16. Camden #3
His father pointed at the casing. “The minute you walked behind that curtain, master control would have dumped the wireless channel. Nobody runs an open mic through a commercial break.”
Chloe looked back at Camden. “Then why is he standing there like that?”
Marcus turned on her. “Because he wants you panicking.”
“No.” She shook her head once. “He wanted us in this room.”
Camden looked at Marcus.
That finally silenced him.
The arena remained somewhere beyond the insulated walls, thousands of people on the other side of production doors and concrete, but the Green Room had narrowed to three people and the transmitter in Camden’s hand.
Marcus looked down at it again.
“What did you do?”
Camden released the pack.
It landed on the carpet beside his shoes. The microphone followed, the wire coiling across the floor.
A burst of electronic feedback ripped through the room.
Chloe recoiled and covered one ear. Marcus stepped back from the transmitter as the squeal abruptly died.
The indicator kept blinking.
Chloe stared down at it.
“Oh, God.”
Marcus’s face lost its color.
Camden watched him reach for an explanation and fail to find one that survived the red light on the carpet.
“You set this up,” Chloe said.
Marcus looked at Camden. “Who touched that rig?”
Camden adjusted the front of his jacket where the wire had pulled it.
“You bribed somebody.”
There it was.
Not outrage over the confession. Not denial. Just the desperate search for the broken piece in his system.
Marcus took another step toward the transmitter. “Who?”
Camden moved toward the door.
“Don’t walk away from me.”
He gripped the handle.
Behind him, Chloe’s voice climbed. “How much of that went out?”
Marcus snapped, “Stop talking.”
“How much?”
Camden looked back.
Marcus stood over the transmitter without touching it. Chloe had retreated toward the couch, staring at the blinking indicator as if the plastic box might answer for him.
Camden had spent years watching his father control a room by controlling information. Who spoke. What got photographed. Which version reached the public.
Not this time.
Marcus pointed toward him. “You tell me exactly who you paid.”
Camden opened the door.
“Two thousand in cash buys the floor technician.”
Marcus’s expression went rigid.
Camden kept his hand on the door and met his father’s stare.
“The kill switch is jammed.”
Chloe looked down at the transmitter again.
Marcus said nothing.
Camden stepped through the doorway.
“Enjoy the legal fallout tomorrow, Dad.”
He let the door swing shut, then pushed through the service doors into the arena’s underground parking tunnel.
Camera flashes burst across the concrete before he made it ten feet.
“Ford! Did the league know you were retiring?”
“Who’s the pregnant woman?”
“Is your wife here in Miami?”
Reporters surged toward him from both sides of the lane, microphones and camera rigs filling the space between parked cars. Camden stopped instead of trying to shoulder through them. The questions kept coming, echoing through the tunnel until individual voices blurred together.
He picked out the nearest camera and faced it.
“The league is finished.”
A reporter shoved a microphone closer. “Then give us her name. Who is she?”
“No.”
Another flash broke across his face.
Camden kept his hands at his sides. “You want to write about me retiring, write it. You want to tear apart the contracts, the endorsement deals, the roster spot, have at it. My family is not part of the package.”
“Where is she?”
“Off-limits.”
A photographer called from behind the first row. “You can’t threaten the press because you don’t like the questions.”
“I’m not threatening questions.” Camden looked from one lens to the next. “I’m telling you what happens if anyone steps onto her property, photographs her home, or goes hunting for my wife because you think tonight gave you permission.”
The noise thinned.
“I’ll take every cent I have left and spend it in court.”
Someone shouted his name again, but Camden started walking.
The tunnel opened toward the street, and Miami air rolled in around the pillars. He pulled the team phone from his pocket.
For years, that device had carried schedules, PR directives, travel changes, sponsor notes, and Marcus’s orders. It vibrated in his hand.
Camden did not check it.
He dropped the phone into a trash can beside the curb.
One reporter yelled, “Where are you going now, Ford?”
Camden turned enough to answer. “To clean up what I broke.”
He stepped onto the street and raised a hand toward an approaching cab. The driver pulled over, and Camden opened the rear door before the press could close the distance.
“Downtown,” he said as he climbed inside.
The driver glanced at him in the mirror. “Anywhere specific?”
“The financial district.”
The cab eased away from the curb.
Every instinct in Camden wanted the highway south. Tess was only hours away. He could picture the marina driveway and the bait shack, where he had left her believing he had surrendered again.
Going there tonight would bring the same cameras with him.
He had dragged enough damage onto her property.
“Get me to the office,” Camden said. “I need my legal team in a room tonight so I can finish liquidating this career.”