"No," Fendrik said, already moving toward the sound. "That's a woman."
They followed the voice through a doorway none of them had noticed before, half hidden behind a fallen section of scenery flat, into a narrow storage passage thick with the smell of mildew.
Isaiah's flashlight swept ahead of them, catching dust, broken furniture, and finally, at the very end of the passage, a figure slumped against the wall.
Aria! Her hair hung matted across her face, her dress torn at the shoulder, wrists bound in front of her with something dark and frayed.
She flinched violently at the light before her eyes focused enough to recognize the people standing over her.
"Lia," she rasped, voice barely above a whisper. "You have to go. Now. Before he comes back."
"Who?" Lia dropped to her knees beside her, hands already working at the binding on her wrists. "Aria, who did this?"
Aria's eyes moved past Lia, past Fendrik, landing somewhere behind them in the dark passage they'd just walked through.
"He never left," she whispered. "He's been here the whole time."
"Who, Aria?" Fendrik crouched beside her, voice gentler than Lia had ever heard it. "Give me a name."
"I can't." Her whole body shook, whether from cold or fear or both, Lia couldn't tell. "He said if I said it out loud, he'd make sure nobody ever found the next one."
"The next one," Lia repeated, ice settling low in her stomach. "You mean me?"
Aria's grip tightened around Lia's wrist, surprisingly strong for someone who looked seconds from collapse. "You need to leave. Right now. Before he realizes you found this room."
"We're not leaving you here."
"You don't understand what he's capable of."
"Then help me understand it while we get you out." Lia finished working the binding loose from Aria's wrists, raw skin visible underneath where the frayed material had cut in deep. "Can you walk?"
"I think so." Aria tried to push herself upright and failed, legs giving out beneath her weight. Fendrik caught her before she hit the floor, one arm braced under her shoulders.
"I've got her," he said. "Isaiah, take the light. Watch the passage behind us."
Isaiah swung the flashlight back toward the way they'd come, and it caught on something that hadn't been there a moment ago, a shift in the darkness where the passage bent out of sight.
"Guys," he said, voice dropping to barely a whisper. "Something's moving back there."
A shape stepped out from the shadows behind them, blocking the only way out.
"Don't move." Michael's voice cut through the dark before his face did, flashlight swinging up to catch all of them at once. "Anyone. Hands where I can see them."
Relief hit Lia so hard her knees nearly buckled. "Michael. It's us."
"I can see that." He lowered the light slightly, though his other hand stayed close to his hip. "What I can't see is why four people are standing in a condemned wing that's supposed to be sealed, or why one of them looks like she's been tied up for hours."
"Because she has been." Lia knelt back down beside Aria, who'd gone rigid the second Michael's light hit her face. "This is Aria. We found her like this."
Michael crossed the passage in three strides and crouched on Aria's other side, studying the raw skin at her wrists, the torn fabric at her shoulder, the way her eyes kept darting toward the dark behind them like she expected something to follow. "Miss Bellamy, can you tell me who did this?"
Aria flinched at her own name, said aloud, like it was dangerous to claim. "I don't know."
"You don't know, or you won't say?"
"Does it matter? Either way you get nothing from me tonight."
Fendrik shifted forward, still bracing Aria's weight against his shoulder. "She's in shock, Michael. This can wait until she's somewhere safe."
"Everything can always wait, according to you." Michael's eyes moved to Fendrik with something sharper than the earlier suspicion, something closer to certainty. "How exactly did you know to look in a wing that's been locked since before I was assigned to this precinct?"
"We didn't know. We followed a lead."
"A lead." Michael's mouth flattened. "Convenient lead, for a man with a six year old open question mark hanging over another missing woman from this very wing."
Lia's stomach dropped. "You already knew about Corinne?"
"I've known about Corinne since the day I got assigned this case, Miss Robetor. I was hoping I wouldn't have to bring it up in front of an audience." Michael's gaze didn't leave Fendrik. "Funny thing about coincidences. They stop being coincidences somewhere around the third time the same name shows up next to a missing woman."
"You think I did this." Fendrik's voice stayed level, but his arm tightened protectively around Aria. "After everything tonight, after I helped find her, you still think I did this."
"I think you know considerably more than you've told me, which isn't the same accusation, but it isn't far from it either."
Isaiah stepped forward, voice tight with frustration. "He's been trying to protect people all night. That has to count for something."
"It counts for exactly nothing until I have a name and evidence to match it."
Michael crossed his arms, radio still holstered for the moment. "Let me tell you what I actually have. A pattern of missing women stretching back six years, all connected to this theater. A director who admits to loving the first victim and being the last person to see her. A second victim who mentions his name twice on the day she disappeared. And now a third woman standing in front of me who he conveniently helped rescue after everyone else had given up looking."
"Conveniently," Fendrik repeated, something bitter in his voice. "You think I staged this?"
"I think it would be professionally irresponsible of me not to consider it."
"Then consider this instead." Lia stepped between them before she'd fully decided to. "If he staged any of it, why would he show me Corinne's photograph himself an hour ago? Why hand me evidence that makes him look worse, not better?"
"Guilt does strange things to people, Miss Robetor. So does the hope that confessing half the story earns enough trust to hide the other half."
"That's not what happened."
"You don't know that. You've known him a handful of hours in crisis. That's not the same as knowing a person."
Aria's hand shot out and caught Lia's wrist with surprising strength for someone who'd looked seconds from collapse minutes earlier. "Don't let them separate us. Please. If I'm alone with him..."
"With Michael?" Lia frowned. "Aria, he's the detective on your case."
"I don't care what he is." Aria's eyes were wild now, darting between all of them. "You don't understand. I don't know who to trust in this building anymore, and neither should you."
"Why him specifically?" Fendrik asked, careful, like he didn't want to spook her further. "Did he say something to you? Do something?"
"It's not what he did." Aria's voice dropped so low Lia had to lean in to catch it. "It's how fast he showed up tonight. Nobody knew we were down here. Nobody except the four of us and whoever put me in this passage in the first place."
The words landed heavier than anything else said in the last hour. Lia's eyes cut toward Michael without meaning to, and for one unguarded second, something crossed his face that looked almost like he'd heard every word of it.
Michael's jaw tightened at that, though he said nothing. He pulled his radio free instead, thumbing it to life. "This is Detective Hale, I need medical and backup to the east wing of the Halloway Theater immediately. Victim requiring transport, scene needs securing."
Static answered him, faint and broken, before the radio crackled a response Lia couldn't fully make out.
A sound rose from further down the passage, sharp and sudden, metal striking stone somewhere in the dark behind them.
Every head turned at once.
"That's not backup," Isaiah whispered. "Backup doesn't come from that direction, and it definitely doesn't come this fast."
Michael's hand finally moved to his weapon, sliding it free in one smooth motion, flashlight sweeping the passage they'd just walked through. "Everyone behind me. Now!"
Lia didn't move fast enough.
Something surged out of the dark, fast and low, and slammed into Michael before he could level the light or the weapon properly, sending both clattering across the stone floor as he went down hard beneath the weight of whoever had been waiting in the shadows.
Fendrik lunged forward, shoving Aria into Isaiah's arms. "Get her out. Both of you, go now."
"What about you?"
"Just go."
Lia didn't run. She grabbed the fallen flashlight from the floor, swinging the beam toward the struggle just as Michael's attacker rose from the ground, turning toward the new source of light with a speed that gave her no time to step back.
A gloved hand closed around her wrist and yanked her forward into the dark.