Chapter 40 #2
The private-room door opens into the upper hall, where work lights spill yellow circles across black carpet.
Without music, Velvet Fortune has lost its seduction; the building fills instead with shouts, running feet, and the metallic snap of weapons drawn below.
My right wrist burns with every heartbeat, making my fingers clumsy, so I grip the knife in my left hand while Lidia uses the stolen card on the stairwell reader.
Sequins glitter under our feet from some abandoned costume, absurd little stars marking the route through violence.
The reader flashes green, and we take the concrete service stairs down one flight, our shoes advertising the route on every tread. At ground level, a second card reader releases the fire door into costume storage and the loading passage.
Sequins catch the low light from racks packed close together.
Feathers brush my face as we force through hanging outfits.
The air smells like hair spray, dust, and fabric warmed by old stage lamps, carrying me back to Cherry pulling satin from my shoulders as I tried to cover a body the costume refused to hide.
Lidia stops at the rear wall. “Which panel?”
“Behind the silver coats.”
She tears them aside, exposing a narrow service door. The access card opens it with a click, allowing cold air to move through from the loading alley.
“Boris uses this entrance,” I say. “Hold it open until his men reach you.”
“Where are you going?”
“The lights.”
Lidia catches my left wrist. “Katie, Igor knows the building.”
“So do I.”
Her grip tightens before releasing. “If you die, Cherry will wake up solely to kill me.”
“Then avoid the inconvenience.”
I leave her beside the open service door.
The lighting ladder waits behind a locked storage cage. Dancer staff cards open it, but the stolen card now in Lidia’s hand has to remain at the entrance. I drive the guard’s knife through the thin plastic housing around the latch, levering until the cover splits and releases the bolt.
The ladder rises through a square opening above the main stage.
My stomach tightens as I place one foot on the first rung.
No pain follows, only fear made physical through every muscle protecting what grows inside me.
I climb with my left hand doing most of the work, keeping my body close to the rails while the right wrist rests against each rung rather than gripping it.
When men enter the costume corridor below, Igor shouts my name and I climb faster.
The catwalk forms a narrow steel path above Velvet Fortune’s stage.
Beside the rail, cables run toward a lighting console protected by a hinged cover, while portable work lamps hang from hooks for repairs.
Far below, the circular stage waits beneath darkness; near the bar, the brass frame used for the Diamond Draw remains, its empty velvet bag swaying where somebody struck the stand.
I open the console.
The first spotlight warms to life over the stage. I trigger the second after a pause, then the third, recreating the sequence Artur watched while we reconstructed how the room changed around my moving chair.
Three white circles burn below where Artur can see them from outside.
The ladder rattles.
Through the opening rises Igor’s head, and from his eyebrow to the left corner of his mouth, dried blood leaves that side of his face dark beneath the work lights.
After the pistol strike, his damaged eye has swollen nearly shut.
With one hand, he pulls himself onto the catwalk while the other keeps a gun close against his chest.
“You enjoy high places,” I say, backing toward the center span.
“You enjoy making injuries worse.”
“It’s the only relationship we have.”
He raises the pistol.
From its hook, I grab the nearest work lamp and swing. The metal shade strikes his wrist, knocking the muzzle into the rail as the shot explodes above us. Through the enclosed club, sound slams, and as my ears ring, burned powder coats my tongue.
Igor comes forward through the swinging light.
I keep to his left, forcing him to turn his head far enough that the swollen eye loses me. He adjusts by rotating his whole body, exactly as he did at the casino, blocking the path toward the ladder with his width.
“Cherry lived,” I tell him. “You failed.”
“She screamed.”
Rage burns through the fear; I want to strike him until every lie stops, but anger would straighten my approach and give him the line he expects.
I let my weight move onto the ball of my right foot.
Igor lunges when my shoulder turns. I pivot beneath his reaching arm, using the narrow dance turn that once carried me around Artur’s chair without touching his knees. Igor catches my hair, and pain tears across my scalp, stopping the turn halfway while his body drives mine against the rail.
The steel bar presses below my ribs, so I twist, protecting my stomach as his forearm bears down across my shoulders.
“Ivan wants the children,” he says near my ear. “Pasha wants Artur to watch.”
I reach backward for his face.
My fingers find the open wound, and Igor jerks away, giving me enough space to drop beneath his arm. I seize his gun wrist with both hands despite the pain, then pull it across the top rail while planting my heel against the lower crossbar.
His greater strength supplies the forward drive.
I release suddenly, turning outside his shoulder as his weight continues toward the rail, and his hip strikes steel. The pistol falls to the stage, spinning through one white circle of light before disappearing beyond it.
Igor catches the upper bar with both hands.
For one breath he hangs over the stage, boots scraping against the grated floor. I reach for the work lamp, tear it from its cable, then drive the hard rim into his injured eye.
His left hand opens while the right slides across blood on the rail. Igor looks at me through the eye that still works, surprise entering his face before gravity takes the rest.
He falls.
His body strikes the main stage far below the private room where my clear heel first opened his face. The impact reaches the catwalk a fraction later and weakens my knees.
I grip the rail as nausea rises; killing him leaves sweat cooling under my shirt, blood on my fingers, and the terrible quiet of a body that will never climb after me again.
As men shout below, I return to the console. The main blackout switch resists beneath my swollen hand, forcing me to use both palms until it drops. Every stage light dies, leaving the fire-curtain control glowing red beside the switch until I strike its button.
Heavy fabric releases above the stage, descending between Pasha’s men and the service side with a roar of chains. Gunfire begins beneath the falling curtain, flashes breaking the dark before thick material divides the room.
From the costume corridor comes Lidia’s shout, followed by boots moving through the entrance she kept open.
Artur says my name.