Incognito (One Direction)

Chapter 2

There was a knock at her hotel door. She looked at it suspiciously. They weren’t going to leave for another hour, and by now, everyone knew how impatient and no-nonsense she was, so they never disturbed her with matters that didn’t need her attention.

Apparently, the boys just thought that her job was to schedule and arrange interviews properly, and only the security team knew about her higher position in terms of command. The band and boys didn’t think that she really wasn’t anything to fear. They thought she was more corporate than brute force.

If only they knew.

But no, she couldn’t make it blatantly obvious, since she was technically undercover and Simon had hired her to be discreet, which she had been trying to do, except it was so difficult when one of them would start flirting with her randomly.

It was highly embarrassing, and she couldn’t even momentarily hit their throats to keep them temporarily mute, since that would mean she would reveal how knowledgeable she was of the human body and she wasn’t exactly certain if that would ruin the vocal chords of One Direction, or might result in some damage for the other boys.

She went over to the door, grabbing her butterfly knife that was under the pillow at all times just in case.

She kept the door chain on, and opened the door slightly.

That way, if any hand decided to enter, she could just crush the wrist and make sure it was broken permanently.

It was only Paul.

“What?” she said curtly. There were only a few hours in one day where she wasn’t out checking things. Recently, this had been very taxing, since she was handling five different people and their safety.

“Niall, Josh and Liam had been out, and we had to rush them back to the hotel.”

“Why? Don’t they have a few hours off? That’s the only reason why I have free time right now.”

“The video’s on Youtube, otherwise you might think I’m exaggerating.”

She slid the chain lock and let him in. “Fifteen minutes, and I’ll handle the rest.”

Eliza opened her brand-less laptop for Paul, who typed in what he was talking about. Paul was the most tolerable among the people here. He wasn’t afraid of keeping anyone in line, but he knew the right balance of being a friend and a person who was doing his job.

He clicked on one video, and there appeared the boys while they were walking through the street with a bevy of girls trailing behind them.

Eliza immediately saw what Paul was referring to as the problem.

“How did you find out about this so quick?”

“It was a trending topic on Twitter. The fandom was joking about it, but whether it was a joke or not, I think you should know about it. I messaged the bodyguards they were with and told them to head back immediately and not to walk back.”

“Okay. Thanks Paul. I’ll handle this.”

Paul left quickly and Eliza repeated the video. It was the normal kind, except this time, there had been a red laser light flicking undecidedly on Niall’s face and then suddenly diverted to Liam’s.

Well this just made things a little more complicated for Eliza. Now she had to force herself to get along with the boys enough so they would trust her enough to have her tag around without knowing she was a bodyguard. She had only worried for concerts and signings and things like that, but she hadn’t thought anyone would just randomly try to threaten them when only a few fans were around.