CHAPTER 21
Clara
Malcolm’s voice breaks open above us, and I do not look up.
That is the choice.
Not forgiveness.
Not cruelty.
Choice.
The tram has stopped with Avery inside it, half-lit by the white emergency glow, water running down the windows in uneven lines.
Her hands are bound. Her cheek is pressed to the glass.
Her lips move around my name, but the set is too loud with water and alarms and old metal for me to hear her clearly.
Above us, somewhere behind the control glass, Malcolm has just handed me another piece of my life.
Because I gave it to you first.
The lighter.
Marla’s.
Laurel scared before the fatal take.
Me scared enough to forget my own kindness because remembering would mean knowing I understood the danger and still let the set keep rolling around us.
No.
Not now.
Avery slams one palm against the wet tram window.
Alive first.
Grief later.
I run to the tram door.
Alvarez grabs the exterior handle and pulls. It doesn’t move. The door shudders in its track, locked from inside or pinned from the control system. Diana stands behind him, barefoot in water, one hand on the fake concrete wall to keep herself upright.
“Can you break it?” I ask.
Alvarez tries again. “Glass is safety laminate.”
“Of course it is.”
Avery’s eyes flick down.
Not to us.
To the bottom of the door.
Good girl.
No. Not girl.
Avery.
I crouch near the lower track, water soaking through the knees of my pants. The concrete is cold, gritty, and slick under my hand. The tram smells like wet metal, old upholstery, mold in the vents, and overheated wiring. My tongue tastes like smoke from Crescent Vault and fear I refuse to swallow.
There.
A small access plate below the door seam. The screw heads are wet, scraped, one newer than the others.
“Here,” I say.
Alvarez drops beside me. “Manual release?”
“Or another joke from a man with a door fetish.”
Diana says, “Not the time, and yet accurate.”
Alvarez pulls a folding knife from his pocket and pries the panel edge. It doesn’t give.
I reach for the cracked rain tank credential in my pocket.
Alvarez looks at me. “That’s evidence.”
“So is she.”
I jam the cracked plastic into the seam and angle it under the panel lip. The credential bends. My fingers slip once. Pain flashes under my thumbnail. I bite down on a sound and try again.
Avery watches me from behind the glass.
Her face is gray with cold.
“Clara,” Diana says, too carefully.
“I’ve got it.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I’m enhancing the evidence.”
The panel pops loose.
Inside: a red pull tab, a wire loop, and a small metal pin inserted sideways through the release lever.
Manual pin.
Malcolm’s voice from earlier, unwanted and useful.
Check the hinge side. Check for manual pins. Don’t trust open doors.
I hate him.
I need him.
Both sentences fit in my chest badly.
“Pin,” I say.
Alvarez leans in. “I see it.”
His fingers are too big for the gap.
Mine aren’t.
I reach in before he can stop me.
The metal pin is slick. My thumb slides. My scraped nail screams. I pinch harder and pull.
It doesn’t move.
Avery hits the glass again, weaker now.
Above us, a heavy thud comes from the booth.
My body tries to turn toward it.
I don’t.
Avery first.
“Clara,” Diana says again.
“Don’t say my name unless you’re bringing tools.”
She thrusts something into my hand.
A hairpin.
I look at her.
She shrugs, breathing hard. “I’m full of surprises and poor footwear.”
I hook the hairpin around the metal pin, twist, and pull.
The pin comes loose.
The tram door hisses.
Not open.
Released.
Alvarez grabs the handle and yanks. The door slides three inches, then jams.
Avery’s fingers appear in the gap.
Small. Shaking. Blue at the nails.
I grab them.
Her skin is cold enough to scare me.
“I’m here,” I say.
Her eyes find mine through the gap.
“Don’t let him play the rest,” she says.
“What?”
Her teeth chatter. “The tape. Don’t let him play the rest.”
“Whose tape?”
She tries to answer. Her mouth moves. Water drips from her chin. Her eyes roll once, not fully, but enough.
“No,” I say, and the word comes out ugly. “Stay with me.”
Alvarez wedges his shoulder against the door and pulls again. Diana gets both hands on the frame. One uniform arrives and adds force. Metal shrieks.
The door slides open enough for Alvarez to reach in.
Inside the tram, Avery is strapped to a fold-down seat with two real restraints and three fake ones. Stage cuffs layered over functional zip ties. Tape around her ankles. A cable tied to the chair leg, not her, probably to make her look more trapped on camera than she is.
That makes me angrier.
Not because the danger is fake.
Because some of it is decorative.
“You’re okay,” I tell her.
A lie.
A useful one.
Avery shakes her head, water dripping from her lashes. “He has—he has the original.”
“Gavin?”
She looks past me.
Up.
The booth.
“Yes. No. Victor—Victor wanted it gone. Gavin wanted everyone to see.”
Alvarez cuts the first zip tie.
Diana pulls tape from Avery’s ankles with hands that tremble and a face that says she will deny it under oath.
“Where is Gavin?” Alvarez asks.
Avery flinches at his voice.
I shift between them without thinking.
Alvarez notices and softens his tone by half an inch. “Avery, where did he go?”
“He said Reed would reset it.” Her gaze snaps back to mine. “He said Malcolm always comes back to the wrong place.”
The booth above us goes silent.
Too silent.
My ribs tighten around air that tastes like metal.
Avery’s final restraint snaps under Alvarez’s knife.
She pitches forward.
I catch her.
Not elegantly. We both go down to the wet tram floor, my back hitting a seat, her weight cold and shaking against me. She smells like rain bar water, fear, old fabric, and something sweet under it, maybe the vanilla spray from her trailer. The normal scent nearly breaks me.
“There,” I say, though I don’t know what there means. “There. You’re out.”
Avery grips my sleeve. “He made me say your name.”
“I know.”
“No, he—he said you’d come because you think dead girls ask politely.”
The sentence gets under my skin and stays.
Diana turns away for one second.
Alvarez swears under his breath and calls for medics over a radio that spits static, then clears enough for a response.
I look up at the booth.
Red emergency light flashes behind the glass.
No movement.
“Malcolm,” I say.
Avery’s hand tightens on my sleeve.
“You have to go,” she says.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Medics—”
“He stopped it.” She blinks hard, trying to focus. “The tram. He stopped it from there.”
I look at Alvarez.
He is already looking at me.
That is the problem with good detectives. They hear the unsaid before it becomes strategy.
“I’ll get him,” he says.
“No.”
“Vane.”
“I know where the door is.”
“You are shaking.”
“So is everyone with a pulse.”
“You have Avery.”
Avery’s fingers dig into my sleeve again. “Go.”
I look down at her.
She is twenty-six. Soaked. Terrified. Alive because enough people chose imperfectly in the correct direction for once.
Laurel did not get that.
That thought hits hard enough to make my vision catch on the wrong detail: a loose thread on Avery’s wet shirt, stuck to her wrist. My mind wants to fix it. Align it. Smooth it. Make one small thing obey.
I do not touch the thread.
I hand Avery to Diana.
Diana’s eyes widen. “Me?”
“You’re mean enough to keep her awake.”
“I am many things, but qualified is not currently—”
“Avery,” I say, “Diana is going to talk to you about directing choices. Stay conscious to disagree.”
Avery’s mouth trembles. “Her third act pacing is bad.”
Diana looks offended in a way that is almost holy. “You little ingrate.”
Avery makes a sound that might have become a laugh if she had more heat in her body.
Good.
Human.
I stand.
My knees complain with a bureaucratic thoroughness. I ignore them and move toward the side stairs leading to the booth.
Alvarez catches up before I reach them. “We do this together.”
“You say that like I’m hard to partner with.”
“You are an unattended firework with cheekbones.”
“Don’t compliment me in a murder tunnel.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Then work on phrasing.”
The stairs to the booth are metal, narrow, slick with condensation. Each step rings under my feet. The red light above strobes through the gaps in the rail, cutting Alvarez’s face into pieces, then mine, in the small pane of glass beside us.
Halfway up, I hear a sound.
Not a shout.
A drag.
Like someone pulling weight across concrete.
I climb faster.
Alvarez says, “Slow.”
“No.”
“Vane.”
“Fine.”
I slow by one insultingly small amount.
At the top, the booth door is half-open.
Blood on the frame.
Not a lot.
Enough.
My stomach drops and then locks.
I push the door.
Alvarez moves in first, weapon up.
The booth smells like burnt plastic, dust, blood, and hot metal. Control panels line the far wall. Wires hang from a ripped bypass box. Papers from the Edda folder are scattered across the wet floor. A broken mic sits near the console, its red light still on.
Malcolm is on the floor beside the control panel.
For one second, my body turns traitor.
My feet stop. My hand grips the doorframe. My throat closes around his name and refuses to release it because saying it might make the room real.
He lies on his side, one arm under him, borrowed windbreaker torn, shoulder at a wrong angle, blood along his hairline and down toward his temple.
His right palm is burned red where he must have ripped out wires.
The Edda folder is half under his ribs like he tried to protect paper from a man with a weapon.
His eyes are closed.
“Malcolm,” I say.
Nothing.
Alvarez goes to the other side of the booth, clearing the room. “No Gavin.”
I go to Malcolm.
Not running. Running would make the floor unreliable.
I kneel beside him, water from my clothes dripping onto concrete.
“Malcolm.”
His lashes move.
Good.
The relief hurts worse than fear.
“Don’t,” I tell him, because I am an idiot.