Chapter 20 Thiago
Chapter twenty
Thiago
Micah moved toward a case.
I was twelve feet away when he broke from his mark at stage right and crossed the narrow strip of floor between the fly rail and the stacked equipment. From the house, Micah’s movement would have read as completely normal: a stagehand responding to a technical problem during a live performance.
His credentials were clipped where they should be. His shirt was the same black work shirt he’d worn all week. He kept his head down and his pace controlled. Nothing in him appeared rushed.
The flash device detonated from the balcony with a concussive pop that ricocheted through the hall and sent a sheet of white light over the rail. It was bright enough to make the audience gasp and sharp enough to snap heads upward in unison. I didn’t look up. I kept my eyes on Micah.
He was already at the case.
He crouched as if to check a lighting unit, one knee down, shoulders angled toward the stage. His left hand braced on the edge. His right disappeared below the line of the lid.
I headed toward him.
Not a sprint. Not yet. Speed without control would have drawn Dominic’s eye and half the wing with it. I closed the distance the way I’d been trained to close distance in crowded, structured environments: direct line and minimum wasted motion.
In my ear, the comms unit crackled once.
“West corridor,” Eamon said. His voice was flat and clear. “Package moved. Local contact on Devereaux.”
Good. That line was closing too.
I was six feet from Micah when he changed shape.
That was the only accurate way to describe it.
One second he was a competent union crewman handling an interruption.
The next he became a man committing a lethal crime.
His shoulders tightened. His weight shifted onto the balls of his feet.
The right hand came up with the weapon already clearing the case.
He had chosen a compact rifle broken down to fit among cables and hardware. He assembled it in a single practiced motion, stock seated, muzzle lifting. Every visible line had pointed us toward the balcony, and the shooter had always lived on the floor.
Dominic was not where Micah expected him to be. He hadn’t taken part in the last relocation of the podium.
That bought me the second I needed.
We’d moved the stage mark again, three feet back toward the house.
Dominic had accepted the change with his usual dry impatience, and we’d made the change with Micah occupied by a fake discussion with Eamon in the green room.
Micah now had a false map in his head. He brought the barrel up, pointing at the old position, and found empty space.
Then he saw Dominic.
Next he saw me.
He tried to get a shot off. The rifle discharged in the instant before my shoulder connected with his chest. I hit him hard enough to drive us both sideways into the brick wall.
The shot went high into the fly grid, hitting metal and ringing out above us. Pain tore through my left shoulder a half-breath later, hot and immediate, not the blunt force of collision but the clean, vicious line of a bullet that had passed through flesh on the way to its destination.
I pressed my right forearm across his throat and slammed him back into the wall before he could reorient himself. He fought fast and efficiently, stronger than he looked. He did not panic, and he still believed he had a chance to finish the task and bring Dominic down.
It wasn’t happening on my watch.
I drove my weight into him and trapped the rifle between our bodies and the wall.
My left arm was functionally gone, with numbness slowly taking over.
Blood ran down inside my jacket. I shifted my grip and used my hips instead of the shoulder.
His right hand clawed for leverage. I pinned his wrist against the brick and felt the weapon slip from his control.
“Don’t,” I said into his ear. “Stop fighting.”
He tried to twist free.
A plainclothes NOPD officer came in from the corridor with his sidearm up and his badge visible.
He had been Eamon’s local contact for the Devereaux intercept, moving under civilian cover through the building while the audience filled the house.
He took one look at the rifle and the blood and stepped in without asking questions.
“Weapon,” he said.
“On the floor,” I answered.
He kicked it clear, got Micah’s hands, and finished what I had started with cuffs and a knee in the right place. Only then did I pull away.
The world tipped slightly.
I caught the edge of the brick wall with my right hand and stayed upright out of blunt refusal to fall with so many eyes on me.
In my earpiece, Eamon barked. “Devereaux is in custody. West service corridor. Henri is being taken now. Third row center. He didn’t run.”
I looked past the wing and onto the stage.
The orchestra had stopped. The sound collapsed into stunned silence. Beyond the edge of the proscenium, the audience held its breath. Heads turned. Some people stood. Ushers were moving in the side aisles.
Dominic remained standing with the baton still in his hand.
He had seen enough.
His head turned toward the wing, eyes on me against the wall with blood darkening the left side of my jacket. Our eyes met. I expected shock, fear, or anger at the situation. What I saw instead was recognition.
He turned back to the orchestra and conducted.
At first, only one trumpet played. It was the opening phrase of “Saints,” soft and steady, floating over a room that had forgotten how to breathe.
Another trumpet joined him. Then a trombone.
Then the snare at the back, light on the beat. The players knew what was needed.
Dominic continued, moving the baton with practiced calm. The orchestra watched him intently as it played.
I had spent ten days studying the man’s routes, habits, and preferences. None of that had prepared me for his grasp of authority at a moment that could have induced mass panic. He didn’t make a show of reclaiming the room. He simply carried on.
The full chorus of “Saints” filled the Orpheum.
Brass lifted. Strings answered. The harmony opened under it. The room, which had braced for violence, was suddenly holding music again.
Then the pain caught up with me. Adrenaline had done its work and was fading. My shoulder throbbed in brutal, distinct pulses. I looked down and saw blood running through my fingers where I’d clamped my hand against the wound. Not catastrophic, but deeper than I wanted it to be.
The officer who had taken Micah turned back toward me. “Sit down.”
“I’m fine.”
He gave me the look professionals reserve for other professionals who say stupid things under pressure. “You got shot.”
“Through the shoulder.”
“That’s still getting shot.”
I slid down the wall far enough to get one knee under me instead of sitting outright. He pulled a pressure bandage from the plainclothes kit at his belt and shoved it into my right hand. “Hold that there. EMS is coming backstage.”
I took the bandage and pressed harder. White heat shot through my arm. I locked my jaw and stayed quiet.
The music continued.
Somewhere out front, they were walking Henri from his seat. In the west service corridor, Devereaux was learning what happened when Eamon Price’s local network closed around him. Somewhere onstage Dominic St. Clair was refusing to let a gunshot rule the night.
I heard running footsteps approaching me. Luca.
He came around the fly rail and dropped into a crouch in front of me without flinching at the blood. That tracked. Luca had grown up in the administrative rooms of a funeral home. He knew the difference between a mess and an emergency. He took in the entire situation and then stared into my eyes.
He put both hands on my face. Not the wound. My face.
The gesture startled me. It was precise and grounding. My eyes close briefly on reflex. Solange Moreau had done the same thing to him the morning of the concert before we left the house, palms firm on his cheeks, as if confirming he was intact.
“I’m fine,” I said.
His hands didn’t move. “I know you’re not fine. Stop it.”
“The shoulder is—“
“I don’t care about the shoulder.”
His pupils were dark and dilated. There was no polish left in his movements, no cultivated competence or careful household authority. Fear and fury had taken hold, and he refused to let either take him apart.
“I care that you’re here,” he said.
The music was still going on behind him. The final chorus was building, and the officer at my side looked away for a moment.
Luca spoke, barely above a whisper, “Santiago.”
I closed my eyes for a moment.
“I’m here,” I said.
When I opened my eyes again, Dominic had arrived.
He had given the room back the ending it deserved before he stepped away from it. Now he stood a few feet away, baton still in hand, expression pale but controlled. The officer rose just enough to clear space.
Dominic looked first at the blood, then at me, and finally at Luca’s hands still framing my face. Finally, he said, “Mr. Reyes.”
“Yes.”
“This was not the arrangement.”
Even shot through the shoulder and half on the floor against a brick wall, I nearly laughed.
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t.”
He nodded once. “You altered it.”
“That’s my job.”
His gaze sharpened on mine, and for one moment he appeared to understand he had come within inches of dying in public at the hands of a man with correct credentials and a badge clipped to his shirt. Then discipline took over again.
“Good,” he said.
Luca responded. “Dominic, is that all you can say?”
“What would you prefer?” he asked without looking away from me.
“That you’re relieved he’s alive.”
“I am relieved he’s alive. I’m also confirming that his tactical intervention was good. Quality job performance.” He looked at Luca. “These facts can coexist.”
The EMS team arrived, pushing through the wing with a stretcher. One of them, a compact woman with sharp eyes, cut away the jacket sleeve before I could object.
“All the way through,” she said after a quick look. “Lucky.”
“I know.”
She glanced at my face. “No, honey. Real lucky is when the bullet hits the wall instead of you. This is hospital lucky.”
Luca stepped back far enough for them to work. He released my face. I missed the contact immediately.
As they secured the bandage and checked the distal pulse, the house beyond the wing shifted from performance silence into aftermath noise: anxious voices and the sweep of rumors. It would be on every local station within the hour.
Dominic knew that. Celeste would know it before the cameras did. The board would panic. Henri would be booked and then hospitalized or not, depending on how far his illness had progressed. Bridget—God, Bridget—would be genuinely rattled for one of the first times in her life.
The paramedic looked at Luca. “Family?”
Before he could answer, I said, “No.”
Luca’s head turned toward me with an expression I couldn’t fully read. The paramedic nodded as if that settled nothing and everything. “Are you riding with him?”
Luca said, “Yes.”
Dominic added, “Obviously.”
The paramedic took that as sufficient consensus and went back to her work. They got me to my feet with more dignity than I deserved after insisting I was fine. The shoulder protested violently. My vision narrowed for a second, and then returned.
Luca stayed at my right side close enough to catch me if the floor shifted again. He smelled faintly of starch, sweat, and the soap from the house, all of it woven with the harsher notes of backstage dust and gunpowder.
As they started walking me toward the service corridor, I looked back once.
Dominic stood where the wing opened onto the stage, shoulders squared, the line of his body steady. Beyond him, the Orpheum glowed with work lights and shaken faces.
He caught me looking. Instead of any larger gesture, Dominic lifted the baton a fraction.
Then Luca and the medics turned me toward the freight exit, and the sound of the house fell behind us.