16. Chapter 16
Loralee
The road back to the festival feels longer in the dark.
Rocco drives with one hand on the wheel and the other close to the phone mounted on his dash.
Grant’s voice comes through the speakers in clipped updates about locked gates, camera angles, and a deputy checking the service road.
I understand each individual word, but together they seem to belong to a world with rules I have never needed to learn.
Beside me, Rocco has become quiet and remote. The man who lay naked beneath my hand less than twenty minutes ago has disappeared behind the controlled demeanor of the security professional. Yet his hand strays from the wheel long enough to settle briefly on my thigh. The touch reassures both of us.
“Carver found a partial print outside the east side of the booth,” Grant says. “Large boot. Deep tread with a triangular section missing near the heel.”
“Photograph it and cover it until we get there,” Rocco says.
“Already done.”
Rocco disconnects as we reach the access road.
Portable floodlights shine across the vendor area, stripping away the warmth of the festival and replacing it with harsh islands of white.
The pumpkins, hay bales, and strands of unlit bulbs look like abandoned stage decorations after the audience has gone home.
During the day, this place smelled of apples, cinnamon, food cooking over open flames, and hundreds of people carrying hundreds of emotions. Now the grounds feel hollow. Not empty. Hollow.
Rocco parks beside a sheriff’s vehicle and turns toward me. “Stay in the truck until I come for you.”
“I thought I was supposed to stay beside you.”
“You are. After I know no one is waiting inside your booth.”
He is out before I can answer.
I watch him cross the lane toward Grant and Deputy Carver.
They speak beneath the floodlight, their shadows extending across the ground in three different directions.
Rocco listens without interrupting, then circles my booth slowly.
He checks the neighboring tents, looks beneath the tables, and checks the dark spaces between the rear panels and the tree line.
Only after he has examined every possible hiding place does he return. He opens my door and offers his hand.
“Don’t touch anything.”
“That may make identifying the card difficult.”
“You can look.”
“I usually touch.”
His jaw tightens.
“I said usually,” I remind him. “I won’t disturb your evidence.”
He keeps my hand in his as we walk toward the booth. I would tease him about it under different circumstances. Rocco would insist he is guiding me over uneven ground, and I would pretend to believe him.
Tonight, his fingers feel less like possession and more like a promise that nothing will reach me without going through him first.
Deputy Carver stands several feet from the open side panel. “Ms. Tilsby.”
“Loralee is fine.”
He nods toward the booth. “I photographed everything before we moved closer. The card is on the reading table. There may be prints, but with the number of people who’ve been in and out today, we’ll be sorting through plenty that don’t belong to our intruder.”
“He was wearing gloves,” Rocco says.
Carver glances at him. “The video isn’t clear enough to establish that.”
“He opened the panel without leaving an obvious print on the metal support. He crossed damp ground, but the print you found begins several feet from the service road. He knew enough to avoid leaving evidence until he stepped where the gravel thins.”
Carver considers this, then nods. “Gloves are likely.”
The difference between them is subtle. The deputy gathers facts after something happens. Rocco looks at the same facts and sees the choices made before it happened.
He steps through the opening first. Grant has positioned a portable light outside, its beam cutting across the interior without touching the table.
The crystals and candles remain exactly where I placed them.
My massage table stands folded against the back panel.
Even the chair left slightly crooked after my last appointment appears undisturbed.
The Tower lies in the center of the dark cloth. Upright.
A stone building rises against a black sky, its crown split by lightning while two figures fall toward jagged rocks below.
Flames pour from the windows. The image has always been dramatic, but I have never found it frightening.
Destruction is not always punishment. Sometimes a structure must fall because it was never strong enough to shelter anyone.
Tonight, the card feels different.
Rocco positions himself between me and the open side of the booth. “Is it yours?”
“I need to see the deck.”
“Where is it?”
I point toward the narrow drawer beneath the reading table. From the aisle, it looks like part of the decorative wooden frame. Someone would have to study the table closely to notice the small groove I use as a handle. Rocco crouches without touching it.
“Was it closed when you left?”
“Yes.”
“It’s open now.”
Barely. A quarter of an inch, perhaps less, but enough that I can see the interruption in the clean line of the wood.
“May I put on gloves and open it?” I ask Carver.
He removes a pair from his pocket but hands them to Rocco. “Let him.”
Rocco pulls them on and slowly opens the drawer. Inside is the wooden box that holds the deck I use for festival readings. I recognize immediately that the lid isn’t seated properly.
“He opened that too,” I say.
Rocco lifts the lid and steps aside so I can see without moving closer. The cards are stacked inside, but one corner rises higher than the others, as if someone handled them and returned them carelessly.
“Can you tell if one is missing without touching them?” Carver asks.
“There should be seventy-eight.”
Grant begins counting photographs on his phone while Rocco removes the cards one at a time, placing them in careful rows on a clean evidence sheet. I know before he finishes.
Seventy-seven cards.
He looks at the Tower on the table. “It came from your deck.”
“Yes.”
The word leaves me quietly, but the certainty behind it spreads through the booth.
This was not a stranger carrying a random card chosen because the picture looked threatening. Someone entered my space, found a drawer most people never notice, opened the wooden box, and deliberately selected the Tower from my deck.
Rocco straightens. “Who saw you put the cards away?”
“I don’t know. Anyone walking past could have seen me.”
“Did anyone ask where you kept them?”
“No.”
“Did anyone show unusual interest in the deck?”
I think through the appointments, faces, voices, and hands that crossed the table. Some people touched the cards hesitantly. Others handled them as though they expected the paper to reveal its secrets through their fingertips. Nothing rises above the rest.
“I spoke to too many people.”
Rocco looks toward Grant. “Pull the footage from the hours surrounding her final appointment. Flag anyone who passed the booth more than twice or remained in camera range without entering.”
Grant nods and moves away.
I step closer to the table.
Rocco’s arm comes across my waist before I reach it. “Don’t.”
“I’m not going to touch the card.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Listen.”
Deputy Carver’s brows rise, but he says nothing.
I close my eyes and let the noises around me recede. The low voices outside. The rush of wind against the tent panels. The faint electrical hum from the portable light. I don’t reach for the card or invite another vision. I simply open the part of myself I usually guard.
For several seconds, there is nothing. Then something brushes the edge of my awareness. Not an image, but an emotion.
Humiliation burns beneath anger so intense it makes my stomach clench. I sense the need to punish someone, not merely for what they have done, but for what their actions revealed. Beneath both emotions is a conviction as cold and solid as stone.
Someone owes him. My eyes open.
Rocco hasn’t moved his arm. “What happened?”
“He believes something was taken from him.”
“The man who left the card?”
“I think so. But it isn’t money or property.” I look at the Tower again. “He feels exposed. Humiliated.”
“By you?”
“I don’t know.”
His arm tightens. “That isn’t good enough.”
“It’s what I have.”
Carver moves closer. “Could the card have been left as a warning about the festival?”
“No.” I don’t hesitate. “This is personal.”
The admission should frighten me. Instead, anger begins to rise through the uneasiness. This man entered a space I created to make people feel safe. He put his hands on my cards and turned one of them into a threat.
Rocco recognizes how angry this makes me, but sees it as a liability.
“You’re done here.”
“I’m not leaving the festival.”
“We’ll discuss that after we get you somewhere secure.”
“There is nothing to discuss.”
His gaze fixes on mine. “Someone broke into your booth.”
“And if I disappear, he learns that it worked.”
“This isn’t about proving you’re brave.”
“No. It’s about refusing to let him decide what I do with my gift.”
Rocco’s eyes harden, but I recognize the conflict beneath. He wants to protect me. He also knows exactly how I will respond if protection begins to feel like another form of control.
“We’re not resolving this here,” he says.
“That sounds suspiciously like a compromise.”
Carver clears his throat, but his mouth twitches before he looks away.
Rocco lowers his voice. “You don’t return to this booth unless I’m satisfied it can be secured.”
“That is a condition I can accept. We can negotiate tomorrow.”
His eyes narrow, but his arm relaxes around me. Deputy Carver photographs the open drawer and begins packaging the Tower card. As he slides it into a clear evidence sleeve, I notice a dark streak across the lower border of the image.
“Wait.”
Everyone stills.
I point without touching. “That mark wasn’t there before.”
Carver angles his light over it. A thin reddish-brown smear cuts across the white edge.
“Could be dirt,” he says.
Rocco crouches to examine it. “The ground outside the east entrance is gravel. No red soil.”
“But there is red clay near the old equipment road,” Grant says from outside. “North of the festival property.”
Rocco rises. “How far?”
“Less than a mile through the trees.”
The men exchange a look that requires no explanation. The intruder may not have approached from the county road. He may have come through the woods and used the service entrance only after reaching the grounds.
Rocco tells Grant to bring up the property map. Carver speaks into his radio, requesting another deputy before anyone searches the equipment road.
Their voices surround me, practical and controlled, but my attention remains on the Tower sealed inside transparent plastic.
The emotional impression has faded. The certainty has not. Whoever left the card doesn’t merely expect something to fall. He intends to be the one who brings it down.