Fireproof (Maggie O'Dell #10)

She followed a path behind the huge fenced-in lots alongside a steep drop-off. She flicked on a flashlight to get her bearings, then turned it off. Now that the rain had changed to a steady drizzle, she could hear water rumbling over the rocks below. She caught a glimpse of the stream and the rocky walls.

She paused and squatted down, resting her camera bag on the wet grass. She’d prepared her equipment in the car, pulling on rain sleeves, though her camera was supposed to be waterproof. The hood over the lens and the infrared strobe were expensive additions, courtesy of Jeffery.

When he had given her the new pieces she joked about turning her into a paparazzo. Jeffery didn’t find it amusing. He was an award-winning journalist, soon to be anchor-slash-host of his own daily news show—or at least that was his hope. Sam wondered if he realized he was getting too old to run with the young bulls in this industry.

He’d come a long way from what he called his humble beginnings as a high school teacher. Sam didn’t know why this wasn’t enough for him. But his own show had become yet another obsession. He seemed determined to make it happen no matter what he had to do. No matter what Big Mac demanded. He didn’t care how many hurdles Sam had to jump, because he knew her future had become intertwined with his.

She just wished she could make him understand why requests like this one, in particular, certainly made her feel like a paparazzo. He was doing this sort of thing more and more. The line began to blur between real journalism and sensational reality TV. If only he could see her now.

Sam was fumbling in her pocket for her flashlight when she noticed a beam of light ahead of her about a hundred yards. The shadow of a man followed.

Sam froze.

Maybe it was a resident walking his dog, though this was much too bumpy and steep to be a walking path. And she didn’t see a dog. The man seemed focused on the house on the other side of the fence. The brim of his baseball cap pointed in that direction.

Who was Sam to judge? Here she was, late at night, sneaking around to get photos of that very same house.

Twigs snapped in front of her. Something stirred in the tall grass that lined the ridge. She slipped to her knees and held her breath. She tried to reassure herself that wildlife probably lived down closer to the stream. It was probably a beaver or raccoon. Whatever it was, it was moving away from her and in the direction of the man.

She eased her camera up, slowly, quietly, keeping her eyes on the grass. The zoom lens made the camera heavy enough that she had to use both hands. She started to raise it to eye level.

“Put down the gun.”

The voice from behind startled her so much she jumped. But instinct made her grip the camera tighter. At first she thought the warning was meant for the man ahead of her, but when she looked up for him, he was gone.

“Put it down.” The woman’s voice came with measured breaths.

“It’s not a gun.” Sam’s hands shook but she kept them from moving, from flinching under the camera’s weight. Would the woman really shoot her? In the back? “It’s a camera,” she tried to explain. “I’d rather not put it in the grass.”

Oh God, she couldn’t believe she’d said that. Jeffery would certainly say she had grown a pair of cojones.

“What the hell are you doing back here?”

“Wildlife photography,” Sam said without missing a beat, realizing Jeffery had taught her to be an instinctively good liar. “There was something in the grass.” Not entirely a lie. Even her mother would agree that lying for self-preservation was forgivable.

“At night?”

Sam shrugged. She was already going to hell. Then she said, “I have an infrared filter.”

The woman came around to face her, shining her flashlight into Sam’s eyes. She could still see the outline of the gun aimed directly at her face. Suddenly she realized this wasn’t a suburban housewife with a neighborhood watch group.

“Since when does a cable news station sponsor wildlife photography?”

Now Sam recognized the woman’s voice. The target of Jeffery’s documentary had just made Sam a target.





CHAPTER 33




Back in the warm, dry kitchen Patrick suggested coffee to distract Maggie from still wanting to shoot the woman with the camera. He’d never seen Maggie so angry and wondered if she’d rather have found a serial killer stalking her than this photojournalist.