Chapter 1: The Clock That Didn’t Match
“That’s you—right before the smoke!”
Daniel Carter thrust his phone forward so quickly that it nearly touched Karen’s face.
On the screen was grainy security footage from the protected-forest entrance. The image was unmistakable. A woman with towering orange-yellow-pink hair stood near the edge of the trees.
Karen.
Behind them, beyond the forest entrance, emergency vehicles flashed red and blue through a thin veil of smoke.
Karen stared at the phone.
Then at Daniel.
Then back at the phone.
“Don’t you dare call that proof,” she snapped.
She swung her enormous neon-pink handbag between them, forcing Daniel to lower his arm. She wasn’t backing away. If anything, she stepped closer.
Daniel had lived across the street from Karen for nearly nine years. He knew her temper. Most people in the neighborhood did.
But this time, he wasn’t interested in an argument.
He believed he had evidence.
“You were there,” he said. “The camera caught you.”
Karen’s eyes narrowed.
“Your camera caught a person. It didn’t catch a crime.”
Daniel opened his mouth to answer.
Then he noticed the digital clock on the emergency information board behind her.
He froze.
The time on his phone footage was 5:41 p.m.
The official display read 5:52.
Daniel looked again.
Karen followed his gaze.
Her expression changed.
She raised her wrist.
“My watch says 5:52.”
Daniel stared at the three different references.
For the first time, the certainty in his face disappeared.
“That clock’s wrong,” he muttered.
Karen pointed toward his phone.
“Your camera’s time is wrong. Your story is wrong. So what exactly are you accusing me of?”
Daniel tightened his grip on the phone.
“I know you were there.”
“And being there makes me guilty?”
She pointed toward the smoke.
“Then answer this. If being there makes me guilty, does that mean you’re guilty too just because you’re standing here?”
Daniel said nothing.
The distant siren grew louder.
A county fire official, Linda Hayes, arrived at the entrance and asked both of them to step away from the road.
The argument was over for the moment.
But the timestamp problem wasn’t.
Linda examined Daniel’s phone and photographed the emergency display.
Then she looked at Karen.
“Were you here at any point this afternoon?”
Karen hesitated.
“Yes.”
Daniel’s head snapped toward her.
“But not when that video says I was.”
That answer created a new problem.
Karen had admitted being at the forest.
Now everyone needed to know why.
And Karen suddenly realized that explaining where she had actually been might expose something she had never intended to discuss.
