by Jessica King
Ivy looked to the stage, where Jennings was running into the wings, away from Aline, who was on her back on the stage. She could see the medical team waiting in the wings, their protocol restraining them from moving toward Aline until the area had been deemed safe. It was a big area, but she knew where to start.
Ivy took off toward the back of the auditorium, where the gun had sounded from. No one got in her way as she sprinted up the series of three-inch stairs, searching faces for anyone who didn’t look in a panic. Either the shooter was a fantastic actor—which wasn’t a far stretch considering the occasion—or they weren’t in the crowd now trying to desperately escape the auditorium. She finally elbowed her way to the back, where people were crouched against the wall, whipping their heads back and forth, looking for a threat.
“LAPD!” she shouted at the people who bumbled away from her, scared of her focused energy. “Did you see who just fired?”
A security guard who had been stationed at the other door came up to her, eyes dark with panic. “I heard it—but no one shot. There wasn’t anyone back here!”
“What?” Ivy asked, looking around until her eyes landed on a black box the size of a shoebox. A speaker.
“Is this connected to Bluetooth?” she asked, and the security officer repeated the question into his radio.
“It’s Bluetooth, but there weren’t supposed to be any speakers on Orchestra,” a panicked voice coated in static said from the other end.
“But the Bluetooth system is disabled,” the officer said into his walkie talkie. “Could someone have enabled it?”
“Have to be one of our crew, or someone with some shady tech help,” the voice on the other end said. Ivy moved the box to the side and found a tiny iPod shuffle hiding behind it up against the wall. Purple.
Ivy pressed the pin on the strap of her dress. “Vince, we are looking for Oliver Corbyn. He’s our shooter,” she said. Ivy turned on the device and saw that a ten second clip labeled as a sound effect had been most recently played. She couldn’t play it back, too worried about sending another wave of panic through the crowd, but she would have bet money that pressing play would have another gunshot echoing through the space.
“Can you repeat?” Vince’s voice was confused. In the background, she could hear Chief Marks yelling to lock down the facility.
“Oliver Corbyn shot Aline. I have found a speaker that played a gunshot sound at the time of attack. I think he used a silencer and that he’s somewhere on one of the three mezzanines. I will head up to the first mezzanine. Joyce take second, Vince take third. Kenshin stay where you are, we’re going to flush him out of the theatre if he’s in there. Do you copy?”
“Copy,” Vince said, followed by both Joyce and Kenshin.
Ivy sprinted up the steps to the first mezzanine, adrenaline keeping her worries for Aline at bay. When she surged out onto the mezzanine, she had to fight her way through an escaping crowd onto the tier, searching each face as she went. When she finally made it through, she was greeted by an entirely empty set of chairs and a crowd bottlenecking at the other door. She rushed forward and yelled she was police until she was able to search each face.
“First mezzanine clear,” she said.
She looked up to the stage, where Aline was still laying. From the elevated angle, she could see the shining red blood pooling on the stage beneath her black and nude dress. Even the woman who was shot matched the décor of the Oscars, she couldn’t help but notice. In the rush, one of the statues depicting the famous award made of hanging crystals had been broken, and now long strands of string and glittering crystals littered the stage.
Behind her on the screen that had signaled winners throughout the evening was a picture of Aline. Not from the awards, but from the film she’d been nominated as Best Actress for. It was a shot of what must have been her character sleeping. But in the purposely overexposed lighting, she could have been pale enough to be dead. Photoshopped over her lips was a Kingsmen card, the design drawn in the signature dark red. It was eerie to see on such a large screen. To know that this was the only way the card could be delivered. Ivy whipped out her phone and refreshed the page on the internet she kept up on the site.
Aline Rousseau: 2017
She flipped over to Jennings’s page. Jennings Ford: WIP. Surely it would have been found out eventually, but had it been worth attempting to startle the killer to return her to the label of “Work in Progress?”
“Second mezzanine clear.” Joyce said, breaking Ivy from her momentary trance.
“Vince?” Ivy asked through the system.
Vince’s panting came through the earpiece first. “Almost up there. Wait!”
The microphone cut out, and Ivy bit on her finger in a scream as she pushed her way through the crowd once again. She could see Joyce on the stairs far above her, who had already turned around. She was running for Vince, a hand on her gun.
“I got him!” she heard through the earpiece and Ivy felt sick with relief. A slew of curses in a British accent cut off when Vince’s radio cut out again.
“I’m on my way to help detain him,” Joyce said. “Ivy get down to Aline.” Ivy turned back, running for the closest orchestra level door, the world echoing with shouts and a drug dog’s barking. Ivy vaguely registered that someone must have managed to slip in with an illegal substance.
“Good work,” Chief Marks said. “Kenshin you with Shea?”
“I have him in cuffs, sir,” Kenshin’s voice was curt. “And…I took his mic. He says he wants to help.”
“Let’s leave him like that for now,” Chief Marks said. “I have a few questions for him. On way to Aline with you, Hart.”
+++
Sunday, February 26, 2017, 11:20 p.m.
The pain was horrible. Her shoulder burned in a way she never imagined possible, and believed that surely, she was dying. Her Oscar, knocked over and surrounded by tiny, beautiful crystals, stared back at her, its shine reflected on the stage she’d wanted to stand on all her life.
She knew now that she’d made the wrong decision. That she should have taken Oliver’s offer to go home. Shouldn’t have let him encourage her to stay when she’d almost said, Yes, let’s leave.
And now her frail mother had seen her shot on live television. She was possibly dying herself of heart attack after watching her only daughter collapse to the ground. Aline tasted bile and iron as people moved around her and she tried to tell them where it hurt, to tell them that she’d known this might happen, and she was still too stupid to leave. But only cries escaped her lips.
She screamed as someone applied pressure to the wound, white blurring the edges of her vision.
Ivy was above her, yelling—to her or to the people pushing into her wound, she couldn’t tell. Her world turned into a silent movie, and then all the colors and light drowned to black.
Aline had passed out, and Ivy hoped it was from pain and not blood loss. She turned when she heard a horrible racket at the back of the house, a woman screaming until she finally broke through the security guard posted there.
“No! I am her handler!” Emily, who usually reminded Ivy of a shaking chihuahua, had now bared her teeth. She stomped on the foot of a security guard with her heel and ran before he could do anything about it.
She was sobbing by the time she reached the stage, lacing her fingers with Aline’s. She didn’t say anything, didn’t beg Aline to wake up like most people did. She just looked at Ivy, her face crumpled.
“She’s alive,” Ivy said.
“Helicopter on the way,” Chief Marks said, coming up onto the stage.
“What are her chances?” Emily said, her lips barely moving.
“I don’t know,” Ivy whispered. “Depends where it hit. She looked down at Aline, who looked pale beneath her lipstick. She was losing too much blood, but Ivy couldn’t manage to tell Emily that. Emily looked up the image projected behind Aline.
“Did you find who did it?” Emily pointed to the card onscreen.
<
br /> “We found him,” Ivy said.
“Who was it?” she whispered.
“Oliver.”
Emily stared at the ground for a long moment, her crying suddenly stopping. “Where is he?” she asked. “Is he here still?” The intensity of the stage lights finally dimmed, turning Emily’s expression sinister.
“I don’t think you should—” Ivy started, but her words were lost in the intense stare of the other woman.
“I’m not going to kill him,” she said. “But I need to see him. Now.”
“I doubt he’s still in the building,” Ivy said, and Emily started shaking.
“Ivy?” The call was quiet.
Ivy’s head jerked up to a crouched Jennings, hiding in the wings. Her fingers were wrapped around the curtains.
Ivy beckoned her forward, and the three women sat around Aline as medics rushed to get a gurney. Jennings stared at the blood on the stage, and Ivy knew that the woman wasn’t there anymore. She was with her friend, whose blood had pooled just like this in her kitchen in Florida.
“They know about you now,” Ivy said. “You’ve been labeled a Work in Progress.”
Jennings took a deep breath and nodded. “It was going to happen. At least I can—” Her voice trembled. “At least I can call my kids now.” Her fingers played with a broken piece of crystal.
+++
Sunday, February 26, 2017, 11:36 p.m.
Joyce did not try to spare Oliver Corbyn from the cameras as they flashed relentlessly along the red carpet. She’d escort him to the cop car so slowly that the photographers would have enough pictures to fuel their respective tabloids for weeks.
They’d found the old Smith and Wesson on the ground of the third mezzanine—where Oliver had been running from—with the silencer that Ivy had suspected. When she called this in to Chief Marks, he didn’t respond for a long moment.
“I saw him with that gun,” he said. “He said it was a replica, and I believed him.”
“Well security must have, too,” Joyce said.
“Then it must have been empty when he entered the theatre,” the Chief said. “Even if he told them it was a prop, they would have checked it.”
The crowd along the red carpet began booing as word spread through the crowd. She was certain some of it was false, as accusations of Oliver running onstage and flashing the crowd and Oliver throwing a beer bottle at whoever had beaten Aline for Best Actress and Oliver stabbing the host flittered through the fans packed outside right along with the real story.
Joyce figured it was best not to confirm or deny anything at the moment. She’d seen people start riots for less. And if they heard that their beloved Aline had been shot, and that her status had not been determined yet… She didn’t like Oliver. Hated what he’d done. But she wasn’t about to allow him to be trampled to death by a thousand angry fans.
She put her hand above his head as she guided him into the back of the car she and Kenshin had driven to the Awards and slid into the passenger seat herself.
Oliver cried in the backseat.
“I like Aline,” he said, his voice barely understandable with all the quavering. “But you don’t understand. If I didn’t take that shot, I was going to be killed.”
Joyce exchanged a look with Kenshin. He could just be saying it, a last-ditch effort at sympathy before he was officially questioned.
“I have proof,” he said. “I have a burner phone I was using for the Kingsmen, and a threat to end my life if I didn’t shoot Aline came through just a few hours ago.”
Joyce turned around as Oliver struggled to fish around in his pocket with the handcuffs on. He eventually managed to grab the phone and offer it to her. She reached for it and pulled up the message.
If you don’t follow through, you’ll be a WIP.
An anonymous number. Joyce pocketed the phone.
“Does that mean I get some sort of leniency?” Oliver asked, his voice thick.
“We’ll remember you gave it to us. But a lead like this is probably a dead end. And you tried to kill someone,” Kenshin said, his voice flat. “You might have actually killed her.” The helicopter sounded above them, and Joyce hoped that it was a medical helicopter, not a news vehicle that would be essentially useless now that the evacuation was finished.
Oliver’s sniffling continued for several minutes.
+++
Sunday, February 26, 2017, 11:37 p.m.
“The bullets were inside the theatre already?” Ivy asked, and Emily’s eyes beside her went wide. “What?” she asked. She motioned to the microphone. “One sec,” she said into the microphone, angling the piece toward Emily, who leaned in toward her shoulder.
“We toured the Dolby before coming in, as a security briefing,” Emily said, her voice shaking with rage. “He went into the bathroom while we were there. Could he have left them?”
Ivy felt them all take a collective breath. Ivy sucked on her teeth as she watched Aline being moved from the stage to a stretcher. “Let’s get the car. We’ll meet them,” Ivy said. She helped Emily up, who was staring after Aline like the idea of Aline’s bleeding didn’t make any type of sense to her.
“You should call her mother,” Ivy said, remembering Aline mentioning her. “Tell her that she’s still alive and being moved.”
Emily shakily fished her phone from the clutch she’d brought with her.
“Wh-who are you calling?” she asked Ivy, confusion still a hard mask across her face.
“I’m getting the accomplice,” she said, dialing the office. “Hi, Barnes? I need you to get someone to arrest Jeremiah Ethan for assisting in the attempted murder of Aline Rousseau.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Monday, February 26, 2017, 1:55 a.m.
Ivy and Emily were both pacers, it turned out. They had turned the waiting room into a place of movement as they waited for news, orbiting the room like racecars.
“Most people survive shoulder gun shots,” Vince kept saying, the only words he had to offer the two of them.
That didn’t stop them from pacing—a police detective dressed in 1920s garb, and a hyperventilating handler in a strapless ballgown with a smear of blood on her arm. They had to be quite the picture, Ivy decided, but she knew neither of them would be headed home for a wardrobe change until they received an update on Aline.
The doctor had come out twice. Once to say that Aline had been placed in the ICU and again to say that she’d been taken into emergency surgery. In the meantime, Ivy had had bounced between the slightly off-white walls like a screen saver on a television, never hitting a corner, and most likely changing shades as she alternated between feeling pale, turning red with anger, and green whenever her stomach turned at the image of blood that kept playing in her mind.
An hour later, the doctor reemerged, and Emily tripped over a chair, no longer looking at her feet. The noise disturbed the only other people in the waiting room—family of a young girl who had broken her ankle, ironically, dancing to a musical number that had been performed at the Oscars. They didn’t say so explicitly, but the family seemed to suspect why Ivy and the rest were there, who they were waiting on.
“She’s stable,” the doctor said, and Ivy pinched the bridge of her nose. “And the bullet is out.”
“Good, good,” Emily said. “That’s good, right?” Emily looked about ready to pass out. The doctor smiled. “Did you get that Nathan?” Emily said into her phone.
Nathan, who had been on video chat for the past several hours, was now cheering with a yapping puppy, who was turning in circles, excited for the sake of being excited.
Vince and Marcus were smiling, and Inga had simply placed his bald head in his hands. His shoulders, which Ivy knew had been wound tight since the moment she escorted Aline away from him at the security checkpoint, finally dropped.
“She’ll need an additional surgery later, as well as physical therapy. But she’s expected to make a full recovery.”
“Can we see her?” Emily asked
, her knees bending like she might just take off toward the patient rooms even if the doctor said no.
“Let’s give her a bit of time,” the doctor said. “She’s out under the anesthetic. But she did resurface for a minute to ask for Emily to call her mother.”
Emily laughed, even as a few tears slipped from her eyes. “I can do that.”
Emily’s phone rang, and her eyes skipped up to the doctor. “I think she’s up,” Emily said. “One sec, Nathan.” She accepted the call. “Aline?”
The family waiting in the corner whispered to one another at the sound of her name.
“Emily,” Aline’s voice, still melodic but weak, was quiet through the speaker phone.
“I’m out here with the detectives, Inga, and Marcus.”
“Oh, lovely of them,” Aline said, and Emily shook her head, grinning. “Do tell Detective Hart that I saved some of the candy we got for her. In my purse.”
Ivy decided it best not to tell Aline that her purse had been quite stained through with her blood. The line was quiet for a moment.
“Emily,” she said. “It was Oliver, wasn’t it?” Emily didn’t respond, and she looked around the room for answers no one could give her. How did they explain to her that her boyfriend had likely dated her only to kill her? “He wasn’t there when I went to get my award.”
There was a long pause. “I’m sorry, Aline.” Emily looked like she wanted to say more but knew any apology she made would be insufficient.
“Did you get him?” she asked.
“Yes,” Ivy said, and the doctor circled his hands as if to tell her to hurry it up. “But you should go to sleep, Aline. Aren’t you tired? We’ll come see you later.”
“Hmm,” Aline said, and then she hung up.
“She doesn’t really say bye,” Emily said. “I think it might be a French thing, her mother does it, too.”
The doctor opened his mouth, then closed it, as if he had something to ask them, but didn’t know if he could. He ran his hand across his five o’clock shadow.
