CHAPTER 2 #2
The stage seems to quiet around that.
Not enough for anyone outside our circle to hear. Enough for Diana to.
Her face changes from fear to something harder. “Careful, Victor.”
He exhales through his nose, then smooths himself back into shape. “I meant I know her status. We do not yet know if she left voluntarily, staged something, had a medical issue, or—”
“Was taken,” I say.
Victor’s eyes return to mine. “You always did prefer the worst version.”
I could answer that.
I could say the worst version is not a preference when you’ve seen what a blocked door does to a burning set.
I could say I learned from him.
Instead, I turn to Diana. “I need the raw feed from every unit running between midnight and two.”
“You’ll have it.”
Victor says, “Legal will need to review—”
“No,” Diana says.
One word. Flat.
Victor smiles at her now. “This production is not your personal kingdom.”
Diana steps closer to him, not dramatic, not loud. “A girl vanished off my set while wearing a coat I told wardrobe not to use.”
The back of my neck heats.
“What?” I ask.
Diana does not look at me. “I rejected the original coat. I said it was morbid and cheap and the kind of thing some executive would call iconic because women bled near it.”
Victor’s face closes by inches.
I keep my voice level. “Who overrode you?”
Diana looks at Victor.
Victor spreads one hand. “The legacy assets test well.”
Legacy assets.
Laurel’s coat. Clara’s trauma. A dead girl’s wardrobe treated like a prop with analytics.
Something in my hand gives a soft plastic crack.
I look down.
The tablet case has split near the corner under my thumb.
Lyle, who has returned near the edge of the set, sees it and immediately decides to examine his clipboard like scripture.
Diana sees too.
Victor pretends not to.
I ease my grip.
A man who breaks equipment in front of producers becomes a problem they can name. I have spent years staying useful enough to remain close to rooms where people say the wrong thing.
Useful. Quiet. Controlled.
Clara would laugh at that.
No. Not laugh. She would make a small brutal comment and then look away before it became affection.
The thought lands badly.
I check my phone again.
No call back.
Of course not.
The last time Clara trusted me with a door, someone died on the other side.
My radio spits static.
Then a voice I don’t recognize says, “Scene seventeen is ready.”
Every person near me stops.
The static dies.
Lyle whispers, “Was that… was that on our channel?”
I press the transmit button. “Identify.”
Nothing.
“Security two, lock all channel traffic. Who accessed comms?”
A beat. “Checking.”
I look at Diana. “What’s scene seventeen?”
She answers too fast. “We don’t have one scheduled tonight.”
Victor says nothing.
I turn to him. “But you know what it is.”
“I know numbers, Malcolm. Films tend to have them.”
“Wrong answer.”
His eyes sharpen. For a second, the polished man slips, and the younger one looks through. The one near the red door. The one saying keep rolling because the reset would take forty minutes.
Diana’s voice cuts in. “The reboot script skips from sixteen to eighteen because we renumbered after revisions.”
“Why?”
“Because seventeen was a placeholder for a deleted sequence from the original.” She looks at me now, and the unease in her face is not performance. “The Red Door Sequence.”
The name goes through the space like a dropped tool.
Lyle mutters something under his breath that I’m glad I can’t make out.
Victor slips his phone into his pocket. “This is getting theatrical.”
“Avery was taken from a set dressed like the deleted sequence,” I say. “Someone used an original production credential. Someone spoke over our comms. Someone put the original coat on her after Diana rejected it. That’s not theater. That’s access.”
“And who had access?” Victor asks.
He wants me to say it.
Security.
Me.
My team.
I feel the trap under the question. Clean, basic, effective.
Diana hears it too. Her eyes flick toward me, then away.
I make a decision.
“Pull every credential from the last twenty-four hours,” I tell Lyle.
He points at himself, startled. “Me?”
“You’re standing here.”
“I’m a PA.”
“Congratulations. You’ve been promoted to person with legs. Go to the security office. Tell Casey to print the logs and not send them over email.”
He blinks. “Should I say you said—”
“Say it while walking.”
He walks. Almost runs.
Diana’s mouth twitches once. Not humor. Appreciation under stress.
Victor’s doesn’t.
“We have protocols for this,” he says.
“We had protocols last night.”
Low blow.
True blow.
His expression empties.
Diana looks between us. “What happened last night is not staying in this room.”
“No,” I say. “It isn’t.”
Victor’s voice turns mild. “Is Clara Vane coming?”
There.
Not Avery.
Not the police.
Clara.
I study him, the set lights catching the fine lines near his eyes, the careful tilt of his head.
“Why ask me?” I say.
“You called her.”
I don’t ask how he knows. On his production, every wall has an ear if it can bill overtime.
“She has relevant history,” I say.
“She has trauma,” Victor corrects. “A great deal of it. Publicly documented.”
Diana’s face hardens. “Don’t.”
Victor ignores her. “Bringing her here could inflame the situation.”
“The situation sent for her.”
“The situation,” he says, “may be someone using a vulnerable woman’s past to manipulate this production.”
My teeth press together hard enough to ache.
Vulnerable woman.
Another useful phrase. Softer than unstable. Cleaner than difficult. Same cage.
“You’re worried about Clara?” I ask.
“I’m worried about liability.”
“At least you found honesty.”
Diana makes a small sound. It could be a cough. It could be her swallowing a laugh at a terrible time.
Victor steps close enough that I can smell his cologne under the wet plywood and sugar-thick fake blood. Cedar. Pepper. Money trying to seem natural.
“You are not in a position to take moral inventory,” he says quietly.
No one else hears.
That is how men like Victor prefer their threats: intimate enough to deny.
I meet his eyes.
He knows I lied.
He has always known.
That is the other part of the knife. Not that he can expose me. That I let him keep the handle for eleven years.
“I’m in the position you hired me for,” I say. “And I’m telling you this set is closed.”
“Diana?”
She doesn’t look at him. “Closed.”
Victor’s jaw works once. He steps back and lifts his phone. “Then I’ll make the necessary calls.”
“Start with LAPD,” I say.
He smiles at me over the screen. “I’ll start with the studio.”
He walks away before I can answer.
Diana watches him go.
“He knows something,” she says.
“Yes.”
“You know something too.”
“Yes.”
She waits.
I don’t fill the silence.
After a moment, she shakes her head. “Men and their sacred little omissions.”
“That include women?”
“In Hollywood? Everyone omits. Men call it strategy.”
I almost like her again.
She turns toward the red door. “Did you know Laurel?”
The stage noise seems to lower, though it doesn’t. My body does that when her name is said here. It edits sound.
“Yes.”
“Did you love Clara?”
Not did you know.
Not did you work with.
Diana Sutter is good at her job because she points the camera where people don’t want it.
I look at the tablet instead of her.
“Relevant how?”
“That’s an answer.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It is in this town.”
A bad smile touches her mouth. Then fades. “If Clara comes here angry, Victor will use it.”
“She knows.”
“Does she?”
I think of Clara’s voice on the phone. Don’t.
Not stop. Not help. Not why.
Don’t.
A word that could mean ten things when it comes from a woman who once trusted you in the dark.
“She knows people like Victor,” I say.
Diana studies me for a moment. “That wasn’t what I asked.”
My radio saves me this time.
“Malcolm, west gate. We have a black sedan approaching. Driver says Clara Vane is expected.”
My hand tightens around the tablet again. The cracked corner bites into my skin.
Of course she’s early.
Of course she drove herself.
Of course she came after hanging up on me because Clara Vane would rather walk into a burning set than let a terrified girl borrow her nightmare alone.
Diana says, “That her?”
“Yes.”
Victor stops near the stage door, phone still at his ear.
He heard too.
Everyone is hearing everything now.
The set feels colder.
I press the radio. “Hold her at the gate.”
A pause.
Diana looks at me sharply.
I add, “Don’t let press see her. I’m coming.”
Victor lowers his phone. “I’ll greet her.”
“No.”
His eyebrows lift.
I don’t have time for this, and because I don’t have time, the truth comes out rougher than planned.
“You don’t get first contact with her.”
Victor’s smile is slow and unpleasant. “Protective.”
“Experienced.”
I turn before he can answer and move for the stage door.
The walk across the lot takes two minutes if you don’t know what guilt weighs. Tonight it takes longer.
The air outside is colder than it should be for Los Angeles.
Night shoots always feel borrowed from another city.
Trucks line the lane between stages. Cables run under rubber mats.
A craft services table sits abandoned under a canopy, paper plates curling at the edges, coffee burning itself bitter in an urn.
Someone left half a bagel on a napkin. Cream cheese sweating.
Real life refusing to pause for disaster.
A young extra in a blood-spattered nightgown smokes near a dumpster and cries into her phone.
A grip pushes a cart of fake axes past me, sees my face, and changes direction.
At the corner of Stage 11, I stop long enough to check the security monitor mounted near the lot office.
West gate feed. Wide angle. Sodium lights. Concrete booth. Two guards.
Black sedan.
Driver’s door opens.
Clara gets out.