Page 7 of Riggs (The Maddox BRAVO Team #2)

Riggs

I wake to rain ticking the window and heat tucked under my arm. For one unguarded second, I just…slow down. Vanessa is curled against me, breath warm at my throat, hair a dark spill on my bicep, my hand already splayed over her waist like it chose before my brain caught up.

I’m half-tempted to break my own rules.

Then the second ends.

Mission. I ease my arm out, lay her back into the pillow she stole from me, and stand. Sweep first: door wedge still in, latch intact, slider locked with the anti-lift I set. Hallway quiet. I flick through the morning briefs on the secure phone while the kettle hums. Rae’s overnight:

Rae: StreamLite tech (Jared) ghosted again from a different device—blocked now. Sponsor rep “Caleb” searched Vanessa’s travel tag on Slack at 02:14, deleted.

Rae: Pulled copy.

Jaxson: Pushed decoy posts to fan accounts; lobby cam scrape clean.

Hayes: No device chatter on Seattle PD scans within a 5-block. You’re clear.

Clear enough.

“Are you making tea,” Vanessa murmurs, voice thick with sleep, as if this is a thing I’ve done a hundred times.

“Kettle,” I say. “And coffee.” I pour, set both on the nightstand. “Eat.” I slide the protein bar across after the cup. “Full day.”

She flops onto her back and blinks up at me, blanket pooled at her waist, hair feral, mouth soft. My composure takes a hit it doesn’t show. “Bossy,” she says, smiling like last night lives under her skin too.

“Protective,” I correct, because giving the hunger a name won’t help either of us, and I need my hands doing something besides remembering her.

We move fast after that. She vanishes into the bathroom with garment bags; I check the route to the ballroom, confirm our back-of-house corridor and the side stair to catering.

The hotel sends a floor plan; I redraw it with exits and blind corners, send Rae’s local contact a note about a main door that doesn’t shut true.

By the time Vanessa comes out in a slate silk blouse and black pants made to ruin a man’s concentration, I’ve got a livable plan and a quiet pulse.

“You look like a problem,” I say before I can filter it.

“Good kind or bad?” She hooks a necklace, watching me over the mirror edge.

“Both,” I say. Her mouth curves like she expected that.

We take the service hall down. Brice paces near the ballroom doors when we arrive, headset askew, stress sweat making his importance hair droop.

“Thank God,” he says, which is a phrase I hear a lot and believe rarely. “We’re behind. The brand wants a ‘spontaneous’ confessional reel and the sponsor insisted on a neon arch that won’t fit through the service door.”

“Lose the arch,” I say. “Use the wall.”

He sputters. Vanessa touches his arm. “We can cheat the angle,” she says in her soothing-a-skittish-client voice. “Trust me.”

I sweep the ballroom while they tussle with aesthetics.

It’s chaos—cables like snakes, ring lights, folding chairs, a pop-up “kitchen” being wired in a corner.

Sight lines first, people second. I put one of the hotel guards at the catering hallway and another at the fire doors.

I walk the perimeter, tuck wedges where I want doors to stay shut, pocket one of the brand’s gaffer tapes for later because my hands like useful.

Rae’s in my ear. “ You’ve got three private networks in range. Venue Wi-Fi is Swiss cheese; I’m patching with our box. Sponsor’s router name is ‘Caleb-iPhone-Hotspot.’ I’m mirroring it to see who loves him.”

“Copy.” I scan staff badges as they whirl by. “StreamLite replaced?”

“ New crew. Backgrounds clean. I still don’t like the venue coordinator. She forwards floor plans to her personal email because ‘it’s easier.’ ”

“Note it.” I spot a catering cart unattended, lift the lid. Sandwiches and a knife that doesn’t belong there. I move the knife to my kit and flag the catering lead. “Chain of custody,” I remind her. She blushes and nods, grateful to be told without being shamed.

The morning is breaking a hurricane with good manners.

Vanessa turns on under lights—two cameras, three setups, four hundred micro-adjustments to make it look effortless.

Brice rattles “deliverables” into a schedule no one is reading; the PA writes on her hand and forgets and writes again on the other.

Between takes, Vanessa drinks water when I nudge it into her hand and eats bites of protein she claims to hate and then finishes.

I move her through the room like a current—behind the lights, not in front of doors, always with my body between her and the places people appear from.

“Riggs.” Her voice when she’s off camera is the one I prefer. “Am I doing okay?”

“You’re doing your job,” I say. “I’ll do mine.” I keep my eyes on the corner where a sponsor rep hovers two inches farther in the room than he belongs. Jaxson sends me his face on my phone with a red outline. Caleb. My favorite suspect.

Rae again, low. “ Ghost user pinged the ballroom router and died. Two seconds. Pulled a camera feed of the green room door. ”

“Which one?”

“ Stage right hall. Your 2 o’clock. ” I turn without turning my shoulders. The cam’s angle is off just a hair like last night. I walk past, casual, and set it back with a bland smile to a grip who’s about to argue until I stand too close and he remembers he has another thing to do.

“Lunch in ten,” Brice calls. “Then surprise confessional—Vanessa alone, handheld, fifteen minutes.”

“Not alone,” I say.

“Alone on camera,” he corrects, brittle. “Riggs, you can lurk. Just…lurk flatter.”

“I don’t lurk,” I say. “I stand.” He throws his hands and gives up.

We run the confessional in a tight corner of the ballroom under a softbox.

Vanessa sits on a stool, camera on a tripod two feet away, and talks to the lens like she’s chatting with a friend.

No location tells, no reflections. She’s good, but I knew that already.

I like the way her hands move when she searches for truth and finds a phrase that feels like her.

The afternoon blurs. Sponsor B-roll. A “spontaneous” dance shot on the empty floor that looks nice and gives me heartburn.

I keep the crowd outside—fans whose excitement bleeds under the ballroom doors like pressure under a threshold.

The hotel adds ropes we don’t need and security we don’t trust. I give them jobs they can’t screw up and keep our corridor clean.

At 5:40, we wrap the last setup. I take one more loop because that’s who I am, and end back by the “green room”—a space made out of pipe and drape and faith.

Vanessa ducks inside to switch shoes, Brice yells at his headset without knowing he has it muted, and the PA bumps a cart and apologizes to another ficus. I stake the door.

“Two minutes,” Vanessa calls, bright, because she knows how to send a room home.

She’s later than two. Three. Four. The hairs on my neck stand up. I knock once, and then push through the curtain.

She’s at the vanity table someone built from a folding table and a mirror on a stand. She has a card in her hand. It’s thick, white, the kind you use for wedding invites if you want people to think you’re serious. Her face is not her camera face. It’s stripped. Scared.

“Where was it,” I ask, already moving.

“In my bag,” she says, and her voice is both flat and shaking. She holds it out. I take it with two fingers at the edges, like it might have teeth.

Block letters, printed and glued on like someone thinks they’re in a movie: I’M GETTING CLOSER.

My body goes quiet in the way I like and also hate—every system down to what matters. “Sit,” I say. She sits. I key my mic. “Rae, we’ve got paper.”

“ On it. ” She’s already stripping feeds.

“Jaxson, eyes are yours. Who had hands on her bag in the last hour.”

“ Pulling, ” he says, voice gone clipped. “ Three options from the hallway cam. PA, sponsor rep, venue coordinator. ”

“Of course.” I bag the card in a fresh evidence sleeve from my kit, then pick up the bag and set it on the table, emptying it out one item at a time, slow and clean. Nothing else. No powder. No device. Just a note from someone who wants to scare her.

Vanessa’s hands are fists on her knees. “He was right here,” she says. “While I was in the room.”

“He was in the room,” I correct, because he hands people power. The note is a tactic. “We’ll find the hallway hole.”

“I feel stupid,” she whispers. “I feel like I let him?—”

“You didn’t let anything,” I say, sharper than I mean to and not sorry for the edge. I step in, take her wrists, pry her fingers open gently and put a water bottle in one and my palm in the other. “Look at me.”

She drags her eyes up. Pupils blown, breath fast. Panic has stages. I’ve walked them with too many people I care about.

“Four by four,” I say, the cadence I save for rooms that tilt. “In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. Hold for four.” I do it with her until her shoulders creep down from her ears and her face relaxes.

“Good,” I say. “Now name five things you can see.”

She swallows. “Your…jaw,” she says, because she’s her even when she’s scared. “The tape on the floor. The…uh, ring light there. My necklace. Your watch.”

“Four you can feel.”

She squeezes my hand. “Your skin. The chair under me. The water bottle. My heartbeat calming down.”

“Three you can hear.”

She listens. “The AC humming. Someone rolling a case. The band upstairs?” She almost laughs. “Of course they booked a jazz trio.”

“Two you can smell.”

She inhales. “Hairspray. You.”

That does something to me I put away for later. “One you can taste,” I say, softer.

“My energy drink from an hour ago.” She exhales. The shaking drops to a tremor. She is here again. So am I.

“We’re going to find who touched your bag,” I say.

She nods, quick, like a swallow. “I hate him.”

“Good,” I say. “Hate makes clean lines. Fear makes static.”

Rae is back in my ear. “ I have a clip. Sponsor rep ‘Caleb’ steps into green room at 5:07 while you were adjusting a cam, Riggs. He pretends to answer a call, sets his folder on the vanity, and then picks it up again. Time in room: eighteen seconds. Vanessa’s bag is on the chair.

He could have dropped it one-handed. Venue coordinator enters five minutes later, stays ten seconds, straightens a curtain, leaves.

The PA passes the opening twice but never crosses the threshold. ”

“Clip to Turner,” I say. The FBI has an agent with a sense of humor and a hate for men like this. “And lock down the exterior doors. We’ll leave via catering.”

Vanessa stands. Her hands aren’t shaking now. Her mouth is a thin, dangerous line. “What does it mean, ‘I’m getting closer’?”

“That he wants you to believe he can be anywhere,” I say. “He can’t. He has to use holes. We’ll close them.”

“Why me?” It’s not the brand question. It’s the human one.

“Because you’re loud,” I say simply. “Because you figured out how to turn attention into something soft for people who don’t get a lot of it.

That pisses off small men who need the world to be about them.

” I step closer, lower my voice. “And because you’re brave and that reads even when the sound is off.

He wants to make you smaller. I won’t let him. ”

She huffs a breath that is not a laugh, not a sob. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s shut the doors.”

We move. I hand the evidence to hotel security with a chain-of-custody sheet and a stare that gets me everything I want.

We exit through catering, a narrow corridor with bad art and good alarms. Brice tries to argue and then doesn’t because I say his name the way people hear when they’re an inch from a line they can’t see.

In the elevator, I text Dean the short version.

Note in tote. ‘I’m getting closer.’ Likely placed by sponsor rep Caleb. Rae has clip. Pushing to Turner at the FBI.

His reply is immediate.

Use the cover. Tighten the circle. Put Caleb on ice.

“You did good,” I say, and mean it.

“I almost threw up,” she admits.

“That can be ‘good’ in a lot of rooms,” I say, and get the ghost of a smile.

There’s complete silence for a beat, then she says, “I hate that he was so close to me,” she says quietly, like the thought is a cold that got under her coat.

“He was close to your bag,” I correct. “He wasn’t close to you.” I look at her until she looks back. “That’s the line. That’s the one I paint every time we move you. He’s going to learn to hate that line.”

She watches me for a second. “Riggs?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you.”

I nod, and I watch as she relaxes slightly.

Back in the room, I put her behind the door, wedge it, set the alarms, move a chair under the knob the way old men who survived real things taught me. I text Rae to watch the hallway cam and Jaxson to scrape Caleb’s phone. I send Hayes a photo of the card; he texts back

Glue brand is cheap craft. Printer’s low on magenta. Local. I can smell it.

He’s joking.

Vanessa stands by the window, looking at the rain making its own map on the glass. I go to her, put my hand on her back, don’t move it when she leans into it.

“I’m getting closer,” she says, quoting the note with contempt. “So are we.”

“We’re already here,” I say, and let myself have one more second with her before I turn away. I can’t cross this line no matter how much I want to.

Tomorrow, we talk to Turner. Tomorrow, I walk Caleb out of a room and hand him to an FBI agent who loves paperwork. Tomorrow, we tighten everything until “close” becomes “caught.”

Tonight, I keep watch, and she sleeps. That’s the job. I just need to keep reminding myself of that fact.