My Bodyguard

Chapter one

Claire’s POV

The first crack wasn’t a sound so much as a feeling — loose and hot, like somebody popped a balloon inside my ribs. Then glass came off the lights, and my monitor blew a hiss, and people started screaming. Someone’s elbow clipped my hip and I stumbled into the mic stand. My hand went warm — singing loud does that sometimes, but this was different: slick.

A man I’d never seen moved into my space so fast I thought he was part of the crush. He wasn’t. He turned his body along mine like a door closing, one arm high to shield my head, the other anchoring my waist. I smelled gun metal, club beer, mint.

“You know what this is about?” he asked, calm like he’d just leaned over to comment on the weather.

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

“Someone does,” he replied, and I felt it more than heard it: maybe someone who sent the men with guns. Another string of pops — three quick — and the stage lip to my left splintered. People poured down the wings, and he moved me with them, hand at the base of my spine like he’d done it a hundred nights.

“We’re taking the back door,” he said, low, as we hit black backstage. “My car.”

I tried to laugh, but it came out breath. “Who are you?”

“Rowan.” He didn’t look at me. He swept a glance around the corridor and eased me behind him. “I’m the maybe that gets you out of here.”

A young stagehand ran past, eyes wild. Rowan kept his body in the gap between me and the greenroom door, shifting me inch by inch. Another burst of gunfire popped somewhere up front — farther this time, which could mean they were moving too, or it could mean nothing.

“Walk fast,” he said. “Don’t run.”

I walked fast. My heels clicked, stupid and bright. He kept that hand on me like he was afraid I’d dissolve and he’d need to gather me up.

Backstage smelled like dust and cables and old sweat. We turned a corner and my bag snagged on a case; Rowan cut it free without breaking step. “Leave it.”

“I need—”

“You need air outside this building.” He said it not unkindly, just as fact, the way I tell drummers we’re not taking requests.

We came to a steel door; he put himself between it and me, radio at his mouth, quiet words. When it buzzed open, night air hit my bare ankle where a strap had broken. Rowan’s jacket was around my shoulders before I realized I was cold. We crossed a yard that stank of bottles, toward a car I registered more by its clean lines than its color.

He opened the passenger door and finally looked at me straight on, eyes checking my face, my hands, probably tallying damage. “You hit?”

“I don’t think so.”

That almost-smile again — gone fast. “Good.” He shut me in, and I heard the frame go solid the way a bolt does.

Through the windshield I watched him walk the perimeter, methodical, head turning. I touched my cheek and my fingertips came away clean. My fingers weren’t shaking. My voice, when I tried it in the quiet car, sounded a little strange to me, but even:

“I don’t know who wants me dead.”

He wasn’t in the car yet, but I said it anyway, like practice. Like naming a key before you play in it.

Rain began, soft. Inside the car I sounded it out quietly to myself — the high C I’ve always hated — and was a little proud that it didn’t crack.