I ignore that entirely. “Hartley. Poisoned.”
“Fuck.”
There’s yelling in the background, a woman’s voice sharp and indignant. Grim pulls the phone away and shouts, “Sorry, Mama,” before coming back on the line. “Okay. That’s bad. That’s very bad.”
I start breaking down my rifle as we speak, hands moving fast and precise, muscle memory taking over. Barrel off. Components separated. Everything stowed cleanly back into my bag. My eyes never stop moving, tracking the stage, the exits, the upper levels where he vanished.
Paranoia crawls up my spine.
“What the hell did he shoot at?” I murmur, more to myself than Grim.
“What?” Grim asks.
“I need you to hack the summit cameras,” I say. “All of them. Every angle. Inside and out.”
“Already doing it,” he says around a crunching sound. He’s eating something. Of course he is.
I stand, sling the backpack over my shoulder, and move along the wide ledge that had hidden me so well. I circle it carefully, staying low, until I reach the opposite side.
Alejandro’s side.
The carpet is still warm where he was lying. The impression faint but there if you know how to look. I kneel, peer down at the stage from his vantage point, tracing the line of sight.
It’s the same view I had.
No blind spots. No hidden figures. Nothing obvious that would justify a shot.
Which means the target wasn’t obvious.
“I’m going down there,” I say.
There’s a beat of silence. Then, “Mmm,” Grim replies thoughtfully. “That really a good idea?”
“It’s the only one.”
I move around the wall to the access ladder, its twin hidden in shadow just like the one I used. I descend quickly, controlled, sliding the last few feet down the rails and landing softly in the dark corridor that runs alongside the stage.
The noise from the auditorium is muffled here, panic turned into a distant roar. I slip along the back, staying in the shadows, my voice low as I speak into the earpiece.
“Tell me you’ve got eyes.”
Another crunch. I glance to my right like he might be standing there, crumbs on his shirt.
“Yeah,” Grim says. “I’m in. Every camera you could possibly want.”
“Good,” I reply. “Pull up Hartley’s death. Alejandro took a shot. I need to know exactly when.”
I pause, listening to my own breathing, already bracing for what the footage is about to tell me.
“At what?—”
He’s loaded onto a tarp.
Not a body bag. Not yet. Just a heavy sheet grabbed in a hurry, corners clenched in gloved fists as the medics lift together, awkward and strained, like they didn’t expect him to weigh this much now that life has left him. The tarp bows in the middle as they raise him, the shape of his body obscene and wrong, fluids soaking through in dark, uneven patches.
For a split second, I think of Skippy.
The train.
