This Story Might Save Your Life(84)

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “There won’t be a next time.” My head aches, and my hair is wet after an awkward shower. I couldn’t scrub thoroughly enough with only one hand. I still feel dirty.

“Are they actually trying to pin this on my brother?” Sarah asks. “Do they really think Benny could have killed Xander?”

Philip adjusts his wire-frame glasses. “I think they’re under a lot of pressure to find a suspect.”

“But why me? Why are they so focused on me?”

“You were the one to report him missing. You’re in love with his wife. You attempted to transfer a million dollars of company money to your personal bank account—”

“That wasn’t me.”

“—and you were caught on tape wishing him dead. The good news is, they don’t have any evidence directly tying you to his murder.”

“Because I didn’t do it.”

Philip opens his computer and looks over the top at me, expressionless. “Right. Let’s back up. To the reason you were arrested. You were upset because your neighbor was taking photos of you as you were leaving Joy’s house last night? Is that correct?”

“Ted. And Emil, he was there too. I think they’ve been working together. I think Emil was feeding Ted info, and Ted was using it to sneak photos of Joy.”

Philip lets out a cynical hum. “I don’t know about Ted, but my aides did stumble across some information about Emil that might be useful.” Philip then proceeds to tell us an infuriating and yet believable story about Emil’s connection to Shake Awake and Xander’s side trade for company shares.

“And here I keep thinking Xander can’t possibly get any worse,” I mutter. Xander was impossible to be around when that Shake Awake stuff went down. I knew he was blame-shifting, but I figured it was because he was embarrassed. For not doing the research. But there was so much more to it than that. “I can’t believe Emil never said anything. Don’t you think that’s suspicious?”

The more I think about it, the more suspicious it gets. Could Xander and Emil have had an altercation that didn’t end well? What else is Emil hiding? I recall him skulking in the shadows, all muscles, as I argued with Ted outside Joy’s house last—

I gasp. I can’t believe I forgot.



* * *



MY BACKUP SD card reader isn’t registering the memory card. I unplug the device and try again. “No,” I breathe as nothing happens.

“Could be the card is damaged,” Philip says over my shoulder, unhelpfully. To Sarah, he says, “It was in your car all day? In this heat?”

“Yes, but—” She looks stricken. “Wait.” She slides her own computer across the table. “Try mine.”

I hold my breath as I plug in the connector, and there it is. A pop-up window showing the contents of one shady surveillance camera. Luna and Sarah inhale sharply. There are dozens of files.

With my clumsy left hand, I click on the most recent, and there I am, in grainy color, standing on the desk to unscrew the air grille. The image is distorted by waves, and the range is limited—because of the grille’s ornate design it shows only a bird’s-eye view of Joy’s chair in the corner of the room—but it’s better than nothing.

“Likely triggered by motion,” Philip says.

“That asshole,” I mutter.

“How far back does it go?” Sarah asks.

I find the end. “Ten days.” I exchange a wide-eyed stare with Sarah.

“This could be all we need,” she says quietly.

The gravity of the situation slams into me like a hard-on-hard blow.

“Go on, then,” Philip says.

But my hands are frozen. Everything we need could be on here. Everything. I’m not sure I’m ready for this.

Sarah seems to understand. “Do you want us to do it?”

I nod. She takes my chair, and I plant myself on the floor beside the couch, where the pups are sharing the dog bed. Rubbing the silky fur beneath their floppy ears, I listen as my sister clicks through the files.

“Okay,” she says. “Six days ago would be … okay. Here we go. Wait. Shit.”

“What?” I give in, craning my neck to watch the screen.

“Error message.”

She exes out of the pop-up and tries again. Again, error.

“Try the next one,” Philip says.

The next file opens, but my relief evaporates when I realize it’s even more distorted than the first, stripes of red and green punching through the image so that only shadows of movement are visible.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah says. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have left it in my car. I wasn’t thinking about the heat, I just—” She stops at the sound of Joy’s voice.

“Aren’t you going to be late?” Joy says. The words reach into my chest and squeeze like a heart attack.

“Leaving in a minute,” Xander says.

A slight movement. The audio crackles. I imagine Joy sitting in her seat at the recording desk, brown hair down around her shoulders, chin propped on her palm. “Where are you meeting for dinner?”

“Some new sushi place downtown.” Another shadow enters the picture.

He’s no more than a ghost, but I still want him gone. “Skip to the next one.”