“Clean,” he muttered.“Too clean.”
“What does that mean?”Chloe asked.
“They were fast,” Anja explained.“In and out with no prints or debris.This wasn’t opportunistic, it was organized.”
Kayne bent down and picked something off the ground.It looked like a link, similar to the one he’d found in her office.
“Was there a chain around the trailer?”he asked Hal.
“No.I don’t know where that came from.”
Kayne pocketed it and lifted his gaze to Chloe, green eyes heavy with knowledge he didn’t want her to carry.Her stomach dipped.She knew that look now.
Anja disappeared as Kayne guided her back to the gym.
“This wasn’t some teenager looking for scrap to pawn,” Kayne murmured.
Before she could respond, a familiar voice chimed in behind them.
“I passed the construction crew on the way in.”Leo strode over, wearing adon’t-even-think-about-lying-to-meexpression.“Break-in?”
Chloe nodded.
Anja returned with two bags.She unshouldered a sleek duffel.“Cameras go up today.”
“I have experience with electronics,” Kayne said.“Do you need help putting them up?”
“Yes.”
Chloe opened her mouth to ask why he wasn’t taking the lead, but she realized he was keeping his cover as boyfriend, not bodyguard, since Hal and a couple of the other construction workers were nearby.
“I’ll help too,” Leo offered.
Kayne took the second bag from Anja, and the three of them went to work,
“You’re installing cameras?”Chloe asked.
“Everywhere,” Anja said.Her light eyes softened a fraction.“Inside.Outside.Roofline.Parking lot.If a squirrel sneezes in the wrong direction, we’re gonna know.”
Kayne shot Chloe a look over his shoulder.“Your gym’s about to be the safest damn construction site in St.Louis.”
She’d planned to install a security system when the renovations were finished.That timeline just got aggressively revised.And she had no doubt that what Kayne and Anja brought with them wasn’t something you picked out online after reading reviews.
“None in the locker rooms,” she called out.Her clients needed to know they wouldn’t be spied on while they showered and changed.
Kayne was already scaling a ladder he found somewhere, a box of motion sensors tucked under one arm like a man born to do this.Anja mapped the perimeter, calling out placements and coverage zones.Leo kept up with them, positioning cameras as instructed.At one point Anja turned back, her voice low but unyielding.
“This wasn’t random, Chloe.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“And we’re not letting them get any closer.”
Chloe swallowed hard and nodded.Between the break-in, the stalking, the threats, and the way her life had shifted so far off balance she barely recognized the horizon, she should have been shaking.But watching Kayne move with unflinching purpose, Anja lock down every blind spot, and Leo’s fierce expression as if he’d bulldoze St.Louis if it meant keeping her safe, she exhaled for the first time that morning.
Someone was hunting her, but she wasn’t alone anymore.And whoever had broken in last night?They weren’t going to like how well this place recorded their face next attempt.
This time, she’d be ready to look back.
