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“No.”

“I didn’t think so, but I wanted it to be your answer.”

The radio at my shoulder called for me before I could respond.

The first ticketed group was ready.

I lifted the radio.

“Send them.”

Hollowfield came alive.

For the next several hours, I did not have time to wonder whether Grant Bellamy was somewhere beyond the floodlights.

I had forty-three employees in some stage of costume or support work, a shortened route, reduced capacity, two closed structures, three groups who managed to lose the direction signs despite my best efforts, and one fog unit that had chosen Saturday night to develop a personal grudge against me.

I adjusted spacing at the Widow’s Cellar when guests lingered too long after the reveal.

I moved a reset worker from one section to another when the first developed a delay.

I walked a mother and crying little boy out through an emergency lane when he decided halfway through the attraction that being brave was deeply overrated.

Damien remained close enough that I stopped noticing how often I looked for him.

Sometimes he was directly beside me.

Sometimes he held back a few yards where the guest path narrowed.

Once, when I backed out of a staff opening while answering a radio call, my shoulders met his chest.

His hands settled briefly at my waist.

“Clear,” he said near my ear.

I stepped aside.

His hands were gone immediately.

The place where they had been stayed warm beneath my jacket for the next several minutes.

Near nine, my phone buzzed with a message from O’Shea.

He had not located Grant yet.

He did not need to tell me what that meant.

It did not mean guilt or proof. It only meant that the man who had lied about Thursday was not currently sitting in an interview room making everything easier.

Damien read the message over my shoulder because I showed it to him.

“We stay on the route we agreed,” he said. “No unplanned detours.”

“I wasn’t planning any.”

“I know.”

That simple answer made me look up.