CHAPTER 15 #2
I take off my coat and wedge it under the open roll-up door so it cannot fall shut quietly.
Then I remove one shoe.
Absurd.
Practical.
I wedge the heel sideways against the track.
If the door comes down, it jams.
Maybe.
My socked foot touches cold concrete.
“Wonderful,” I say to myself. “Professional and stylish.”
A sound comes from the monitor.
Not a beep.
A breath.
The screen turns on.
Avery appears.
Not live. Maybe not. Her face fills the frame, pale, dirty, hair pulled back badly. She sits in front of a red door. Her mouth has no tape now, but she looks like she has learned not to waste words.
“Clara,” she says.
My fingers go numb.
I know editing. Not professionally, but as a person who has been edited. I know a cut. A jump. A forced line.
This video is cleaner than the bait outside.
Longer.
Recent.
Avery blinks at something off camera.
“If you’re seeing this, I’m probably not where they told you I am.”
Her voice wavers, then steadies.
Good girl, I think, and hate the maternal shape of it, hate that fear turns every woman into someone’s younger self.
“They wanted me to say Malcolm took me. He didn’t.” She swallows. “He lied before. I know that. I found that. But he didn’t take me.”
My stomach twists.
“They want you mad enough to stop checking the edges.”
A small sound escapes me.
Not a sob.
Not quite.
Avery understands the room.
“That’s how I knew I had the right thing,” she says. “The footage doesn’t show Laurel dying. It shows them practicing how to blame you before she died.”
My hand goes to the doorframe.
Cold metal. Hard edge. Real.
The video glitches.
Avery’s eyes flick to someone off camera.
“No. I said I’d read it.”
She looks back.
“There are two drives. One is a copy. One is the insurance. Red Vale stored the preproduction materials here because it was off the studio books. Victor used—”
The screen cuts.
Not black.
A still image replaces her.
A red door.
White text over it:
TIME’S UP.
The portable hard drive beside the monitor begins to whir.
A small progress bar appears.
DELETING: 2%
“No.”
The word leaves me calm.
Too calm.
I move.
Threshold crossed. Fine. The trap has become a clock.
The hard drive is connected to a laptop under the table, hidden behind a black cloth. I yank the cloth aside. The laptop screen shows a deletion process running through folders.
BH17_WORKPRINT REDVALE_TRANSFER PERFORMER_DISTRESS AVERY_LORNE_UPLOAD LW_CV_RAW
LW.
CV.
Laurel West.
Clara Vane.
My fingers are clumsy on the trackpad.
Deletion: 5%.
I hit cancel.
Password prompt.
Of course.
I unplug the hard drive.
The screen flashes.
WARNING: REMOVAL MAY DAMAGE DATA.
Fine. Data can file a complaint.
The room changes.
A click behind me.
Not the roll-up door.
A smaller click.
The portable AC unit stops.
The hallway lights outside flicker once.
Then a smell hits.
Smoke.
Not archive smoke. Not chemical canister.
Hot plastic.
A small device beneath the garment rack glows red at the edge.
My throat tightens.
No fire yet.
Heat.
Timer.
I grab the hard drive, the clapperboard, and one folder from the table because the label on it catches my eye:
EDDA MARSH — TERMINATION.
The aligned sugar packets stay behind.
No.
I go back for them.
Stupid? Maybe. But whoever aligned them did it for me, and if there is residue, prints, anything—
A speaker pops on behind the garment rack.
A distorted voice fills the unit.
“Final girls always come back for props.”
I freeze.
Not because of the voice.
Because behind the garment bags, something moves.
A shadow.
Low.
A person?
A recording?
I reach for the nearest object.
Clapperboard.
Wood. Hard edge. Symbolically annoying.
“Come closer,” I say, my voice too polite. “I’ve had a long night and I’m holding cinema.”
No answer.
The smoke thickens near the floor.
A fire suppression alarm should trigger.
It doesn’t.
Someone disabled it.
Fine.
I put the hard drive inside my shirt, against my waistband, and tuck the folder under my arm. The clapperboard stays in my hand.
I back toward the roll-up door.
The door begins to descend.
My coat catches first.
The motor strains.
My shoe heel pops free.
“Damn it.”
I duck and shove my shoulder under the metal slats, pushing up with one hand while clutching the folder with the other. Pain shoots through my arm, white and hot. The door is stronger than I am. The motor grinds. My coat tears.
“Clara!”
Malcolm.
Not close enough.
“Here!” I shout.
The door jams on my coat for one blessed second.
I drop, slide under the gap on my back, concrete scraping through my shirt. The folder bends. The hard drive digs into my skin. The clapperboard clatters away.
The door slams down behind me.
Smoke leaks under it.
I roll onto my side and cough so hard my ribs cramp.
Footsteps pound down the hallway.
Malcolm reaches me first.
Of course.
He drops to one knee but does not touch me.
His hands hover, open, furious with the restraint.
“Are you burned?”
“No.”
“Bleeding?”
“Emotionally or—”
“Clara.”
“No.”
Alvarez arrives behind him with Casey and two uniforms. “Get back from the door.”
“Device inside,” I cough. “Heat source. Smoke. Suppression disabled. Drive deleting.”
Casey’s face goes gray. “Drive?”
I pull the hard drive from under my shirt and shove it toward him. “Clone it. Now. Don’t connect it to anything networked. Don’t be heroic with a USB cable.”
He takes it like I handed him a newborn with malware.
Alvarez barks orders into his radio. The hallway fills with movement: uniforms, fire call, building staff yelling from somewhere downstairs, Diana’s voice slicing through the noise with a sentence about warrants and arson that makes a man apologize to her twice.
Malcolm is still kneeling in front of me.
His shoulder is bad. I can tell by the way he holds himself. His borrowed windbreaker is too short in the arms. There is soot on his throat.
“You came in,” he says.
“I noticed.”
“The gate locked.”
“I noticed.”
“The van was bait.”
“I noticed a lot of things.”
His face is tight enough to break something. “You could have died.”
I sit up slowly.
My sock is filthy. One shoe gone. Coat partly trapped under a murder door. Hair coming loose. Throat burning. Folder bent in my lap.
A mess.
Alive.
“Then stop saying it like I missed a meeting.”
His mouth opens.
Closes.
He looks down at his hands.
Progress again.
I hate that I can name it.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
The hallway noise moves around us. Alvarez shouting. Casey running. Diana terrifying storage staff. A fire alarm finally beginning to wail somewhere far too late.
“For what?” I ask.
The question comes out harder than I mean.
Malcolm looks at the closed unit door. Smoke curling beneath it. “For wanting to say the wrong thing first.”
That hits me in a place I don’t have armor.
I look away.
On the bent folder in my lap, Edda Marsh’s name is stamped in black.
Under it, in red pen, someone has written:
TERMINATED BY REQUEST OF V.H.
There.
Not proof of murder.
Not enough.
But a line.
A real line.
I hold it up.
Malcolm’s eyes sharpen.
Alvarez turns at the same time.
“Detective,” I say, and my voice scrapes but holds. “I found why the door stayed locked.”
Then something buzzes inside the folder.
Everyone stops.
I look down.
A cheap prepaid phone is taped to the inside flap.
Its screen lights.
One message.
THANK YOU FOR SAVING THE COPY.
A second message appears.
NOW WATCH WHAT HAPPENS TO THE ORIGINAL.
The screen switches to video.
Avery, live this time.
Bound to a chair in front of the red door.
And behind her, water starts to fall.