Page 46 of Clear Path

Bodhi removed Rory’s digital camera from her messenger bag. Evan peered over his shoulder as he pressed the button to power it on. The camera came to life, illuminating their faces in the darkness.

Bodhi navigated to the image review function and began scrolling through the photos. The most recent shots showed the photos she’d uploaded earlier from the trail. Then shots of the impromptu exhibition in her living room—judging by the perspective, she’d taken them from the deck of the tapas bar. He continued to scroll back. Julie surveying the rubble of a demolished house, a series of photos document the destruction, and series of its owner standing in her kitchen one last time.

“These are from two days ago,” Evan volunteered unnecessarily.

Bodhi continued backward through the images until he found a sequence of shots taken earlier. Landscapes of the trail,close-ups of wildflowers, a dilapidated vegetable stand on the side of the road, and then?—

“What’s this?” He stopped on an image of a massive brick structure partly reclaimed by nature. Vines crawled up its walls, windows were broken or boarded, but the imposing edifice remained intact.

Evan leaned closer. “That’s the old Allen & Sons factory.”

Bodhi swiped to see more images of the building from different angles.

“It was a garment manufacturer back in the early 1900s,” Evan explained, his voice taking on the cadence of a lecturer. “Young women, mostly immigrants, made dresses for wealthy Pittsburghers. After the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York in 1911, the workers here organized a walkout to protest their own unsafe conditions.”

Bodhi studied a close-up image of faded lettering above the factory entrance. “She took a lot of photos of this place.”

“It’s the perfect embodiment of her displacement theme,” Evan said, growing animated. “A site of worker exploitation, resistance, and then abandonment. It sits less than half a mile from the trail but has never been renovated or recognized historically because it doesn’t have the scenic value developers like Julie are looking for.”

Bodhi swiped through more images, finding interior shots of the factory—cavernous rooms with broken sewing machines, dust-covered worktables, and shafts of light streaming through holes in the ceiling.

“These were taken the earlier in the week” Bodhi noted, checking the date on the timestamps.

Evan nodded eagerly. “We should check the factory.”

Bodhi frowned. “We need to stay here. We’ll radio the others.”

Before he could, static crackled, then Aaron’s voice came across the airwaves. “She’s not here. We’re thinking we’ll go down to the drainage ditch and check that. Follow it out toward Company Row and then turn around if we don’t find her.”

Evan grabbed for the radio. “No, don’t. Do you know the old Allen & Sons factory?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“She was just there two days ago. She took a lot of pictures. She may have gone back,” Evan explained.

There was a long pause. Then Aaron said. “It’s outside the containment area. Out of radio range.”

Evan frowned. “Barely. Maybe three miles, at most.”

Bodhi held his hand out, and Evan reluctantly placed the radio in it.

“Stand by for a minute, okay?” Bodhi told Aaron.

“Will do.”

He eyed Evan. “How sure are you that she’d go to the factory?”

Evan hedged. “It’s the logical place to look.”

“They’re closer to the ditch. If she did follow it, they’ll waste a lot of time going in the opposite direction. Time we don’t have,” Bodhi countered.

Evan opened his mouth to argue just as the radio crackled to live again. “It’s Sadie. We struck out, too. We’re closer to the factory. We’ll head that way. Aaron, you follow the ditch to Company Row.”

“You’ll be out of range,” Aaron protested.

“We won’t be able to reach Bodhi, but make sure your work cell phone is turned on. I’ll be able to contact you. Satellite phones,” she explained for Bodhi’s benefit.

“Over.”

---