A pause stretched too long on the other end. "Someone did. From your number."
The room seemed to tilt sideways for a second before settling. "Read me exactly what it said."
"It said, ask Joy to pull the file on Corinne Whitfield before Lia does it herself." Joy's voice shook. "Lia, who else has your phone?"
"Nobody. I've had it on me the whole night."
"Then how did they get your number?"
"I don't know." Lia's grip on the phone tightened until her knuckles ached. "Just find whatever you can on that name and meet me by Fendrik's office. Don't tell anyone else what you're looking for."
She hung up before Joy could argue, and turned back to find Edith and Isaiah both watching her with matching expressions of dread.
"Someone's inside your phone," Edith said quietly. "Or inside this theater in a way none of us have accounted for."
"Or both," Isaiah muttered.
Lia didn't answer. She was already moving toward the east wing corridor, Isaiah falling into step half a pace behind her, refusing to let her walk it alone this time. The door to Fendrik's office sat at the far end, closed, a thin line of light showing underneath it.
She turned to leave, and her phone buzzed again in her hand. Same unknown number. "Ask him what really happened to Corinne. Ask him why he still keeps her photograph in his desk drawer."
Lia's blood ran cold, because she had just come from that office. She had stood two feet from that desk while Fendrik promised her they were on the same side.
And she never once thought to open the drawer. Lia didn't knock.
Fendrik looked up from his desk, already reading something in her face before she said a word. "What happened?"
"You tell me." She crossed the room and stopped directly across the desk from him, close enough that he had to lean back slightly to keep looking at her. "Someone's been texting me all night. Telling me things they shouldn't know. Ten minutes ago they told me you keep a photograph of Corinne in your desk drawer."
Something shifted in his expression, quick and unguarded before he caught it. "Who told you that name?"
"Edith. Only she didn't have to. Whoever's sending me these messages already knew before I did." She planted both hands on the desk. "Open the drawer, Fendrik."
"Lia, listen to me before you do something you can't undo."
"Open it, or I will."
Isaiah shifted near the doorway, silent, clearly wishing he were anywhere else. Fendrik held Lia's stare for a long moment, then reached down and pulled the drawer open himself, slow enough that it felt almost ceremonial.
Inside sat a folded newspaper clipping, yellowed at the edges, and a single photograph of a young woman laughing at something off camera, dark hair, bright eyes, a face Lia had never seen before tonight.
"That's her," Lia said quietly. "That's Corinne."
"Yes."
"You told me you didn't know what the note meant. You stood right here and lied to my face."
"I said I didn't know what girls the note was referring to. I never said I didn't know Corinne." His voice stayed level, but something underneath it had gone raw. "There's a difference, even if you don't want to hear it right now."
"That's a technicality, not an explanation."
"And this is the only explanation I've been able to explain for six years."
He pulled the clipping free and set it on the desk between them, careful, like it might tear if handled wrong. "Corinne and I were involved. Before Aria, and before you ever set foot in this building. When she disappeared, I was the last person who admitted to seeing her that night. The police looked at me first and hardest, and they never found enough to charge me, or clear me either. I've spent six years being the man everyone quietly suspected and no one could prove anything about."
Lia's anger faltered, just slightly, against that explanation. "Why didn't you say any of this earlier?"
"Because the moment I say it out loud to you, you have to decide whether you believe me. And I already know how that story usually ends for men like me."
Isaiah cleared his throat from the doorway. "For what it's worth, I don't think you did anything to Aria."
"That's kind of you to say. It won't hold up in front of Detective Michael."
Lia picked up the photograph, studying the woman's face like it might explain something the words hadn't. "Whoever is sending me these messages knows about Corinne. Knows about the drawer. That's not public information."
"No. It isn't."
"So either they were close to you six years ago, or they're close to you now."
"That's a shorter list than you'd think." Fendrik dragged a hand through his hair, the gesture more tired than anything defensive. "Edith knew Corinne. Jeff was already producing here back then, though he'll tell you he barely remembers her. And Renata worked wardrobe that season, before she and I were ever involved."
"Renata," Isaiah repeated, something tightening in his voice. "She never mentioned knowing Corinne. Not once, in all the time she's been talking to me."
"Would she have any reason to bring it up?" Fendrik asked.
"If she was hiding it, yes. That's exactly the kind of thing you don't bring up."
Lia looked between them. "So we have at least three people who could know enough to write those messages, and every one of them has already lied to me about something else tonight."
"Welcome to six years of my life," Fendrik said quietly.
Isaiah crossed his arms. "This doesn't excuse you keeping quiet, but I understand it a little better now than I did five minutes ago."
Fendrik's shoulders dropped slightly, like admitting that much had cost him something. "I've been asking myself the same question for the last hour."
A sound cut through the office before he could say more, distant but unmistakable, glass breaking somewhere deep in the theater, followed by a scream that cut off far too quickly to be an accident.
All three of them went still.