Chapter Six
As the paramedics loaded their injured charges into the ambulance, Lattie addressed the group, telling the performers to go home and rest while the stagehands did a thorough inspection of the equipment.
Rehearsal would resume tomorrow, unless otherwise notified, but for now, Lattie and the choreographer would be reaching out to the dancers’ emergency contacts before heading to the hospital themselves.
Chloe was still shaking, her hands icy cold as she headed into her dressing room to grab her things. Those poor dancers.
Reaching for the drawer where she stashed her bag, her hand stalled partway.
It was partially open. Yanking it the rest of the way, she saw her bag was open too.
Had someone been in here rummaging through her things?
Snatching it up, she did a quick check to see if anything was missing.
She never carried much cash, but what little she had was still there, as were all her credit cards and her ID.
With the most important things accounted for, she looked through the other items. Her brush was there, and her makeup…
Wait. Had she taken her hand lotion out to use and forgotten to put it back?
She must have. She couldn’t imagine anyone being so desperate for moisturizer that they’d steal from her. But then, why was her bag open?
Unnerved, she quickly gathered up her things and was more than happy to take up Danny’s offer when he volunteered to walk her to her car.
He was interested in her; she knew that.
He hadn’t exactly hidden it, but then, according to some of the gossip she’d heard, Danny was interested in anything with a pulse.
And while he was tall, fit, and attractive, with his dark blond hair, green eyes, and perfect smile, he didn’t do anything for Chloe.
She’d made it clear she just wanted to be friends, and he’d accepted her decision good-naturedly.
“I can still flirt with you, though, right?” he’d teasingly asked her.
Chloe laughed. “Can you be around a woman and not flirt?”
He’d thought about it for a moment before unabashedly replying, “No.”
“Then I guess you can still flirt with me.”
There was no flirting today, though, as he walked with her out to the parking lot. His usually irreverent grin was banished under the weight of what happened. “That was fucked up.”
Yes, it was. In all her years on the stage, nothing like that had ever happened. “I hope they’ll be okay.”
Danny nodded with a grimace. “They won’t be able to perform. They’ll need to be replaced.”
He wasn’t wrong, though his pointing it out so soon after it happened struck a distasteful chord inside Chloe. As if the show was more important than the performers’ well-being. “Lattie will make that decision once he knows more.”
When they reached her car and she used her remote to unlock it, Danny opened the door for her. “Are you going to be okay? I can come over if you want.” He quickly raised his hand as if to forestall any protest. “Just two friends hanging out.”
Chloe tried for a smile, knowing it was a weak attempt at best. “I’ll be fine. I think I’ll use the time to catch up on my sleep.”
“Okay.” Leaning in, Danny hugged her and kissed her cheek. “Call me if you want to talk.”
“I will.”
But when Chloe got home and the walls began to close in around her as a fearful feeling tightened her chest, she didn’t call Danny, but another man instead.
As soon as Erik left the opera house, he called Jayla, and she began searching through earlier footage, trying to find the culprit.
Once he was home, he immediately logged in to help her search.
They located the person on the feed, but the problem they’d run into was two-fold.
One, Erik had a limited number of cameras, so he’d had to prioritize, and the feed from the one camera with a view of the catwalk didn’t pick up enough detail of their saboteur’s facial features, even with the low-light technology, especially since he’d been wearing a dark hoodie with the hood up.
All they knew at this point was that he was a clean-shaven Caucasian male of roughly the same height and build as Jackson Savoy.
From there, they switched their focus to the feed monitoring points of entry, hoping to get a clearer picture.
This brought them to their second problem: the number of people moving freely in and out of the opera house.
Performers, musicians, stagehands, set builders, wardrobe people, and administrative staff, all of whom had at least one person among them who fit that limited description and could have easily thrown on a hoodie.
More so among the stagehands and set designers.
There were too many variables, and if Jackson Savoy chose to disguise himself, blend in with the crowd, would they even recognize him?
He could walk in with a supply crate or violin case loaded with plastic explosives, and they might never suspect a thing.
Erik let out a low growl of frustration. Short of posting up at the door and searching everyone before they entered, he wasn’t sure how to work around it.
“Someone went into Chloe’s dressing room.”
“What?” Switching the feed on his laptop, he accessed the camera that monitored her door.
“It was while she was on stage, just after the light fell.” Jayla gave him the corresponding time-stamp, and he navigated to it, watching as the door slowly eased open and a man in a navy-blue hoodie with the hood up slipped cautiously inside.
“Dammit! The fucker kept his head down.” Had he known there was a camera?
And now Erik was kicking himself for not putting another one in there with a full view of the space.
Instead, he’d attempted to protect Chloe’s privacy – it was a dressing room after all, and he hadn’t felt right about possibly seeing her unclothed without her consent – and had only installed one camera with a view of the door so they could monitor who went in there.
Jayla had agreed with the decision at the time, deeming the point of entry more important since the room didn’t have any windows that someone might slip through.
“I’m going back there,” Erik announced, standing and grabbing his keys.
Whether it was Jackson Savoy or someone else, according to the feed, the guy had been alone in Chloe’s dressing room for thirteen minutes.
There was no telling what he could have done in that time.
He could have planted his own cameras, or worse, sabotaged something.
“I need to check it out. Do you have eyes on Chloe?”
“I do.” A moment passed as Erik headed for the door, before Jayla added, “She seems agitated.”
That stopped him in his tracks. “What do you mean? Is she okay?”
“She’s pacing in her living room and keeps looking at her phone.”
“Probably waiting for an update on the people who were hurt.”
“Looks like she gave up waiting, she’s calling someone.”
Erik’s eyes widened as a moment later, his phone flashed with another call, Chloe’s name appearing on the screen. “Er… She’s calling me.”
Sounding perplexed, Jayla asked, “Why?”
With all that happened today, he figured the art lessons would be off the table for a while, but maybe he was wrong. “I’ll tell you later. I need to take this.”
“Fine. Keep me posted.”
Hanging up with Jayla, he switched over. “Chloe? What’s up?”
A few beats of silence, and he wondered if the call got disconnected before he heard her say, “Hey.” Clearing her throat, she asked, “Can you talk?” There was a subdued quality to her voice, so unlike her usual bright and cheery personality.
Erik set his keys down. “Of course.” He could head to the opera house to examine her dressing room after. “Are you all right?”
“Things are just weird right now, and I needed someone to talk to. Do you mind?”
He would have thought he’d be the last person she’d think of if she needed to bend someone’s ear, but the first part of her statement had him on high alert. “Weird how?” Had she seen something in her dressing room? A note? A threat?
Chloe hesitated a moment before she said in a rush, “I know it sounds selfish, I mean, two of our dancers were badly injured, could have been killed, but someone was in my dressing room, and I…” When her voice cracked on the last word, she trailed off, pausing for a moment before adding, “They got into my bag and stole my lotion.” She let out a huff of laughter that was devoid of humor.
“I mean, ridiculous, right? People almost die, and here I am, freaked out over a missing tube of cheap hand cream.” Quickly, like she thought he might dispute her claim, she added, “And before you ask, I already checked my car and my apartment, even though I know it was in my purse. Someone took it.”
“I believe you.” Hell, he’d seen the proof that someone was in her dressing room.
“Why lotion, though?” she asked. “It doesn’t make sense. I think that’s what bothers me most.”
Erik was sure now it was Jackson Savoy he’d seen on the feed, even if he hadn’t seen the man’s face.
Sabotaging the light fixture so it would fall had been a distraction, though it’s possible he might have devolved so completely in his obsession with Chloe that he had intended to kill – but he’d used the time to creep into her personal space.
Perhaps to sit where she sat, touch the things she touched, but he’d taken something personal. Something that smelled like her.
Chloe didn’t wear perfume. Erik’s keen sense of smell had picked up the subtle bouquet of her soap and hair products, but the most prominent scent was the lotion she used.
To Jackson Savoy’s muted human senses, that would be the scent he attributed to her.
Scent was a powerful reminder. It unlocked memories that someone may have thought were lost. But in Jackson Savoy’s case, the missing item also served to leave Chloe unsettled, off balance for whatever he had planned.
“Was anything else missing?”
“No. Not as far as I could tell. Honestly, I was freaked out, so I didn’t stick around to search the room.”
Erik would be sure to do that for her as soon as he got back to the opera house.
“So, how long have you lived in the area?”
The sudden change of subject threw him for a moment. “Er… I moved here, well, to the Virginia Beach area, when I was a teen.”
“Huh. I was expecting you to say you’d been stationed here and decided to stick around after you got out of the military.”
“What made you think I was military?”
“The way you stand.”
He’d have to work on that now that he was actively going out on missions. A tell like that could be a problem if he was supposed to be incognito.
When he didn’t volunteer anything more, Chloe asked, “Were you in the military?”
He thought about denying it for a second, but why bother? She’d already guessed. “Yes.”
Before she could dig deeper, ask questions he couldn’t answer, he changed the subject again. Asking with a smirk, “So have you thought more about that tattoo you’re going to get?”