CHAPTER 2 #3
The camera is too high to give me details, but my body supplies them anyway. The dark line of her coat. The way she stands without looking around too much, because looking around too much tells people what hurts. One hand holding her bag. The other empty.
No Molly.
That irritates me.
No. It scares me, and irritation is easier to carry.
The guard says something through the booth speaker. Clara turns her head slowly toward him.
I can’t hear her answer.
I can imagine it.
God help the guard.
I start walking again.
My phone buzzes before I reach the gate.
Unknown number.
For one foolish second, I think it might be Clara using a number she thinks I don’t have. Then I see the attachment icon.
My thumb hovers over the screen.
I should wait.
I don’t.
The image opens.
Avery Lorne sits on a floor somewhere dark, wrists bound in front of her, tape over her mouth. Her eyes are wide and wet, but focused. She holds a card with shaking fingers.
ASK CLARA WHAT HAPPENED TO LAUREL.
For one second, my knee forgets what walking is.
I stop beside a parked equipment truck and put my hand against the cold metal side.
The truck smells like dust, gasoline, and old rope. The lot hums around me. A cart rattles over asphalt behind me. Someone laughs far away, too loud and too late.
Avery is alive.
That should be the first thought.
It is.
The second is worse.
Someone knows exactly where to press.
Not at the case. Not at the production. Not even at Clara.
At the space between Clara and me.
I zoom in on the photo.
Her wrists. Not zip ties. Cloth. Wardrobe tie, maybe. Tape over the mouth. Background: black floor, scuffed. A line of red paint at the edge of frame. Not blood. Paint. A set piece, maybe from the old corridor.
I scan the corners.
There.
Lower right. A piece of tape on the floor with handwriting half cut off.
17B.
My mouth goes dry.
Not Stage 14’s active hallway.
Another build.
Backup set. Storage stage. Somewhere off-grid enough to hold a person and close enough to use our comms.
I hit the radio. “Casey, pull all stages with standing Red Door pieces, backup flats, archival builds, or 17B labels.”
Static. “That’s a lot of history.”
“Then start reading.”
“Copy.”
I look back at the gate monitor on my phone.
Clara stands under the security light now, face angled toward the booth.
The camera turns her into sharp lines and shadows.
It does not show the scar. It does not show the eyes.
It does not show the woman who once laughed with powdered sugar on her black jeans because Laurel had dropped a donut in her lap between takes.
Good.
The camera doesn’t deserve her.
I move.
The west gate sits beyond a row of production trailers and a cluster of rented palms nobody bothered to water. A long-lens photographer stands across the street pretending to check his tire. One of my guards positions himself to block the view, but not enough.
I make a note to fix that and hate myself for noticing angles when Clara is twenty yards away.
She sees me before I reach her.
Her face does not change.
That is how I know she’s furious.
Clara’s anger used to be loud only when it was safe. When it mattered, she got polite. Still. Exact. Like every word had been measured against a blade.
She wears a black coat over dark pants, hair pulled back low, no visible makeup except something at her mouth that the harsh gate light makes almost colorless. One hand grips her bag strap. The other hangs at her side, fingers slightly curled.
She looks tired.
She looks alive.
The relief is so sharp I almost resent her for causing it.
The guard beside the booth says, “She’s not on the approved—”
“She is,” I say.
Clara’s eyes stay on mine. “Am I?”
The sound of her voice in person moves through me with the old damage attached.
Not softer. Not weaker.
Present.
I stop three feet away. Far enough not to crowd her. Close enough that I can see the faint pressure marks on her palm where her phone must have been.
“You shouldn’t have come alone,” I say.
Her eyebrows rise a fraction. “Good to see you too.”
Not a greeting.
A cut that knows it is one.
The guard looks at the pavement like it might open and spare him.
I take out a visitor credential. My fingers don’t move as smoothly as they should. Clara notices because she notices every failure she can use later.
“Put this on,” I say.
“No.”
“Clara.”
“Try again. With less command.”
The guard makes a strangled sound and turns it into a cough.
Under different circumstances, I might deserve that.
Under these, I still deserve it.
I hold the credential out by the clip, not stepping closer. “Press is across the street. If they get your face before we control the perimeter, Victor gets the headline he wants by morning.”
Her gaze flicks past my shoulder.
There. She clocks the photographer, the bad angle, the guard too close to the booth glass.
She takes the credential.
Not because I told her to.
Because the information is useful.
That matters.
Her fingers brush the plastic, not my hand. Avoidance with surgical accuracy.
“Victor’s here?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Of course he is.”
“You know him.”
“I know his type. Different thing.”
“You don’t know this type enough.”
She clips the badge to her coat, eyes back on mine. “That almost sounded like concern.”
“It was.”
“Messy. You used to hide it better.”
There are replies available.
None survive the distance between us.
Behind her, across the street, the photographer raises the camera a little.
I shift before thinking, putting my body between Clara and the lens.
Her eyes drop to the movement.
A muscle in her cheek tightens. Not gratitude. Not yet. Maybe never.
“Don’t,” she says quietly.
Same word from the phone.
Closer now, it has more weight.
I keep my voice low. “He already has the shot if I don’t.”
“I didn’t ask you to block anything for me.”
“I know.”
“And yet.”
“Yes.”
She looks away first, but not like surrender. Like she found something more important to hate.
“I got the photo,” she says.
“So did I.”
Her attention snaps back. “When?”
“Two minutes ago.”
“After you called me?”
“Yes.”
“So when you called, you didn’t know about the card.”
“No.”
“You knew enough to summon me.”
“I asked.”
“You said you needed me.”
I did.
And there it is between us, ugly with need because I should have used any other word.
A cart rattles somewhere behind the gate. The guard pretends to check his tablet. The photographer across the street moves three steps to the left.
Clara’s face is calm.
Her fingers are white on the strap of her bag.
“Is Avery alive?” she asks.
“Yes.”
The word changes her. Not much. A shallow shift of air through her nose. Her shoulders lower, then lock again.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Is that your professional answer or your honest one?”
“They’re the same tonight.”
“That’s new.”
I absorb it because she has earned worse.
“We have a four-minute blackout,” I say. “Camera feeds cut at 1:38. Back at 1:42. Avery gone. The red coat gone. Original production credential used. Someone came over comms and said Scene seventeen is ready.”
The skin near her mouth pulls tight.
“You know what that is,” I say.
“I know what they want me to think it is.”
“Clara.”
“No.” She steps closer now, not much, enough for the security light to catch the fine tension at the side of her jaw. “You don’t get to say my name like I’m already standing too close to a ledge.”
My thumb presses against the cracked edge of the tablet case in my hand.
“I was going to say there’s a 17B mark in the photo.”
That stops her.
Good.
Not good. Useful.
Her gaze sharpens. The investigator takes over because that part of her has always been stronger than fear.
“Show me.”
I hesitate.
A stupid, half-second hesitation.
She sees it and smiles with no humor.
“Careful, Malcolm. Protecting me is how you ruined my life the first time.”
The words hit clean.
No flinch. Not outside.
I hand her the phone.
She takes it.
Her face changes when she sees Avery. Not the public face. Not the actress face. Something private and immediate moves under her control, then gets locked behind it.
Her thumb widens the image.
“There,” I say, pointing without touching her. “Bottom right.”
“I see it.”
“Does it mean anything?”
She keeps looking at the photo. “Not by itself.”
“But?”
She gives me back the phone.
Her hand is steady now too.
That scares me more than shaking.
“But Laurel and I shot pickups on a second red door set after the main unit wrapped,” she says. “Smaller build. Cheaper. They used it for inserts.”
My pulse slows in the way it does before impact.
“Where?”
She looks through the gate, past the trailers, toward the dark line of stages.
“Not Stage 14.”
“Clara.”
Her eyes come back to mine.
For one second, the years don’t disappear. Nothing so kind. They compress. Eleven years of anger, silence, footage, reports, headlines, and me making myself useful to men I should have exposed sooner.
She says, “Take me to the lot map.”
The power shifts then.
Not to me.
Not away from me.
To the case.
That is safer for both of us.
I gesture toward the open gate. “Stay close.”
She steps past me. “Try saying please sometime. People may stop assuming you were assembled in a warehouse.”
Against every decent instinct, my mouth almost curves.
“Please stay close.”
She stops one step inside the lot and glances back.
The set lights catch her face, and for a second I see the woman from every poster and none of them. Older. Sharper. Here because someone put another girl in the wrong coat.
“That was terrible,” she says.
“I’m out of practice.”
“At being polite?”
“At asking.”
The air changes.
Small. Dangerous.
She looks at me for half a second too long.
Then her gaze moves past me to the dark bulk of Stage 14, and whatever almost happened closes with a quiet click.
“Good,” she says. “Start with the map.”
She walks ahead of me onto the lot.
I follow, and behind us, the west gate rolls shut.