Chapter 5
SIENNA
The screening lounge at the Palomar was exactly the industry space that Sienna loathed and Dani loved: leather seating, a bar that served cocktails named after award-winning films, and a guest list designed to make everyone present believe they had been specifically selected.
A networking event for independent producers and distributors, hosted by a trade publication that was running a feature on emerging documentary voices.
Sienna’s name was on the invite list because Parallax Films had been nominated for the publication’s Breakthrough Documentary award two years running. She had attended last year, talked to four people, and left before the keynote. This year she had a different agenda.
The lounge was already half full when they arrived.
Conversation hummed at the pitch of industry people being interesting for each other’s benefit, animated enough to suggest passion, calibrated to suggest professionalism.
Trays of small, architectural appetizers circulated on the arms of waiters who had been trained to be invisible, and the music was jazz turned low enough to permit conversation and loud enough to cover the silence when conversation failed.
Sienna took it in with the quick, cataloging attention she brought to every room: who was here, who was talking to whom, who was standing alone and might be approachable.
She was wearing a fitted dark jacket over a simple shirt, her curls pulled back loosely, her only concession to the dress code being the fact that she had ironed the jacket.
Dani had tried to get her into a dress. Sienna had countered with the argument that no one had ever extracted investigative intel while worrying about a hemline, and Dani had conceded the point.
“All right,” Dani said, adjusting her blazer in the reflection of the lounge’s entrance glass.
She looked sharp, olive-toned skin glowing against a cream blouse, her dark hair pinned in its usual creative knot, eyes bright with the sharp energy she brought to rooms full of people who might be useful.
“I’ll take the distributors by the bar. There’s a guy from Sterling Reach who handled a release last year for a project that touched Burty’s distribution network.
If I can get him talking, he might confirm the exclusivity agreements we heard about from the Pinnacle exec. ”
“Good. I’ll work the producers near the screening room.
” Sienna scanned the lounge, cataloging faces, matching them to the research binders she’d studied that afternoon.
“There’s a woman from Cerulean Media who used to be on Burty’s board.
She left under circumstances that were described in the trades as amicable, which in Hollywood means someone got pushed. ”
“I love this industry. Every single relationship is either transactional or toxic.”
Sienna picked a piece of lint off her blazer.
“Sometimes both.”
“True.” Dani touched Sienna’s arm once, lightly, as she always did before they split up at events, a grounding gesture, brief and warm. “Text me if you need backup.”
They separated. Dani moved toward the bar with the confident ease of someone who had never met a room she couldn’t work.
Sienna lifted a glass of sparkling water from a passing tray without breaking stride, the glass cold against her palm, and angled toward the cluster of producers and distributors near the screening room entrance.
She managed one and a half conversations before the evening changed.
The first was with a junior producer at a mid-sized company who knew Burty Howarth by reputation and had nothing useful to offer beyond industry gossip that Sienna had already noted and dismissed.
He collected proximity to powerful names the way some people collected stamps, enthusiastically, and with no idea what any of it was worth.
Sienna extracted herself after seven minutes with the polite ease of someone who had spent years learning to leave conversations without burning bridges.
The second was more promising. The Cerulean Media woman, a sharp-eyed executive in her fifties named Grace Nakamura, had accepted a glass of white wine and settled into a corner booth with the body language of someone who had stories to tell and was measuring how much of her audience could be trusted.
She had just started describing the circumstances of her departure from Burty’s board—a reorganization that she called “sudden” with a tone that suggested several more accurate adjectives, when her gaze shifted to a point over Sienna’s shoulder and her expression closed like a door.
“I’m sorry,” Grace said. “I have to go.” She was moving before Sienna could respond, disappearing into the crowd with the practiced speed of someone who had learned when to leave a conversation and was executing the lesson.
Sienna turned around.
Adriana Lovett was standing twelve feet away, watching her.
She was wearing a black suit tonight. Tailored, sharp, a silk blouse beneath it that caught the lounge’s amber lighting and turned it warm against her skin.
Her dark hair was in the same sleek twist, her posture rigid as a blueprint.
But the look was different tonight. At the gala, her gaze had been assessing, categorical—the look of someone filing a problem under threat.
Tonight, the assessment was still there, but layered beneath it was a focus more personal than professional.
Sienna’s pulse kicked up. She ignored it.
Adriana crossed the twelve feet between them with the unhurried certainty of someone who had been in this room long enough to know where Sienna was standing, must have been watching long enough to time the approach for the moment Grace Nakamura left, and had chosen this exact moment to make her move.
It was strategic. It was also, irritatingly, elegant.
Adriana walked as she spoke, with purpose and an authority that made the space around her rearrange itself.
“Ms. Ramirez.” The voice was the same: low, tight, pitched to land. But there was an edge to it tonight that hadn’t been present at the gala. A tightness that said this was not a coincidence, and Adriana was not here to network with independent producers.
“Ms. Lovett.” Sienna kept her voice even, her body language relaxed, even as her pulse accelerated with what she was identifying as alertness and nothing more. “I didn’t realize you attended events for independent producers.”
Adriana tilted her head a degree to the left, a small, measuring movement.
“I attend events where my clients’ interests are being discussed.
” Adriana held Sienna’s gaze with the unblinking focus of someone accustomed to using eye contact as a tool.
Up close for the second time, the gala’s distance had softened details that were sharp now: Adriana’s eyeliner, the line of her jaw, the faint trace of warmth beneath the vetiver that was skin, not fragrance. “You’ve been busy since the gala.”
“I’ve always been busy. You’re just paying attention now.” Sienna smiled, and the smile was on purpose.
The corner of Adriana’s mouth moved. Not quite a smile, sharper and unguarded, suppressed before it fully arrived. Sienna caught it and filed it: Adriana Lovett was funny, and she worked very hard to keep that fact locked behind the mask, and occasionally it escaped.
“I’m going to be direct,” Adriana said.
“I’m counting on it.”
A waiter passed between them carrying a tray of cocktails, and Adriana waited for him to clear before she spoke.
“Your investigation into Burty Howarth is interfering with active legal matters.” Adriana’s posture was impeccable, her hands still at her sides, everything about her arranged for professional authority.
And yet up close, in this lighting, the lounge’s closer quarters revealed details the gala’s ballroom had obscured: the faint lines at the corners of Adriana’s eyes that deepened when her jaw tightened, and the way her fingers curled inward, just slightly, as though she was holding a tension she refused to release.
“The sources you’re interviewing are bound by confidentiality agreements,” Adriana continued, “and the documents you’re pursuing may contain privileged information.”
“Which documents?”
A tension tightened behind Adriana’s eyes.
Sienna was inviting her to name specific documents, which would confirm their existence.
A trap dressed as curiosity. The question landed.
Sienna watched: the brief pause, the micro-adjustment of Adriana’s jaw, and then a barely perceptible reset. She didn’t take the bait.
“That’s not a conversation I’m going to have in a cocktail lounge.”
“That’s interesting.” Sienna kept her voice conversational, warm even, as she did in the critical moments of interviews when she needed the other person to understand that she was not afraid and was not going away.
“Because the conversation you came over here to have seems to involve telling me to stop investigating your client’s alleged fraud, which is also something most lawyers wouldn’t do in a cocktail lounge.
Unless they were worried enough to make an exception. ”
The observation found its mark. Adriana’s jaw shifted, barely perceptible. Sienna was beginning to understand that Adriana’s tells were always small, which made them more valuable, not less.
“You’re very confident,” Adriana said, “for someone with a two-person production company and a converted garage for an office.”
“You’ve been researching me.”
Sienna folded her arms across her chest.
“Of course I’ve been researching you. You threatened my client at a public event.”
“I told the truth about your client at a public event. The fact that truth feels like a threat to you is worth examining.”
Adriana’s lips parted. Not to speak. A crack, there and gone. Sienna caught it, and the understanding arrived instantly; this piece of information was going to be difficult to file under any useful category.