Page 16 of Riggs
“I don’t lurk,” I say. “I stand.” He throws his hands and gives up.
We run the confessional in a tight corner of the ballroom under a softbox. Vanessa sits on a stool, camera on a tripod two feet away, and talks to the lens like she’s chatting with a friend. No location tells, no reflections. She’s good, but I knew that already. I like the way her hands move when she searches for truth and finds a phrase that feels like her.
The afternoon blurs. Sponsor B-roll. A “spontaneous” dance shot on the empty floor that looks nice and gives me heartburn. I keep the crowd outside—fans whose excitement bleeds under the ballroom doors like pressure under a threshold. The hotel adds ropes we don’t need and security we don’t trust. I give them jobs they can’t screw up and keep our corridor clean.
At 5:40, we wrap the last setup. I take one more loop because that’s who I am, and end back by the “green room”—a space made out of pipe and drape and faith. Vanessa ducks inside to switch shoes, Brice yells at his headset without knowing he has it muted, and the PA bumps a cart and apologizes to another ficus. I stake the door.
“Two minutes,” Vanessa calls, bright, because she knows how to send a room home.
She’s later than two. Three. Four. The hairs on my neck stand up. I knock once, and then push through the curtain.
She’s at the vanity table someone built from a folding table and a mirror on a stand. She has a card in her hand. It’s thick, white, the kind you use for wedding invites if you want people to think you’re serious. Her face is not her camera face. It’s stripped. Scared.
“Where was it,” I ask, already moving.
“In my bag,” she says, and her voice is both flat and shaking. She holds it out. I take it with two fingers at the edges, like it might have teeth.
Block letters, printed and glued on like someone thinks they’re in a movie:I’M GETTING CLOSER.
My body goes quiet in the way I like and also hate—every system down to what matters. “Sit,” I say. She sits. I key my mic. “Rae, we’ve got paper.”
“On it.” She’s already stripping feeds.
“Jaxson, eyes are yours. Who had hands on her bag in the last hour.”
“Pulling,” he says, voice gone clipped. “Three options from the hallway cam. PA, sponsor rep, venue coordinator.”
“Of course.” I bag the card in a fresh evidence sleeve from my kit, then pick up the bag and set it on the table, emptying it out one item at a time, slow and clean. Nothing else. No powder. No device. Just a note from someone who wants to scare her.
Vanessa’s hands are fists on her knees. “He was right here,” she says. “While I was in the room.”
“He was in the room,” I correct, becausehehands people power.The noteis a tactic. “We’ll find the hallway hole.”
“I feel stupid,” she whispers. “I feel like I let him?—”
“You didn’t let anything,” I say, sharper than I mean to and not sorry for the edge. I step in, take her wrists, pry her fingers open gently and put a water bottle in one and my palm in the other. “Look at me.”
She drags her eyes up. Pupils blown, breath fast. Panic has stages. I’ve walked them with too many people I care about.
“Four by four,” I say, the cadence I save for rooms that tilt. “In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. Hold for four.” I do it with her until her shoulders creep down from her ears and her face relaxes.
“Good,” I say. “Now name five things you can see.”
She swallows. “Your…jaw,” she says, because she’s her even when she’s scared. “The tape on the floor. The…uh, ring light there. My necklace. Your watch.”
“Four you can feel.”
She squeezes my hand. “Your skin. The chair under me. The water bottle. My heartbeat calming down.”
“Three you can hear.”
She listens. “The AC humming. Someone rolling a case. The band upstairs?” She almost laughs. “Of course they booked a jazz trio.”
“Two you can smell.”
She inhales. “Hairspray. You.”
That does something to me I put away for later. “One you can taste,” I say, softer.
