Chapter 49 - Nadia

The other backup dancers and I huddled around the trapdoor, saying words of encouragement to the wounded singer below.
Tatiana didn’t hear any of us. She was busy letting out a stream of cries and curses at anyone near her. To me, that seemed like a good sign. She didn’t look grotesquely injured; there was no blood, and all of her limbs bent the correct way. It was a good thing the layer of padding was still directly beneath the trapdoor. If she had landed on hard cement…
“I just can’t believe this,” the girl next to me whispered. “I thought we were in the clear!”
“Why tonight of all nights?” another guy asked. “With the writer here…”
The Times writer had moved to the front row, and was frantically scribbling on his notepad while interviewing one of the dancers.
“Especially after we caught the last trap,” I said absently.
“Which trap?”
“The sandbags last night. They were set to fall on Tatiana at the end of her climactic song. That’s why rehearsal was canceled last…”
I trailed off as I realized everyone around the trapdoor was staring at me wide-eyed. Shit. I’d taken for granted that all the guys I lived with knew about the sandbags. Nobody else was supposed to know.
I was bombarded with questions.
“What sandbags?”
“Another trap? From the same saboteur?”
“How do we even know this trapdoor was intentional? What do you know, Nadia?”
Before I could respond, Ryan emerged from backstage and jumped down to the aisle. He stormed up the theater and out the back door. Andy came out of the curtain a moment later.
“He was just fired,” Andy told me. “Atkins is blaming him.”
I flinched at the news. “Why? That’s not fair!”
Atkins appeared and grabbed Andy by the arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I was going after Ryan. And I assumed… since you fired him, that I…”
Atkins scowled. “He was the one who set up the cameras. You configured the cloud storage. Right? The blame is his. I need your help looking at the camera footage. We have to see if anyone was seen going down the stairs…”
While he and Andy came up with a plan, I stared after Ryan. He had wanted to get to the theater early to check on everything, but I’d distracted him at the townhouse. If he had had more time, he might have discovered the trap.
It was all my fault.
“Excuse me?”
I turned to find the Times writer staring up at me, notepad at the ready.
“Are you Nadia, the understudy to the lead?” His grin was feral. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
I leaped from the stage. “I have to go,” I said over my shoulder as I ran to the back of the theater and out the door.
The street outside was crowded this evening. I scanned to the right, then the left, before spotting Ryan’s hulking shape up the street.
I chased after him, which was mostly a fast walk while trying to shoulder through the crowd on the sidewalk. He turned down another street, and I panicked that he would get away from me until I rounded the corner and caught sight of him again.
I followed him for two more blocks before he finally turned into a bar.
The bar I worked at.
I was breathing heavy when I finally reached it and went inside. There wasn’t much of a crowd tonight, and the regulars who normally lingered at the bar weren’t there. Robbie was pouring shots from a bottle of tequila, and frowned when he saw me come inside. I put a finger to my lips.
Carefully approaching Ryan at the bar, I put my hand on his back and whispered, “Looking for a good time, big boy?” into his ear in a sultry voice.
He flinched, then relaxed when he realized it was me. Then he tensed again. “I don’t want any sympathy, Nadia. I’m here to drink.” To prove the point, he downed two shots of tequila and then bit into a lime.
I held up a finger to Robbie. “Put these on my tab.”
“You got it, Nadia,” he replied.
Ryan frowned at the exchange. “You a regular here or something?”
“I like to come here and help men get drunk.” The joke went right over his head, so I added, “This is the bar where I work.”
Ryan chuckled. “Small world. For some reason I assumed your bar was on the upper east side.”
“Bars on the upper east side can afford to hire bartenders who aren’t struggling actresses.”
Robbie returned with the bottle of tequila and looked a question at me. I nodded, and he added a shot glass in front of me and then filled them both with amber liquid.
“Robbie, this is Ryan. Ryan, Robbie.”
Ryan shook his head. “Pleasure.”
Robbie glanced at me and mouthed the word wow silently. Then he said, “So you’re one of Nadia’s four hunks from the show, huh?”
“I was, up until tonight.”
Robbie blinked. “You mean your arrangement with Nadia…”
“I was fired,” Ryan said.
Robbie winced. “Should’ve known with the drinks and all.” Someone down the bar called for a drink, and Robbie wandered off.
Ryan sighed and leaned his elbows on the bar, staring straight ahead. “Atkins fired me, and I just saw red. I don’t even remember leaving; I was suddenly out on the street, walking west. This was the first bar I came across.”
I leaned forward on the bar to get into his peripheral vision. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“But it’s my fault,” I insisted. “You wanted to get to the theater early, and I distracted you.”
Without looking in my direction, he reached down and gave my thigh an appreciative pat. “That distraction was worth it, babe. But it wasn’t why I got fired. I set up the cameras based on the saboteur’s MO up to that point. I didn’t think about other parts of the theater, like the sub-stage.”
“Still, if I hadn’t…”
He finally turned toward me and clamped a heavy palm over my mouth. “It’s seriously not your fault. An extra half hour at the theater wouldn’t have mattered. If you really want to make me feel better, you can drink with me.”
I took the shot glass off the counter and downed it. “I’ll help however I can.”
Robbie refilled our shots and we downed them again. “What a shitshow.”
“The show itself, or the saboteur?” Ryan asked.
“Either. Both. The whole damn thing.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I kind of fucked up,” I admitted.
“Worse than me?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I let it slip to the other dancers about the sandbag trap we disarmed last night.”
Ryan winced and sucked in his breath. “That’s shitty. Atkins told everyone rehearsal was canceled for plumbing repairs.”
“And I revealed his lie. I might end up like you in the next few hours.”
Ryan chuckled. “You’re the backup to Tatiana, who was just injured. He can’t fire you.”
“Tatiana didn’t look that injured to me.”
“Braden thinks she hurt her ACL,” Ryan said. “The ligament in the knee. I think she’s going in for an MRI. Right now, it’s possible the show rests on your shoulders.”
That was a scary thought, although part of me tingled with excitement. “If the show even continues. With Tatiana injured, Vandercant might pull funding entirely.”
Ryan grimaced. “Yeah, that thought crossed my mind too. Was trying to stay positive for you.”
We each downed another shot, and I leaned into his shoulder. “We’ve got this backwards. I’m supposed to be comforting you.” I cleared my throat. “Everything’s gonna be alright. You’ll find another job somewhere else.”
“Yeah right. I’ll probably never work in this town again.”
I scoffed. “Now you’re being as dramatic as Tatiana.”
He twisted to look at me. “The reporter was there. You can bet your ass this story will be in the paper—it’s too juicy to ignore. And then I’ll be scapegoated for the faulty trapdoor, or for overlooking its security. Either way, I’m publicly fucked. Nobody’s gonna want to hire the stage hand who allowed a lead actor to get injured.”
I wanted to disagree with him, but he was right. Theater people were a superstitious bunch. Even if Ryan found a director who took pity on him, the cast of that show would consider him bad luck.
The weight of that reality hung over both of us like a cloud. Ryan leaned on the bar and put his head in his hands.
There was nothing else I could do but wrap my arm around him. He leaned into me, and it turned into a hug. He clung tightly to me, more emotional than I’d ever seen the normally abrasive man. Robbie watched from across the bar like a proud father, and wiped an imaginary tear from his eye. I stuck my tongue out at him.
“Thanks, Nadia,” Ryan said. “I needed this.”
“What else are fuck-buddies good for?”
“You mean besides hot sex?” he asked.
“Obviously.” I gave him a weak smile. “Maybe if we find the saboteur, it’ll exonerate you.”
“Maybe,” he said doubtfully.
The liquor was starting to hit me. So were other aspects of the theater trap.
“It could have been me,” I said. “Atkins suggested Tatiana take a break between songs and let me take one. If I had stepped in, it would have been me who fell through the trapdoor.”
Ryan’s eyes sparkled with thought. “It was awfully strange that Atkins suggested she take a break, wasn’t it?”
“I guess.”
“Tatiana is a drama queen,” Ryan went on. “She would never let the understudy take a song, not while the Times writer was there. Especially not a solo song like More Than Money. So why did Atkins even offer it?”
“At the time, I assumed you or Andy told him how I’d crushed that song last night.” I smiled at the memory. “God, I would have crushed it tonight, too.”
Ryan waved off my thought. There was a fire in his eyes that I’d seen before. “Maybe Atkins knew. Maybe he set the trap for Tatiana to get rid of the show’s weakest link. But then she suddenly starts singing her heart out, showing what she can really do. So Atkins changed his mind, and tried to get you to do it instead.”
I made a face at him. “But wasn’t the trapdoor sensor activated by remote control? That’s what I heard Andy saying. If Atkins did plan the trap, and did change his mind after hearing Tatiana sing, he could have just un-triggered the device. Right?”
“It’s too fishy,” Ryan said. “Atkins was acting weird all night. It has to be him!”
“You’re being silly,” I said. “If it was Atkins, he wouldn’t have needed to break into the theater to leave the note for Tatiana. He literally has one of the only keys to the place. And he just fought to get us those security cameras…”
“All red herrings to throw us off,” Ryan said bitterly.
Any other time, I wouldn’t have pushed back against his ranting. But with a few shots of liquor in me, I had more courage to say what I thought to my new friend. And I was afraid he would do something rash tonight if I didn’t say something to calm him down.
I took Ryan by the hand and waited until he looked me in the eye.
“Ryan, I think you’re upset at getting fired by Atkins. Which is totally understandable! I would be too. But you’re allowing it to cloud your judgement about the saboteur. You’re focused on Atkins and ignoring all other evidence.” I smiled. “And I’m telling you all of this because that’s what a good fuck-buddy would do.”
He was still resistant to my argument, but I could see that I was getting through to him. A little bit of fire had left his eyes. Enough that I didn’t think he would do anything crazy tonight.
He reached into his phone. “Does this place serve food? I’m starving.”
“Afraid not. But there’s a really good Italian place a block over that…” I trailed off.
Italian.
I yanked my phone out of my pocket to check the time. Instead, I saw four missed calls from Braden and a dozen text messages. My phone was still on Do Not Disturb from rehearsal.
And I was late for dinner with Braden’s parents.
“Fuck!” I shouted.