Chapter 128: CHAPTER 129: Eyes in the Crowd

ZANE'S POV

The noise inside the massive arena was so loud it felt like it was vibrating straight through the floorboards and into my shoes. Thousands of people were screaming, cheering, and stomping their feet as the final seconds of the championship game ticked down. The whole place was alive, electric, buzzing with the kind of excitement that made everyone lose themselves in the moment.

Everyone except me.

I stood near the edge of the players' bench, breathing heavily, but my mind was a million miles away from the scoreboard. I had attended the championship for two reasons. The first was hockey. The second was Aria. And the second reason was eating me alive.

Ever since my private investigation started uncovering strange information about her background, I had become increasingly worried. It started out as a simple background check because I was curious about the new girl who had tried to confess her feelings to me in the cafeteria all those weeks ago. I remember her standing there with her hands twisting together, looking at me with those bright, honest eyes, and I remember how casually I had brushed her off. That memory sat wrong in my chest now. It dug into me at strange hours, usually when I was alone, usually when I should have been sleeping. I kept thinking about the way her face had crumbled when I walked away, and the way I hadn't cared enough to look back.

But the deeper my investigator dug into her background, the more confusing and terrifying the details became. People were tracking her. People were spending serious money to monitor her daily life long before Bianca ever hired that street thug to cause trouble at the warehouse. The realization had turned my curiosity into something heavier, something closer to dread. Because if dangerous people wanted her before any of us even knew her name, then Aria wasn't just a girl caught up in petty school drama. She was a target. A real one.

And now, the championship brought together too many important people, making it the perfect opportunity for someone to move unnoticed in a massive crowd.

While everyone else focused on the game, cheering for every goal and screaming at the referees, I spent most of my time watching the crowd. My heart was hammering, not from the game, but from the tight, sick feeling of anticipation curling in my gut. Something felt wrong tonight. I couldn't name it, couldn't point to a single reason why my skin was crawling, but the instinct was there, hot and sharp, pressing against my ribs like a second heartbeat.

I kept my back turned slightly to the ice, scanning the packed rows of seats rising up toward the ceiling. I paid attention to faces, movements, and conversations. Most people were exactly who they claimed to be. Students with painted faces and foam fingers. Proud parents leaning forward in their seats. Pack members wearing their family crests. Local visitors eating overpriced popcorn and laughing.

A few weren't.

Several individuals stood out immediately because they seemed far more interested in observing people than watching hockey. They weren't cheering. They weren't looking at the puck. Their eyes were constantly moving, scanning the student section, checking exits, and holding small, encrypted earpieces in their ears. One of them was wearing a plain dark jacket that looked too clean, too new, and too deliberately forgettable for someone attending a high school championship game.

My stomach twisted into tight knots. They were professionals. I could feel it in the way they stood, the way their shoulders stayed level and still while everyone else bounced and swayed with the crowd. They moved like men who knew exactly how to disappear when they needed to, and that knowledge sent a cold line of ice straight down my spine.

"Hey, Zane! Great game, man!" one of my teammates yelled, slapping me hard on the shoulder as the final buzzer sounded and red lights flashed across the glass.

"Yeah, thanks," I muttered, forcing a quick smile that felt like a mask stapled to my face.

The crowd erupted into an absolute frenzy. Students rushed over the barriers, spilling onto the ice to celebrate with the team. Teammates shouted, threw their gloves in the air, and hugged each other tightly. Parents were crying in the front rows, and the band started playing a loud, victorious fight song.

I barely heard any of it. My ears were filtering everything through a wall of static, catching only the sounds that mattered. Footsteps moving against the flow. A jacket zipper being pulled up in the corner of my vision. The soft click of a phone being raised to someone's mouth instead of their ear.

Amidst all the chaos, celebrations, and screaming teenagers, I finally spotted one of the men I had been investigating.

He was standing near the concrete pillar underneath the lower bowl, wearing that plain dark jacket that blended into the shadows. The man wasn't watching the players. He wasn't watching the championship trophy being lifted into the air. His attention was completely fixed on Aria.

She was standing up in the stands with Maya, looking flushed and happy as the Steel brothers swarmed the glass below her. She was smiling. She was clapping. She had no idea.

That was enough to make me follow him.

I slipped away from my celebrating teammates, keeping my head down and moving quickly through the thick sea of cheering students. The man in the dark jacket turned sharply, walking briskly toward the concrete exit tunnel that led out toward the parking lots and the service hallways.

Every step I took behind him felt like stepping deeper into something I couldn't undo. My pulse was loud in my ears, louder than the arena music, louder than the screaming fans around me. I kept my distance, staying hidden behind large groups of parents, and I listened.

He had pulled a small black phone from his pocket, holding it close to his mouth. His voice cut through the background noise of the arena, low and precise and completely without emotion, like a man reading coordinates off a map.

"Position four is locked," the man whispered harshly into the phone. "The target is confirmed. She is right here. Yes, right above the home team bench surrounded by the Steel pack. The crowd is too wild right now to make a clean grab, but she is vulnerable. Standing right out in the open."

My blood turned to ice in my veins. Every muscle in my body locked tight, and for a second I forgot how to breathe. I pressed myself against the concrete wall, my back flat against the cold surface, listening so hard my ears ached.

The man mentioned Aria's name. He spoke about her as though she were some kind of valuable asset. Not a girl. Not a student. An item to be collected.

"Affirmative," the man continued, pausing as he walked through the heavy double doors into the dimly lit concrete hallway. "The buyers are doubling the payout if we secure her tonight before the pack elders start dispersing. Keep the transport vehicle idling by the side exit. I am moving closer."

My stomach tightened into a fist. The words "buyers" and "secure" and "transport vehicle" slammed into me one after another, each one heavier than the last. This wasn't about Bianca. This wasn't about jealousy or high school popularity wars. This was a targeted operation by men who had done this before, men who were calm enough to discuss kidnapping a teenage girl with the same flat tone someone might use to order lunch.

He wasn't interested in school drama, romance, or Bianca's jealousy. Whatever these people wanted had nothing to do with any of that. This wasn't high school gossip. This was a professional operation, and Aria was the prize.

By the time the conversation ended, I was already moving quickly.

The man pushed open the heavy exterior door, stepping out into the cool night air. I didn't follow him outside. I knew I couldn't handle this alone, and I knew with absolute, bone deep certainty that I couldn't let Aria walk out of this arena with those men waiting in the shadows. My hands were shaking. Not from fear, but from the desperate, furious energy of knowing something terrible was about to happen and knowing I might not be fast enough to stop it.

I bolted down the concrete hallway, my sneakers slapping against the cold floor, echoing loud and fast. I burst out onto the ice rink floor where the Steel brothers were still standing below the stands, looking up at Aria with that intense, possessive hunger in their eyes.

They were celebrating. They were smiling. They didn't know.

I needed to find them and warn them because this situation had just become far more dangerous than any of them realized.

The trophy was gleaming under the stadium lights. The crowd was still chanting the team's name. And somewhere outside the building, in the dark, a vehicle was idling, waiting for Aria.

My lungs burned as I pushed through the last cluster of celebrating students, heading straight for Kai. The words I needed to tell him were clawing at the inside of my throat, sharp and urgent and terrifying, because once I spoke them, everything was going to change.