“You’re not calling in the bomb squad for whatever new booby traps have been placed inside?” Tempest had found Detective Rinehart near the back door, speaking with Officer Quinn, and was trying to explain to them that this had to be a trap. A distraction from the killer.
“We have no reason to believe there are any traps in the theater.” Rinehart glared at her, clearly regretting his decision to let Tempest and her dad through the barricade. “Just a couple of stupid kids playing a prank.”
“Hidden Creek isn’t big enough for our own bomb squad,” Officer Quinn said.
“Isn’t that what bigger county and state agencies help small towns with?”
“Well, yes,” Quinn said, “but—”
“Quinn,” snapped Rinehart. “Do shut up.” He turned to Tempest. “Ms. Raj, I have things under control.”
“Then where are the kids?” Darius asked.
Rinehart and Quinn exchanged a look.
In spite of the situation, Tempest laughed. She had a guess. A good one. Because she knew the theater. “You can’t find them, can you?”
Quinn’s eyes grew wide, and Rinehart reddened.
“Out,” growled Rinehart. “Go back to your vehicles. Better yet, go home. We can take care of this. Your presence is a distraction.”
“This whole thing is a distraction,” Tempest said, as the officer from the barricade led them away from the building.
“That man,” said Darius, shaking his head. “He’d be more than competent if he could just get over his ego.”
“At least it looks like they’re going back inside to search.”
They sat on the tailgate of the pickup truck Darius had driven over, Tempest’s anxiety rising each minute the kids didn’t appear. It obviously wasn’t a ghost holding the teenagers captive, but was it a person? Or more booby traps left behind?
There wouldn’t be any more knives or swords. There had already been three blades. Like a magician’s trick, this successful booby trap was all about expectations. Nicodemus had been caught off guard because a backup blade had already been triggered. But after the third time something happens, a feeling of familiarity sets in, meaning the magician would switch gears to defy expectations.
A magician. Tempest had instinctively thought of the person who set these traps as a magician, not as a murderer. Brodie? Moriarty?
Clouds were sweeping in overhead, and the wind whipped up Tempest’s hair. She was reaching for a band to tie her hair back when a scream sounded from inside the theater. Then another.
“What the—” Darius began.
Tempest jumped down from the bumper.
“Let me out!” It was Officer Quinn’s voice. Banging followed. Not ghostly thumping like fake spiritualist mediums use to suggest spirits are communicating, but the pounding of fists on the new front door of the theater.
The officer who’d been guarding the barricade scrambled to open the multiple locks as several members of the crowd filmed the scene.
As soon as the door was unlocked, Quinn flew from the theater, nearly stumbling over his feet. Nobody else was with him. He hadn’t found the kids.
Tempest ran to her jeep and grabbed the chain mail she’d brought from the house. She slipped the main piece of the hefty armor on, feeling its weight slump her shoulders, then hopped the barricade and ran into the theater. There was so much confusion that nobody stopped her.
She stepped through the vaulted entryway and into the lobby. The lights were off, but from the light of the open door, the hazy impression of burgundy velvet wallpaper and decorative crown molding made it feel like she was stepping back in time.
“Don’t go any farther.” Rinehart held out his arm protectively, like parents do for their kids in a car when they brake too quickly. It does nothing in that situation, just as his arm did nothing now, except to convince her he wasn’t a bad guy. Narrow in his thinking, certainly, but not a bad guy. “Something really strange is going on. Something frightened Quinn as he explored the stage. And now there’s this.” He looked up, and Tempest followed his gaze.
Above them, a gleaming metal axe hovered in the air. Tempest had donned the chain mail that covered her chest, not her head.
“Get out of here, Tempest.” Rinehart was frightened, but he wanted to make sure nobody else got hurt.
Tempest looked from him back to the axe. It wasn’t hovering. It was dangling. By a fishing wire. Barely visible in the dim light but easy to see when you knew what you were looking for. Amateurish. This wasn’t meant to hold up to scrutiny.
“This is what I do,” she replied. “I think you were right this time. This isn’t a booby trap. It’s a performance.” She jumped up, hoping she was right. Her thighs and calves protested under the additional weight of the chain mail, but her leap was as high as ever. Her hand made contact with the hilt of the axe—it was plastic. She jumped once more, this time wrapping her hand around it.
This was performance art, not unlike what she had done with her stage persona. As The Tempest, her tagline was Destruction follows in my wake.
“It’s harmless,” Tempest said. “I thought it was the killer who was creating a distraction, but it’s attention seekers.”
“Where are you going?”
She carried the axe past the Gothic sconces on the wall and stepped out of the lobby into the theater seating area. Like a cathedral, pews filled the space leading to the stage. The Whispering Creek Theater had never been a church, but architect Chester Hill had gone all out to make it look like a miniature cathedral not only in its exterior but also its interior. Red cushions lined the original hardwood oak pews, but they were faded and sagging.
Tempest strode confidently through the aisle toward the stage, using her phone as a flashlight. “I see you up on the catwalk,” she called out. They were dressed in black, so she wouldn’t have seen them if her light hadn’t reflected off a lens in one of their hands. “I’m not a ghost, and I don’t consent to being filmed, so you’d better stop filming too.”
The sound of whispers carried down to her.
“They’re up there.” Tempest pointed to the catwalk above the stage as Rinehart reached her side.
“You’re not going to arrest us, are you?” a youthful voice called from the catwalk.
“Are you?” Tempest asked Rinehart.
“Assaulting an officer is an offense,” he said.
“We didn’t touch him!” a second young voice from above the stage blurted out. “We just dropped a piece of gauze and he freaked out.”
“It wasn’t even our idea,” the first voice said. “She told us how to get inside without breaking anything and where the best spot was to see the ghost.”
“She?” Tempest jumped onto the stage and shone her light straight up. The pair above her couldn’t have been more than fifteen, but they looked even younger.
“Paloma Rhodes,” Rinehart muttered. “She’s got all my attention focused here and away from her.” He joined Tempest on the stage and shouted upward, “I’m losing my patience.”
“We didn’t really even do any breaking and entering,” a nervous voice answered, “since we didn’t break anything.”
“Who was she?” Tempest asked again. “This woman who told you about the ghost?”
“She didn’t give a name when she called us.” The young voice was desperate now.
“If I have to come up there and get you, things will be a lot worse for you.” Rinehart looked around for how to get up to the catwalk, but it wasn’t necessary. The two teenagers climbed down on their own.
Tempest wasn’t concerned about two kids wanting to get attention by posting videos of fake ghosts. They were only puppets. She was more concerned with who had created this distraction.