Page 30 of Her Last Secret

And then it happened—the moment the play had been building towards. The scene was set with ominous lighting that cast long, foreboding shadows across the stage. A false night that belied the true darkness about to be unleashed. The lover, unsuspecting, turned his back to Rebecca’s character, speaking lines heavy with dramatic irony. Rebecca's face was a mask of feigned devotion, contorting into a grimace of concealed rage as her hand found the brick along the floor.

He watched, transfixed, as Rebecca raised the brick high above her head—her movements deliberate, almost ceremonial. His heart thrummed against his ribcage, pounding in time with the impending doom. With a brutal swiftness, the brick descended, meeting the actor's head with a sickening thud—a sound too real, echoing through the silent auditorium. Once, twice, thrice, the brick rose and fell, each impact a grotesque symphony. Brutal. Sickening. Splashes of crimson stained her hands, contrasting sharply against the pale skin, painting a picture so visceral that a moan of despair nearly escaped him.

The lights were pointed at it. Every eye was drawn to it. The stage had been set for this heinous murder and…well, what was the reaction of the deviants all around him?

Thunderous applause erupted within the dimly lit theater, a cacophony that reverberated off the walls and pounded into his ears. The audience was alive with appreciation, their hands coming together in a fervor that matched the intensity of the final scene. But as they rose from their seats, their faces alight with awe, he remained still, disgust coiling in his gut. How could they not see? Their clapping was an affront—a celebration of the murder he had just witnessed.

His fingers twitched, itching to silence the clatter, to make them understand the sanctity of death they so ignorantly applauded. It would be easy, so terribly easy, to let the darkness within him loose upon this unsuspecting crowd. But no. His purpose was singular, his mission clear. The rage simmering within him funneled into a laser-sharp focus on one person alone: Rebecca Clarke.

The final curtain call beckoned the performers back to the stage, and there she was, Rebecca, bowing with a flourish, her eyes shining and her hands still slick with blood.

He could take no more of it. He ran out of the row and back to the lobby. He then made sprint to the bathroom where he barely made it into a stall before he threw up.

His thoughts churned as his obsession with Rebecca tightened its grip around his mind. She had stood there, in the spotlight, a celebration of death, sin, and murder.

What the hell had this society come to? Was the applause and celebration of murder now the norm? How had he missed it? How had things come to this?

It was perverse, intolerable.

When he was done throwing up, he got back to his feet and walked to the sinks. He rinsed out his mouth and looked himself over in the mirror. He looked pale, sickened by what he’d just seen.

Rebecca would be next. She was a murderer, just like Emily and Sarah before her. Not only that, but she chose to bring her sins to the spotlight, to let others watch. She was an influencer, feeding the sick minds of the masses.

She must be stopped, her charade ended. And he would be the one to close the curtain on her final act.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Rachel’s figure cut a solitary figure against the glow of her laptop screen in the otherwise dimly lit conference room. The field office was quiet at this hour, as it typically was after about eight at night. The only noises came from the soft hum of electronics and the occasional whisper of pages from hefty case files being turned.

She was doing her very best not to be discouraged by the fact that she and Jack had once again been forced back to the field office, once again having to dig through files and internet searches in an attempt to find answers. It was always a struggle to sit at the field office in front of a laptop while their villain was out there somewhere, potentially only moments away from striking yet again.

But her focus was unyielding; Rachel's eyes darted across the backlit display, scanning through a digital labyrinth of theater websites and social media profiles. She also tried her very best not to constantly remind herself that this grunt work could be done from home, where her daughter would soon be sleeping in a home without a mother or a great-grandmother.

As she wrestled with that thought, she began to resent her job…a job she had worked very hard to get and to become the best at. She also knew that maybe it wasn’t the job that was to blame, but her own ambitions and priorities.

“Hey,” Jack said from across the conference room table. “You okay?”

“No.”

“Care to share?”

“This shit can be done from home,” she said. She surprised even herself with the profanity and the venom behind the comment.

“Then let’s go home. I’d like to catch up with Agent Carson, anyway.”

“Oh, I’m considering it. But if I go home, my mind won’t be fully on the case.”

Jack nodded but said nothing. And she appreciated that. He’d become very good at understanding when she needed to simply vent and when she was actively seeking advice and counsel. And this was a case of simply needing to vent.

So she turned her attention back to her research, not even exactly sure what she was looking for. She scrolled and clicked her way through performance schedules, cast lists, and the venues where Emily and Sarah had taken their final bows. Each discovery laid another breadcrumb on the trail to a killer who seemed more elusive than ever.

As Rachel sifted through the histories of these theaters, a pattern began to emerge—one venue, in particular, caught her attention. The Grandiose Theater, a once-thriving bastion of the arts, now revealed itself to be hemorrhaging money. Whereas it had held at least a thirty shows a year in the past, it had been downgraded to roughly a dozen, and with irregular hours in the past two years. Ticket sales were in decline. Rachel's brow furrowed as she clicked through quarterly reports, each one painting a grimmer picture than the last.

The debts were piling up, towering like the stage sets that had once brought stories to life within the Grandiose's walls. Outstanding loans, unpaid vendor invoices, and deferred maintenance costs all told a tale of desperation. The only reason she’d focused on these financial difficulties was because she knew that financial strain could drive people to dark places—places where morals became malleable and lives could be deemed expendable. She’d seen it more times than she could count during her career.

Was it possible that the financial ruin of a theater could be a catalyst for murder? Rachel leaned back in her chair for a moment, allowing herself a deep breath. She supposed a few dead actresses could drum up some sympathy for the theater community. And that could maybe give a boost to ticket sales. Maybe even enough to help re-establish a fledgling theater.

"Money," she muttered to herself, "is always a motive."

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