CHAPTER 8 #2
Not may I. Not maybe. A decision.
That is Clara when the fear becomes a blade.
I call Rowan.
He answers on the fifth ring with machinery in the background and a voice like gravel dragged over sleep.
“Somebody better be on fire.”
“Not currently.”
“Malcolm?”
“Yes.”
A pause. The machinery lowers. “What happened?”
“I need you at Burbank. Stage archive. Old Blood House builds.”
Another pause. Longer. “No.”
Clara hears him from across the table. Her eyes don’t leave my face.
I say, “Avery Lorne is missing.”
“I saw nothing, heard nothing, and retired from unpaid nightmares.”
“This one’s paid in consequences.”
“Cute. Still no.”
“Rowan.”
His voice drops. “Do not use that tone with me. I buried enough of my conscience with that movie.”
Clara’s hand shifts on the table.
I keep my gaze on the wall. “Scene 17 is active again.”
Silence.
The fryer hisses behind the counter. Molly’s laptop fan whirs. Outside, Diana crushes her cigarette against a curb with more violence than necessary.
Rowan says, “That scene doesn’t exist.”
“It does tonight.”
“Who’s with you?”
“Clara.”
Another silence.
Then, quieter, “She there?”
“Yes.”
“Tell her I’m sorry.”
Clara’s face changes before she can stop it.
Not surprise.
Weariness.
She leans closer to the phone. “That better be about a specific thing, Pike.”
Rowan exhales. “You always did make apologies unsafe.”
“You always did make them vague.”
“I’m thirty minutes out.”
“Make it twenty,” she says.
“You bossing me now?”
“Apparently I’ve branched out.”
For the first time in too long, Rowan gives a dry laugh. “Yeah. That tracks.”
He hangs up.
Molly points at the phone. “I like him too.”
“You like everyone until they disappoint you,” Clara says.
“That’s called optimism with poor screening.”
Alvarez returns from speaking with Kiki. “Uniform will hold the scene. You’re not all going back to the lot unsupervised.”
“Correct,” I say. “We’re going back supervised by poor judgment and a detective.”
He looks at me. “I don’t remember volunteering.”
Clara rises. “You said you loved inconvenient people.”
“I said like. Never love. Love creates overtime.”
Molly starts packing her laptop. “I’m coming.”
“No,” Clara and I say at the same time.
Molly stops.
Clara looks irritated that we matched.
I am smart enough not to look pleased.
Molly plants both hands on the table. “Counterpoint. I found the blog, Red Vale, E.M., and this coffee shop has a cheese-based legal hazard. I have earned field trip rights.”
“You almost pepper-sprayed a sandbag,” Clara says.
“It had hostile posture.”
Alvarez says, “You stay where there are witnesses.”
Molly opens her mouth.
He points at the wall. “Someone came here twenty minutes before you. They may know your face now. You have a laptop full of research and the survival instincts of a golden retriever in a haunted house.”
Molly looks offended. “I am at least a terrier.”
Clara’s voice softens one degree. “Mols.”
That does it.
Not the safety argument. Not the detective. Not me.
Clara using the smaller name.
Molly looks down, then nods once. “Fine. I stay. But if you die, I’m ruining everyone’s branding.”
“Fair,” Clara says.
Molly grabs her laptop bag and points at me. “You. Bring her back.”
Clara says, “I bring myself back.”
Molly points at her too. “You. Help him think it was his idea if it keeps you alive.”
Clara’s mouth twitches.
Mine does not.
This is not funny.
It almost is.
We leave Marla’s with Alvarez, two marked units pulling up as we go.
Diana meets us near her car and insists on following.
I don’t argue. Partly because she has useful access.
Partly because Clara will side with her if I try to reduce the number of stubborn women near danger, and I’m tired of losing correctly.
The ride back to the lot is five minutes.
Clara refuses my passenger seat and sits in the back behind me.
I deserve that.
It still does something unpleasant to my chest.
Alvarez rides shotgun, reviewing notes. His presence makes the car feel more official and less intimate, which should help.
It doesn’t. The rearview mirror catches pieces of Clara: the angle of her jaw, her hand on her phone, the hair at her temple escaping its tie.
She is reading Gideon’s Red Vale documents.
Of course she is. A sandbag almost crushed her and someone marked an old booth, so she is doing document review at midnight in the back of my car.
“You still get carsick reading,” I say before I can stop myself.
The car goes quiet.
Alvarez looks out the windshield with the expression of a man pretending to be furniture.
Clara’s eyes lift in the rearview mirror. “You still make personal observations like they’re safety briefings.”
“Are you carsick?”
“No.”
A beat.
“A little.”
I reach into the center console, take out a roll of peppermint mints, and hold it back without turning.
She does not take it.
For three seconds, pride fights nausea in the back seat.
Pride loses.
Her fingers brush my palm as she takes the mint.
Barely.
Enough.
“Do not look emotionally satisfied,” she says.
“I’m looking at the road.”
“You have shoulders.”
Alvarez mutters, “This is the strangest ride-along I’ve had since the magician divorce.”
I do not ask.
Clara does. “Magician?”
“Long story. Rabbit survived.”
She makes a sound that is almost a laugh.
It lands in the car like contraband.
Then the lot gate opens, and the moment is gone.
Rowan Pike is already waiting near the archive building when we arrive.
He stands under a yellow security light with a duffel at his feet, wearing old work boots, a canvas jacket, and the expression of a man who has regretted coming since before he parked.
He’s built like someone who used to carry heavy things for a living and now resents chairs for not understanding backs.
He looks older. We all do.
His hair is more gray than brown now. There’s a scar along his chin I don’t remember.
His eyes go to Clara first.
He takes off his cap.
That small gesture does more than anything he says.
Clara gets out of the car slowly.
“Rowan,” she says.
“Clara.”
The years stand between them with dust on their shoulders.
He looks like he wants to hug her and knows he should rather walk into traffic.
Smart man.
“You look…” he starts.
“Careful.”
He nods. “Yeah. That was a bad opening.”
“Terrible.”
“Alive,” he says finally. “You look alive.”
That one gets through.
I see it in her face.
She looks away toward the archive door. “So does the franchise. Nobody’s happy about everything.”
Rowan almost smiles. “Still mean.”
“Underfunded coping strategy.”
His gaze shifts to me. The almost-smile dies.
“Reed.”
“Pike.”
“Still doing security for people who cause the problems?”
“Still arriving late with moral clarity?”
Alvarez steps between us with the calm of a man who has seen too much masculine weather. “Save the reunion for a place without evidence. Who has keys?”
Rowan lifts a ring from his pocket. “Old prop archive. Not main evidence. I called in a favor.”
Diana arrives behind us, getting out of her car. “If your favor is named Brent, he owes me six schedules and an apology.”
Rowan looks at her. “You Sutter?”
“Unfortunately for several men, yes.”
“I liked your second film.”
“Nobody saw my second film.”
“I did.”
She pauses. “Then I apologize for the third act.”
“It was ambitious.”
“It was underfunded.”
“I know the feeling.”
Alvarez sighs. “Keys.”
Rowan unlocks the archive.
The door opens to darkness and stale air.
Not the cold chemical sweetness of the shoebox. Older. Dust, cardboard, canvas, metal, dead glue. The smell of things saved because someone might monetize them later.
I step in first and sweep the light.
Rows of metal shelving. Prop weapons tagged in bins. Broken furniture. Door frames. Fake medical equipment. Boxes of call sheets and continuity photos. Wardrobe overflow. Old flats leaned against the far wall. A hanging plastic curtain dividing the room from a deeper storage section.
Clara enters behind me.
She says nothing.
Her silence changes with each room. In the coffee shop, it was survival. In the shoebox, it was anger. Here, it is recognition.
She remembers this place.
“Lights?” Alvarez asks.
Rowan reaches beside the door and flips the switch.
Fluorescent tubes flicker alive one by one, buzzing like angry insects.
Clara flinches.
Small. Fast.
I pretend not to see.
She knows I saw anyway.
Rowan leads us down the center aisle. “Blood House materials are supposed to be in cages C and D. Most of it got transferred after the reboot started. Some duplicates stayed.”
“Duplicates like what?” Clara asks.
“Door hardware. Rain bars. Breakaway panels. Hero props nobody cataloged right. Studios save trash if it touched a poster.”
Diana says, “That explains several executives.”
Rowan laughs once, surprised.
Good.
People who can laugh are breathing.
At cage C, the padlock is newer than the rest.
I notice it when Rowan does.
He stops.
“That’s not mine,” he says.
Alvarez’s hand moves near his side. “Meaning?”
“Meaning somebody changed it.”
I crouch and look at the lock. Clean metal. No rust. Hardware store type. The hasp around it is old and scratched.
“Cut?” Rowan asks.
“No,” Alvarez says. “Photograph first.”
Clara is looking past us, through the mesh cage.
“What is it?” I ask.
“There.”
Inside the cage, on a shelf between a cracked rain bar and a bin labeled BH — DOOR MECH, sits a call sheet clipped to a red backing board.
It is facing us.
Not stored.
Displayed.
Scene 17 — Red Door Sequence.
Across it, in black marker:
SHE DIDN’T LEAVE FIRST. YOU MOVED HER.
The room loses sound for one brutal second.
Clara turns to me.
No accusation this time.
No sarcasm.
That is worse.
Rowan whispers, “Christ.”
Alvarez says, “Nobody moves.”
The lights go out.
Not flicker. Not fail slowly.
Out.
Darkness drops over the archive with a hard electrical click.
A metal door slams somewhere behind us.
Then another.
Rowan curses.
Diana says, “That was the entrance.”
I reach for Clara before I stop myself.
This time, I stop before touching.
“Clara,” I say into the dark.
Her voice comes from my left, close and steady.
“I’m here.”
That should not feel like mercy.
It does.
Then my radio crackles.
The distorted voice comes through softly, almost pleased.
“Now ask him in the dark.”