Page 145 of Dance of Deception

Cages.

Chains.

Bloodstains. Fingernail marks on the wall.

The pretty dresses, hanging neatly in a row on a metal rack.

I clench my eyes shut, my body locking up, my breath coming in sharp, panicky bursts.

No.

No. No. NO…

My vision blurs, my pulse hammering so hard it feels like I'm going to split open.

A shadow I thought I’d buried long ago shifts inside me, uncoiling and wrapping itself around my heart, dark and suffocating.

The walls feel like they’re closing in, pressing, crushing, swallowing me whole.

I want to run. But I can’t.

I’m trapped in his past.

Trapped in mine.

And there’s no way out.

29

CARMINE

The car roarsthrough the streets.

I drive like a man possessed, barely registering the other vehicles that swerve out of my way. My phone sits on the console beside me, the screen glaring up at me blankly. But it doesn't hold the answers I need. I never put live cameras in Lyra's dressing room.

That was a fucking oversight, and I’m paying for it now.

I watched her earlier, talking alone with that other dancer in the small rehearsal studio. I watched them head for the exit together. But then Lyra jogged back to the dressing room alone.

And then there was nothing.

I watched the fucking door for twenty minutes. Thirty. Thirty-five.

Then something snapped inside me.

And that brings me to my current near-suicidal driving through the city, my pulse thundering in my ears.

The car screeches to a stop in the alley behind the Mercury Theater. I lurch out, gun drawn as I storm to the back door and punch in the code I’ve watched Lyra use before.

I don’t know what the fuck I’m walking into, just that I’m ready to kill.

I move fast, surging through the empty halls, my jaw set. I kick open the door to the dressing room…

…And everything in me—every scream, every demon, every impulse to rip out a throat and spill blood across the world—goes quiet.

She’s huddled on the floor, back pressed to the lockers, arms wrapped around her knees, rocking slightly. Her haunted gaze stabs into nothingness in front of her, eyes unfocused like she’s somewhere else entirely.

Around her, the floor is littered with photographs.

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