The dress, though—that wasn’t old. It was new. It was the next disguise. The next mask. In this case, it was an illusion—just like Regina had told them when Shaw and North had spoken to her at the Lucky. Mark had been trying on another mask when Matty had tried to break free from his control. And when Matty had shown up at the Borealis offices, it had set in motion a chain of events that put Regina on Mark’s trail. Shaw could visualize the clues all falling into place: there had been signs of a fight at Mark’s apartment, where Regina must have gone after hearing Mark’s name at Teddi’s house; while Shaw and North had been distracted by Brueckmann and Mark’s foray into BDSM, Regina had continued to hunt Mark, finally tracking him somehow to Hog Hollow Hocks and killing him.

Positioning himself at the center of the booth, Shaw looked out into the black emptiness of the theater. Then he kept moving. A door on the far side of the booth was marked Stage Manger, and Shaw found, again, that it turned easily. Where would Mark Sevcik, the man who was always trying to hide in plain sight, hide the recordings?

In plain sight.

Shaw stepped into a room that had obviously served a number of purposes over the years. At some point, doubtless, it had been exactly what the door proclaimed: an office. Over the years, though, the desk and chairs and filing cabinets and any other furniture that had once served functional roles in this place had been removed, and instead, a twin bed hugged one wall, neatly made up, the pillow fluffed and leaning against the wall. A door opened onto a private washroom, where a toothbrush sat in a cup and a feather boa curled above the mirror. A pair of fake breasts occupied the seat of a folding chair just inside the bathroom.

Returning to the control booth proper, Shaw studied the space. It seemed insane for Mark Sevcik to come here, to hide the recording in a place where he risked encountering Regina. But something told Shaw that he was right. Under the surface of conscious thought, where his best insights swam darkly, Shaw could intuit a connection between Mark’s Facebook page, where he talked about his new passion as a sound engineer, and Regina telling them that she needed amateurs to run lights and sound. Some sort of shadow-logic had brought Mark Sevcik here, to the Lucky, to hide the recording. The reasoning behind that decision, Shaw could figure out when he had time.

He ran his hands behind the control boards. He untaped the cables. He removed the tacks from an ancient Cats poster—the only surviving decoration—in hopes of finding a hollowed-out space in the wall. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Shaw stepped back, trying to take in his surroundings, to see everything fresh and reconsider where Mark might have hidden the recordings. As he did, light flashed out along the stage, brightening everything to an eye-watering intensity. Blinking, Shaw pressed against the glass, staring out to see what was happening.