’t heard him enter the room. How long had he been there behind me? How much did he hear?
Not that I wasn’t going to tell him, it was the first thing on my list as soon as I finished speaking with Cory. I’d wanted to tell him first, but the opportunity to speak to Cory alone presented itself, and Naz clearly needed a break. I wasn’t ready to put more on him.
I was going to tell him everything about the texts, but I really didn’t want him to overhear me confess to Cory that I’d fallen for him. That my feelings are deeper than just a role I play when he needs me. That I’ve imprinted on him like a dog to his master.
Swallowing deeply, I struggle to find my words at first. “I was going to tell you. I’ve been getting messages.
What happened today…” Deep breath. “What happened today might have been my fault. I was ignoring the messages, not taking them seriously enough. I wasn’t positive that the unknown number was the same person we’ve been dealing with until this. ”
I pull my personal phone from my back pocket and open up my text thread with the unknown number, showing him the last messages I received, including one that came through around the same time that Cory called.
Unknown: Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Unknown: Are you ready to listen now?
Naz stares down at the phone long enough that the screen goes dark again. Long enough that I know he’s processing more than just the text messages.
“If anything, I think the messages support our theory that they don’t know where you are,” Cory says, his disembodied voice cutting through the silence.
“None of the texts suggest they know where Scott is or that he’s with you.
Although my guess is they know you’re close and that’s why they targeted Scott with these messages in the first place. ”
“It was probably those stupid social media posts,” Naz says almost robotically. “All those pictures that make it look like you’re staring at me like a lost puppy.”
I know him well enough that I know he’s not glossing over the issue of me not being truthful, or the very real possibility that he overheard me profess my love for him. He’s compartmentalizing, focusing on something tangible so he can process one thing at a time.
“Actually, it supports what I was just discussing with Simon, too.”
“Simon is the home health nurse?” Cory clarifies.
“Yeah, he moved in just a couple of hours before you called. I gave him a rundown of the basics so he could make an informed decision about staying, and he had an interesting theory as well.”
Naz tells us about his conversation with Simon. If he’s right, it changes the game as well as our plan for catching this person.
“This all makes sense to me,” I say, still not looking Naz directly in the eyes.
“Their texts have kind of been all over the place. It’s one reason I didn’t think they were connected to the actual attack, but if you put them together and consider that the physical threats were meant to scare and not actually harm anyone… ”
“We’re not working with a criminal mastermind here,” Cory finishes for me. “They’re grasping at straws.”
“In that case, we should be able to create a diversion, right?”
“How do you mean?”
“Send us all to New York to meet with legal and the investigators,” Naz says.
“I don’t think putting you all in the public eye is a good move right now,” Cory starts.
“The rest of the guys won’t actually be there.
The trip is just a decoy,” Naz explains.
“File the itineraries into the system so they think we’re all going.
Scott and I will actually go to keep up appearances in case we’re followed at any point.
We normally stay at Will and Ari’s condo, and the label owns the only other flat on that floor, so the security team has somewhere to stay.
Which means if anything bad happens, there are unlikely to be innocent bystanders. ”
“And then what?” I ask, finally looking up to meet his gaze.
“We hope they make a move and are stupid enough to get caught.”
His expression is flat, devoid of emotion. His dark eyes are locked on mine, but it’s like there are shutters up, blocking me from seeing the real person beneath the hard exterior. It’s hard not to wince after I spent so long getting under his shell, getting to know the sweet softness inside him.
Cory’s voice breaks through the tense silence. “I can work with that, and I’ll meet you there, too. Scott, when you get here, I’ll need you to turn over the phone. It’ll be easier for us to see if we can trace anything.”
“But—”
“Just temporarily,” Cory assures me. “I’ll need to meet with Blake about this, anyway. So I’ll try to get the phone back to you once we make a final decision about what to do with you.”
What to do with me.
Scott: What do you want from me?
My ears pop as the small jet begins its descent, the change in cabin pressure settling inside my head like a constant buzz.
I swallow against it, wishing it was as easy to clear the uncomfortable pressure from my chest. The loud mechanical whirring of the landing gear and the initial thud of the wheels touching down do nothing to break the oppressive silence that’s filled the cabin for the last hour and forty minutes.
Naz has barely said a word to me since we got off the phone with Cory, and even then he wasn’t truly speaking to me. It was more like he was speaking at or around me while we came up with a plan for New York.
I had a few minutes of hope that Naz would be able to overlook my stupidity, or that his ability to compartmentalize would allow him to process and maybe even rationalize my reasons for hiding the messages from him. But it’s looking more and more like that’s not going to happen.
Maybe he’s just upset and not wanting to talk. Maybe he’s worrying over not being there to help his grandparents settle in, and having the whole band move in. Maybe he just needs time.
Or maybe he’s done with me.
I wouldn’t be surprised. He probably blames me for Jesse and Luc getting hurt. I blame me.
Understanding doesn’t make the likelihood that this is over any easier. The thought of him leaving me sits in my gut like a boulder, weighing me down and making me feel sluggish.
None of that changes what I need to do, either.