Free Into the Dark by Alison Gaylin Page B

about.”
    “And?”
    “During that download. It moved.”
    “Uh . . .”
    “Do you know what I’m saying?”
    “I . . . um . . . I think
     so.”
    His mouth twitched into a grin. “The camera , Brenna.”
    “Oh . . . Oh, because . . .
     Wait. What? ”
    “That last bit. When she rolled over onto her side.
     The angle changed a little—it tilted up.”
    “You’re saying . . .”
    “Yes.”
    “You’re saying there was someone else in the room
     with her. Someone behind the camera.”
    He looked at her. “There has to be,” he said.
     “Right?”
    Brenna moved the cursor back to the middle of the
     download, muting it before she hit play again.
    They watched in silence for several seconds.
    “There,” Morasco said. “It’s at 4:31.”
    Brenna brought the cursor back, and watched again.
     And this time, she saw it—a slight change of camera angle; an adjustment. “You
     are so observant.”
    “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
    A cameraman. Someone in the
     room. Someone who knows what’s behind that shadow—her real name and her age
     and her height and weight and hair color and maybe even the family she came
     from . . .
    Someone who may have made her disappear.
    Morasco was still grinning at her. “So
     . . .”
    “So . . . what?”
    “When I said, ‘It moved,’ what did you think I was
     talking about?”
    Brenna stifled a smile. “Grow up, please.”
    “I’m not the one with the dirty mind.”
    “God, it’s like I’m talking to Trent.”
    “I’m just trying to work through your issues.”
    “Is that a euphemism?”
    “You need another beer.” He raised an eyebrow at
     her. “Among other things.”
    She clicked off the computer and let him get her
     one, glad for the company and the dumb jokes and the blank screen. And even
     though she knew that it hadn’t been camera movement that Morasco had been
     thinking about when he gazed at Lula Belle with such sorrow, such ache, she was
     glad, too, to be able to act as though she didn’t.
    A fter
     Morasco left, Brenna pressed her face against the door, listening to his
     footfalls until she could no longer hear them. “The camera moved,” she
     whispered. Then she let herself remember that night in O’Donnell’s parking lot,
     start to finish.
    “I’m sorry, Nick,” she whispered, once she pulled
     herself out of it. “I’m so sorry.”
    It wasn’t until later, when Brenna was getting
     ready for bed, that she was struck by yet another memory from her early
     childhood—soft-focused and murky and close to forgotten: her dad’s large hand,
     cupped around a tiny baby bird, placing him in a shoe box filled with soft
     cotton. And his voice, warm and gentle. Put your finger on
     his chest, pumpkin. You can feel his heartbeat.

Chapter 6
    “O kay, wait, wait, back up a second,” Kate O’Hanlon said around a mouthful of whitefish
     salad. “What was I wearing?”
    Brenna put down her coffee cup. “I already told you what you were wearing.”
    “Tell me again.”
    She sighed. Always the quid pro quo . . . “Red leotard, black bolero jacket with Michael Jackson–inspired epaulets, denim cheerleader
     skirt.”
    “Was the skirt flouncy?”
    “Very flouncy.”
    “What about the shoes?”
    “I didn’t notice your shoes, Kate.”
    “How could you not notice my shoes?” Kate took another bite of her bagel, Brenna thinking, When was the last time you could even see your shoes?
    Not very nice, but come on. Kate had gained a significant amount of weight since their
     last breakfast and information exchange (November 12, 2008. Elephant and Castle. Cinnamon
     pancakes, bacon, sausage, whole wheat toast and butter)—and she’d easily been three
     hundred pounds back then.
    Not that Brenna cared. It was Kate’s body, and she could do what she wanted with it—though
     Brenna did hope, if this was the way the woman always ate, that Kate was at least
     on Lipitor. The misleadingly named “fish