The river drums the metal door in small, impatient fists. Elena lifts her hand and the two uniforms go silent, boots planted in wet grit. I swallow the taste of copper and sugar off the air and keep my Night Choir pin pressed into my palm until the edges bite. The door gives to the pry bar with a tired exhale and we step into a box of hush where the city’s noise turns into felt.
Elena works the first room like a scalpel—shoulders squared, voice low and steady. “Police. Warrant. Announcing.” She slices the beam of her light along corners and vents, past a bowl of hard candy and the promise-poster: You Are Safe Here with a cherub mask smiling too much.
“Left,” she says. The uniform peels off. “Right.” The other goes. I stay centered, a human wedge resisting the urge to run.
The next door opens to black paint that smells like high school theater and fresh lie. Gaffer tape Xs stripe the floor like landing pads; cue lights squat in the wings with gel frames set to comfort. A boom mic hangs on a C-stand as if listening for applause. The studio hum I know so well has migrated here; everything’s powered, everything’s expectant, the frequency riding my bones at 60Hz.
I kneel at a folding chair because that’s where he wants me, at the level where witnesses sit and practice bravery until it sounds consumable. On the seat, a fan of index cards waits under a paperweight shaped like an angel. I slide one card free with two fingers and read: “Thank you for trusting us.” Another: “You can take a breath.” Another, uglier for being precise: “You’re not a headline. You’re human.”
“Cue cards,” I whisper, because the room deserves the quiet truth. “He scripts the pauses that make us sound kind.”
Elena glances back without breaking her sweep. “Bag them,” she says, and I do, each card slipping into plastic the way an apology slips into a feed and curdles.
Micro-hook: From the ceiling there’s the faintest click, like a pin dry-firing. I look up and see nothing but a black square that could be a sound panel—until my eyes learn the shadow’s grammar and the pinhole glitters. I feel the strip of tape in my pocket itch to be used.
“Lens at twelve o’clock,” I say.
“Mark it,” Elena says, and I reach the boom, extend it, press the tape over the tiny eye with my wrist steady enough to pass a test I never wanted to take.
A whisper threads the air from farther back. Not the river, not the fan—human breath. Elena’s chin tips; she moves on the sound, measured and exact. “Police,” she says, nearer. “We’re coming to your voice.”
“Don’t—” the voice cracks. “Don’t clap.”
“Juniper,” I say, not stepping past Elena’s shoulder, not crossing the tape unless she says the word. “It’s me. No audience. Just us.”
“He said that,” Juniper answers from somewhere the dark keeps, words thin like they’ve been rationed. “He said, ‘Just us.’ His voice was warm. It sounded practiced, like he smiles with his teeth hidden.”
Elena edges the light around a stack of flats and finds a small door to a storage cove. She gestures the uniform forward and they clear the space. The door opens on a breath of stale peppermint and cardboard. Juniper sits on a milk crate, knees hugged up, a blanket thrown around shoulders in that hospitality that bruises harder than a shove. Her eyes find me and don’t blink.
“I didn’t answer your call,” she says. “I thought if I answered, it would start. The play.”
“We’re not staging anything,” I say, throat tight. “We’re here to walk you out.”
Elena does her careful kneel, palms visible. “I’m Elena,” she says. “You are not in trouble. We have a warrant. We’ll ask you questions later, with a door open and tea that isn’t a prop.”
Juniper’s breath stutters but doesn’t break. “He said ‘supportive debrief.’ The email looked official. He knew the names of the women from group, the facilitator’s favorite word. He told me he could teach me to talk without being used.”
“He used those words?” I ask, because words are fingerprints.
“He used your words,” she says, and it lands like a thrown ring. “He said ‘no stingers, no reveal, no doxxing.’”
Elena glances at me once, lightning-quick, then back to Juniper. “Did you see his face?”
“No,” Juniper says. “Only his hand through the door when he passed me tea. Big knuckles. A ring that tapped the metal. Tap tap.” She demonstrates on the crate, a metronome that makes the room smaller.
“Warm voice, rehearsed cadence, ring that taps,” Elena says, halfway to herself, halfway to the recorder she’ll run later. “Okay. We’re going to stand now.”
When Juniper rises, she makes herself even smaller, a skill that comes from practice, not nature. The blanket slides and I catch it, and the fabric’s softness enrages me with its selection. We step out of the cove and into the taped Xs universe again.
“He told me to stand on the mark when I was ready,” Juniper says, eyes traveling to the white tape, to the boom. “Then he said there’d be no camera until I wanted one.”
I look up at the pinhole I blinded and keep my mouth closed.
Elena’s radio pops, a whisper of uniforms checking doors, stowing jargon. “Back lot clear,” the radio says. “Loading dock secured.”
“Good,” Elena replies. “We’re pulling drives and power next.”
“Wait,” Juniper says, small hand fluttering toward the ceiling corner where the tape sits. “There.” She points not at the pinhole I covered, but at a half-inch seam in the molding. “He said nobody ever looks at angels when they’re not on stage.” She steps onto the nearest X and reaches toward the molding with two fingers, stopping short. “Can I?”
Elena nods, and Juniper shifts the piece of wood—just a hair—and a grid wakes, nine tiny lenses winking behind a laser-cut cherub frieze, the plaster putti peeking from their nests like gossiping saints.
“He told me this wall was history,” Juniper whispers. “He said the Orpheum had angels and he brought some here so I could ‘feel legacy.’”
“Hidden camera array,” I say, nausea a clean heat. “He brought the cherubs from the symbol set. He wants salvation to look like a close-up.”
Elena signals the uniform for photos and a lift. “You did good,” she tells Juniper. “You just made a case stronger.”
The room inhales—power shifting. A faint LED on a wall-mounted timer blinks from green to amber. I feel it at the base of my skull before I see it, like the room is counting me in.
“What’s that?” I ask, too quickly.
Elena pivots and reads the cheap plastic face. “Aux relay,” she says. “Ten seconds to trigger.”
“Trigger what?” Juniper asks, voice knuckling white.
The answer arrives in confetti.
Cannons hidden in the rafters belch paper rain—metallic strips, sugar-packet colors, a shower of celebratory trash. The air turns sticky with the scent of burned tissue and cheap ink. The paper sticks to my cheeks and wrists and to the tears I’m not permitting yet. A preloaded audio cue clips on, a flaccid orchestral swell that would call for bows if anyone here earned one.
“Curtain call,” I spit. “He staged a curtain call for the raid.”
Elena slams the power kill to the auxiliary rack. The music dies mid-fake triumph, the cannons cough their last, and the hum drops from hymn to ache. Paper settles in the quiet with the pitter of a bad rainstorm, flecking the taped Xs with confetti crowns. I rip a strip from my sleeve. Printed across it in neat serif: HERO SHOT.
I hold it up between two fingers. “He anticipated us,” I say. “He wanted a hero montage.”
“And he wanted you on the mark,” Elena says, eyes on the ceiling angles where tape still covers one lens but not nine. “We get those drives now.”
“And we get out,” Juniper whispers, shrinking from the confetti like it bites.
“Now,” Elena agrees. She calls to the uniforms: “Bag every camera module, every timer, all confetti with text, and the mixer. Chain-of-custody labels on each.” She tips her head, the closest she gets to a please. They move.
Micro-hook: My phone buzzes in my pocket, a vibration that has nothing to do with alerts I’ve muted. I check the locked screen: a push notification that isn’t mine—LIVE: Warehouse Rescue — Exclusive Angle—from an account I don’t follow. I don’t open it. I tuck the phone away like it burns, because it does.
“He’s broadcasting,” I say. “From a mirror feed. Maybe delayed, maybe bouncing off a pirated node.”
“We sever his veins,” Elena says. “Then we follow the blood.” She aims at the cable chase and the officer finds the trunk line, fat and smug. “Cut it,” she says. The cable shears; the record lights blink into a sulk.
Juniper’s breath slows into a rhythm not shaped by a metronome. “He told me I could choose when the camera went on,” she says, voice low. “He said I could run the board when I was ready to be brave. He said he could keep me small until I wanted to be big.”
“He steals our words,” I say, cards crackling in their bag. “He sells them back with strings.”
“I didn’t tell him where I live,” she says, eyes shining but dry. “But he knew my train. He knew the dumpling place by the clinic. He asked if I liked ginger.”
“We need you on paper later,” Elena says softly. “Not now. Now we go.”
We herd the room into motion. The officers move racks onto dollies; techs appear like a summoned chorus, gloves on, mouths set. Elena notarizes everything with her eyes, with that particular stillness that makes judges less cranky. I hold the evidence bags like they’re hot plates and try not to narrate my way back into the center of this.
The confetti clings to my boots, to Juniper’s hem, to Elena’s sleeve. When we reach the threshold, a gust from the river lifts a handful of strips and spins them toward the light. One catches on the doorframe. I peel it free and read: GRACE NOTE.
“You’re not allowed that word,” I tell the empty air.
Outside, the warehouse block breathes wet sugar and rust. The tidal creek has crept over the low sidewalk and turned the lot into a mirror where blue strobes scatter. The Night Choir would love the image if I let them. I do not.
Elena meets my eyes. “We need transport for her, not the precinct. Hospital first. Then a victim advocate room that doesn’t feel like a script.”
“I have a list,” I say. “Real rooms. We traded names over dumplings.”
“Good trades,” she says. She turns to Juniper. “You pick. We’ll go where you want.”
Juniper folds the blanket tighter, face set. “Somewhere quiet, not glass,” she says. “And no camera on the ceiling.”
“Done,” I promise.
A tech jogs out, breath frosting the air that thinks it’s still late. “Lieutenant, you should see this,” he says to Elena. “The confetti strips—some have QR codes. When we scanned one, it opened a page with a countdown and a still frame of this room… empty.”
“He wants to sell the absence,” I say. “He wants the moment after the rescue to look like the end of an episode.”
Elena’s jaw flickers. “Secure the strips. No scans without Faraday sleeves. If one got through—”
My pocket buzzes again. I don’t need to look to know the Choir, my jackal choir, has already scented a new song. I keep the phone dark and turn to Juniper. “You’re not a plot device,” I say, forcing each word to stand on its own feet. “We’re not airing anything. We’re not even writing a line until you tell me what helps.”
“You can say I’m alive,” she says after a beat. “And that I want quiet.”
“That’s what I’ll say,” I answer. “And nothing more.”
Elena’s radio murmurs about a cruiser en route to a partner hospital that doesn’t wander with microphones. She nods toward it, and Juniper moves, new careful, every step a sentence.
We’re almost to the car when a paper drone—the lowest-rent prop—drops from the awning with a rubber-band twang and lands at my feet. It’s a folded playbill made of newsprint, cherub logo stamped cheap on the cover. I unfold it with two fingers. Inside: DRESS REHEARSAL / HALF-LIGHT / CURTAIN CALL DELIVERED with a black square where a sponsor logo should be. Below, in tiny type: You prefer corridors to chambers. Panel, noon tomorrow. Bring your questions.
“Panel?” Elena asks, reading over my shoulder without touching. “What panel.”
I hear the hum of monitors two neighborhoods away, the glassbox breathing like it’s waiting for me to come make fire. “There’s a theater-talk panel tomorrow,” I say, feeling the sore place where journalism and performance rub each other raw. “Industry forum. He just booked us seats.”
Elena slides the playbill into an evidence sleeve. “He just booked himself a witness,” she says. “We’ll be there first.”
I look back at the black-box door we emptied, at the confetti that will take weeks to stop surfacing from cracks, at the creek light wrinkling like a bad edit. My pin warms in my fist, cherub face printing into skin.
“He staged our rescue,” I say, voice flat enough to stack on a shelf, “and he wanted me to love the shot.”
The wind lifts a strip off my shoulder and sends it skittering across the wet asphalt. It reads APPLAUSE in serif I recognize from a catalog Jonah once texted—a thought that stings where pride and loss meet.
“No applause,” I tell the river. “Not tonight.”
Juniper slides into the cruiser. Elena closes the door with a gentleness I file for later. Sirens turn polite and the car moves. The techs roll out the last rack, the drives boxed and tagged, the hidden cherubs blinking no more. A gull yells like a heckler and the city answers with a truck’s indifference.
My phone buzzes a third time. I finally look. The push alert headline morphs mid-scroll: HEROES OR HACKS? A still of confetti falling frames an empty X. He cut us out of our own rescue.
I pocket the screen and face the block. “He wants to write the recap,” I say.
“Then we edit,” Elena replies, eyes on the river’s seam of light. “Tomorrow.”
The word leaves a space I can’t fill yet. I breathe the sugar-metal air and step away from the door we opened, not sure what the audience saw, only that they saw something. The panel clock beats in my head like a timer I can’t unplug, and the question hangs where the confetti won’t fall: what do I owe the story when the story wants me onstage?