The gate opened far enough to show a man in a white dinner jacket standing behind the hanging strip of film.
Nico Rusk had changed out of his street clothes, but not into anything that belonged to the current production. The jacket was old Morrowglass stock, satin lapels yellowed at the edges, the kind of thing a leading man wore when a director wanted him to look dead before the audience knew he was dead. One hand held the lift’s emergency brake. The other held a pair of tailor’s shears.
Rowan put himself between Nico and Mara without making a show of it. His shoulder brushed the gate. The lift shuddered under the weight of the three of them.
“Good evening,” Nico said. “You’re both earlier than expected.”
“Expected by who?” Mara asked.
Nico glanced at the reel. “That depends which version of the evening we’re using.”
The film clicked on its spindle. A narrow ribbon of black passed through the light from the warehouse doorway. Every few inches, a pale frame flashed and vanished: a hand, a wall, the corner of a lamp. The reel had been threaded through a small inspection viewer bolted to the lift’s rear panel. Someone had wanted to see what was on it without carrying it into the open.
Mara looked at the shears. “Put those down.”
“That is not the first instruction I’ve had tonight.”
“Put them down.”
Nico did, but not on the floor. He folded them shut and slid them into his jacket pocket. His smile arrived with the smoothness of a curtain rising.
Rowan reached past Mara and caught the lift gate before it could close. “Who else is here?”
“People who dislike waiting.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have that won’t make them come faster.”
From the corridor beyond the costume warehouse came the distant knock of doors being opened. Metal against metal. A call shouted, then swallowed by the hanging garments.
Mara stepped into the lift. Rowan’s hand closed around her wrist.
“No.”
She looked at his fingers, then at his face. “The reel is in there.”
“And a man with shears.”
“Nico is not the one I’m worried about.”
His grip loosened, though he did not let go. That was the thing she kept noticing about him: when he was frightened, he did not become louder. He became exact. His eyes moved over the cables, the corners, the floor, counting places a body could fall and places a body could be hidden.
Nico saw it too. “He’s very good at making a room feel smaller.”
“Occupational hazard,” Rowan said.
“You used to coordinate stunts.”
“I still do, when people insist on being stupid.”
“Then you’ll appreciate the arrangement.” Nico lifted his chin toward the reel. “I was told to bring it to the projection room. I was also told that if I did, my financing would remain intact.”
“By Dorian,” Mara said.
Nico’s expression did not change. His right thumb moved once over the seam of his pocket, where the shears rested. “You make that sound like a confession.”
“It sounds like arithmetic.”
“Dorian appreciates arithmetic.”
The footsteps in the corridor came nearer. Mara could smell the warehouse now: dust, old wool, face powder sunk into collars, the hot metallic scent of exposed film. The lift’s cramped walls reflected all three of them back in pieces. Nico’s white jacket. Rowan’s bruised mouth. Her own blackened fingertip.
“What did he promise you?” she asked.
“An executive producer credit. Final cut on my picture. A seat at the table when the next slate is approved.”
“And what did he ask for?”
Nico looked at the turning reel. “A piece of history.”
“That is not what he asked for.”
His eyes settled on her. For once, he did not perform warmth. “He asked for the name of the person who could use it.”
Rowan’s hand moved from her wrist to the small of her back. Not possessive. Directional. He was steering her behind him, toward the rear wall where the film viewer cast the least light.
Mara did not move. “And you gave him mine?”
“I gave him a name.”
“Which one?”
The corridor doors banged open.
Two men entered the warehouse in dark coats, followed by a woman carrying a tablet. Not studio security. Their shoes were too clean for the lot, and they had the alert, unfinished posture of people accustomed to being told where danger was rather than finding it themselves.
Nico swore under his breath.
Rowan pushed the lift gate closed. The first man reached it before it locked and jammed his arm through the gap.
Rowan struck the elbow, not hard enough to break it, but hard enough to make the man withdraw with a sharp cry. Then he pulled the manual release. The lift dropped six inches.
Mara’s stomach rose into her throat.
“What are you doing?”
“Making them choose.”
The lift’s old motor groaned. The gate rattled. Nico braced one hand against the wall and caught the reel with the other before it could jump its spindle.
The woman outside shouted, “Mr. Rusk, step away from the equipment.”
Nico gave Mara a look that might have been amusement if his mouth had not gone so pale. “They’ve become very formal.”
Rowan released the brake. The lift sank another foot, dragging the men’s hands away from the gate. Then it stopped with a violent clank.
A shelf of costume boxes toppled in the warehouse. Hangers crashed down. Someone yelled.
“Now,” Rowan said.
He forced the gate open with both hands. Mara slipped through first, ducking beneath a row of military coats. Rowan followed, but Nico stayed in the lift.
Mara turned. “Move.”
Nico was winding the reel back onto its core.
“If I come with you,” he said, “they search every exit on the lot.”
“They’ll search you anyway.”
“Yes. But they’ll search me as a man who stole something.” He tucked the reel beneath his jacket. “Not as a man who helped the hidden heir.”
The words landed between them with no room to soften them.
Rowan looked at Mara.
Nico’s gaze followed. “There. That’s the face I was waiting for.”
Mara felt the lift wall at her back, though she was standing in the warehouse. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No,” Nico said. “But I know what people look like when a word has found its mark.”
The men were climbing over the fallen boxes. One had a hand pressed to his elbow. The woman with the tablet was already calling someone.
Rowan stepped toward the lift. “Give me the reel.”
Nico pulled it free and held it out. “If I do, you leave by the west fire door. There’s a truck bay behind Stage Nine. The alarm has been disabled.”
“By who?”
“By me.”
“You planned this?” Mara asked.
“I planned not to be cornered in a room full of dresses.”
He pushed the reel into Rowan’s hands. The contact was brief. Rowan weighed it, turning the canister once to check the seal, then gave it to Mara.
The metal was warm from Nico’s body.
“Why help us?” she asked.
Nico reached into his jacket and took out a folded contract. Several pages bore Dorian’s blue-ink initials. “Because I read the final paragraph.”
He tore the contract in half.
The sound was small. It carried.
Mara watched the paper split through the middle of his name.
Nico smiled without showing his teeth. “The financing was never intact. The seat was never mine. Dorian wanted a picture he could own and an actor he could replace.”
Rowan took Mara’s arm. “We’re going.”
The first man came around the rack with a collapsible baton in his hand.
Rowan shoved Mara sideways. The baton struck the metal rack where her head had been. Coats spilled over them. She fell against a mannequin, knocking its wooden hand loose. Rowan caught the second swing on his forearm.
The sound of impact was dull and intimate.
He did not cry out. His fingers opened once, then closed again.
Mara grabbed the nearest garment and pulled. A row of heavy mourning veils came down over the man’s head. Rowan drove his shoulder into the man’s chest and sent him into a pile of hatboxes.
“West door,” he said.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Not enough.”
“Your hand.”
“It works.”
He flexed it to prove the point. The movement was wrong. The ring finger lagged behind the others.
Mara started toward him, but he caught the reel instead, lifting it out of her hands before it could hit the floor. He put it inside his coat and buttoned the coat over it.
“Keep moving.”
There it was again. The calculation. Film first, then the person carrying it. Except this time he had chosen to carry both.
She could not stop looking at the crooked finger.
Nico was backing toward the lift. “Go,” he said. “I’ll give them a better story.”
The woman with the tablet had reached the fallen rack. “Mr. Rusk, you are interfering with a legal recovery.”
Nico lifted the torn contract. “Then recover this.”
He threw it at her face.
Rowan dragged Mara through a curtain of sequined capes. Behind them, Nico began speaking loudly, warmly, as if he had been waiting all evening for an audience.
“The reel is mine,” he called. “I ordered the removal. I arranged the lift. I acted alone.”
The west fire door stuck halfway. Rowan kicked the lower hinge. The door flew open onto the truck bay, where rain had gathered in shallow black pools beneath the sodium lamps.
Mara stepped outside. Cold air struck her cheeks. Rowan came after her and pulled the door shut with his uninjured hand.
For several seconds they stood beside the loading dock, listening.
The warehouse filled with voices. Nico’s voice among them, bright and theatrical, turning accusation into dialogue. He was giving them a scene they could file, a version with only one guilty name.
Rowan leaned against the brick wall. His injured hand had begun to swell.
Mara reached for it.
He pulled away. “Don’t.”
“You can’t hold the reel properly.”
“I can hold it.”
“That is not the same thing.”
He looked at her then. Rain silvered his hair and ran from his jaw to the collar of his shirt. “You always make the distinction after the damage.”
She took the reel from inside his coat. “And you always wait until the damage belongs to you.”
His mouth tightened. He did not answer.
Mara found a first-aid tin bolted beneath the loading dock stairs. The studio kept them everywhere, most of them expired, because accidents were cheaper when they were anticipated. She opened the tin and took out gauze, tape, and a narrow splint.
Rowan watched her kneel.
“Give me your hand.”
“It’s a finger.”
“Give me your hand.”
He did.
His palm was callused, warm despite the rain. She set the finger straight. His breath stopped for half a second. He did not pull away.
Mara wrapped the splint in place, then taped it to the middle finger. Her hands were steady. That was what hands were for: keeping small things from moving until they could be dealt with properly.
“You learned that where?” he asked.
“Location work.”
“Your mother?”
Mara tightened the tape. “Among other places.”
He looked at the bandage, not at her. “You knew Nico would be there?”
“No.”
“You knew he had the reel?”
“No.”
“You knew the fire door was disabled?”
She pressed the tape flat with her thumb. “That one was obvious.”
The corner of his mouth moved. Not a smile. A concession.
From inside the warehouse came a heavy thud, then a burst of applause. Nico, performing for the people arresting him.
Rowan flexed the bandaged finger. “He said it. Out loud.”
“He said he stole the reel.”
“He said the other part out loud too.”
Mara put the first-aid tin back beneath the stairs. “He guessed.”
“Did he?”
She did not answer. The reel sat between them in her hands. The canister was marked ROOK—2 in white grease pencil. Beneath that, in smaller writing, someone had added a timecode.
00:17:42.
Mara found the portable viewer in the emergency cabinet beside the door. Its batteries were dead, but Rowan struck the casing against his knee until the contacts shifted, then held the wires together with two fingers while she threaded the film.
He made himself useful even with the splint. That was the part she could not put down. Not the injury. The decision to hide it until the reel was safe.
The viewer flickered.
A room appeared in the small square of glass. Alden’s projection room. The image trembled, washed in smoke. June stood near the door, younger by twenty years and wearing the coat Mara still remembered from winter kitchens. Alden sat at the projector table, his face turned away from the lens.
A third figure stood behind him.
Mara saw the cut of the suit first. Then the pale hand resting on the back of Alden’s chair.
Dorian Pike.
Alden’s voice came through the tiny speaker, roughened by smoke.
“If this reaches the archive, Pike was here before the fire. He has the ledger. He knows what Celeste and I put aside.”
Rowan’s hand tightened around the viewer’s wires.
On the screen, Dorian leaned toward Alden. His face remained outside the light, but his voice carried clearly.
“Tell me where the girl is.”
The film jumped. June turned. Alden lifted his head.
Mara reached for the stop switch.
The image froze on Dorian’s hand, pale against the chair, while the reel continued to turn in the dark.
From the warehouse, a door opened.
Someone stepped into the rain and called Rowan’s name.
Mara looked toward the sound, then back at the frozen frame.
Dorian had not been searching for the heir after Alden’s death.
He had been searching before it.