Chapter 7 #2
She grips the chair back to draw it along the existing scrape until its legs reach the original depressions, changing the doorway’s angle in the surviving mirror.
Katie points at George. “Stand where the first man entered. Boris, use the service panel. Artur, sit where the chair started.”
Neither George nor Boris questions her. I sit.
From the original position, the main doorway lies behind my left shoulder. The shooter could have raised his weapon before entering the room, leaving only his arm visible in the mirror. When Katie rotates the chair to its later angle, George’s full chest appears in the reflection.
The movement brings her close enough for the citrus scent of her lotion to reach me through the industrial cleaner.
For one intrusive second, I see the room as it was, her tiny black costume barely covering her while her breasts hovered near my mouth above the roll of her hips.
What seemed like part of the dance survives as a pale curve in the carpet, marking where she unknowingly forced an assassin to change his aim.
“Moving the chair exposed him,” she says. “He had to step farther into the corridor opening to find you again.”
Boris opens the service panel. “Igor would have seen the change from here.”
“He came through before the first shooter recovered,” Katie says. “That’s why they reached us from both sides instead of waiting for a clean second shot.”
The bullet path through the center mirror aligns with the chair’s later position. The weapon was aimed after Katie moved me, evidence that the men adapted to her dance rather than building the attack around it.
George opens the printed schedule, where Katie’s name was added to the available roster ahead of the premium draw, but no dancer assignment appears until every stone had been returned for recording.
Earlier, the service-panel alarm went offline while Katie filled out employment forms in George’s office.
Before she touched the bag, the attack was already inside my club.
George pours the gems into the velvet sack; they came from the same molds and resin batch. The clear stone looks different, but color disappears inside the velvet.
Boris weighs several on a small evidence scale, but the differences are too slight for a hand inside the bag to distinguish.
Katie reaches in without looking and removes a red stone. She repeats the draw twice, producing blue and green.
“The diamond was chance,” George says. “Nobody placed her hand or changed the bag.”
I look at Katie beside the damaged mirror, remembering that she came here because her employer stole her wages before random plastic put her in my room. When armed men moved, she chose my life before knowing what protecting it would cost her.
The suspicion I carried from the first night loses its final support.
While I suspected her, I had procedures to follow.
Without that refuge, I have to look at the woman herself.
Katie risked her body for a stranger before she knew my surname would become hers, negotiated after armed men invaded her home, then entered mine this morning to make the staff laugh.
I want her close for reasons security can no longer excuse.
“None of this began with you,” I tell her. “The men were in position before the draw. You were pulled into their plan when you moved my chair.”
Her mouth softens before tightening again. “That sounds almost like you’re clearing me of a crime nobody admitted I was accused of.”
“You are clear.”
Clearing her doesn’t repay the interrogation or the guards, while she still knows nothing about the contact logging. I could explain everything now, but I keep that decision to myself.
Katie turns toward the corridor; a gray door stands beyond the private room with STAFF ONLY printed above the handle. She presses the bar, and the latch opens without resistance.
“This should lock from the other side,” she says. “Cherry used a badge when she brought me upstairs.”
George tests the door, then swears under his breath. “It closes automatically. That latch was replaced last year.”
Boris examines a pale strip near the frame. “Someone taped the latch before removing it. No damage, so the door never reported a forced entry.”
George checks the access report. “Ivan requested a temporary credential list that morning. We had rotated two guards after a cash-room dispute, and he wanted every active badge reconciled before Artur arrived.”
Ivan has made the same request at my casinos and construction sites. A senior security officer who failed to request the list would be neglecting his work.
The request also gave him every badge number capable of opening this door.
Katie walks with George toward the office to compare the staff schedule while Boris waits until they turn the corner.
“The phone logging?” he asks.
I watch Katie through the smoked panel. “Continue it. Clearing her doesn’t clear the people trying to reach her.”
The attackers provide a valid reason, though I keep the fear of losing her trust to myself.
George returns carrying a black envelope sealed with dark red wax. “A courier delivered this during the reconstruction. He said it was for Mr. Dymov and Mrs. Dymova.”
The card inside bears Pasha Saranov’s name above an address and tomorrow night’s time; his condolences occupy one polished sentence. The next invites my new wife and me to a private fight night attended by every organization currently waiting to see whether the Dymovs are bleeding.
Katie reads over my arm. “Can we refuse?”
Pasha selected an audience that will interpret absence before the first fight begins.
“Only if we want him to announce that we’re afraid.”
The wax cracks between my fingers.