And, damn it, I know she’s saying it just to get my mind off my mom. Kelsey has all but given up on the competition after Sydney. She still works hard and does an outstanding job, but she doesn’t comment on it anymore. I bring it up occasionally just to see if she’ll fight with me about it, and she still will, but I can tell the spark is gone. She thinks she’s lost.
“You know you still have just as good of a chance at winning this thing as we do, right?” I say, though the truth is, I don’t know if I believe it. I know sheshouldhave just as good of a chance.
And maybe, just maybe, if she and her team had found the person behind the attack on the camera system in Sydney, they’d be back in the running, but it’d be hard to justify the choice.
“Sure,” she says, rolling her shoulders as if one is bothering her.
“You okay?” I ask, moving behind her to give her a shoulder rub.
When my mom was working all the time when I was in high school, I used to do this for her regularly. She claimed my large hands were only good for one thing: shoulder massages.
“That feels good,” Kelsey says, her tone so close to a moan that my dick perks his head up in attention.
Not now,I silently reprimand my blood flow.
“Why are you so stressed?” I ask.
I get the over-the-shoulder look again. “Really?”
“Yeah, talk to me about it.”
“It’s the same reason I was stressed yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.”
“Well, tell me about it again. Maybe talking it through will help.”
“Okay, but you have to keep rubbing my shoulders,” she says.
“Deal.”
“Tampering with our cameras doesn’t make sense.”
“Why?” I ask, prompting her to keep going with her train of thought.
She taps her fingers on the table in front of her laptop. “Because there is no reason to have done it.”
“I mean, the security cameras cover the entire venue. And there are a lot of people and money in there on a concert night,” I say, playing devil’s advocate.
“Yes,” Kelsey says slowly, though I can tell her mind is moving much quicker. “But that would only make sense if they’d targeted the venue’s monitoring system too.”
“So what does it tell us that they didn’t?” I ask.
“Well, the only reason to have targetedoursystem and not the entire venue’s is to get to Jaxon.”
“Which someone did,” I add.
“Which someone did,” she repeats, clearly thinking. “But it was just a streaker. I mean, between our two teams, we stop multiple people a night from getting up on the stage with Jaxon. If my team is watching looped videos for long enough, one of the crazies is bound to make it through.” She pauses, considering. “Plus, the hack was impressive. Why would someone spend that kind of time and money just to have a possibility at streaking onstage? And we both saw the tape of the streaker’s interview—that guy had no idea about the cameras being out.”
We both sit in silence as my thumbs continue to dig into the tight knots in her shoulders.
“It can’t be about the streaker,” she says finally. “That has to be a coincidence. Right place, right time.”
“Then what’s it about?” I ask.
“Well, if we take the streaker out of the equation, then it looks like…then it looks like a penetration test.”
“You think someone was trying to penetrate you?” I tease. “Am I going to have to kick someone’s ass?”
Kelsey doesn’t laugh. She’s thinking so hard, I can almost feel the genius pushing through.
