Page 47
My first impulse was to draw a line from production to the bypass and work out where I could keep her in view. Instead, I turned the sheet toward her.
“Show me what you personally have to cover before opening. We’ll work out how to get between those places without using that staff crossing.”
She uncapped the pen and began marking the page.
“The front gate for the briefing. Production. The extended bypass, because I need to check the turn we added last night. And the two adjacent sets—their staffing changes while the figure room stays closed.”
I followed the route as she drew it. When she paused near a narrow transition, I pointed to the outside path.
“Can we use this to reach the bypass?”
“Yes, but we come around this side.” She redirected the line before I could finish tracing it. “The other way puts us against people leaving the next room. This brings us in beside them.”
I checked the connection to production and asked what could be delegated. Sybil marked the public queue for a staff lead once it was moving steadily, then set aside the routine reset checks. Farm deliveries remained Clinton’s responsibility, provided she received confirmation rather than another verbal promise.
We stayed over the sheet until we had a route that let her reach the places she needed without repeatedly squeezing through the busiest crossings. The compromised effect remained outside it, and nothing took us near the sealed crime-scene room.
When we finished, Sybil capped the pen and set Saturday’s plan beside the binder. She drew the previous season’s sheet back into the cleared space, leaving it next to the current layout.
The two plans lay side by side beneath our hands.
Last year, the lantern belonged near the approach where somebody had moved it Friday. Last year, guests had used the passage the hanging figure had swung into.
Neither disturbance made sense against Sybil’s current design.
Both made sense against the old one.
Clinton knew that layout. Troy knew it. Grant knew it. So did other people who had worked Hollowfield the previous season, which meant the plans hadn’t handed us a killer.
They had handed us something else.
Somebody wasn’t randomly sabotaging Sybil’s attraction.
They were using last year’s version as a blueprint.
Chapter Five
The radio at my shoulder had been quiet for exactly forty-three seconds when somebody called for another extension cord near the south queue.
I swallowed the bite of staff meal I’d been trying to finish and reached for it.
“Check production first. There should be two orange fifty-footers on the equipment rack. If they’re gone, call me back before you borrow one from another section.”
A crackle of acknowledgment followed.
Across the workroom, Damien looked up from Saturday’s route sheet. He’d folded his field jacket over the back of a chair, but everything else about him still looked ready to move at a second’s notice. The safer path we’d marked earlier ran beneath one broad finger while he compared it with the radio-check schedule I’d given him.
I pointed my fork at the paper. “Before you decide that corner needs another security improvement, remember that people carrying prop bins have to fit through it.”
“I remember.” His mouth shifted, not quite a smile. “I also remember you rerouting me twice this afternoon because I was about to walk into outgoing traffic.”
“Excellent. Growth.”
Outside the open workroom door, Hollowfield was gathering speed. Radios answered one another along the staff lane. A cart loaded with replacement batteries rattled past, followed by two performers carrying costume pieces over their arms. Cold air pushed into the room every time someone crossed the doorway, smelling of dry corn, wood smoke, and the first food warming for the public side of the farm.
I took another bite before somebody could need me badly enough to ruin it.
The damaged figure set remained closed, exactly where it belonged. The final room was still sealed. Our revised route had already survived two walkthroughs without creating the bottleneck I’d been afraid of.
