"And while they're distracted by the Twitter storm," I said, looking at Kit, "we invite Miles Green into the dressing room."
"I'm going to need pants for this," Alfie said solemnly.
An hour later, the back lounge had transformed from a love nest into a tactical operations center.
We were dressed. Properly dressed. It felt like putting on armor. I wore my black cargo pants, combat boots, and one of Kit’s oversized band tees tucked in, with a heavy flannel shirt over it.
Euan sat at the small table, three laptops open in front of him, creating a localized heat source of processing power.
Kit was inspecting the "gift." It was a massive, ostentatious arrangement of lilies. He was carefully peeling back the floral tape on the vase base with a pair of tweezers.
"Found it," Kit muttered. "Lens is hidden in the decorative ribbon knot. Mic is in the floral foam."
"Audio and video," Euan confirmed, glancing at a frequency analyzer. "It’s currently dormant because of the Faraday bag. Once we pull it out, it pings home."
"Is Miles listening live?" Alfie asked, chewing on his thumbnail. He was pacing again, that burnt-sugar energy dialed up to a manic frequency.
"He will be," Euan said. "The device sends a 'wake up' alert when it detects voice frequencies."
"Okay," I said, pacing the strip of carpet. "We need a script. We need to give him exactly what he wants to hear, right up until the moment we ruin him."
"He wants to hear us exploiting you," Kit said, his face darkening. "He wants proof that the 'progressive' Riot Theory is just another pack using an Omega."
"So we give it to him," I said. "We stage a fight."
Alfie stopped pacing. "I don't want to fight you. Not even pretend."
"It’s acting, Alfie," I said, touching his arm. "It’s a performance. You’re good at those."
"I'm good at projectingtruth," he argued. "I'm rubbish at lying."
"Then channel the fear," I said. "Channel how scared you were that I would leave. Channel the anger at the industry."
I looked at Euan. "When do we go live?"
"We need to be in the venue green room," Euan said. "The signal needs to come from the location Miles expects. If it pings from the bus while we’re driving, he’l know it’s a trap."
"Manchester load-in is in two hours," Kit checked his watch. "We set the trap there."
"Rowan is meeting us on site with legal," I added. "She’s bringing the injunction papers."
I walked over to the whiteboard. I picked up the eraser.
I hesitated over theIntimacy Logisticsschedule.
"Leave it," Kit said softly from behind me. "It stays."
"It's private," I said. "If Miles sees this..."
"He won't," Euan said without looking up. "The camera will only activate once we take it out of the bag, which we'll do at the venue. We control the frame and what it sees."
Control the frame. That was the job.
I put the eraser down.
"Okay," I said. "Let’s run the scene."
Alfie took a deep breath, shaking out his hands. "Right. I'm the exhausted, demanding frontman. Kit is the enforcer. Euan is... Euan."
