Free Camera Never Lies by Elizabeth Goddard Page B

answered me, but I saw the lie all the same—she had a connection to Alec Gordon. Just how big or small I wasn’t sure, but I had to find out.
    Now was the time to look through my photographs. I sat at the small desk, wondering if I would actually delete photographs of her if I found any. I loaded the files from my camera onto my laptop and began browsing through the images. Many of the nature scenes pleased me, but I kept my focus on searching for Emily. I couldn’t remember if I’d actually pressed the button that would capture her picture when I’d seen her yesterday, or if she’d given me her warning look in time. Scanning through the pictures, I was careful to avoid the ones of Alec’s body because I wasn’t prepared to face those yet.
    One picture caught my attention. I zoomed in on a photo I’d taken of a copse of trees in the distance. With so many people milling about, it wasn’t easy to capture nature unhindered. Often, I’d crop the shot if people were in the way. In this particular shot, I’d caught George. I hadn’t met him yet when I’d taken it. He was talking to none other than Alec Gordon. I leaned back in the chair, considering what that meant.
    George knew Alec.
    I moved to the next image. Alec had turned his back to George and faced the camera. I zoomed in on George’s expression and gasped. He looked like a man who wanted to kill Alec right there and then.

CHAPTEREIGHT
    T hey’d suggested it would take a full hour to get to the dock, which, at the time, had seemed odd to me. The distance from the lodge to the other side of the lake, where the Feldman’s Shore trailhead began, was seven miles. It would only take a few minutes for me to drive there. The trail itself was not even a mile. Now, as I stared at the trailhead that would take me to the lake, comprehension dawned—with a seven-hundred-foot drop to the trailhead, I wouldn’t hike this in record time.
    Footsteps approached from behind, alerting me that I stood in the middle of the trail entrance. I stepped back rather than down. A guy stood next to me and gazed at the zigzagging trail—or at least what could be seen from our perch. I didn’t have long to wait for his reaction.
    “Ooohh. So that’s why.” He said it more as a matter of fact than with a sense of dread.
    As he bounded down the trail, he looked like a whippersnapper to me, making me feel old. As they say, you’re as young as you feel. At that point, I hoped my body was in better shape than my mind. I picked my way downward as people passed me both going down and coming up. Embarrassed that I was the slowest hiker, I tried to speed up but made a new discovery. My knees were not prepared for this type of descent—forty-five minutes of it—and they screamed in defiance. I was glad I’d made this excursion without Rene, who was in great shape, even approaching forty. If she saw me like this, she’d never leave me alone, calling me at the crack of dawn to make sure I did morning calisthenics.
    Finally I stepped onto the dock area where the tour boat awaited. Gulping for air, I leaned against the railing until I recovered. Did they provide a helicopter lift at the end of the day for people who couldn’t make their way back? The way I felt at the moment, I hoped so. The last person in line climbed into the boat—my cue to do the same.
    A gusty breeze caught my hair, whipping it this way and that, as the tour boat sliced through the pristine lake. I tilted my head back to allow full sun exposure. At such a moment, I didn’t care about the dermatologists’ warnings against too much sun—more vitamin D was in order. In fact, I’d say a tour of the lake was just what my therapist would have prescribed—that is, if I had one.
    Though I’d believed I’d done nothing but bungle my amateur investigation so far, I began to see that I had clues. Nothing concrete yet, but George knew something about Alec, and Emily had stated she didn’t know him, although I thought