The orchestra launched into the opening measures, warm and precise. The weighty section of “Saints,” slowly built toward release, and the brass section filled the Orpheum with impressive gravitas.
A flash detonated in the balcony.
White light slammed across the house. Hard. Precise.
Eight hundred bodies reacted at once. Heads snapped upward. Programs slipped from hands. Someone cried out.
Dominic didn’t stop.
Then I looked at Bridget. Every head in the house went up, but hers. She looked down.
It was only slightly. A dip of her eyes and a tiny angle of her chin toward stage right. Her bow hand tightened and released. Not panic. Recognition.
She knew what was happening next. Not the flash distraction. The real thing.
Thiago was on the other side of the stage. I ran.
Chapter twenty
Thiago
Micah moved toward a case.
I was twelve feet away when he broke from his mark at stage right and crossed the narrow strip of floor between the fly rail and the stacked equipment. From the house, Micah’s movement would have read as completely normal: a stagehand responding to a technical problem during a live performance.
His credentials were clipped where they should be. His shirt was the same black work shirt he’d worn all week. He kept his head down and his pace controlled. Nothing in him appeared rushed.
The flash device detonated from the balcony with a concussive pop that ricocheted through the hall and sent a sheet of white light over the rail. It was bright enough to make the audience gasp and sharp enough to snap heads upward in unison. I didn’t look up. I kept my eyes on Micah.
He was already at the case.
He crouched as if to check a lighting unit, one knee down, shoulders angled toward the stage. His left hand braced on the edge. His right disappeared below the line of the lid.
I headed toward him.
Not a sprint. Not yet. Speed without control would have drawn Dominic’s eye and half the wing with it. I closed the distance the way I’d been trained to close distance in crowded, structured environments: direct line and minimum wasted motion.
In my ear, the comms unit crackled once.
“West corridor,” Eamon said. His voice was flat and clear. “Package moved. Local contact on Devereaux.”
Good. That line was closing too.
I was six feet from Micah when he changed shape.
That was the only accurate way to describe it. One second he was a competent union crewman handling an interruption. The next he became a man committing a lethal crime. His shoulders tightened. His weight shifted onto the balls of his feet. The right hand came up with the weapon already clearing the case.
He had chosen a compact rifle broken down to fit among cables and hardware. He assembled it in a single practiced motion, stock seated, muzzle lifting. Every visible line had pointed us toward the balcony, and the shooter had always lived on the floor.
Dominic was not where Micah expected him to be. He hadn’t taken part in the last relocation of the podium.
That bought me the second I needed.
We’d moved the stage mark again, three feet back toward the house. Dominic had accepted the change with his usual dry impatience, and we’d made the change with Micah occupied by a fake discussion with Eamon in the green room. Micah now had a false map in his head. He brought the barrel up, pointing at the old position, and found empty space.
Then he saw Dominic.
Next he saw me.
