Chapter 18
CHAPTER 18
T o Ilya, being fully back in the straps was more healing to his heart than all the rounds of grief counseling he’d undergone since Derek’s passing.
After working at Maxime’s for two weeks, Ilya felt better than he had in a very long time. Walking through his own home didn’t give him a pang, and he could look at the empty side of the bed without a clenching pain in his chest that felt like it would never ease. He’d even dreamed of Derek telling him, “it’s about time, you know,” which he chalked up to his conscience trying to soothe his guilt. And there was guilt, but it was less than he’d expected it to be — possibly because he was so busy that he didn’t have time to dwell on it very much.
They were making excellent progress on the segment for the show now that they could fly together. And despite his best efforts to prevent it, every time they took to the straps, Ilya found himself falling a bit more under Mario’s spell.
He knew it was stupid and dangerous, but there was little he could do to stop it, short of walking away from Mario and Circo, which he was reluctant to do. He even tried repeating to himself all the reasons it wouldn’t work: Mario was ten years younger. Mario had never had his heart broken and deserved someone who could love him unreservedly, without a shadow of the past. He even tried to convince himself that he wasn’t really falling in love with Mario, that it was propinquity and the fact that on the straps, there was no way to not know someone’s body as intimately as that of a lover. But ever since the night the scales had been forcefully ripped from his eyes by the collapse of the rigging, Ilya had been fighting a losing battle.
It didn’t help that he could feel Mario watching him and could see the way his eyes often went heavy-lidded and his breathing sped up when Ilya was near. Sometimes he felt Mario was holding himself back much the way Ilya was, and the temptation was almost more than Ilya could bear.
They had settled in at Maxime’s well, though the manually operated equipment that they were using wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as what they’d be performing on once they moved into the main performance space. Then Ilya received a call from his friend Arturo, an older man who had once been among the best of Circo’s trapeze performers, who had retired to become the head rigger.Arturo wanted him to inspect the newly installed equipment so Ilya and Mario could return to practicing at the warehouse.
Ilya had to admit, as Arturo led him along the repaired catwalk to where the new crane had been installed, that Circo management had spared no expense, neither in the equipment's quality nor the safety features they’d put in place. There appeared to be at least twice as much bracing for the new crane, and the strap rigging had redundant safety features in case a chain gave way. There were even completely new straps which were reinforced with kevlar, enough to strengthen them without losing the comfort and flexibility of the cotton that allowed them to do many of their stunts.
He approved of everything, but, oddly enough, he would miss using the space in Henderson. It had been quiet there, and Ilya hadn’t realized how exposed he felt in the Circo warehouse. But there would be no way he could get permission from management to move their training to Maxime’s permanently. It was a matter of liability insurance, and he and Mario had been walking a fine line as it was. If either of them had gotten hurt, Circo could not only have refused to pay for their medical needs, but even sued them over the “unnecessary risk” clause in their contract if one of them had been rendered unable to perform.
“You’ll have to let me know if the new crane is doing everything you need,” Arturo told him. “It’s got all kinds of features, more even than the one over in the performance space on the Strip. I bet they’ll want a full evaluation from you — there were some rumbles that the equipment over there will be replaced too as soon as Phantasma’s run is over.”
“Good to know,” Ilya said. The performance space had the same crane that had fallen, so it was probably just good sense to replace it, too. “Did they ever figure out what caused the collapse?”
Arturo shrugged. “Still investigating. You’d think the firm they hired was the NTSB or something, the way they were up here swarming all over everything. Then they insisted on inspecting the equipment for the silks and the trapeze, though they didn’t find anything.” He snorted. “Though to be honest, I would have said they wouldn’t have found anything on the straps crane if they’d inspected it the day it fell. I swear to you, Ilya, that equipment was in perfect shape, and the bracing for it was solid. There wasn’t a single nut or bolt missing, either.”
As they made it to one wall, where a ladder would allow them down off the catwalk to descend to the floor below, Arturo made a comment that stopped Ilya in his tracks. “It was the damnedest thing, the way your partner picked you up and threw you like you didn’t weigh as much as a child. Then he threw himself back so fast he was a blur on the video. I’ve never seen anyone move that fast, and I’ve seen some damned odd things in my life, some you wouldn’t believe were possible.”
“You saw the video?” Ilya wondered why he hadn’t been called on to watch it. “Are they circulating it around in a new safety briefing or something?”
“Nope. They called me in to look at it because they thought I might have some insight on the way it fell as to what could have gone wrong. Then they locked it down as being proprietary for liability purposes.” Arturo shrugged. “I’m not an engineer, and I would have said that there was no way it could have fallen to begin with, so I wasn’t much help. But I got to see that young man in action, and it was a sight. Better than when he flipped out of the straps to get to Patrick when he was injured.”
“I would have been interested in seeing that myself,” Ilya replied. No doubt the older man was exaggerating what he’d seen, but Ilya could remember being lifted by his waist and flung into the crash mats. He shuddered slightly, recalling how close Mario had come to being crushed in order to make that throw.
They made their way down the ladder. Then Ilya took his leave of his friend and headed to his office. He and Mario had practiced at Maxime’s the previous day, though he’d canceled their session this morning to answer Arturo’s summons. Once he was at his desk, he texted Mario that he could come in after lunch to the warehouse so they could try out the new equipment.
While he waited, Ilya took the SD card out of his video camera to download it to his computer. He liked to review their practices so he and Mario could see any changes they needed to make or things they wanted to improve. It took a few minutes to offload everything, and then he started going through the video files to name them and sort them into folders.
Eventually, he came to the video he’d taken of Mario just before the accident — and of course there wasn’t any footage of the crane fall, since they’d been looking at the playback. Still, Ilya looked at it again. Perhaps there had been a sound or something they’d missed in the moment, which might give some clue about why the accident had happened.
Unfortunately, it was hard to hear anything but the music, and Ilya quickly grew distracted watching Mario, struck anew by his grace in the air. The sequence wasn’t long, and Ilya grumbled over not paying closer attention to what he’d meant to look for. He started the clip again, which was much bigger on the computer screen than the viewfinder of the recorder. Again, he heard nothing that shouldn’t be there, but near the end of the clip, as Mario was spiraling toward the ground, he noticed something that made him frown.
Behind Mario was a tiny dot falling toward the floor, so small that they never would have noticed it on the viewfinder. Ilya paused the video, backing it up, straining to see the dot. It was impossible to tell what it was, and it was only noticeable being dark against the light-colored background. He reversed the video, following the dot moving upward, to where it disappeared. And there, at the very edge of the video, was a faint shape, only a fraction lighter than the background.
Ilya zoomed in on the area. It was small, and at first he couldn’t tell what he was looking at. Then there was an abrupt movement, and Ilya recognized the sole of a shoe, visible only because it wasn’t the same matte black as its surroundings. Someone had been up in the rigging just before it fell. Someone had dropped something small, perhaps a bolt, and then had gotten away from the scene without anyone ever knowing they’d been there.
Who could it have been? And why? Had someone been working in the rigging and accidentally caused the crane to come down?
Then a horrifying thought struck him, and Ilya felt like a hand squeezed his chest —had it been deliberate sabotage?
The rational part of him wanted to dismiss the idea. Who would want to hurt either him or Mario? It had to have been an accident, because it wasn’t like either of them had enemies. He supposed it was possible that someone from a rival show might want to sabotage Circo’s practice space to cost them money, but was that someone willing to commit murder? Besides, the building security was stringent in order to protect intellectual property. No one could have gotten into the building without coming past a badge reader and innumerable cameras.
The logical side of his brain was insisting it wasn’t a shoe. It was a reflection from the floor, a trick of the light, nothing more. Maybe something had fallen, a tiny piece of the suspended structure that failed moments before the crane had followed, but it was a confirmation that it had been equipment failure, not sabotage.
But the primitive part of him was screaming at him that there was danger at Circo. And if he and Mario weren’t the focus, one of them appeared to be in its path. He didn’t know how long he sat there, staring blankly at the image, until a knock on his door startled him. He hastily closed the program.
“Come in!”
Mario opened the door, stepping inside with a puzzled look. “You said to come this afternoon, right?” He looked closely at Ilya, a frown creasing his brow. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Ilya said, waving a hand and rising to his feet. “Sorry, I got preoccupied doing paperwork. It’s always taxing.”
Fortunately, Mario seemed to accept the answer. “Do you still want to try out the new rigging?” He sighed. “I’ll admit I’d love to stay with Maxime. It feels more like home there than it does here.”
“So do I,” Ilya admitted. He came out from behind the desk, noticing that Mario was already dressed and ready to work. “I’ll have to change clothes. You go warm up, and I’ll join you in a few.”
“Okay.” With that, Mario left, closing the door quietly behind him.
Ilya went back to his computer, then opened the folder with the video. He knew he was being paranoid, but he sent the file to the cloud, then emailed it to his home account. After locking his computer, he left his office, heading toward the locker room.
It was probably nothing. But if it was something, and that something was directed at Mario, he was going to do everything in his power to stop it.