“Did someone break in?”
Kayne shook his head, eyes never leaving the screen.“There’s no breach notification.”A muscle jumped in his cheek.“But something tripped the system.”
They were moving seconds later, grabbing clothes and half-lacing their shoes, the easy intimacy of moments ago burned away by adrenaline and a creeping dread Chloe didn’t want to name.
They met Anja in the kitchen.If she was surprised they came from the same room, she didn’t comment.Kayne didn’t say much on the drive.He didn’t need to.Chloe recognized the silence now.It meant he was running scenarios, tracing failure points, and counting how many ways this could go wrong.
The club loomed dark and quiet when they arrived, its exterior deceptively calm.There were no broken doors or shattered glass, no obvious signs of intrusion.
Kayne and Anja headed straight for the security hub.Chloe followed, hugging herself as unease crawled along her limbs, the echo of empty space pressing in from all sides.
The monitors were dead.Not powered down.Not malfunctioning.
Destroyed with intent.
Someone had yanked wires and smashed ports in a deliberate, methodical dismantling.Whoever had done this hadn’t been rushing.They’d known exactly what they were looking for.
“No forced entry,” Anja muttered, scanning the doors and locks.“No alarms were tripped beyond the system itself.”
“So they got in without triggering anything,” Chloe said quietly.
“Yes.”
She swallowed.The club suddenly felt enormous and hollow.
They swept the building and found nothing else disturbed.There was no missing equipment or trashed offices.Nothing was taken, which meant it wasn’t about theft.It was about access.
Someone had been inside her building.
And left without a trace.
#
Kayne crouched in frontof the server rack, his pulse still ticking too fast for a room that was, on the surface, quiet.
Too quiet.
Anja stood a few feet back with her arms folded, pale brows drawn as she surveyed the mess with a detective’s critical eye.The open panels and exposed wiring were not ripped out in a panic, but cut cleanly, almost surgically.
“That wasn’t vandalism,” she said calmly.“That was someone who knew exactly what they were looking at.”
Kayne exhaled slowly through his nose.Losing his temper wouldn’t help.Not when Chloe was a few feet away, pretending she wasn’t shaking.
“The system didn’t fail,” he said, his voice low and controlled, and so calm that it was dangerous in its restraint.“It wasneutralized.”He dragged a hand through his hair.“It tells me they didn’t learn on the fly.They either had time or practice.”
Anja straightened.“You’re thinking surveillance.They scoped it out ahead of time.”
“I’m thinking rehearsal,” he replied.“Someone watched the system get installed.Learned the layout and the redundancies.Then came back when they knew they wouldn’t trigger anything.”
Anja’s mouth tightened.“So they planted a camera.Something small.Battery powered, possibly.They watched the install, learned the blind spots, then pulled it before anyone thought to look for it.”
Kayne’s gaze swept the room the way his brain had been trained to do since he was eighteen.He hated how clean that theory was.How plausible.
“Which means,” Anja said, finishing the thought, “they know how we think.”
Kayne’s teeth clenched.“Not anymore.”
He pulled his phone from his pocket and started walking.“That’s not happening again.”
