CHAPTER 17 #2
“Because by the time I understood what I had seen, your name was already in the first draft of the incident summary.”
“Convenient.”
“Yes.”
“And you decided one more omission would save me.”
“Yes.”
I close my eyes.
Bad idea.
Behind my eyelids: water over Avery’s face. Laurel behind glass. Malcolm’s younger hand pulling me from a hallway. Victor on his phone. Nate saying language mattered while a woman begged them not to run the take.
I open my eyes.
“If Avery dies,” I say, “because you are still rationing truth—”
“She won’t.”
The words come too fast.
I turn on him.
He knows before I speak.
“Don’t promise what you can’t control.”
He swallows.
The tiny movement is the only thing in him that looks young.
“You’re right.”
“I hate when you say that.”
“I know.”
“No. You like saying it because it makes you sound reformed.”
His face changes.
There.
Hit.
Not unfairly.
He looks down at Edda’s folder. “Maybe.”
The honesty disarms me enough to make anger stumble.
I do not forgive him.
I do not trust him.
But I believe he is trying to stop lying, and that is such an inconvenient category I want to throw it out the window.
Alvarez turns hard onto the studio access road. “Two minutes.”
My phone is dead, so I cannot check Molly. That makes my hand twitch toward an empty pocket. I hate the dependency. I hate that I want her voice. I hate that I walked into Crescent Vault without her and proved everyone half right.
“Diana has Molly on speaker,” Alvarez says, as if he can hear thoughts too.
I look at him.
He shrugs. “Your face got louder.”
From the back seat, Malcolm says, “It does that.”
“Don’t bond over me,” I say.
Alvarez almost smiles. “Too late.”
The studio gate is a disaster.
Press has multiplied. Police lights flash.
Crew members cluster behind barricades with hoodies and coffee cups and fear disguised as gossip.
Someone shouts my name. Someone shouts Malcolm’s.
A camera catches the car through the windshield, and for one ugly second I am twenty-three again, being photographed before I understand what part of my face will become the story.
My fingers find the cracked rain tank credential in my pocket.
I press the edge into my palm.
Pain. Small. Chosen. Mine.
Alvarez gets us through the gate with his badge and a level of profanity that feels medicinal.
Wardrobe Annex C sits behind Stage 14, past the hidden corridor where the sandbag fell, past the shoebox, past all the places that have learned my footsteps too well.
It is a low, ugly building with peeling beige paint, a loading dock, a rusted pipe along the roofline, and a sign that says ANNEX C — FAbrIC PROCESSING in faded black letters.
ANC.
The missing letters from Avery’s video.
My lungs make a bad decision.
Not panic.
Preparation.
Alvarez stops the car short of the loading dock. “Everyone waits for backup.”
“No.”
He turns on me.
I lift a hand. “Not a heroic no. A tactical no. If the ten minutes are real, waiting means we arrive to a body.”
Malcolm gets out without speaking. He looks at the roofline, drains, service door, cameras, gutter, tire marks in the dust.
“Fresh water runoff,” he says.
I follow his gaze.
A thin stream runs from beneath the loading dock door, across the concrete, into a drain.
Water.
Not much.
Enough.
“Avery,” I say.
Alvarez points at a uniform. “Side exits. Nobody enters alone.”
Diana’s car pulls in behind us hard enough to make gravel spit. She gets out barefoot again, phone in one hand, Molly’s voice already yelling from speaker.
“CLARA, IF YOU ARE ALIVE, COUGH RUDELY.”
I cough because my lungs are compromised and Molly is impossible.
“Oh, thank God,” she says. “I hated that sound but loved the data.”
I take Diana’s phone. “Mols.”
“You went into a burning storage unit.”
“Technically the unit caught fire after.”
“That is not a defense. That is plot order.”
“I need you.”
“I know, tragically. Casey sent stills from Avery video. I enhanced the sign. It’s Annex C, fabric processing, but that’s not the only thing.”
“What?”
“There’s a sticker on the metal shelving behind Avery. Old inventory code: BH-WARD-AUX-03.”
I look at the annex.
“Wardrobe Aux 03,” I say.
Malcolm turns.
Molly continues, “Teresa Hall had access to the current wardrobe database. She said Paul was the one who told her Diana approved the coat. Paul’s badge pinged twice tonight near Annex C, but he told everyone he went home.”
Paul.
Wardrobe assistant.
A small name hiding under bigger men.
“Is Paul Victor’s person?” I ask.
“Maybe. Or scared. Or dead next, given the evening’s theme. I hate this theme.”
“Find his full name.”
“Already doing it. Also Gideon says don’t enter without a warrant, and then he said, quote, ‘I understand no one is listening, but I would like the record to reflect despair.’”
“Tell him noted.”
“He hates when you borrow his emotional vocabulary.”
I hand Diana the phone back.
Alvarez is at the loading dock door now, checking the frame. Malcolm stands to the side, not in front of me.
A choice.
I step up beside him.
He says, “If she’s inside, we move to her first. Not the door. Not the rig. Her.”
“I know.”
“If the person is inside—”
“Her first.”
He looks at me.
“What?” I ask.
“You said it without fighting.”
“I’m tired. Don’t get attached.”
“Too late,” he says.
The words come out low.
Not meant for everyone.
Maybe not meant for himself.
My body registers them in the worst possible way: pressure under my ribs, heat behind my neck, anger turning its head toward something I refuse to name.
I look at the loading dock instead.
“Don’t,” I say.
“I know.”
“No. You don’t. Don’t make this about us while she’s in there.”
His face closes.
Not fully.
Enough to hurt.
“You’re right.”
“There it is again.”
“I can’t win.”
“You’re not supposed to win me.”
Silence.
The line lands harder than I expect.
Maybe because I mean more than the moment can carry.
Malcolm looks at the door.
Then at me.
“I know,” he says, and this time it doesn’t sound like reformation. It sounds like damage learning a new shape.
Alvarez wedges a pry tool into the loading dock door. “Ready?”
Nobody is.
We nod anyway.
The door slides up with a metal scream.
Water spills over the lip.
Not a flood. A sheet. Cold and clear and wrong across the loading dock.
Inside, Annex C is lit red.
Rain falls from a rig overhead into a shallow catch basin built from plastic sheeting and sandbags. The red door stands at the far end, mounted in a frame, its surface slick with water. A chair sits in front of it.
Empty.
Ropes hang from the arms.
Cut.
My heart hits once, hard enough to hurt.
Avery is not in the chair.
On the floor beside it, written in black marker on wet tape:
SHE WAS NEVER YOUR FINAL GIRL.
Alvarez curses and sweeps left with his weapon.
Malcolm sweeps right.
I move forward before anyone tells me not to, stepping into water that soaks through my shoe. The room smells like wet canvas, rubber, hot lights, and fake blood diluted thin enough to look like bad watercolor in the drain.
“Avery!” I call.
No answer.
Rain hammers plastic. The sound fills everything, making silence impossible to trust.
Near the chair, a strand of hair sticks to wet tape.
Dark blonde.
Avery’s.
Maybe.
I crouch, not touching.
Then I see it.
Under the chair.
A lighter.
Silver. Scratched. Dented.
A second L.W. lighter.
Again.
No.
Not the lighter from Avery’s bag. That one is evidence. Bagged. With Alvarez.
This is a duplicate.
Or the one in Avery’s bag was never the original.
The room tilts by half an inch.
I reach without thinking.
Malcolm’s voice cuts through the rain. “Clara.”
I stop.
My fingers hover inches above the lighter.
Evidence.
Bait.
Memory.
On the side of the lighter, a strip of wet red tape is stuck crookedly. Black marker bleeds through the water.
ASK HIM WHO GAVE IT TO HER.
I look back at Malcolm.
His face has gone white.
Not guilty-white.
Remembering-white.
The kind of pale that comes from a buried thing hearing its name.
“Who gave Laurel the lighter?” I ask.
The rain keeps falling.
Alvarez looks between us.
Diana stands in the doorway, barefoot in water, face drawn tight.
Malcolm’s mouth opens.
Nothing comes out.
That is answer enough.
My chest goes tight around something that is not fear.
“Who?” I ask again.
His voice is almost gone when he answers.
“You did.”
The room turns red around me.
Rain. Door. Empty chair. Second lighter. Malcolm’s eyes.
“No,” I say.
It comes out calm.
Too calm.
He takes one step toward me.
Stops himself.
“You gave it to her after the first red door take,” he says. “At Marla’s. You said she needed a light that opened when doors didn’t.”
My hand closes on nothing.
I do not remember.
That is the worst part.
Not the lighter.
Not the message.
Not the empty chair.
The blank space where my own kindness should be.
Water hits the plastic. Lights buzz. Somewhere outside, Molly is yelling through a phone I cannot hear clearly.
Malcolm says my name.
I stand.
Slowly.
“Don’t,” I say.
He stops.
“No more.” My voice shakes now, and I hate it, but it keeps going. “No more little pieces when the room forces them out. No more timing your truth like scene coverage.”
“I didn’t—”
“You did.”
His face takes it.
Good.
I want it to hurt.
I need it to hurt somewhere besides me.
“I can work with you,” I say. “I can use what you know. I can stand beside you if Avery needs both of us alive. But whatever you think we are doing emotionally—stop.”
The rain seems louder.
Or I am quieter.
Malcolm looks like I have put a door between us and locked it from my side.
Good.
Maybe.
“I understand,” he says.
“No,” I say. “You don’t. But you will.”
Alvarez’s radio crackles.
A uniform shouts from the back of the annex. “Detective! North exit. Blood trail and drag marks.”
Avery.
Everything else drops.
I turn toward the voice.
Then the red door behind the empty chair clicks.
Once.
A lock disengaging.
The door opens inward by one inch.
And from behind it, a phone begins to ring.