The Inside Man

Chapter 11: The Inside Man

The podcast clip went viral fast. Within forty-eight hours, Julian’s confession was clipped, looped, and spread across every corner of the internet. #JuliansBodyguard was trending worldwide, and amateur sleuths were racing to figure out who he was.

For Kael, it was a security nightmare. For Julian, it felt like relief.

It was 3 AM. on a Friday. Julian was asleep in the bedroom, tangled in the sheets, breathing slowly and even. The soft rise and fall of his chest were the only peaceful things in the room.

Kael wasn’t sleeping.

He sat at the dining table, three laptop screens lighting his face blue in the dark. The last few days had softened something in him. Tonight, that was gone. The stalker’s silence wasn’t retreating. It was planned.

He pulled up the security logs and started hunting the leak.

Apex was solid from the outside. That meant the leak was inside. Kael opened a document and started laying out what he knew.

Incident 1 (The Garage). The photo was taken from twenty feet in a private hotel garage. The decision to skip the afterparty was made in the SUV at the last minute. Only four people knew: Kael, Julian, the driver, and Marcus.

Incident 2 (The Crimson Letter). Slipped into the vetted gift pile sent up to the penthouse. Only Julian’s management had the authority to send it up.

Incident 3 (The Paparazzi Ambush). The press hit the exact loading bay. Kael switched to ten minutes before they used it.

He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. The driver wasn’t at the label meeting. The label execs weren’t in the SUV.

The one name that overlapped all three was Marcus.

But Marcus made his living off Julian. Hurting him made no financial sense, and Marcus cared about nothing more than money.

Kael pulled the dashcam footage from the first night. Marcus, typing on two phones. “I’ve already texted the VIP list for the afterparty.”

Kael’s stomach dropped. He hacked into Marcus’s cloud backup — a clear violation of protocol - and he didn’t care. He pulled the list Marcus had sent that night and ran it against the tour’s employee database.

One name flagged red.

Brenda Hayes. Production Assistant.

Kael stared at the file. Brenda. The girl who’d fumbled Julian’s coffee order in the dressing room, week one. She’d been in the room. She had backstage access. As Marcus’s assistant, she’d have seen every text he sent about their location.

Kael ran her social security number through a deeper database.

The screen blinked twice.

ERROR: SSN INVALID. FABRICATED IDENTITY DETECTED.

“Son of a bitch.” He shoved back from the table so hard the chair tipped and hit the floor.

She wasn’t scared of Julian. The spilled coffee, the running out of the room — that was covered to map the security setup. She’d planted the letter. She’d been tracking Marcus’s texts. She was the leak.

Before Kael could hit the alarm, the laptops died.

Total darkness swallowed the room.

The AC cut out. The blackout shades slammed down on their own, sealing off the city lights.

BEEEEEEP.

An alarm screamed from the wall panel — a jammer, killing every signal in the building. They were cut off.

Kael didn’t wait. He drew his gun and racked the slide, the sound sharp in the dark. He crossed the living room fast and quietly and went straight for the bedroom.

“Julian.” His voice cut through the dark like a command.

Julian jolted upright, gasping. “Kael? Why is it so dark?”

“Up. Shoes on. Stay behind me.” Kael hauled him out of bed, one strong hand locked around his arm. “The power’s out. He’s in the building.”

“What? How? You said the locks—”

“It’s someone on the inside.” Kael pushed him into the reinforced corner of the room and put himself between Julian and the door. He raised the gun, the sights glowing faint green in the dark. “Brenda. From your production team. Faked ID. She’s been tracking us through Marcus’s phone.”

The blood left Julian’s face. “Brenda? The coffee girl? She was scared of me.”

“She wanted you to think that.” Kael’s eyes stayed locked on the hallway. “She just killed the power.”

“The door’s steel, Kael.” Julian’s hands gripped the back of his shirt, fingers tight against the solid muscle. “She can’t get in without your fingerprint.”

“Kill the main power and the backup generator kicks the fire safety system on.” Kael’s voice was flat. “It’s built to keep people from burning alive in a sealed room. So it does one thing automatically.”

CLACK. HISS.

The front door unlatched and swung open on its own, the sound tearing through the silence.

“It unlocks the doors.”

Footsteps started across the marble floor. Someone was inside.

“Julian.” Kael’s finger moved to the trigger. His voice dropped, steady and absolute. “Don’t move from this corner. No matter what happens.”

Julian shut his eyes, a tear sliding down fast. He pressed his face against Kael’s back, holding on like the solid warmth of him was the only real thing left.

“I understand.”

The footsteps stopped outside the bedroom door.

“I brought your coffee, Julian.” The voice was sweet, calm, and wrong. “And something for the watchdog too.”

Something metal rolled across the floor and stopped at the doorway. Kael’s flashlight snapped on, catching it in the beam.

A smoke grenade. Pin already pulled.