He checked for messages.
There was nothing from Rowan. No missed calls. No updates.
But something was wrong.
He felt certain of it.
Lauren remained near the front window even after Rowan closed the door.
Her shoulders stayed tight beneath the oversized jacket, her attention drifting toward the driveway and the woods beyond it as if she couldn’t quite make herself stop watching.
“You can sit down,” Rowan said.
Lauren startled. “Sorry.” She rubbed her hands together once. “I keep forgetting where I am. I’ve been on edge for so long . . .”
“I understand.” Rowan meant the words.
She’d spent most of a week feeling exactly that way—present in a room but never fully inside it, always halfway somewhere else.
Lauren finally looked at her. Something in her expression shifted, softening just slightly at the edges. “Thayer used to talk about you. Did you know that?”
Rowan blinked. “No.”
“He did.” A faint sad smile touched Lauren’s mouth. “He said you were one of the few people on that set who treated everyone the same whether the cameras were rolling or not.” She looked down at her hands. “That’s why I reached out to you. I didn’t know who else would actually listen.”
The words landed somewhere tender. “I’m glad you did. Come on.”
She led Lauren toward the kitchen and pulled two water bottles from the refrigerator. The ordinariness of the gesture felt strange.
Lauren took the bottle but didn’t open it. Instead, she leaned against the counter, still appearing too wound up to fully settle.
Rowan waited—trying to be patient—for her to start.
“Thayer knew something was wrong for a while,” she started. “At first, he thought Vince was just difficult. He’s the kind of director people warn you about but you work with anyway because the credits are worth it. That’s what Thayer said.” She paused. “But then he started noticing things that didn’t add up.”
Her heart thumped in her ears. “What kind of things?”
“He bought these new cameras—they actually had trackers on them.” Lauren’s jaw tightened. “Some of them went missing, so he traced their location. It turned out, someone had taken them and was using them in trailers. In a hotel suite. In a production office.”
Rowan’s stomach turned even though she already knew part of this. Knowing and hearing it said plainly were different things entirely.
“Thayer realized that someone was recording people,” Lauren continued. “Not just conversations. Private moments. Arguments. Things people would do anything to keep quiet.”
“That’s disturbing, to say the least.”
Lauren set the water bottle on the counter. “Then he overheard a conversation from one of his assistants. He was being blackmailed. Thayer put everything together. He realized it was Vince. That he was keeping files on people.”
“To control them,” Rowan said.
“Yes.” Lauren reached into her bag and set a small external hard drive on the counter between them. “My brother copied what he could find. He told me if anything ever happened to him I needed to take this and disappear.” She looked up. “At first, I thought he was being paranoid.”
“But then he died.”
Tears filled Lauren’s eyes. “He did.”
“I’m so sorry, Lauren.”
She sniffled. “Me too. I have to do something about it. I can’t lose . . .” Her voice trailed.
