CHAPTER 5
Clara
Malcolm closes his hand around the phone like fingers can make a sentence disappear.
They can’t.
I saw it.
ASK MALCOLM WHY HE MOVED HER.
Four words are enough when they know where to aim.
The lot keeps moving around us in small, obscene ways.
A police cruiser idles near the trailers.
A grip drags a case over uneven pavement.
Someone laughs too far away, probably from nerves or ignorance, and the sound makes my back teeth press together.
Avery’s trailer sits behind me with its crooked shoe, its lined sugar packets, its dead woman’s lighter sealed in paper.
Malcolm stands in front of me with his hand closed around the phone.
Not hiding. Holding.
There’s a difference. I hate that I still know how to read it.
“What,” I ask again, “did you move?”
His eyes stay on mine. The security lights make them look colder than they are. Or warmer than they deserve. I can’t tell anymore. This place edits people without cameras.
Detective Alvarez says something to Victor behind us. Diana answers before Victor can. Teresa cries quietly near the wardrobe trailer and tries to make it look like allergies, which is impossible at midnight on a studio lot unless the allergy is corporate manslaughter.
Malcolm doesn’t look at any of them.
“Not here,” he says.
A laugh comes up my throat and dies there, ugly and dry.
“Of course not.”
“Clara.”
“No. Let me guess. Not here, not now, not with police, not with Victor, not while Avery’s missing, not while Mercury is in retrograde, not while men are busy discovering the emotional inconvenience of consequences.”
His mouth tightens. “Mercury?”
“I ran out of legal excuses and moved into astronomy.”
“This isn’t me avoiding.”
“That is exactly what avoidance says after buying a new jacket.”
He exhales through his nose and looks toward the lot office.
I step into his line of sight.
He could move around me. He doesn’t. He has six inches on me and a decade of training in body mechanics, and still, for one second, he lets me be the wall.
That should not matter.
It does.
I hate him for that too.
“Did you move Laurel?” I ask.
The question lands in his face before he can stop it.
There. Pain. Immediate. Not performed.
“No.”
“Did you move her lighter?”
“No.”
“Did you move evidence?”
“No.”
“Did you move me?”
The silence changes.
Not long. Not enough for anyone else to notice.
Enough for me.
My skin gets too tight under my coat.
“Malcolm.”
His hand lowers around the phone. “Yes.”
The word enters me through the soles of my shoes.
For a second, the lot tilts—not dramatically, not like a movie, not enough for anyone to catch. My weight shifts wrong. The visitor badge taps against my coat. The plastic edge clicks once. Tiny. Stupid. Real.
“You moved me,” I say.
“Yes.”
“I was told I collapsed near the exterior set entrance.”
“I know.”
“You said I wasn’t near the door.”
“I know.”
“You said—”
“I know what I said.”
The calm in his voice scrapes the inside of my head.
“No,” I say softly. “You don’t get to sound tired of your own lies before I’m finished hearing them.”
His face hardens at the edges, but not with anger. With containment. Malcolm has always been good at containment. Fire, cables, unsafe rigs, drunk actors, me. He puts danger into boxes and labels them with useful words.
I wonder what label he used for me.
Difficult. Fragile. Protect.
Maybe worse.
Maybe alive.
The thought is unwelcome.
“What do you mean you moved me?” I ask.
He looks past me once. Alvarez is closer now, talking to one of the uniformed officers by Avery’s trailer steps. Victor has his phone out again. Diana watches us like she knows she is seeing a scene she has no right to direct.
Malcolm drops his voice. “I pulled you from the hallway before the first medic reached you.”
“You said I wasn’t in the hallway.”
“I know.”
“Were you lying then or are you lying now?”
“Then.”
The answer is too clean.
I want to hit him.
Not with my hand. With an object. Something blunt and emotionally appropriate. A clipboard. A prop ax. Victor.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because the studio’s first draft put you at the door when Laurel died.”
The words are not enough by themselves. The meaning drags behind them.
At the door.
Not near. Not adjacent. At.
My fingertips go cold.
“I wasn’t.”
“No.”
“Then why would they—”
I stop.
Because the answer is standing thirty feet away in a navy suit, speaking softly to a detective like charm is a legal document.
Victor wanted a version.
The studio wanted a version.
The dead girl could not object, and the surviving girl was already bleeding.
A practical solution.
I taste metal again.
“Say all of it,” I tell Malcolm.
His eyes move over my face like he is checking for structural damage.
I nearly laugh.
Too late.
“They were building a negligence defense before Laurel’s body left the lot,” he says. “The door had a lock issue. The rain system malfunctioned. People heard you arguing about the reset. They wanted to say you went off mark. That Laurel followed you. That the scene failed because you—”
“Because I what?”
His jaw tightens.
This time I let myself enjoy it.
“Because I was hysterical?” I ask. “Unprofessional? Jealous? Difficult? Pick the vintage. I had a whole collection.”
His voice goes low. “Because you were convenient.”
That shuts something in me.
Not the anger.
Something softer that didn’t deserve to be standing there.
A police radio chirps nearby. Teresa says, “I need to sit,” and Diana tells someone to get her a chair. The world continues making little arrangements around the hole Malcolm has cut open.
“So you lied,” I say.
“Yes.”
“To save me.”
His gaze holds mine. “I thought I was.”
I take one step back because the distance has become confusing.
“No,” I say. “You saved their timeline.”
The hit lands.
He takes it.
Good.
Not good enough.
“Clara,” Alvarez calls.
I turn too quickly and almost regret it. Not physically. Emotionally. Turning away from Malcolm feels like leaving a room before knowing whether it is on fire.
Alvarez stands near Avery’s trailer steps with a notebook in one hand. “I need your statement before you leave the lot.”
“Who said I’m leaving?”
He looks between me and Malcolm. “Experience.”
That almost earns him a smile. It doesn’t get one. I’m rationing.
Victor approaches with the smooth pace of a man entering a negotiation he believes he can still win. “Detective, Ms. Vane is not an employee of this production. Given her past connection to the property, I would advise caution about allowing her broad access to—”
“Mr. Hales,” Alvarez says, without looking up from his notebook, “I have an aunt who gives advice every Christmas. I don’t follow hers either.”
Diana turns her head away.
Malcolm’s mouth does nothing. His eyes betray him again.
Victor’s smile becomes a thin corporate injury. “I’m only concerned about boundaries.”
I face him.
“Victor,” I say.
He looks at me with practiced patience.
“When you talk about boundaries, does your mouth burn a little, or have you developed immunity?”
Diana makes the smallest sound. Teresa, sitting now on a folding chair someone dragged from wardrobe, presses a tissue under her nose and stares at the ground.
Alvarez writes something down. I suspect it is not official.
Victor steps closer. “Clara, I know this is difficult.”
There it is.
The leash word.
I feel Malcolm move before he stops himself. Not in front of me. Not beside me. A shift. A check.
Progress, maybe.
I don’t need it.
I let my voice go polite. Very polite. My worst tone. “The next person who calls this difficult is going to explain to a police detective why a missing actress was dressed in the coat of a dead woman whose accident your production is recreating for money.”
Victor’s expression goes cold.
At last.
There’s the man under the brochure.
Alvarez looks up. “That part interests me too.”
Victor turns to him. “The wardrobe issue is being exaggerated.”
“No,” I say. “The wardrobe issue is being softened.”
Alvarez’s eyes come back to me. “You’re saying the coat Avery wore belonged to Laurel West?”
“Original hero wardrobe. Laurel wore it the night she died. Diana rejected its use. Victor overrode her. Avery asked to see it yesterday because she was investigating something about the original shoot.”
Victor says, “That is speculation.”
“It’s a witness-based summary. Speculation wears more perfume.”
Alvarez’s pen pauses.
He looks like he regrets liking that.
“Ms. Vane, statement,” he says. “Then I need you available.”
“I’ll be available through my office.”
Malcolm’s eyes cut to me.
I ignore him.
Alvarez nods. “Don’t leave the city.”
“I live here.”
“People leave places they live when things get interesting.”
“Noted.”
Victor’s gaze flicks between us. “You’re releasing her?”
Alvarez gives him a tired look. “Did you want me to arrest her for being unpleasant at you?”
Diana turns it into a cough badly enough that even I almost break.
Victor does not appreciate the room slipping away from him. That is useful. Men like Victor reveal more when charm stops working. Not truth, exactly. Anger in a nicer suit.
Malcolm steps closer, voice low. “You shouldn’t go back to your office alone.”
I don’t look at him. “You moved me once. Don’t make a hobby out of it.”
“Clara.”
“I have Molly.”
“That is not comforting.”
“It isn’t meant to comfort you.”
“Molly owns pepper spray shaped like lipstick and once threatened a producer with an expired parking ticket because she thought it was a subpoena. I’m aware of her tactical profile.”
Despite everything, the corner of my mouth tries to move.
I crush it.
“Then you know she’s terrifying.”
“She’s five foot three.”
“She fights dirty and Googles fast.”
Alvarez looks up again. “Who’s Molly?”
“My assistant,” I say.
Malcolm says, “Her chaos goblin.”
I look at him.
He looks back, and for one obscene second, the old rhythm stands there wearing the wrong night’s clothes.