Incognito (One Direction)

Chapter 8

One of the laptops had five moving dots on them. It kept track of where the boys were. Eliza was on another laptop, doing some background work on Modest management. It seemed that she didn’t do enough research on the actual company.

They were definitely a big part of why One Direction got big in the US. They did seem to overwork and stress on the boys with interviews, publicity stunts and touring. Eliza’s take on it was that they were trying to get every ounce of money from the boys while they still had the contract bound. The boys lacked a lot of freedom and seemed to be getting tired. The PR team liked to keep the different boys with their respective images, although from what Eliza had seen, the boys weren’t as one-dimensional as she initially thought them to be.

There were also some pretty dishonest aspects to how they handled their clients as well, and not just One Directions’. Eliza buried deeper and had to hack into a few places to see just what she was looking for.

The bad images of their clients, it seemed that there were some shady deals made to hide it. It wouldn’t be marketable to have a bad image, and any sinful parts of their lives were hushed up.

There were a lot of aspects that she had to look at. She went and looked at Rebecca Ferguson’s case for quite a while. She didn’t really stay on the One Direction part that long. She wanted to see the other ways the company managed their other clients. There was a repetitive way that they ran things, but it wasn’t necessarily good for the clients themselves.

By the time she was running out of things to learn about, she couldn’t help but wonder if Simon had sent her to protect the boys from the management itself.

That would be a force to reckon with.

She was just one person, and what made things worse was that she was undercover. There was also one tiny problem that management knew that she wasn’t one of them, but was telling everyone from the crew that she was.

A forwarded note suddenly popped up in her messages.

It was from Modest, and it was another death threat.

‘Did you like our teaser a few months ago?

That was only the start.

The real fun is coming closer than you think.

21.’

It was sent online this time, and Eliza messaged management if they could give her the original source. Hopefully, if this was some dimwitted person, she could track the IP address and get a lead from there.

To her frustration, she couldn’t trace it. Whoever these people were, they were good. It wasn’t even just some random thing to cause a stir. It was thought-of already, and quite on the same caliber as some of her other cases.

What did 21 mean?

There were multiple things that pertain to that. There could be bible passages that could give a clue to it. There really wasn’t any time to pore through every chapter that was 21 and decide one which one was relevant. No. It had to be simpler than that. It was also the number of perfection by excellence in the Bible: 3x7. And although it was a possibility, it was highly doubtful that it was something religious.

21. A symbol for a person centered on himself or herself. That didn’t seem to make sense. There were 21 letters in the Italian alphabet. None of the boys were obviously Italian, as far as Eliza knew. If any of them had slept with any Italians, she wouldn’t be likely to know and frankly, she wouldn’t try finding out. Simpler.

21 amino acids? 21 was the final stage that a man reaches his final size? This was getting a little too ridiculous, even for her. Was 21 a date? The next 21st was too far off and this warning had come too soon. It meant something else.

Birthdays. None of the boys were born on a day that was on the 21st. 21 wasn’t a significant number to them. It had to be something more specific. It had to be easy and simple though. Sometimes, what appeared as the most complicated, was the simplest.

21…. And then it hit her. Louis.

He was the eldest. He was 21 years old.

She immediately looked at the tracker to see where he was. He wasn’t at the hotel lounging around by the pool with Niall and Harry. He was out with Eleanor somewhere. More publicity.

Didn’t this come at such an opportune time though?

‘When did you receive this message?’ she sent to management as quickly as she could type.

She received a reply instantaneously. ‘Only a few seconds before we sent it to you.’

Eliza suddenly got very nervous and her eyes widened as she stared at it for a few seconds. Without thinking, she automatically closed her laptops and hid them in the safe of the room.

She put a knife inside her boots and a gun in a hidden holster as she put her jacket on. The phone was quickly in her hands and her eyes were on the dot that was marked with 1 for Louis. They were labeled 1-5 based on birth order.

She had to get something that would zip through cars. It was lucky that the management always had backup vehicles, and a motorcycle was one of them. While waiting for the elevator, she called Paul to tell him to get it unattached from the tour bus where it was being carried.

He didn’t even ask. Paul had seen too much of her to know that she had too many eccentricities that she wouldn’t be willing to share. Maybe extreme motorbike racing was one of them.

Little did he know…

When she got to the lobby, the concierge had informed her that the bike was dispatched and was waiting for her at the back entrance.

She merely smiled and headed toward the kitchens, where one of the usual service entrances was located.

The bike looked fast and beautiful.

She took a glance at the tracker again and activated the GPS that would take her the quickest to Louis.

“Send message to Paul,” she dictated to her phone as she got on the bike and started it. “Keep an eye on the boys at the hotel. I received another message.”

She put on her helmet.

“Delete recording after received.”

She zoomed away and hoped that she wasn’t too late when she found Louis.

~

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