Chapter 83

I was still getting a tutorial on the setup when the guy I wanted to talk to came into view. He was walking with Jill so I had no trouble redirecting the crew leader to the road manager – and moving Sean out of earshot of everybody else.

The first thing he did was point to my sling.

“Ding that up again?” he asked.

“Nah,” I replied. “Jill told me that the crew leader will put anybody to work so I wanted him to know I was on the DL.”

Sean laughed but nodded.

“I know I’ve put on 10 pounds of muscle in the past month,” he said. “I’ve been lugging and toting with the best of them. Uh ... I never really got the chance to tell you how sorry I am about what Carly said to you.”

“Are you sorry?” I asked pointedly.

“Of course I am,” Sean said.

“OK, then you can prove it to me,” I told him. “Brian and I were still in the suite when the shit went down with you and her and Ryan. We heard every single thing you said – including what you told her as you were leaving.”

Sean closed his eyes and lowered his head.

“Ryan is the only other person I told,” I informed him. “I’ve had other things to deal with and Ryan told me that Liz rarely spent time with Carly anyway. I also figured, correctly enough, that you and your wife would be the easiest people to crush if it became necessary. So, now I need to know if it is necessary.”

“Shit,” Sean muttered.

“I need to know if something else is coming down the pike,” I told him. “I’m not interested in causing you more trouble than you’ve already got but I will if you’re not candid with me right now.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sean said, sighing and shaking his head. “It’s just so fucking stupid. I love my wife but, God damn it, she gets on my last fucking nerve. She doesn’t think about anything past a single moment in time. You know? She never takes a second to look down the road to see if something is going to bite her on the ass. It gets frustrating!”

“I’m rapidly learning how you feel,” I said. “Liz is just learning to think as much about tomorrow as she does about today. In some respects, she plans everything out to the smallest detail. In others, she just stumbles along hoping things work out for the best.”

“Exactly!” Sean said, pointing at me. “You know, Carly has this martial arts routine that she’s constantly tweaking. It’s designed to allow her to disarm a bigger attacker. She has every single move planned out down to the millimeter. But then she does something stupid like this.”

“Like what?” I prompted. “I need to know what information she passed along and who she passed it along to.”

Sean held up a hand.

“It wasn’t information,” he told me. “It’s like Ryan told you. Liz kept her at arm’s length so there was no information to pass along.”

“What was it?” I urged.

“Photos,” Sean told me.

“Photos?” I repeated in a tight voice. “Like of Liz undressing or...”

“No, no, no!” Sean said. “It wasn’t anything like that! God, I would have ... I don’t know what I would have done. Liz wasn’t in any of the pictures at all. They were of Liz’s property.”

I shook my head in confusion.

“Her property?” I asked.

“It’s like this,” Sean said, sighing heavily. “There is a magazine called Nashville In Town. OK? Liz is pretty private but there are a lot of rumors about how ... opulent ... her home is. Carly works out with one of the writers for the magazine and she asked if Carly might take some pictures of the house, the stables, the cars, the waterfall. She offered Carly $10,000 to take photos. I found out about it. We ... we both have a lot of expenses. She has a lot of debt. Judo isn’t a lucrative sport and it costs a lot of money to travel to tournaments and stuff. I had a student loan, a car payment and some credit cards that were taking up a lot of our income. So Carly did it.

“I didn’t know about it until afterward. I mean, as tight as our budget is, she couldn’t hide 10 grand from me. I pushed her until she told me what she’d done. Liz was pissed. I mean, she was livid that photos from inside her house had shown up in a magazine. She pulled everyone into a room and gave them hell. I lied to her. Carly and I had only been married about a year when this went down and I covered for her. She was careful not to show any of the security features or anything like that but it was completely fucked up.”

“It was,” I said, careful not to show my relief.

“They came back a couple of times for other things but I told her that I wasn’t going to help her out if she got caught,” Sean continued. “They wanted behind the scenes tour photos and things like that. I was worried that Carly would try to secure another payday with some of the other photos she’s taken.”

“Other photos?” I asked.

“Just tour stuff and pictures from Manhattan,” Sean clarified. “For the first few months, Carly was with Liz a lot. She has photos from Spain and from the apartment in New York. I was worried that she’d reveal that Liz owns the villa. I’m not sure that anybody knows about it. That’s her quiet spot away from everybody but the European press is just as ridiculous as the American photographers. She would never have a moment’s peace. That was my biggest concern.”

“And Liz never found out who gave the pictures to the magazine?” I asked.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Sean said.

“OK,” I said. “I’m going to keep this to myself unless she asks about it directly. I’m not going to lie for you. But if she doesn’t come out and ask me point-blank about it, I’m not going to bring it up in conversation. Liz is still really mad about what Carly called those little boys and I don’t want your downfall on my conscience. But this is the only time I’m going to offer this to you. The next time, you and Carly can sink or swim on your own. Do you understand me?”

“Yeah,” Sean said, nodding gravely. “Thanks, Travis. This is a good job, you know. I don’t want to lose it.”

“I know you don’t,” I said. “I’m not one to offer free advice but I’m going to now. You need to really keep an eye on Carly. I know the financial situation isn’t any better. I know that she still hasn’t found a job. I’m going to be honest with you. She’s looking in the wrong sector. She’s never going to be able to work security again. Anybody that looks to hire her is going to call Liz first and Liz is going to end the process right then. Carly needs to accept that her mistake was a fatal one as far as her career path goes. She’ll need to look elsewhere. She has the credentials to work as an instructor. I don’t think Liz would put a stop to that idea. But working personal or private security is no longer a viable career path for your wife. OK?”

Sean sighed and nodded his agreement.

“We’re going to be coming off the road for a while after we’re done here,” I told him. “She’s planning to take almost a year off. You’ll still be paid and you’ll still have duties to perform but they will be mostly local. That will give you the time to put things right with your wife if you can.”

“A year?” Sean asked. “It’s usually six months at the maximum between the end of one tour and the start of the next.”

“She’s a little burned out right now,” I lied. “She has some other things she needs to deal with and she wants to spend some time writing. Her next tour is going to be structured differently, I think. To be honest, I’ve only heard snippets here and there about what she has in mind. But I do know that you’ll have some time away from the travel.”

Sean gave a grim chuckle.

“I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing right now,” he admitted.

I opted to change the subject.

“How is the ‘Crazies List’ looking?” I asked.

Sean shrugged.

“The usual,” he said. “Most of them aren’t terrible people. They’re a little lonely; they’re a little goofy but most of them are harmless.”

“Most,” I repeated.

“Yeah,” Sean agreed. “We’ve hit on one or two that are way out there. There is a woman that is convinced that Liz is her long-lost sister. She’s sent ... a hundred ... emails. There is a guy that has a strong fixation on Liz. It’s good that the label handled all credit card transactions this time. We were able to cross-check their names and those associated with them against ticket purchasers. It’s not foolproof but it helps. We usually have a real battle with the ticket agencies to get them to release the information. This time I just called the label, told them what I wanted and they came across in like three hours. No hits, but that only means they didn’t buy a ticket. It doesn’t mean somebody we haven’t identified didn’t give them one or they didn’t steal a credit card. Uh, has anyone mentioned that you’ve got a couple of crazy emails lately?”

“They told me,” I said with a nod.

“Just watch yourself,” Sean advised. “I’m always around and I’m never too busy if you need somebody to watch your back.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I think it’s OK. The only one that really worried me was the guy from New York that threatened to cut off my head for defiling his princess.”

“That one went straight to the cops,” Sean said. “That guy is a serious whack-a-doodle and I am almost positive that if he got the chance ... you’d be a lot shorter.”

“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “The Nassau County police called us last week. They picked him up on a couple of outstanding warrants. They wanted me to file charges against him.”

“You should,” Sean said.

“I told them I’d hold off if he’d seek mental health treatment and agree to probation,” I said. “I don’t want to lock up some guy that just needs help.”

“You don’t want to have some asshole come after you with a sword either,” Sean noted.

“True,” I said.

“Has there been much fallout about ... the stuff that got out?” Sean wondered.

“A little here and there,” I said. “There was just enough truth to it to give it some airtime. Caley checking into rehab sort of squelched it though.”

“I didn’t know her then,” Sean said, shaking his head. “I’ve heard the stories though. It’s tough for me to reconcile that time of her life with what I see now. I can’t even be angry about what happened to Carly. Liz gave her plenty of chances. She could have canned me at the same time and nobody would have batted an eye. Getting moved to the advanced team fulltime isn’t a great thing but it’s better than trying to find a new gig.”

“I never wanted anybody to lose their job over that,” I said.

“Oh, I know,” Sean said. “You ... well, you heard what Ryan offered. All she had to do was apologize. She needed to apologize. Yeah, on the plane, we wondered about the kids when we found out what we were going to be doing. It wasn’t right and I’m sorry about that. But the information we got told us we’d be escorting you and two children to the beach. For the record, never once did I use the term Carly used. I wondered if they were your children but I did not denigrate them in any way. That was purely her doing and I still feel badly about it.”

“It’s over,” I said. “I can let go of a grudge now and then. I wish I’d been able to get off to a better start with both of you. I knew you didn’t want to come with me. Truth is, I didn’t want you to come with me. I was still getting my feet under me. You know? Liz had done her best to prepare me but it still hit me hard that so many people were ... interested ... in me.”

“You’re adapting pretty quickly,” Sean said. “We’ve both been around the guys that Liz hung out with. And, well, we didn’t really like them much. Everybody could see that they were using her. Well, everybody but her, I guess.”

“She knew,” I said. “To her, it was a transaction. Everybody got a bump in popularity. Their names shot up the search engines. A new set of fans got exposed to their work. I don’t like it any better than you do but I’ve accepted it.”

“No, that isn’t it,” Sean said. “You accepted her. You’re not out for any personal gain. I think if you’re honest, you’re not crazy about the job you’ve taken on. Yeah, it’s a good job and if you weren’t dating her, it’d be a great job. But you are dating her. I know what it’s like to work with somebody you’re close to. Personal and professional disagreements get muddled when the angry words start. But you’d be with her if she worked the night shift at Dairy Queen. That’s what she’s always missed. The guys she brought around would have dropped her like a hot rock if she wasn’t who she is. You’re not going to do that.”

“No,” I admitted. “I’d think our lives would be a lot easier if she worked the night shift at Dairy Queen.”