Nathan was inside for almost an hour. When he emerged again, he had his phone out. He was calling someone. Putting it to his ear. He looked agitated. His hand rubbed the back of his head. Then he nodded. He hung up and went back inside. The conversation had lasted less than two minutes. He was inside for another three, and then emerged, the flash drive in his hand again, his phone sticking out of his back pocket. He walked toward the carriage house and out of sight.
“It looks like he found something on the drive,” Gabriel noted. “Who did he call?”
“I have no idea,” Emma said.
Gabriel reached over to speed up the footage yet again, but the time flew by and Nathan never emerged. There was no more movement at all. Not until the sky lightened into morning and Emma walked out of the house. Emma went to stop the recording, but Gabriel restrained her with a gentle hand. “The woman who helped you,” he reminded Emma.
The footage kept playing. Emma walked into the carriage house.
Now Emma shut her eyes. She tried not to play it in her mind again. Stepping inside. Walking forward, knowing what she was going to find, thinking that knowledge somehow made it impossible. That what she feared couldn’t come true. She was anxious. She was paranoid. Her fears were not supposed to be real.
“Damn,” Gabriel said. Emma’s eyes popped open. She was looking at an empty courtyard.
“What is it?” Emma asked.
“Here, look.” Gabriel rewound, and Emma watched as her mirror self appeared at the edge of the frame, supported by a woman in a baggy teal shirt and black leggings. They skittered backward, the woman lowering Emma to the ground before gliding back out of the frame. Gabriel played it forward, and Emma watched the scene unfold properly, with the woman helping her to her feet and up the stairs.
“You never see her face,” Emma said. “Maybe when she comes out?”
But when the woman emerged from the house, her face was turned slightly away and down as she dug in her purse. Then she walked across the drive, out of the gate, and out of sight. Emma sat back with a sigh.
“Maybe someone in the neighborhood would recognize her,” Gabriel suggested.
“Maybe.”
“Hold on,” Gabriel said, frowning. He reached over and pulled the laptop toward her. His fingers tapped on the keys and the touch pad. “There. Look.” He spun the laptop around so Emma could see the screen again. It was paused on a view of the courtyard. Empty. The time stamp indicated that it was right after Emma left for the bar.
“What am I looking at?” Emma asked.
“There, on the street,” Gabriel said. He pointed. There was a woman on the sidewalk, walking by with a terrier at her heels.
“That’s the same woman,” Emma said. “Okay, so we know she has a dog and she likes to go on walks.”
“Totally normal. Except look at this.” Gabriel skipped forward. It was night now, and dark. And the woman was there again. Or at least, it looked like the same woman—no dog this time, though, and it was hard to tell from this distance, with only the streetlights to illuminate her.
Emma scrubbed through the footage again, eyes fixed on the space beyond the gates. She watched police cars arrive.
Watched the woman walk past, leading a black lab on a red leash. “Different dog,” she noted. This time, the woman was looking at the house. The camera caught her full-on, in daylight, and Emma’s mouth dropped open.
“Emma?” Gabriel asked, looking concerned.
“I think that’s Daphne,” Emma said. “When I saw her at the wedding her hair was blond and much longer, but … yeah, I think that’s her.”
Daphne had been watching them. Daphne had been there, when she found Nathan’s body. Daphne had been in the house.
Daphne had been in the tree house, covered in blood.
Emma stared at the frozen image. That night, after she’d found the money—she’d run. She’d tripped. The flash drive had been in her pocket, but it must have fallen out. She hadn’t seen Daphne in the tree house—she’d assumed she was asleep. But what if her little sister had seen her? It was the only way she could think that the flash drive would have gotten back inside. Assuming it was the same flash drive.
She needed to know what was on that thing. “Gabriel, I think I know where that flash drive came from,” she said. “If it’s the same one I’m thinking of, my mother had it hidden away. I think … I think it might have had something to do with what your dad found out. About what my father was doing.”