In the video I don’t know exists yet, Marcus’s voice hits the concrete first.
“Busy night for a coordinator, Elle.”
His words echo off gray pillars and low ceilings, picked up by a phone mic that fuzzes slightly on the sibilants. Fluorescent tubes flicker in the top corner of the frame, turning the whole parking level a queasy green. I watch it later and taste exhaust in the back of my throat, even though I’m just sitting in my living room.
The camera’s shaky at first—black fabric, the edge of a steering wheel, a blurred smear of his suit. Then the image steadies. Elle’s phone must be in her hand at chest height, app already open, red recording dot glowing where he can’t see it.
“You’re standing very close to my car, Marcus,” she says. Her voice comes through the speaker low and calm. “Security might read that as a concern.”
He steps back half a pace, enough for his whole body to slide into frame. His tie sits razor-straight against a white shirt; he looks like money even in bad lighting. He smiles in the way I know too well—the one that makes network presidents relax and junior assistants forget their own names.
“You’re right,” he says. “I’m invading your personal space. Forgive me. Long day.”
“We all had a long day,” she answers.
The camera tilts slightly as she shifts her grip on the phone. I see the corner of a white-painted parking spot number on the ground, a smear of oil like a shadow. Somewhere beyond the frame, a car door slams and a laugh bounces off concrete, then fades. They’re alone enough.
“I just wanted a word,” he says. “Face to face. No lawyers, no PR flacks. Professional to professional.”
“We don’t work in the same profession,” she says. “I keep people from getting hurt. You keep people from looking bad when they do.”
He laughs, smooth. “You’re not wrong.”
He lifts his hands in a mock surrender gesture. The motion blurs slightly on the screen, pixels smearing and catching up.
“Look, Elle. The industry is noisy right now,” he says. “Everyone has a story, everyone has a podcast, everyone wants to be the truth-teller who cuts through the spin. And you… keep bringing up mills and rivers and girls who fall in very public forums.”
My own name doesn’t appear in that sentence, but in the video, my ears burn anyway.
“Safety meetings are public forums now?” she asks. “Good to know.”
“You’re not subtle,” he replies. “You’ve been dropping references since the day you walked on Stage Fourteen. ‘Rust on the staircase is a lawsuit waiting to happen.’ ‘You don’t want another abandoned-factory incident.’ People notice patterns.”
“Do they?” she says. “Took them a decade last time.”
He tips his head, acknowledging the hit. The camera shakes again, and for a second, his hand disappears out of frame—toward his pocket, I realize, checking his own phone, confirming they’re alone.
“You’re connected to her,” he says softly. “The girl from the river town. The one the podcast keeps circling without naming yet. Lila.”
My lungs lock when I hear him say her name there, in that echoing garage.
“That’s a lot of assumptions,” Elle says. “What exactly are you accusing me of?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” he says, voice going silkier. “I’m giving you an out. For both our sakes.”
She doesn’t move, but the frame narrows slightly. I can tell she’s stepped in, closing the distance just enough that the mic catches every word. Baiting him closer to the lens.
“Define ‘out,’” she says.
“We both know what happened at that mill should have been handled differently,” he says. “On every level. But reopening it now? Putting Nora back on that staircase in the court of public opinion? That doesn’t fix the original harm. It just creates new ones.”
He leans closer, face shadowed from below by the phone’s glow. In the video, his eyes look darker than I’ve ever seen them, like someone forgot to light him.
“I represent a client who has built an entire life on turning one bad chapter into a story of growth,” he goes on. “You and I know that chapter involved more people than her. You start dragging everyone into the light now, the system closes ranks. Again. And you get crushed in the gears. Again.”
“You keep saying ‘again’ like you were there,” she says.
He doesn’t flinch.
“I read enough sealed paperwork to count,” he says.
There’s a beat of static, the kind that isn’t sound but some digital shrug.
“So here’s my offer,” he says, and his tone lands on the word like it weighs a fortune. “You stop feeding stories to that podcaster. You stop engineering accidents that mysteriously echo Nora’s past. You let this production finish its season without further incidents.”
“And in exchange?” she asks.
“We make it worth your while,” he says. “Consultancy deals. A back-end bump for safety coordination. I can get you in rooms where the real hiring happens, not just the day-rate chaos.”
He spreads his hands again, salesman pose now.
“You deserve a career, Elle,” he adds. “Not just a mission.”
She laughs once, short and sharp. The sound bounces around the garage.
“You’re offering me hush money,” she says.
“I’m offering you stability,” he says, a little too fast. “What you call it is your business.”
She adjusts the phone in her hand so I see the shiny edge of her car’s side mirror, his reflection slim and dark inside it. For a second he’s duplicated: one body, one ghost in glass.
“To be crystal clear,” she says, enunciating, “you’re asking me to stop talking about a documented injury on a former set, stop raising safety concerns on a current set, and stop cooperating with a journalist. In exchange for money and access.”
“Don’t make it sound uglier than it is,” he says.
“You’re very scared,” she says. “For a man who claims it’s not ugly.”
He steps closer, enough that the camera can’t hold all of him; I see a slice of jaw, the knot of his tie, his hand curling slightly at his side.
“You have no idea what the studio is capable of if they decide you’re a liability,” he says, the sugar finally gone from his voice. “You’ve slipped under the radar so far by being useful. Once you’re not, you’re just another name on a do-not-hire list.”
“Already lived that story,” she says. “Didn’t like the ending.”
“This is not a joke,” he says, louder now. “You’re messing with the livelihood of hundreds of people. Crew. Writers. Kids in your stunt team. All because you can’t let go of one night in a dead town.”
“One night in a dead town,” she repeats quietly. “You should put that on Nora’s next award campaign.”
He exhales, sharp enough that the mic pops.
“You think Nora orchestrated any of this?” he says. “She doesn’t have the stomach. She barely has the stomach to read her own call sheets right now. You’re punishing the wrong person.”
“Then why are you here instead of her?” she asks.
That lands. His jaw tightens, a small flash of teeth as he bites the inside of his cheek.
“Because she trusts me to protect her,” he says.
“How’s that working out?” she asks.
The silence after is thicker than the fluorescence hum. Far away, a car engine revs up a ramp, Doppler-fading into the LA night.
“Last chance,” he says finally. “Walk away. Take the money, take the connections, stop poking the bear. You want an apology? We can craft something beautiful. Nora can cry on cue. Everyone loves a redemption arc.”
Her hand lowers a fraction; the frame tilts down, catching the toes of his shoes, the edge of a yellow parking stripe, the scuff on the metal stair rail at the corner of the level. The rail glints, thin and cold, and my chest clamps around an old memory of similar metal biting my palm back in Pennsylvania.
“I don’t want Nora’s tears,” she says. “I want Nora’s truth.”
“Her truth will kill her,” he snaps.
“Then maybe she shouldn’t have built a life on my silence,” she replies.
The words slam into my living room later like they bounced off concrete and traveled west.
On the screen, she lifts the phone deliberately now, no longer pretending it’s anything but a camera. The lens centers his face.
“I’m going to say this once,” she says. “If you come near me like this again, or near anyone else tied to that night, everything I have goes public. Not just to Quinn. Not just to fans with red-string boards. You are not the only fixer in this town who learned how to keep copies.”
His eyes flick down to the phone, then back up to her. For the first time in the video, he looks directly into the lens, right through to where I sit later.
“You’re making a mistake,” he says.
“That’s what they told me before they pushed the NDA across the table,” she says. “Have a good night, Marcus.”
The camera drops to her thigh as she moves. I catch a smear of motion: her hand on the car door, the interior light flaring, the dash chiming. Headlights wash over him as she backs out; in the last frozen frame before the file ends, he stands in the glare like a man caught onstage without a script.
The video cuts to black.
My inbox return screen blinks back up, dull and ordinary.
From: no-reply-burner@protonmail.com
Subject: You should see what “protection” looks like.
I sit hunched over my laptop at the kitchen island, the marble cool against my forearms, city lights bleeding through the glass walls behind me. The AC hums, a soft, steady drone under the tinny echo of his voice still ringing in my ears. On the counter, a plate holds half a glazed donut I took from craft services this afternoon and never finished; the sugar film feels tacky when I touch it.
I scroll up to read the body of the email again, even though it’s only two sentences.
You didn’t ask him to do this, it says. But you benefit if he wins. Decide how much of that you want to own.
No signature. No name. The sender address is a jumble of letters. The attachment is just labeled garage.MP4.
I don’t need a sign-off to know who sent it.
I replay the video, because my brain wants to be sure I heard each word right, wants to make sure I’m not projecting my own guilt into their mouths. Marcus’s voice pours into the room again, tinny and distorted. “Her truth will kill her.” My face reflects faintly on the laptop screen, layered over his.
I pause on Elle’s last line. She shouldn’t have built a life on my silence.
The mill slides into focus in my head again: wet metal, fog clawing at my throat, the cold rail I shoved Lila against. I think about the diner’s bottomless coffee and whispers, about my mother’s tired hands wrapped around chipped mugs, about how easily the town traded silence for the story Marcus gave them.
Healing needs privacy, Marcus always said. He framed it like kindness. Now I hear the second half of the sentence in Elle’s voice: justice needs exposure.
My phone buzzes beside the laptop, screen lighting up with his name.
Marcus: We should talk strategy first thing. Studio’s spooked but they’ll calm down. Don’t do anything rash online.
I stare at the message until the words blur. He doesn’t know I’ve seen him in the garage. He still thinks he controls the cameras.
I open a reply window, fingers hovering over the glass keyboard.
Did you meet with Elle tonight? I type.
I don’t send it. I delete the line letter by letter until the box is empty again.
Across the room, the floor-to-ceiling windows turn the night into a mirror. I see myself at the island, small and barefoot, ringed by glowing rectangles: phone, laptop, the reflection of both in the glass. A house built of windows, and I’m still surprised that people can see in.
I shift my gaze back to the email, to the anonymous sentences hanging there like a dare.
You didn’t ask him to do this. But you benefit if he wins.
I think about Chapter Seven, the extra in the hospital bed, pen shaking over an NDA line. About the way I hovered behind Marcus while he worked his soft-voiced magic. I didn’t write the paperwork. I still watched, and let the silence help me.
My cursor blinks in a new message window. I address it to the only contact info I have for Elle: the production email the coordinator memo listed. It’s probably monitored. It’s probably a terrible idea.
I saw the video, I type. We need to talk. Just us.
I stare at the words, feeling each one click into place like a gear engaging.
My thumb hangs over “Send,” frozen in the glow.
On one side of the screen waits Marcus and his promise of protection built on sealed files and careful lies. On the other side waits Elle and her growing arsenal of recordings, ready to crack every pane of glass I’ve spent my adult life polishing.
I don’t know yet which danger terrifies me more.
I hit save instead of send.
The draft lodges in my outbox, a silent, unsent confession. Between my manager’s threats in a dark garage and the woman filming him, I’m suspended in the middle, the ground beneath both of them.
And I know I can’t stand here much longer without picking a side.