“Oh!” he said, and I gasped. “Oh, that’s just when it fell down.” He paused again, and I imagined the image having turned to black, since I’d found the camera face down against the sill. “Oh, that’s cute,” he said sourly.
“What is?”
“You, flipping me off. Thanks for that.”
I cringed, having already forgotten about my message. I glanced down at my braless chest in the tank top I wore to bed and knew he’d gotten a glimpse of that too. Heat filled my cheeks. I quickly changed the subject. “Do you see anything now? He was there when I put the camera back up. I saw him like ten seconds later.”
He let out a quiet hum, and I held my breath. “No,” he said, drawing it out like he was watching and waiting to change his answer. “The angle is lower than it was, but I don’t see anyone.”
An exhale left my lungs with a painful sharpness. “Are you sure? I saw him standing there. Right outside my window.”
“There’s no one there.”
I blinked and worked up the nerve to lift my eyes over the sill’s edge.
The street was empty.
“Well, can you check the kitchen feed? Maybe that picked something up, because I swear, he was there.”
“Sure. Give me a second.”
I waited again, chewing my thumbnail, and scanning the empty street. Melanie’s house sat tucked in and sleeping across the way. The rest of the storybook street was quiet and dark as well.
“I don’t see anything here either,” Bray said.
My heart sank at the same time I grew dizzy with relief. “How is that possible?”
He audibly yawned. “Dunno. Maybe it was a shadow or trick of light. Sorry the camera fell and woke you. I’m going to go back to bed.”
“Bray, I know what I saw.”
He paused at the edge in my voice, perhaps sensing that my fear stemmed from more than a neighborhood smuggling ring. “Well, there’s nothing on the feed, so I think it’s fine, but do you want me to come over just in case?”
His offer caught me off guard. If it was a chivalrous act or perhaps a job duty he felt obliged to perform, I wasn’t sure. Either way, it felt excessive in the middle of the night.
“No,” I told him. “I’ll be fine.”
I convinced myself it was the truth because, after all, the man I had seen standing in the street was dead.
CHAPTER12
Sweet Briar Books stood in the middle of a strip of local businesses fit for Del Rio: an upscale clothing boutique, a hair salon, a baby store, and a vegan café. Each had an awning, hand-painted sandwich signs luring customers, and dog bowls full of slobbery water outside the door.
It was way too cute and welcoming for the fear fizzling in my veins from last night. Even though I’d told him to stay out of my way, I half wished I’d taken Bray up on his offer to accompany me in talking to Brittany the ex-nanny, because at least then I’d have someone with a gun nearby. The only reason I hadn’t skipped town after seeing the ghost in the street was because of our deal. Finding out what happened to Wallace was even more pressing now. If I’d calledhimat two a.m. to tell him what I’d seen—whoI’d seen—he’d have pulled me off the case right then. But Bray didn’t have the clearance to know why, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to tell him.
A happy little bell jingled when I pushed open the bookstore’s bright red door. The signature smell of bound paper and book jackets hit me like a salty breeze at the beach. I may not have had as much formal education as most, but reading was one thing I held sacred. I escaped into stories of other people’s lives whenever I could, whenever the web of lies of myown life got to be too much. Which was often. Unfortunately, I hadn’t come to browse the adult fiction. I’d come to glean information from the young woman behind the counter.
Brittany Condor looked friendly enough from a distance. She was younger than me, mid-twenties, I knew from Bray’s file on her, and was a graduate student at one of the local universities. She wore her blond hair in a thick French braid, and hoop earrings, which glinted as bright as her smile when she moved. She rang up an old man buying a gardening book who looked like he might have come in only for her company.
The store was a long, narrow galley with the register on the north wall, floor-to-ceiling shelves lining everything but the front window, and parallel rows of free-standing shelves like giant equal signs down the center.
I casually wandered past the short shelves of adult fiction toward the wall of children’s books at the back. I knew the Browning children had mountains of books already, but I needed an excuse to visit Brittany and figured showing up for work with gifts after my abrupt departure from the park would only earn me favor.
Plus, it wasn’t my money I was spending.
I eyed the old man at the counter still chatting up Brittany, who was being nothing but polite in return. Another woman wandered the romance section with a stack of pastel-colored paperbacks in hand. A teenager in a hoodie scoped the young adult section while tapping his phone at the same time.
I squatted in front of a children’s rack and randomly pulled out one of the thin spines. An illustrated unicorn stared back at me, and I imagined Karli Browning would appreciate the attention to detail in its sparkly tail. I kept one ear on Brittany’s conversation while I searched for something for Kaden. The old man was telling her about his garden and offering to drop off some carrots next time he came in. When Brittany politely thanked him and said goodbye, I dove on an opportunity tobeat anyone else to the register. I hastily chose a book with a smiling dragon on the front and moved for the counter. Thankfully, the other customers appeared to be wrapped up in shopping.
