CHAPTER 14 #3
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
She looks at me. “You absolutely would. That’s your whole problem.”
Fair.
We move toward Alvarez’s car.
At the gate, Victor stands with his lawyer, speaking into a phone. He looks up as we approach. For one brief second, his eyes move to the north exit.
Not to me.
Not to Alvarez.
North.
My pulse drops into a colder rhythm.
I change direction.
Alvarez says, “Reed.”
“Thirty seconds.”
“No.”
I keep walking.
A mistake. Maybe.
Not emotional this time.
Calculated enough to be dangerous.
Victor lowers his phone as I stop in front of him.
“Where is she?” I ask.
His brows lift. “Who?”
Alvarez appears at my shoulder. “Answer carefully.”
Victor gives us both an offended look. “If you mean Clara, I assume wherever she can attract the most attention.”
I step closer.
Alvarez’s hand comes up, not touching me.
I stop before he has to.
Growth should not feel this humiliating.
“Your transportation system just sent a van north with a manual override,” I say.
“That sounds like a question for transportation.”
“It’s your level of access.”
“It is many people’s level of access.”
“Then you won’t mind giving Alvarez your phone.”
The lawyer says, “Absolutely not.”
Victor smiles slightly.
Too slightly.
There it is again.
Pleasure in the procedural wall.
He knows time matters.
He knows Clara is moving.
He knows lawyers are locked doors made of paper.
Alvarez looks at the lawyer. “I can get a warrant.”
“Then get one.”
Victor’s smile stays.
My hands remain at my sides.
I do not hit him.
I do not grab the phone.
I do not become the man the frame needs.
I look at Victor and say, “Laurel said the door was locked before she died.”
For the first time, the smile goes.
Not entirely.
Enough.
“She screamed two days before the fatal take,” I say. “Edda Marsh tried to pull the hardware. The workprint exists. Nate knew. Avery found it. And now everyone who can connect those pieces keeps ending up staged.”
Victor’s face returns to neutral too slowly.
Alvarez is very still beside me.
I lean in one inch. Only one.
“I lied once,” I say. “I know what it costs now. You don’t get to keep spending it.”
Victor’s eyes harden. “You should call a lawyer.”
“I should have called one eleven years ago.”
That lands.
Not enough to break him.
Enough to make him blink.
Alvarez pulls me back with two fingers on my sleeve. I let him.
Victor lifts his phone again, but his hand is not as steady.
Good.
Not good enough.
We get in the car.
Alvarez drives. I sit passenger, useless hands on my knees, smoke in my throat, Clara’s dead phone on the dashboard because Diana threw it in after us and said, “Maybe proximity will shame it into charging.”
Casey is in the back with the tablet, tracking the van.
Diana follows in another car, probably breaking several laws and one heel.
Alvarez accelerates out the north gate.
The city beyond the studio is beginning to wake badly. Delivery trucks. Early commuters. A jogger in reflective gear who has no idea he is passing a moving crime scene. The sky is gray at the edges.
Casey says, “Van turned west on Magnolia. Then signal dropped.”
“Dropped?” Alvarez asks.
“Transponder off.”
“Traffic cams?”
“Pulling.”
My knee bounces once.
I stop it.
Alvarez notices. “You okay?”
“No.”
“Great. Honest people are easier to transport.”
I look out the window.
Every red light feels personal.
Every car ahead of us is a door.
My mind tries to make routes, probabilities, entry points, blind spots.
Crescent Vault North Hollywood. Storage opens at nine.
It is not nine yet. If Clara has the threat, she’ll try to arrive before staff, before cameras are crowded, before Avery can be moved.
She will think she is protecting Avery by obeying.
She will not believe obedience protects anyone, but she will believe buying minutes can.
She will go because I would have tried to stop her.
No.
She will go because Avery asked for Clara.
Because every woman in this case has been punished for asking someone to believe her too late.
The thought lands hard enough to change my breathing.
I pull air through my nose. Slow. Smoke tastes worse in daylight.
Casey says, “Got a traffic cam. Studio van stopped near Lankershim and Chandler.”
“Clara?” Alvarez asks.
“Driver only visible. Can’t see passenger. Wait.” He swipes. “Another camera. A woman exits two blocks before. Dark coat. Heading east on foot.”
My chest tightens.
“Time?”
“Four minutes ago.”
Alvarez glances at me. “We can catch her.”
Maybe.
Maybe not.
My first instinct is to say faster.
Instead, I ask, “What’s east?”
Casey checks. “Industrial row. Crescent Vault is six blocks from there.”
“She’s walking the rest to avoid leading van to storage,” I say.
Alvarez takes a corner hard enough to make my shoulder flare.
“She knows she’s being watched,” Casey says.
“No,” I say. “She knows she’s being written.”
The car goes quiet.
Then Alvarez says, “That was almost poetic. Don’t do it again.”
“I’ll try.”
My borrowed windbreaker smells like dust and someone else’s cologne. The sleeves are too short. My shoulder burns. My phone is in evidence. Clara’s phone is dead on the dashboard. Outside, morning keeps arriving like it hasn’t read the room.
We turn onto an industrial street lined with roll-up doors, auto shops, storage facilities, chain-link fences, and crows picking at something in a gutter.
Casey leans forward. “Crescent Vault is ahead.”
The building appears at the end of the block: gray concrete, blue signage, keypad gate, security cameras mounted at clean angles. Too clean. Too calm. The kind of place built to store things people don’t want in their homes but aren’t ready to throw away.
Secrets with monthly billing.
I scan the sidewalk.
No Clara.
Then I see her.
Half a block ahead, near the service entrance, dark coat, phone dead in one hand, walking toward a side gate marked DELIVERIES.
Alone.
A white van is parked across the street.
Not the studio van.
Different.
Unmarked.
The side door is open two inches.
My body goes cold.
“There,” I say.
Alvarez reaches for the radio.
Clara stops at the gate.
A camera above it turns toward her.
Not fixed.
Controlled.
She looks up.
Then, from the open van across the street, a woman’s voice plays through a speaker.
Avery.
“Clara, please.”
Clara turns toward the van.
I am out of the car before Alvarez fully stops.
“Clara!” I shout.
She hears me.
So does whoever is in the van.
The side gate clicks open.
Clara looks at me.
For half a second, every bad version of us stands between the street and the storage gate: me running, her refusing, both of us too late for different reasons.
I stop moving.
It takes everything.
I lift both hands where she can see them.
Not command.
Not grab.
Not rescue.
Warning.
“Don’t choose alone,” I call.
Her face changes.
The van door begins to slide wider.
Inside, in the dark, something red hangs from the ceiling.
A coat.
Or a girl.
Clara turns back toward it.
And steps through the open gate.