CHAPTER 22
Malcolm
The paramedic tells me to follow his finger.
I follow Clara instead.
Bad patient behavior. Predictable. Possibly diagnostic.
She stands three feet from the control console with Diana’s phone in her hand, wet hair stuck to one side of her face, coat torn, shoes soaked, eyes fixed on the fake obsession room someone built inside her office.
Red emergency light flashes over her. White tram light rises from below.
Between the two, she looks like a woman lit by two different crimes.
The paramedic blocks my view with two fingers.
“Mr. Reed.”
“I see them.”
“Then follow them.”
“They’re very compelling fingers.”
“Head injury humor. Great.”
“He’s like this when concussed too?” Diana asks from the doorway.
“Allegedly,” Clara says.
She doesn’t look at me when she says it.
That should be good. She is not collapsing into worry. She is not letting my blood pull her away from the larger fire. She is keeping her eye on the room that is trying to eat her.
Good.
It still hurts.
The paramedic shines a light in my left eye. My skull complains behind the socket. My shoulder has become a separate country with hostile weather. My right palm burns where I ripped out Gavin’s bypass. Every time I breathe deep, one rib argues with the decision.
“Any nausea?” the paramedic asks.
“Do headlines count?”
“No.”
“Then maybe.”
“Name?”
“Malcolm Reed.”
“Date?”
I blink.
Wrong question. My brain offers the night Laurel died first, which is rude and unhelpful.
Clara finally looks at me.
Her face changes by almost nothing.
Almost nothing is enough.
“Today,” I say, “is still the longest night of my life, despite ongoing competition.”
The paramedic does not enjoy that. “Month?”
“June.”
“Year?”
“Twenty twenty-six.”
“Where are you?”
“Shuttle set control booth. Blood House lot. Bad architecture. Worse management.”
Diana lifts one finger. “Bad architecture is generous.”
The paramedic presses gauze to my head wound. “You need transport.”
“No.”
Clara’s eyes come up.
There it is again. That word. The old bruise.
I correct before she has to.
“I mean I understand why you want transport,” I say. The sentence tastes like broken glass and forced adulthood. “I’m saying I need to give a statement before details get buried.”
“You can give one at the hospital,” the paramedic says.
“Details get softer in ambulances.”
Clara steps closer.
Not too close.
Close enough that I can see the water on her lashes and the angry red scrape near her thumb where she pulled the tram release pin.
“You’re bleeding on a crime scene,” she says.
“Technically, I was struck on a crime scene.”
“Do you hear yourself?”
“Not well. Possible head injury.”
Her mouth tightens.
Not a smile.
Not not one.
Progress around us has terrible timing.
Alvarez comes back through the rear service door, jacket wet at the hem, expression flat in the way good detectives use when every option is bad. “Gavin got out through the north service tunnel. We’ve got units on the perimeter and traffic cams pulling.”
“Victor?” Clara asks.
Alvarez looks at her. “Still on lot. With lawyer. Studio legal now claims he’s been cooperating fully.”
Diana makes a sound. “I would rather eat glass with catering hummus.”
“Don’t give them menu ideas,” Clara says.
Alvarez points at me. “Reed, medical transport.”
“No,” I say again, then hold up my unburned hand before Clara can turn the word into a weapon. “I’ll go. But not before you hear three things.”
Alvarez looks at the paramedic.
The paramedic looks at my pupils and appears unimpressed by civilization.
“Two minutes,” he says.
“Four,” Clara says.
He looks at her.
She looks back.
He chooses life. “Three.”
“Thank you,” she says.
“Not what I said.”
“It’s what you meant, medically.”
Diana mutters, “This is why people fear actresses.”
Clara’s gaze cuts to her. “Former.”
“Currently terrifying. The industry keeps records.”
A small laugh comes from the stairs.
Avery.
She is being helped up toward the booth entrance by a second paramedic and a uniform because apparently the universe has decided no one in this case will obey medical advice for longer than thirty seconds.
She is wrapped in a silver blanket over a soaked shirt, lips pale, hair plastered to her cheeks.
Her hands shake around a paper cup of water.
She sees me on the floor.
Guilt hits her face.
Not fear.
Guilt.
That is unacceptable.
“No,” I say.
Everyone looks at me.
Avery freezes on the top step.
“You don’t do that,” I tell her.
Her voice is small. “Do what?”
“Look at me like you caused what he did.”
Clara’s face shifts.
Avery’s cup trembles. Water spills over the rim onto the blanket, darkening the silver.
“I said your name,” Avery says. “He made me—on the recording, and then the video. He said you’d both come.”
“We did,” Clara says. “That part was ours.”
Avery looks at her.
Clara’s voice stays even. “He used you. He doesn’t get credit for us caring.”
The sentence enters the booth and changes its shape.
Avery’s mouth folds in on itself. She nods once, too fast, like crying would cost heat she doesn’t have.
The paramedic behind her says, “She needs a hospital.”
“So does he,” the paramedic near me says.
Diana raises a hand. “Several of us could benefit from a spa with legal privilege.”
Alvarez ignores her. “Avery, you said Victor came to the place where you were held.”
Avery’s eyes move to him, then to Clara, then to me.
I see the calculation. Who is safe. Who has power. Who has already failed her.
Clara steps into the space beside Avery, not in front of her. Good. Not blocking. Not directing.
Avery drinks once. Her teeth hit the paper cup. “Victor came yesterday. Or this morning. I don’t know. I was drugged part of the time.”
The paramedic stiffens.
Avery keeps going because stopping may be harder. “He told Gavin the original wasn’t supposed to be played. Only the copy. He said the copy would point to Clara and Reed if it had to.”
My hand closes against the floor.
Burned palm.
Bad idea.
Pain clears the edge of my vision.
Alvarez says, “Original of what?”
“The take.” Avery’s eyes close for one second. “Laurel’s last take. The real one.”
The room tightens.
Below us, the tram drips.
The water has slowed to a steady tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
The sound lands too near the pulse in my injured hand.
Clara’s face does not change.
Her body does. Small. The shift of a person locking a door from the inside.
“Did you see it?” she asks.
Avery looks at her. “Parts.”
“Tell me the parts.”
“Clara,” I say.
She does not look at me. “No.”
That one is clean.
Not old. Not reflex.
A boundary.
I accept it and shut my mouth.
Avery swallows. “It shows Laurel at the door. It shows the pin. She tries to open it. She says it won’t move. Someone off-camera says keep rolling. Another voice says cut, but lower. Like they didn’t have authority.”
“Edda,” I say.
Avery nods once. “Maybe. There’s a man near the release. Ring on his hand.”
Victor’s signet ring.
The old stills.
Clara’s hand twitches toward the cracked credential in her palm.
She doesn’t use it.
Good.
“Does the footage show Victor’s face?” Alvarez asks.
Avery shakes her head. “Not in the part I saw. But Gavin had a log. Transfer log. Notes. He said faces matter less than systems because systems don’t get emotional on the stand.”
Gavin Rook, making infrastructure into philosophy.
I hate him with the tired precision of a man who recognizes a fellow coward from the other side of the room.
Alvarez writes fast.
The paramedic near me says, “Time.”
“Wait,” I say.
“No.”
Clara’s eyes hit mine.
I deserve that.
I try again. “Avery, did Gavin say where the original is?”
“He said Victor thinks it’s gone.” Her fingers tighten around the cup. “But he said the original has been in the safest place the whole time.”
Diana says, “I hate riddles.”
Avery looks at Clara. “He said the safest place is where everyone is afraid to look because they already know what happened there.”
Stage 14.
The red door hallway.
The original set.
Or the place Laurel died.
Clara and I understand at the same time.
I see it hit her.
She sees it hit me.
That old awful intimacy of knowing the same wound by different entrances.
“Stage 14,” she says.
The paramedic near Avery says, “Hospital. Now. This is not a deposition room.”
Avery’s face crumples with frustration. “I’m trying—”
“You did,” Clara says. “You did enough for this minute.”
This minute.
I’ve been living sentence to sentence with Clara Vane for years without admitting it.
The paramedics move.
Avery is guided back down. Diana goes with her because Avery’s hand finds Diana’s sleeve and Diana pretends not to notice for the sake of her reputation. Alvarez calls for a guarded ambulance, evidence preservation, and someone to seal Stage 14 before studio legal develops sudden creativity.
Clara stays in the booth.
So do I.
The paramedic tapes gauze to my head with the aggression of a man who resents fiction. “Transport. Now.”
I look at Clara’s phone.
No, Diana’s phone in Clara’s hand. The headline still glows there.
My office wall.
No. Her office wall.
The false shrine.
THE LAST TAKE BELONGS TO CLARA.
“I need to say something about that,” I tell Alvarez, nodding toward the screen.
“You can say it while walking.”
The paramedic gets an arm under mine.
The world tilts when I stand.
Not a little.
Enough that the console swims left while the floor goes right.
Clara steps forward.
Stops.
Her hands curl at her sides.
Consent cuts both ways. She won’t touch unless I ask.
The realization lodges under my ribs.
“I need help,” I say.
The words are quiet.
They cost more than getting hit.
Clara comes in immediately.
No victory. No comment.
She takes my uninjured side, her hand firm at my waist, not gentle in any fragile way. Practical. Warm through wet fabric. Her shoulder fits under my arm like an old answer I do not deserve to use.
I don’t lean too hard.