"Stable. But the mark is..." I gesture vaguely at Bells's throat. "They're monitoring it. They want to keep her at least forty-eight hours."
He nods and drags a hand down his face.
"How'd it go with the cops?"
"Told them everything." He drops into the chair beside mine, close enough that our arms brush together. "Mostly everything. Stephen Hughes kidnapped our lead singer, held her in a cage in a fucking opera house, had armed private security, and when we attempted a rescue, the pyrotechnic equipment in the theater ignited during the altercation."
"The pyrotechnic equipment…ignited."
"During the altercation. Yes."
"Raf."
"She didn't start a fire, Phoenix. A firestarted. There's a difference. And it's a difference the investigators are going to confirm when they find the flash pot crate right where a bunch of armed goons were firing guns in a room full of century-old fabric and exposed accelerants."
I look at him.
He looks at me.
"The cops bought it?"
"The cops are dealing with a dead kidnapper, a burned-down historical landmark, and a cluster of surviving private security guards with various broken bones who are all currently lawyering up and pointing fingers at each other. They don't givea shit about the fire's origin right now, although that’ll be a problem, too, I’m sure. They care about the body."
Stephen's body.
Raf leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees, staring at the tile floor between his feet.
"Rex?" he asks without looking up.
"Still in surgery."
His jaw works. He nods once.
The heart monitor keeps beeping.
The door opens again.
Carmine steps into the room looking like he's aged a decade. His usually immaculate suit is wrinkled. His tie is gone. His eyes are bloodshot and he’s holding his phone in a clenched grip like he’s been fielding calls for hours and would rather throw the device into the ocean than answer one more.
He takes in the scene. Bells in the bed. Me in the chair. Raf beside me.
"She's stable?" he asks.
"Stable," I confirm.
He exhales and runs his hand through his hair, leaving it standing at odd angles. "Okay. Good. That's..." He trails off, then regroups. "The opera house fire is national news. Every outlet in the country is running it. The footage from the concert—the unmasking, the pyrotechnic malfunction, the blackout, thechaos—it's everywhere."
My stomach drops.
"The video cuts out during the blackout, obviously, but the unmasking moment..." Carmine's voice is the careful, professional tone of a man who’s spent well over a decade managing disasters and who is currently standing inside the biggest one he's ever faced. "Rex's face is all over the internet. Again. This time it's live video, not a surgical photo. The prosthetic clearly tore off with the mask. There's no spinning this as a stunt."
I already knew that. I watched it happen from behind the drum kit. Watched the mask come away wrong. Watched thousands of faces register what they were seeing.
Watched Bells kiss him anyway.
"That's not all," Carmine says.
His tone makes the hair on my arms stand up.