Chapter 29 Saving Face
Eli’s POV
By the time the all hands started, I had already watched Sloane be tried and sentenced three different ways without a jury.
The text from Noah the night before had set her jaw in that tight way I was starting to recognize as the difference between controlled anger and barely contained fury. She had shown it to me without a word, the little glowing line about Sentinel Gate and being closer to her. I had wanted to throw the phone in the lake and go find him with my hands. Instead, we had gone back to work.
Now we were back in the gleaming heart of Mercer Dynamics, and my job was simple on paper. Keep her breathing while she stepped into a spotlight that wanted blood as much as reassurance.
The auditorium hummed with nervous energy. Employees packed into rows, badges glinting, side conversations bubbling and dying as the big screen cycled through Mercer branding. Above all that, the weight of a government contract deadline and a scandal that would not let go.
On my map, this was a box with too many entries. I had already walked each one that morning. Main doors, service corridors, fire exits, loading dock ramp.
“Contractor cluster rear corridor, twenty degree camera three,” Mila’s voice came in my ear from the temporary ops room we had thrown together. “They have been loitering for ten minutes. Vendor badges check out, but they are too interested in the walls.”
“I see them,” I said, eyes flicking to the feed on my tablet. Three guys in matching polo shirts pretending to be fascinated by a mop closet. “Keep a lens on the basement too. That service elevator pausing with no schedule was wrong.”
“Already flagged,” she said.
Onstage, Sloane walked out like she owned the world. Which, here, she did. Dark suit, hair in that severe line, expression cool. If you did not know her, you would not have seen the faint tightening around her eyes, the way her fingers flexed once on the edge of the podium before she put them flat.
She talked about resilience. About transparency. About the new security protocols we had rammed into place in record time. Her voice steadied the room. You could feel people sit a little taller, like they had borrowed some of her spine.
I worked the perimeter, always with at least two exits in my peripheral vision. The cluster of contractors shifted, one peeling away down the service hall. The basement elevator blipped again on my screen, stopping at the lowest level.
“Diaz,” I murmured, “get a body on that basement car.”
“On it,” came his reply.
It went sideways three minutes later.
Sloane was mid sentence about keeping momentum when a fire door alarm shrieked from a side exit. The sound knifed through the auditorium, hard and sudden. Lights flickered once, the massive screen behind her sputtering with a ripple of static and a flash of something that looked like a corrupted slide.
People jerked in their seats. The room tipped toward panic.
My body moved before my brain finished the equation. I was already pushing through the aisle, eyes on the glowing exit sign.
In the narrow service corridor beyond, a haze of gray smoke hugged the ceiling. Not thick enough to choke, just enough to obscure. On the floor, a small metal canister spat the last of its charge. The fire panel blinked red.
Two figures in masks used the cover to move. One headed straight toward the stage access stairs, the other angled wider.
“Two movers, service hall,” I said into my mic. “Non lethal device only. This is for confusion.”
Mila’s voice snapped in Sloane’s ear. I saw her duck onstage just as the closer intruder lunged for the step.
I hit him at the base of the stairs. The impact jarred my scraped palms from yesterday, pain flaring white. We went down hard. He tried to twist free, grabbing for my arm, but adrenaline and training made the world narrow. My knee pinned his hip, my forearm locked across his shoulders, his wrist wrenched back far enough that he hissed.
The second one made a grab through the curtain gap. I heard shoes squeak, someone curse. Then I was up again, shoulder slamming into his side, driving him away from the path that led directly to Sloane’s legs. We crashed into the wall, the metal fire door rattling.
Phones were out in the audience. I could feel the lenses on us, a hundred tiny squares framing this as entertainment. I did not care. My focus was the distance between those hands and her.
By the time building security and Ward operators piled in, both intruders were neutralized and face down. Smoke still drifted in lazy curls.
Onstage, Sloane stepped toward the edge, one hand white knuckled around the podium. For a half second, when my grip slipped and the intruder under me bucked, I felt her hand on my shoulder, steadying. Just a quick press. A human moment in a room full of eyes. Then she was back at the mic.
“Obviously someone does not like our new fire procedures,” she said into the lingering tension, voice a shade thinner but holding. “We are going to take five, clear this, then finish the important part.”
She could have let it end there. Instead, ten minutes later, she finished her remarks via livestream from a smaller room, insisting on being seen calm and present. The tremor in her tone on one line made my chest squeeze. Brave did not mean unshaken.
Later, in her office, the adrenaline still hung thick. My palms were scraped and bruised, skin raw where I had hit cinderblock. Nothing serious. My heart had not caught up yet.
She took my hand and did not let go. “Thank you,” she said. No CEO voice. Just Sloane.
“If anything had happened to you in front of all those people,” I started, then my voice cracked. I did not finish the sentence, because I did not know how to describe the particular hell of failing publicly and privately in the same breath.
She squeezed my fingers hard, grounding us both. “It did not,” she said. “You did your job.”
By evening, clips of the tackle were everywhere. Hero bodyguard takes down attacker. Billionaire CEO stays onstage. Under that, of course, came the other narrative. Freeze frames of her hand on my shoulder. Side by side comparisons of the dock photo and the stage shot. Commentators wondering how close was too close.
PR pushed hard on competency and courage. The rest of the internet did what it did.
My phone buzzed. Lucas.
Hero looks good on camera. Closer than necessary does not. Extraordinary review tonight. Be ready.
It was not the attackers that sentence made my stomach drop for.
It was the people with conference tables and voting rights who thought they could reroute where I stood.