Free Fractured by Lisa Amowitz

in the silence. The row of candles near the altar glowed red and yellow. I clung to Gabe’s arm, half-expecting to be swept away from her any second.
    Around the shadowy edges, Brittany’s ghost flickered vaguely, like returning here was more than she could deal with, too.
    Trembling, I clutched Gabe’s arm tighter. “Are you sure you’re up for this, Bobby?” she whispered.
    â€œSure. I’m fine.”
    â€œYou don’t sound fine,” she said.
    â€œWhatever,” I muttered. “There’s no going back now.”
    Maybe it was stupid to put Agent Reston’s promises to the test like this, but I couldn’t come up another plan. Better to hold my nose and dive in than tiptoe around trying to avoid the inevitable.
    â€œShe sat over in that pew,” I whispered. My heart raced as we walked down the center aisle. I glanced at the shadows. Brittany’s ghost had faded to the thinnest veil.
    When I stopped at the tenth row, Jeremy stuffed his hands into his coat pockets. “I’d volunteer for floor duty, but Veronica has her standards. It’s kind of difficult for me.”
    â€œI’ll do it,” Gabe said.
    â€œNo,” I said. “It’s got to be me. You guys could miss something and I…”
    The three of them looked at me and nodded. Of course it had to be me.
    I handed Gabe my jacket and shimmied under the pews on my belly, using my phone for a flashlight. It was dusty under the benches, unidentified mounds buried in fine silt like gray snow. But I was looking for something much more recent.
    Blood pounded in my ears. I had to fight to focus. I couldn’t help but wonder if Agent Reston had implanted me with some kind of tracking or monitoring device to remotely assess my performance. Then they’d discuss and score me, like an Olympic ice skater. If I did well, would they share a high five and shout that I’d nailed it? And if I didn’t…
    I swallowed down the bile that rose in my throat. I’d been outmaneuvered. And Agent Reston was a much better chess player than me. I had no choice but to play the game her way.
    I shut off the light from my phone. Sprawled on my stomach, I closed my eyes, and waited to feel, rather than see, what had happened to Brittany Byers.
    There were layers of stories cluttering the dark—some angry, others loud and demanding, still others sad, grief-stricken, and sorrowful. Most of them were faded and worn, woven together into a hundred-year-old record of all the people who’d sought comfort in this church.
    But I was searching for that single bright strand that would lead me to the answers I needed. My hand burned with a deep spark of pain as it passed over a certain patch of floor.
    I opened my eyes and shined the light from my phone. There was nothing. I scanned the floor. Whatever it was that had caught my attention, it was pretty damn small. I wondered if my senses were so attuned now that I was picking up invisible evidence, like fingerprints or grains of dirt. Crime scene stuff better left to the police forensics team. But we’d ruled out bringing in the police, so I proceeded, lying there, trying to slow my breath. My fear loomed behind me like a tidal wave of fire. I had to find the quiet inside the noise, to capture the residue of the events that took place.
    I narrowed my range to a small area, my fingers circling above. To my surprise, a sort of visual map was forming in my mind, kind of like those topography graphs from Earth Science class.
    Then I saw it. A single long, bright hair.
    I picked it up and realized my mistake a second too late. My brain spasmed violently. My lungs seized and I couldn’t pull in a breath. Everything went black. I was teetering at the edge of an abyss. I fell— then landed with a bounce. Something had caught me on my way down. It was like dangling by a single thread over boiling pits of lava.
    I found I could breathe. And see.