Page 1 of Freeing Savannah

PROLOGUE

The notes should have soared.

Instead, they trembled beneath her fingers.

Savannah Gaines sat beneath the glow of stage lights in the packed concert hall of the Kennedy Center, her hands poised above the Steinway grand piano. She’d performed on the world’s finest stages, from Paris and Vienna, to United Arab Emirates and China. But tonight was different.

The lights at the Opera Hall bathed her in gold, warm and blinding, as the hush of the audience stretched long and reverent. Every seat was filled with diplomats, ambassadors, members of the media, and other influentials. The President, Martha Cuthbert, sat in the President’s box with a quiet but powerful intensity. The leader of the free world leaned forward, her gaze meticulously tracking every note Savannah played, her unwavering focus never faltering for even a moment.

This was the grand finale of a cultural diplomacy tour that had spanned eleven countries in twenty-one days. An exhausting, glittering whirlwind of music, photo ops, and forced smiles. But also . . . something more.

Somewhere between the Parisian cafes and the neon lights of Beijing, she’d found something truly unexpected.

She hadn’t expected her stepfather to hire a private security detail. But then again, Senator McNabney had always liked control. And she definitely hadn’t anticipated her new bodyguard to be Sawyer?the boy who once swore he’d never let anything bad happen to her. A boy she had to leave behind when her mother remarried and moved her to Washington, D.C.

Now he was back. Older. Sharper. Quieter. And somewhere along the endless tour, between the formal dinners and late-night practice sessions, that old friendship bloomed into something else.

Something extraordinary.

Something real.

Sawyer Graves had re-entered her life not as the boy next door from summers past, but as the hardened, quiet protector assigned to her by Condor’s Overwatch, the private security team her stepfather insisted on hiring. She hadn’t recognized him at first, not beneath the beard and muscles. But the moment she did, everything changed.

He remembered the swing in her grandmother’s backyard. The secret fort in the woods. Her favorite ice cream flavor. And as chaos unfolded around them, Sawyer became more than just a bodyguard. He became her anchor.

But tonight, he wasn’t right by her side.

She sat alone at the concert grand, fingers poised over the keys, counting rests in her head, as the orchestra played behind her. The sleek glow of an iPad illuminated the digital score before her. Her heart beat to the rhythm of the Concerto, but her blood ran cold.

A soft buzz from the iPad mounted above the keyboard drew her eyes without tilting her head.

IT’S GOING TO BE AN EXPLOSIVE PERFORMANCE.

She’d ignored it, convinced it was a glitch. A prank.

Then came another. The message blinked, then vanished, replaced again by the digital sheet music of Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto.

I SEE YOU.

She swallowed hard and kept going, her fingers gliding through the storm of arpeggios and shifting harmonies with practiced grace, while the blood in her veins turned to ice.

Two days ago, Savannah had been in Japan, a country she never imagined she’d visit, wrapping up the diplomatic tour. A cultural envoy. An art ambassador. A goodwill mission dressed up in gowns and encores. She’d smiled for diplomats, posed beside monuments, and poured herself into the music like it could shield her from the demands of the world.

Savannah blinked hard, the sweat at her temple trickling down past her cheekbone. Her heart was pounding, her shoulders locked in place. On the screen, another message appeared.

I WARNED YOU.

She ignored the messages and played on, wrists stiff, smile fixed for the audience who had no idea someone was enacting a sick joke. A hacker. Some bitter protester with a keyboard and too much time.

But by the time she reached the second movement, she knew better.

ONE WRONG NOTE AND THEY DIE.

And another.

DON’T STOP PLAYING. EVER.

Savannah had learned to compartmentalize years ago. It was the only way to survive the stage. But this was something else. Her fingers flew across the keys with trained precision, masking the rising panic with perfect form. To the audience, she looked like a virtuoso lost in the music.

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