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Katie shrugged, ducking her head. “I was spinning stories out of nothing,” she said. “You know, reading over all the dates and times and snippets of messages and imagining what someone who had created them would be like. After a while, I started to see some patterns, but I don’t know if they’re really there or if I just want them to be.”
“They’re there. Keep doing what you’re d-doing. Once we get to Iowa City, I’ll hook up to the servers and put some of your new filters in place. We’re going to get this guy, sweetheart. I c-can feel it.”
“I hope so,” she said with a small, worried smile. “Some of the kind of people I’m finding in here … they’re not pretty. I don’t like thinking about what could happen to Judah.”
“He’s protected, though,” Sean pointed out. “Somebody is with him at all times, keeping him ssafe.”
“Yeah.” She picked another chocolate out of the box on the seat next to her and put it in her mouth. After swallowing, she added, “I’ll still feel better after we’ve nailed this bitch to the wall.”
“Send me that d-document, okay?” Sean got out his laptop and waited for the file to appear in his Dropbox.
She w
as right to worry. He’d seen it too: behind the cheerful, energetic fans were the rabid ones. The angry ones. The haters.
Somebody should be tracking all these people for Judah all the time. Keeping an eye on the activity behind the scenes, watching for emerging threats. You could do it with software, set up a system that would monitor and alert security when someone’s behavior crossed whatever threshold of shadiness seemed appropriate. He could write the program himself, if he had enough time. Take the bare-bones, patched-together bits of code he’d been using to search for Judah’s stalker and turn them into a real program that could be modified for every individual client.
A personalized celebrity security protocol. Now there was an idea. Not just for celebrities—too small a pool—but for any kind of public figure. Newscasters. Politicians. Give them a watchdog for their social media accounts, something that would define suspicious behavior and send up different kinds of alarms whenever a wire got tripped.
Something like this, if he took it to Anderson Owens and developed it, could potentially make them enough money to get the lenders off their backs and get Mike to stop talking about selling.
Sean stood, jostling Katie’s arm as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Sorry,” he said. “Back in a minute.”
He walked to the window while he dialed, working out the time difference after he’d already committed to the call. It was only five in California. Too early. Mike would still be sleeping.
Sean let it ring. He had something worth waking him up for.
Chapter Thirty
“This isn’t a c-concert, it’s a hipster cocktail party,” Sean said with disdain, scanning the dense collection of bodies packed into the small dance floor of the Iowa City Yacht Club.
“Crowded cocktail party,” Katie commented.
“Yeah, and they’re knocking back a lot of vodka. Those guys have their work c-cut out for them.”
Katie followed Sean’s gaze to the stage, where Judah’s bodyguards flanked him as he fiddled with an amplifier. Ginny hunkered down beside him, taping the set list to the floor.
The basement smelled of sticky mixers and noisy excitement. Sean was right. It wouldn’t be easy for the Palmerston team to keep Judah safe once the concert got under way. Within an hour, this place would be hot, deafening, and roiling with drunk bodies.
The Yacht Club had a low paneled ceiling and black walls. The stage, decorated by nothing more than the brick behind it and a few neon beer signs, raised Judah less than a foot above the concrete floor.
One more venue that didn’t make any sense for a musician with Judah’s profile.
“I’m going to go up there and see if there’s anything I can do to help. I’m useless back here.” She’d been told to stay out of the way and observe, but she needed to be watching a door or scanning the crowd from one side of the stage. She had to do something.
Sean caught her hand. “Don’t. You’re safer here.”
“It’s not my safety I’m worried about.”
When she pulled away, he followed her, and she suppressed the urge to sigh. One overprotective man in her life was plenty. She didn’t want Sean worrying about her, too. It made it even harder to pretend she was on this case as an agent and Sean’s equal, as opposed to some kind of mascot Judah had picked up to suit his superstar whims.
Judah was getting just as bad. He’d whisked them into a meeting as soon as they’d arrived at the hotel—effectively cock-blocking Sean, who’d missed out on his chance for a quickie when their flight got delayed—and kept them busy until it was nearly time to leave for the Yacht Club. They drove from the hotel to the venue in his limo, and when it arrived, he’d told her, “I want you to hang around the back and pretend to be watching the concert. You don’t know me tonight.”
“But—”
“No buts, Kate. This is how we’re going to play it.”
Sean had backed him up, making her wonder just how useless they both thought she was. And exactly what Judah was worried about.
