His breath caught. Once. Barely visible. I'd trained myself to notice when someone's breathing changed.
He stayed still and didn't turn away.
I should've looked away first and stepped back, reestablishing the professional distance I'd already compromised. Instead, I stood there and let him see me seeing him.
"You were watching," he said.
"I was."
"Thank you."
His English was clean and barely accented. It was fluency that came from deliberate study instead of immersion. His voice was lower than it had been in the song, richer, with a grain that the production had mostly polished away.
I nodded. His mouth shifted slightly. It wasn't quite a smile; something more careful than that.
A handler appeared at Rune's elbow, speaking rapid Korean. Rune answered without breaking eye contact with me, then finally turned away.
The system reasserted itself. Handlers and managers took over. It was the machinery required to keep four men moving through their scheduled obligations. I retreated to the wing, flexing my hand once as I tried to shake the sensations. My palm still carried the sense-memory of the contact. It was the unique shape of Rune still imprinted on my skin.
I'd forgotten what it felt like to want to hold on.
Chief Kang appeared at my shoulder. "Good instincts."
I glanced at him. He was watching the stage, not me. "Proximity."
"Fast proximity." He tilted his head slightly, still not looking at me. "You have good instincts. You move instead of thinking it through first."
I didn't know whether that was a compliment or a warning.
"They should have routed the runner differently," I said. "It was a predictable collision point."
"I know. I told the tour coordinator last week." Kang's lips pursed slightly. "She said she'd address it."
"She didn't."
"No."
We stood in silence, watching the band members disappear into the corridor with their handlers. The stage crew moved in immediately, adjusting equipment and running cables.
"Maren mentioned a credential issue this morning," I said.
Kang's expression shifted. "Expired vendor pass. Three months out of date."
"Where?"
"Loading bay. Service entrance. Grove Street side." He gestured vaguely toward the back of the building, where the venue opened onto the less pristine reality of San Francisco's mid-Market neighborhood.
"Did they catch anyone on the security footage?"
"Average height. Dark jacket. Ball cap. Face angled away from the cameras." Kang's jaw tightened. "Professional work. Someone who knows how to move in monitored spaces."
"You think it's connected to the messages Rune’s been receiving?"
"I think expired credentials rarely scan at all. This one did, long enough to get through the door. Then the system flagged it." He finally looked at me. "That's not an accident. It's a test."
"Testing what?"
"Response time. System vulnerabilities. How long it takes for someone to notice." He paused. "I asked specifically for someone who sees patterns, Griffin. Someone the industry decided it couldn’t afford anymore, but who still understands how systems break. And on your first day here, two days after you acceptedthe contract, we've got our first credential breach in eight months."
