Chapter 2

“I’m not here to destroy your tradition, Talia,” he said, his voice dropping into a lower register that vibrated right through the soles of her boots. “I’m here to make sure three hundred school kids don’t end up in the basement when the center span gives way during the second act.”

“The floor held two tons of scenery last Christmas!”

“And wood remembers every pound it ever carried,” he retorted, leaning in just an inch closer. “It remembers until the fiber shears and it doesn’t hold anymore. You’re fighting me like I’m coming in here with a wrecking ball. I’m asking for a single six-inch core sample to check the aggregate integrity. Why does that terrify you so much?”

The word *terrify* hit her like an open-handed slap, but Talia didn’t flinch. She’d spent three years perfecting her smile for real estate brokers, tax assessors, and nosey neighbors who wondered why Arthur Vance had never allowed anyone into the lower prop vaults during his final decade. She tilted her head back, meeting his gaze with a look of warm, exasperated pity.

“Because I know how city contractors work,” she murmured, her voice silk over iron. “You drill a six-inch hole. Then you find ‘anomalies.’ Then you bring in an excavation crew to bill the state for three months of exploratory demolition, and by spring, this theatre is converted into luxury loft condominiums with exposed brick and a boutique pilates studio on the ground floor. I’ve seen it happen in three neighboring towns. I won’t let it happen to my father’s theatre.”

Parker held her gaze for three long seconds. The silence between them wasn't cold; it hummed with a friction that felt dangerously intimate for an empty theatre on a Friday morning.

“Your father’s theatre,” he repeated softly.

“Yes.”

“You’re very loyal.”

“It’s a small town, Parker. Loyalty is our only currency.”

A ghost of a smirk touched the corner of his lips, though his eyes remained coolly calculating. “Too bad the municipal building board only takes cashier’s checks.”

Before she could fire back, the heavy brass-trimmed double doors at the rear of the auditorium banged open, letting in a blinding blast of pale November daylight and a gust of wind that rustled the withered playbills tacked to the lobby board.

“Talia! Sweetheart, are you in here?”

Talia internally exhaled, though she didn’t let the relief show on her face. Reinforcements had arrived precisely on schedule. She had sent a frantic text to Evelyn Miller, the town council chair and her mother’s oldest bridge partner, twenty minutes before Parker laid down his chalk line.

“Down here, Evelyn!” Talia called out, stepping back from Parker with an exaggerated show of professional distance. “Down by the stage!”

Heavy, hurried footsteps echoed down the sloped, carpeted aisle. Evelyn Miller marched into the glow of the work light, wrapped in a plush plum-colored down coat, her silver hair lacquered into an unyielding helmet, clutches of manila folders clutched to her chest like a breastplate. Behind her trailed Mayor Bob Higgins, his breath puffing in little white clouds, looking as miserable as any politician forced to leave his heated office before lunchtime.

“What on earth is the meaning of this?” Evelyn demanded, her sharp gaze sweeping over the drill rig, the chalk marks, and finally landing on Parker with the undisguised hostility of a sovereign queen greeting an upstart mercenary. “Mr. Cole, I presume? I received a very distressing call that you were threatening our heritage status with industrial equipment.”

Parker didn't look flustered. In fact, he reached into his breast pocket with infuriating calm, pulling out a slim leather-bound notebook and a laminated credential badge.

“Mrs. Miller. Mayor Higgins,” Parker greeted them evenly. His tone was impeccably polite, stripping away the rough, combative edge he’d just used with Talia, which only made her blood simmer hotter. “I’m conducting the mandatory seismic and load-bearing audit ordered by the Tri-County Safety Oversight Committee on the twelfth of last month. Notice was served to the town clerk’s office three weeks ago.”

“The town clerk’s office was transitioning software systems!” Mayor Higgins blustered, stepping onto the stage stairs with a wheeze. “Look here, son. I know how things work down in the capital, but Briar Glen handles its own affairs. The Starlight is the crown jewel of our Main Street revitalization project. We’ve got a grant application pending with the state arts endowment. You can’t go poking holes in the stage floor while the grant evaluators are scheduled for a walkthrough next Tuesday!”

“The grant evaluators won’t be impressed if the proscenium arch sags two inches during their tour, Mayor,” Parker said. He flipped open his notebook, pointing to a series of hand-drawn diagrams and laser-level measurements Talia hadn’t realized he’d already taken. “Look here. The foundation wall along the alleyway has settled four inches since the 1996 survey. That settlement is pulling the stage grid out of plumb. The weight isn’t distributing down into the bedrock—it’s hanging on this central concrete plug.”

He tapped his boot heel against the very spot he’d chalked.

The hollow *thud* echoed beneath them. Talia’s stomach dropped. To Evelyn and the Mayor, it was just the sound of old timber and bad construction. To Talia, who had found her father’s private journal hidden inside the false back of his desk after his funeral—who had read the fragmented, frantic scribblings about the drifting drifter who worked the fly rails in ninety-four and never caught his bus home—that thud sounded like a spade hitting a coffin lid.

“Well... surely there are non-invasive methods,” Evelyn argued, though her voice lacked its initial thunder as she peered at Parker’s terrifyingly crisp engineering schematics. “Can’t you use an X-ray? Or one of those ultrasound wands they use on bridges?”

“Ground-penetrating radar requires a flat, non-resonant surface, Mrs. Miller,” Parker replied without missing a beat. “The air pocket between these floorboards and the concrete cap creates radar backscatter. I need a clean core. Two inches wide, eighteen inches deep. If the compression test shows the concrete is stable and hasn’t micro-fractured under the shearing force, I sign off on your temporary occupancy permit for the holiday season.”

He looked straight at Talia.

“If the concrete is compromised,” Parker added, “the stage is condemned until it’s excavated and replaced.”

*Excavated.*

Talia felt the cold sweat prickling at her hairline. She couldn't let him drill today. If he drilled eighteen inches down, the diamond bit would hit the aggregate. But more than that, Parker Cole didn't look like a man who would stop at a single core sample. He was smelling a rat. He’d already noticed the disproportionate strength of the pour.

She needed forty-eight hours. The weekend was starting. If she could stall him until Monday morning, she could find a way to get an injunction through Judge Abernathy—another of Arthur Vance’s old drinking buddies—or, God forbid, figure out what to do with the nightmare waiting beneath the boards.

“Parker,” Talia said, her voice dropping into a gentle, earnest register that drew the eyes of all three people in the auditorium. She stepped closer to him, offering a self-deprecating, rueful smile that had softened far tougher men than him. “You’re completely right about safety. Nobody in this room wants anyone hurt. But Bob and Evelyn are right, too. The holiday season pays for the entire year’s operating budget.”

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