Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 46223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
At 5:40, we wrap the last setup. I take one more loop because that’s who I am, and end back by the “green room”—a space made out of pipe and drape and faith. Vanessa ducks inside to switch shoes, Brice yells at his headset without knowing he has it muted, and the PA bumps a cart and apologizes to another ficus. I stake the door.
“Two minutes,” Vanessa calls, bright, because she knows how to send a room home.
She’s later than two. Three. Four. The hairs on my neck stand up. I knock once, and then push through the curtain.
She’s at the vanity table someone built from a folding table and a mirror on a stand. She has a card in her hand. It’s thick, white, the kind you use for wedding invites if you want people to think you’re serious. Her face is not her camera face. It’s stripped. Scared.
“Where was it,” I ask, already moving.
“In my bag,” she says, and her voice is both flat and shaking. She holds it out. I take it with two fingers at the edges, like it might have teeth.
Block letters, printed and glued on like someone thinks they’re in a movie: I’M GETTING CLOSER.
My body goes quiet in the way I like and also hate—every system down to what matters. “Sit,” I say. She sits. I key my mic. “Rae, we’ve got paper.”
“On it.” She’s already stripping feeds.
“Jaxson, eyes are yours. Who had hands on her bag in the last hour.”
“Pulling,” he says, voice gone clipped. “Three options from the hallway cam. PA, sponsor rep, venue coordinator.”
“Of course.” I bag the card in a fresh evidence sleeve from my kit, then pick up the bag and set it on the table, emptying it out one item at a time, slow and clean. Nothing else. No powder. No device. Just a note from someone who wants to scare her.
Vanessa’s hands are fists on her knees. “He was right here,” she says. “While I was in the room.”
“He was in the room,” I correct, because he hands people power. The note is a tactic. “We’ll find the hallway hole.”
“I feel stupid,” she whispers. “I feel like I let him—”
“You didn’t let anything,” I say, sharper than I mean to and not sorry for the edge. I step in, take her wrists, pry her fingers open gently and put a water bottle in one and my palm in the other. “Look at me.”
She drags her eyes up. Pupils blown, breath fast. Panic has stages. I’ve walked them with too many people I care about.
“Four by four,” I say, the cadence I save for rooms that tilt. “In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. Hold for four.” I do it with her until her shoulders creep down from her ears and her face relaxes.
“Good,” I say. “Now name five things you can see.”
She swallows. “Your…jaw,” she says, because she’s her even when she’s scared. “The tape on the floor. The…uh, ring light there. My necklace. Your watch.”
“Four you can feel.”
She squeezes my hand. “Your skin. The chair under me. The water bottle. My heartbeat calming down.”
“Three you can hear.”
She listens. “The AC humming. Someone rolling a case. The band upstairs?” She almost laughs. “Of course they booked a jazz trio.”
“Two you can smell.”
She inhales. “Hairspray. You.”
That does something to me I put away for later. “One you can taste,” I say, softer.
“My energy drink from an hour ago.” She exhales. The shaking drops to a tremor. She is here again. So am I.
“We’re going to find who touched your bag,” I say.
She nods, quick, like a swallow. “I hate him.”
“Good,” I say. “Hate makes clean lines. Fear makes static.”
Rae is back in my ear. “I have a clip. Sponsor rep ‘Caleb’ steps into green room at 5:07 while you were adjusting a cam, Riggs. He pretends to answer a call, sets his folder on the vanity, and then picks it up again. Time in room: eighteen seconds. Vanessa’s bag is on the chair. He could have dropped it one-handed. Venue coordinator enters five minutes later, stays ten seconds, straightens a curtain, leaves. The PA passes the opening twice but never crosses the threshold.”
“Clip to Turner,” I say. The FBI has an agent with a sense of humor and a hate for men like this. “And lock down the exterior doors. We’ll leave via catering.”
Vanessa stands. Her hands aren’t shaking now. Her mouth is a thin, dangerous line. “What does it mean, ‘I’m getting closer’?”
“That he wants you to believe he can be anywhere,” I say. “He can’t. He has to use holes. We’ll close them.”
“Why me?” It’s not the brand question. It’s the human one.
“Because you’re loud,” I say simply. “Because you figured out how to turn attention into something soft for people who don’t get a lot of it. That pisses off small men who need the world to be about them.” I step closer, lower my voice. “And because you’re brave and that reads even when the sound is off. He wants to make you smaller. I won’t let him.”