“Micah.”
“Yes. He controlled the podium. He controlled the spike tape. If Dominic stood in the wrong place, Micah was the man who moved him back. In a room full of musicians and donors and security, the stagehand with the podium is invisible. No one questions why he’s standing two feet from the conductor.”
“So the balcony was never the attack vector?”
“It was always a distraction.”
Luca set a hand lightly on the back of my chair. “Time to go.” As he turned the chair toward the door, I looked back once.
Henri remained seated with his hands folded in front of him. He did not look at the detective or the camera. He looked at the empty chair where Dominic had been.
Dominic stood a few feet away with one hand in his trouser pocket and the other resting lightly against the wall beside him. He looked at my face, then at Luca’s, reading what he could without asking for an immediate report.
“Well?”
“He talked,” I said.
We moved down the corridor together.
The wheels hummed softly over the tiles. My shoulder had settled into a deep, constant ache. At the elevator, Luca reached past me to press the button.
Luca helped me back into the SUV. My shoulder protested the transfer sharply enough this time that I closed my eyes for a second.
Dominic noticed. “Back to the hospital,” he said.
Traffic crawled for a block and then cleared.
The city outside the window looked ordinary in the way cities do after extraordinary events. A man unloaded bags of ice from the back of a truck. Two women stood under an awning, sharing a cigarette. Streetcar rails flashed briefly in the sun where the line curved across the avenue.
I rested my head back against the seat.
At the hospital, Luca turned in the passenger seat before the detective could come around and open my door.
“You’re getting back into bed,” he said.
“I assumed so.”
“That was not an invitation to sound agreeable. I need to know you understand the plan.”
“I understand the plan,” I said.
The detective opened the door. Heat flooded in.
As Luca steadied the chair and I shifted my weight out of the car, Dominic approached me. “Mr. Reyes.”
I looked at him.
“You were useful today.”
Chapter twenty-three
Luca
“You brought contraband.”
Thiago had his nose in the air, sniffing, when I came through the door.
I set the paper bag down on the rolling tray beside him. “That description would offend my mother.”
