Chapter 1: The Camera
“THAT’S YOU—MINUTES BEFORE THE SMOKE!”
Frank held his phone between them, the screen filled with grainy security footage.
Karen froze.
For half a second, the fury disappeared from her face. Her eyes locked onto the timestamp in the corner of the video. Then her expression hardened.
“Get that phone out of my face!”
She stepped forward, her enormous pink handbag swinging against her side.
Frank stepped back.
“You were at the forest entrance,” he said. “And then the smoke appears.”
“You didn’t see me start anything!”
“I never said you started it.”
But Karen heard the accusation anyway.
Behind them, sirens moved along the suburban road. Far beyond the trees, thin gray smoke drifted across the late-afternoon sky. Emergency vehicles flashed between the trunks.
Karen pointed toward Frank’s phone.
“Being near a forest isn’t a crime!”
Frank tapped the screen.
“Then explain this.”
A second camera angle appeared.
Karen’s face changed.
The footage showed another view of the same road from farther down the perimeter. It showed Karen walking away from the direction of the forest entrance.
Frank lowered the phone.
“There are at least two cameras covering this stretch.”
Karen’s mouth opened, but no words came.
Then she noticed something else.
A county emergency vehicle was turning onto the road.
Karen immediately turned away.
Frank watched her.
“You told everyone you hadn’t been near the forest today.”
“I said I didn’t know anything about a fire.”
“That isn’t what you said this morning.”
Karen spun around.
“You recording everything I say now?”
Frank’s jaw tightened.
“No. But the cameras are.”
The emergency vehicle stopped nearby. A firefighter stepped out and spoke with another responder. Neither approached Karen yet.
That seemed to make her even more agitated.
She began pacing.
“I walk around my own neighborhood, and suddenly I’m a suspect?”
Frank didn’t answer.
He looked back at the footage.
Then he noticed something he hadn’t seen before.
Karen hadn’t been walking alone.
Several yards behind her, partially hidden by trees, was a second figure.
Frank enlarged the image.
The figure stopped near the same section of the forest where the first smoke became visible.
Frank stared at the screen.
Karen noticed his expression.
“What?”
He didn’t answer.
“What did you see?”
Frank looked toward the forest.
Then back at the phone.
“There was someone else there.”
For the first time, Karen stopped shouting.
The emergency crew began moving toward them.
And Frank realized the question was no longer simply whether Karen had been near the fire.
It was who else had been there with her.
