On my way home, I’d purchased the bolt cutters for the padlock on the mystery footlocker under my bed. I had been exhausted when I got home, so I left the tool on my counter. Large chunks of my memory had returned, though the details of my assault in the alley were still lost to me. Could the answers be in that box?
My computer chimed with an email notification. A very specific chime that made me choke on my coffee. A chime from the deep recess of my memory that tore that black curtain even further. I coughed, thumping a fist against my chest.
Dramatically throwing myself into my computer chair, my hands shaking, I pulled up the private email and got visual confirmation of what I already knew. The Client had messaged me.
Had he heard my silent prayers?
The subject line of his message, though, gave me pause.
What the hell did you do?
There was no way he had seen my grainy images on the news, had he? The Nob Hill Prowler—what a horrible name—was a local story at most. He wasn’t, and had never been, in-state, so there was little chance he’d seen it.
Right?
Opening the email, I found a paragraph of text replete with exclamation points and the occasional word in all caps, as well as a link to an article from the Taos Daily Journal. I jumped directly to the article, as I had no desire to get yelled at through email this early on a Sunday morning.
The story was about Shawna Mack, who would have been 45 had she not been snuffed out by The Client in 2003. The author of the article made a veiled claim that Shawna Mack and Brynn Bodwell had the same killer, but that theory wasn’t new—at least not among the armchair detectives holed up in their mommies’ basements.
The article was almost a week old. Why were his panties in a twist about it now? I also didn’t immediately understand what had him so worried, or how in the hell this article by Carter Quincy had anything to do with me, but at the bottom of the piece was a picture that made my heart stutter.
It was a photograph I had taken. Where in the hell had this Carter Quincy gotten my photo of Emery?
I quickly got out of my chair, stalked to the kitchen counter, grabbed the bolt cutters, and practically sprinted for my bedroom. I yanked the footlocker out of its hiding place and stared at it. Idle thoughts about Pandora’s Box came to mind before I went after the padlock with the bolt cutters. It took a few minutes, and was harder to accomplish than I anticipated, but the steel finally gave way with a satisfying snap. Heart racing, I removed the broken lock and lifted the three-foot-long lid. Inside were packages of photographs, negatives in protective plastic sleeves, and rolls of film—some spent, some not. There were folders upon folders of printouts from conversations between The Client and myself. There were scribbled-in notebooks, newspaper cutouts, and paper maps. All the work I’d done with The Client over the years. Oddly, on top, was a framed photograph of my father and me on the deck of a fishing boat. I was five or so in the picture, my mouth open wide and head thrown back as I laughed. The look of adoration on my father’s face as he gazed at me caused my chest to constrict so painfully, I slammed the lid of the footlocker closed. My mother had been behind the camera, no doubt. How had she managed to capture such raw emotion from us both?
I shook my head. None of that mattered. Father was dead and Mother wasn’t worth thinking about now. Not when I just realized something truly alarming: my father’s three cameras, the ones I took with me from California, weren’t here.
Letting out a roar of frustration, I punched at the side of my bed, my fist connecting with the side of the mattress. I did it again and again and again. Where the fuck were they? How did Carter Quincy have my photograph?
I scrambled to my feet, pacing the small space of my bedroom. Smacking the side of my head with an open palm, I willed myself to remember, to tear down the rest of that black curtain.
Think, dammit! Think. Think!
I tore my apartment apart again, searching for their hiding places. How could I have misplaced three of them? I ripped everything out of my closet, cabinets, and drawers. I shoved my mattress off the box spring, searching for holes cut in the material, for little cavities I might have created to hide my most cherished possessions.
I paused at that revelation, standing among the destruction I’d wrought on my bedroom. I had cherished them. Had I taken them out of the locker for their monthly maintenance? It was a task my father had instilled in me so fully that I’d kept it up even after I’d absconded with them.
I closed my eyes, working my way through the routine. Taking the cameras out, clearing off the dining room table, grabbing the cleaning kit from the bookshelf in the living room—a knock sounded on the front door.
My eyes sprang open. It wasn’t a present-day knock, but a phantom one. I cautiously walked toward the door, hoping I would remember who had shown up and interrupted my routine. When I was mere inches from the door, hand outstretched toward the knob, I remembered.
Tracy.
Memories sometimes come back all at once, Dr. Singh had said.
This was one of those times.
I had taken three of the cameras to my storage unit in Clovis after I’d caught Tracy snooping around under my bed and the footlocker. After dating three weeks, she’d thought she'd earned access to my things. Served me right, thinking a long-term relationship was a good idea. I had pulled the cameras from the top shelf of my closet for their monthly maintenance, just as I thought, but had grown distracted by Tracy’s unexpected arrival. Keeping the cameras better hidden had been a low priority since no one had been to my place in ages. Tracy had been an anomaly, a bar pickup that had unexpectedly evolved past a one-night stand in a motel. Her presence in my life had made me sloppy.
She’d shown up with takeout and the promise of sex, and because she’d worn down my defenses, I’d let her in. When the afterglow had faded and I woke up needing to piss, I’d found her ass up with her face under my bed.
“What’s this?” she asked, giggling, pulling the locker free.
“Put that back.” My blood was boiling by the time she playfully tugged on the padlock. I climbed off the bed, hovering over her. She hadn’t moved; she just stared up at me laughing, like this was some joke. “Get your hands off my shit.”
“What you got in here?” she asked, as she gave the locker and her bare tits another shake. “Is it your porn stash?”
I’d shoved her then, blind rage taking over. “Don’t. Touch. My. Shit.”
Tracy had toppled over and whacked her head on my nightstand, jostling one of the cameras perched on top. I dove forward to catch it before it fell, grabbing it by the strap before it collided with the ground. Tracy had let out a scream when I lunged for the camera, then she cowered on the ground in the fetal position.
A quick glance around the room told me she’d pawed at the other cameras I’d carelessly left out. She’d even taken the film out of one of them and had left it on top of the dresser. What the hell was wrong with her? I left the film left in the cameras as a memento and Tracy had soiled everything because I’d let my dick do all the thinking that day.
“Did you take anything?” I snapped at her.
“W-what?”
“W-what?” I echoed, sneering. “Are you hard of hearing? Did you take anything? Why were you putting your grubby little fingers all over my stuff? Who takes film out of someone’s camera?”
“I was just looking!” she whined from the floor, still cowering against the nightstand. “I’d never seen a film camera before so I was just poking around. I didn’t mean to take it out. I couldn’t figure out how to get it back in there so I put it on the dresser. I didn’t take anything. Jesus. You don’t fucking tell me anything, so I was looking at your stuff to see if I could get to know you better. But all your interesting shit is locked up like Fort Knox—just like you.”
I glared at her.
In an attempt to bring some levity back into the situation, she laughed softly, and took on what she thought was a sexy tone. She purred her
favorite descriptor for me, “Secretive motherfucker.”
Normally it would have made me laugh, too. But the charm, what little there was, had worn off. “Get the fuck out of my apartment and don’t come back.”
Tracy sniffed hard, startled. “Wait, what? I’m sorry, baby. I was just joking, you know? It’s our thing. I didn’t mean—”
“There is no ‘our thing’ anymore. Out,” I repeated, walking around the room to pick up her discarded clothes on my floor. I threw them at her one by one—shirt, panties, bra, jeans. “Get. The. Fuck. Out.”
By the time her jeans had collided with her face, she was well and truly pissed and had snatched up her clothes, stood, and was hastily pulling them on. “You’re a fucking asshole, you know that? My mom was right when she said you sound like a piece of shit.”
“You’re not exactly a fucking catch either,” I said, clutching the camera to my chest as I watched her struggle to pull her pants back on. “Lose my phone number, yeah?”
“Already done,” she said, and stalked for the door. I followed after her. She wrenched it open, glowered at me over her shoulder, and said, “Good fucking riddance” before slamming the door.
After locking up after her, I had stormed back to my bedroom to take stock. All three rolls of film were accounted for. It was a foundation-rattling wake-up call that I needed to be more careful. I took the cartridge Tracy had removed from the camera and slipped it into a canister.
The memory fading, I walked to the side of my bed and wedged my fingers behind the headboard. My fingertips met the smooth surface of a film canister, still where I’d taped it that day.
I remembered that I took a roll out of one more camera and put that in the stuffed-to-the-gills footlocker. I had left the third one in the camera, put all three cameras in their respective bags, and taken them to the storage unit the following day, where they’d be safe.
I had planned to bring the cameras back to my place once I was sure Tracy was gone for good, but what I hadn’t planned for was getting the shit kicked out of me in an alley as if I were a clueless tourist getting mugged.
I prepaid for the storage unit in three-month blocks, the most the company would allow. Before my attack, I’d still had part of a month left. Which meant I had lost the storage unit due to missed payments and the goddamn facility had auctioned off its contents.
Someone had bought Dad’s—my—cameras. They had pawed at them just like Tracy had and had taken my film. Not only had they developed film that didn’t belong to them, they’d shared the photos with the media? I felt violated, sick to my stomach. Who had the audacity to do such a thing?
As I paced, my indignation started to give way to something else as puzzle pieces started to click into place. The Client’s anger, the fact that this picture appeared in an article about Shawna … someone had made the connection between Emery and Shawna. Which meant …
Had a picture from Shawna’s surveillance been on the roll along with Emery’s? I’d used a different camera for Brynn because The Client had specifically requested 36 prints, and there had been an already-started roll of 24, so I’d switched to the Minolta. “Shit.”
I was torn between being furious at myself for thinking the roll would be safe in the camera, at the storage unit management for selling off my items while I was laid up in a hospital bed, and at the snooping bastard who had developed these photographs without permission.
I went back to The Client’s message, bracing myself for the rage.
I need you to explain to me how in the FUCK this picture is not only being published but is featured in an article about Shawna. We cut ties ten fucking years ago! Why is any of this surfacing NOW? Are you having a crisis of conscience? I told you I’d keep your secrets if you kept mine—if you try to take me down, you’re going with me. I have just as much dirt on you, asshole! Rethink your strategy. Be smarter.
I bristled at the last sentence, as it was one I had used with him after he’d stupidly gone after Brynn even when I told him it was a bad idea. He hadn’t listened; he’d wanted her too badly. He paid me too much for me to argue with him. What he did with the information I provided him wasn’t any of my business anyway. But the media circus that had sprung up across the whole goddamn country was proof enough that I had been right.
When he’d gone back to more sensible targets, we both went back under the radar where we were happiest. Emery had been a smart choice. But now Emery’s beautiful fucking face was in the newspaper—thanks to one of my photographs.
How had he even seen the article in this tiny newspaper? I wasn’t even sure what state he lived in. Did he have notification alerts set up for their names?
I read his message again. He had just as much dirt on me? I laughed long and loud. He was even more out of his mind than I thought if he believed that. If my hands were stained with blood, it was only indirectly—his were soaked.
I wrote back. I have no idea what’s going on, but I’ll figure it out soon.
Almost immediately, he wrote back. I need better than soon.
My computer chimed with another familiar sound—the sound of a payment notification.
Another message followed soon after. I’ll double that if you make this go away.
Relief threatened to choke me. I hadn’t realized until that moment how truly dire my financial situation had become. How worried I’d been. This little influx of cash would cover rent and groceries. Suddenly I felt grounded. Centered. I had a purpose, direction. The Client had given me security all those years ago. God, I’d missed it. I would do this for him, get back on my feet, and then I’d figure out my next move.
I’m on it, I told him.
The other two rolls of film were safe, but if this person had already made the connection between Shawna, Brynn, and Emery, there was a chance they could find the others. Time wasn’t on my side.
I grabbed one of my digital cameras, a couple zoom lenses, a notebook, and my keys, then headed for the door. Despite the fact that this was a goddamn shitshow, a little trill of excitement bolstered me.
The Collector was back in business.
CHAPTER 20
Michael had left by the time she returned from her excursion into Taos. She immediately threw herself onto the couch for a much-needed nap, but her dreams had been a jumble. Brynn tumbled down stairs. Shawna lay at the bottom of the boat ramp. Emery ran through a campsite, glancing over her shoulder in terror as someone chased her in the dark. Iris’s unconscious body was tossed into the back of a big rig. Then a scene replayed. It was the one Iris had shown her—of her own confusion before her fall, and the young man who had both helped her and expressed concern that she needed to get to a hospital.
Help Amy, a voice said as Iris staggered forward, her shoulder colliding with the doorway that led out into the hall.
Riley woke with a start to the sound of the credenza slamming into the ground. When she opened her eyes, she half expected to be asleep on the hallway floor of Julie’s house, but she was on her couch, her body too warm. She kicked off her blanket and sat up. Her mind was filled with images of Iris and her disheveled appearance at the top of the staircase just before she fell.
It occurred to her then that these jumbled dreams might actually be Iris’s attempt to contact her. The credenza hitting the floor the first day Riley had been in Julie’s house hadn’t been to scare Riley, but to get her attention. She wanted Riley to witness her fall. Was she responsible for the sound waking her up now? Riley cast a quick glance around her apartment but didn’t see anyone—she didn’t sense anyone either.
She remembered something Nina had said. Iris’s messages will always be strongest in that house, where the events took place—she likely wouldn’t be able to manifest anywhere else. Renee Palmer and Pete had used dreams to relay messages to Riley when manifesting wasn’t possible. Even Brynn and Emery had made contact through dreams.
Riley sat up straighter on the couch and replayed that scene. This memory was important to Iris. The
re was something in it Riley clearly had missed if Iris was showing it to her again. Initially, Riley had thought Iris was showing her information solely to help prove she hadn’t died by suicide, but that she’d been accidentally poisoned by a well-meaning good Samaritan who hadn’t known Iris was allergic to Tylenol.
Yet, after speaking to Amy, Riley realized how important the young man was, too. He was the only other person who knew what happened that day, and since he was the only one still alive, he could help provide the necessary details to the insurance company about the truth of Iris’s death. But Riley didn’t know the kid’s name—hell, she didn’t even know if he was a kid. From the way they had spoken to each other—he’d only called Iris “lady”—it was clear they hadn’t known each other before that day. Which meant he probably wasn’t a neighborhood kid. So why had he been there?
Riley closed her eyes, working her way through the memory. She could see the kid’s face, his shaggy black hair, and that he wore a backpack. Most adults didn’t wear backpacks, so she guessed he was fairly young. Maybe he’d ditched school that day and been wandering around aimlessly when he should have been in class. Riley supposed she could search for schools in the area, but did schools keep track of kids’ absences from a year ago? And, even more relevant to Riley, would that be the kind of information they handed out to random people off the street with no connection to the kids attending the school? Riley thought not.
He’d been holding a skateboard by his side, but then he’d swung it around to grip it with two hands in front of his lap. Her mind’s eye scanned the young man’s form. Was he wearing a school uniform? Was there a logo on his shirt, his backpack, his … skateboard? She squeezed her eyes closed even tighter, willing herself to remember what had been on the bottom of that board. An anarchy sticker. A black logo made up of two circles—the inner circle whole, while the outer one was broken in five places—and a stick-figure-style tree in the middle. That one she recognized; it was the logo for Element, a famous skateboarding brand. A red circle with the word “Mongo” crossed out, reminiscent of the anti-smoking logo. And to the right of one of his hands, his fingernails painted black, she could make out another logo that was also vaguely familiar. It was of a skater mid-trick, hand grabbing the board, and the word “Kirky” written below the wheels of his board in a U-shape. The layout of the logo made the board’s wheels look like eyes, with “Kirky” shaped like a smiling mouth.
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