“Five minutes!”a producer yelled.
Kayne lowered the binoculars.Chloe was onstage stretching and laughing with a few of the instructors.It would be easy to pretend she was about to do the most ordinary thing in her world.Instead, she was standing in the crosshairs of someone who wanted her erased.
Sunlight caught in her hair, turning it honey-bright.She moved with a loose, easy confidence, completely in her element.His stomach muscles constricted.He’d seen her scared, shaken, furious, and exhausted.This version of Chloe, the one who commanded space without even trying, was the one that wrecked him.
“She doesn’t even look nervous,” Anja said quietly.
“She always looks calm when she’s terrified,” Kayne replied.“It’s her tell.”
The countdown finished.Upbeat, pulsing music kicked in.The crowd roared as Chloe stepped forward, headset mic in place.
“Good morning, St.Louis!”
The response was thunderous, and Kayne forgot to breathe, the sound washing over him like surf before a rip current.She was born to do this, launching into an intro that was warm, funny, and encouraging.She joked about sore quads, reminded people to hydrate, promised sweat, and complained theatrically about burpees.People laughed and relaxed.They trusted her.
Kayne felt it like a blade under his rib cage.
She demonstrated the warm-up with a weighted plate, explaining form, posture, and breathing.Her voice shifted into steady, authoritative instructor mode.“Engage your core.You don’t need speed.Control is where the magic happens.”
He’d guarded senators, CEOs, and witnesses with price tags on their heads.None of them had ever made him feel as if he was watching something sacred and fragile at the same time.
She glanced toward him between reps.It was just a flicker, a quick instinctive check.Their eyes met.She smiled, but not for the crowd.For him.
Something in his chest cracked.You don’t deserve that trust,a voice warned.Not yet.
Anja shifted beside him.“Kayne.”
Something in her tone cut through the noise.“What,” he asked, not looking away from Chloe.
She held up the tablet.“Drone count just changed.”
That got his attention.He snapped his gaze skyward, then down to the screen.
“Production registered two and the web team two,” Anja said.“I count five.”
The air seemed to thin.Kayne scanned the sky again and spotted it farther back, hanging too still.It had a black casing and no logo.
Wrong.
“Anja—”
“I see it,” she said, already reaching for her radio.“Trying to—”
A sharp mechanical whine sliced through the music, like metal screaming.The black drone jerked forward.Kayne’s blood went cold.
“Chloe!”
She didn’t hear him.She was mid-demonstration, explaining shoulder alignment to the crowd.
The drone screamed lower.Something metallic caught the sun.
No.
Before he could shoot it out of the sky, it dropped a weight plate.
Time fractured.
It fell fast, mercilessly slamming into the stage with a bone-deep crack, so close to Chloe’s head that the rush of displaced air whipped her ponytail sideways.The crowd gasped as one.
