Page 20 of Between the Lies

Nina bent low until her nose almost pressed against the camera’s screen. That man… If you cut that beard and tattoos out, he looked almost like Pratt.

Frowning, she toggled to other photos. A close-up of Jonas’s nose appeared, followed by a floor, a ceiling, cupboards in someone’s kitchen. Each photograph misaligned and blurred.

There had been a few images of the research they’d done so far together, but when investigating sham marriages, most people refused to have their picture taken.

Turning the thing around once more, Nina gave it a quick look under the lamp. Had she seriously been lugging this camera bag around for blurry images? What had Jonas been playing at?

Yes, he couldn’t take pictures of the people they were investigating, but he could have snapped artistic images of them in silhouette… something. Hell, why didn’t he have blurred shots of the clandestine meet-ups they’d gone to with agencies?

She’d been in charge of getting audio recordings from those meetings, but they needed images – and video!

For fuck’s sake! She’d agreed to work with Jonas because her client wanted to make a documentary from this investigation. Apparently, sham marriages made for the best documentaries, and documentaries led to recognition. That’s why she’d agreed to wear a camera or have a photographer capable of shooting video follow her around.

Her client was a sharp lady who also believed in running background checks on people. So Jonas was smart. Perhaps if she attached the camera to a laptop, she’d find what she needed?

She held the camera under the lamplight and checked the sides. There! Right between the bottom and the side was a small ‘slide’ icon. She pressed her thumb to it and swiped downward. A click sounded in the room, and the plate slide open to reveal a small port.

No SD card, but if she found the right wire, she could connect it to her laptop.

Nina set the camera on the table in front of her and raced to the camera bag. She stuffed her hands in, rummaging around. Nothing. She checked the outside of the bag and let out a curse. It had no outside pockets.

What professional carried a camera around without its charger or the wires used to transfer its contents?

Frustrated, Nina started up the slideshow of the photographs again, from the last one to the first Jonas had ever taken. Again, she saw the photograph from that night, then a few images to do with their work. A few videos played – a moving train, a car going across the road. Nothing directly related to their work.

She looked around some more, found a junk folder and?—

Her heart rate picked up, beating so hard, she thought her heart would gallop into her throat and go down her oesophagus.

It was an image, one she saw in her nightmares every night.

The image showed a floor, but in place of wooden planks, tiles or carpet, the entire concrete appeared slathered in dark red blood. Blond hair splayed at the top of the image attached to a human face, the latter off camera. Blood matted the hair, giving the blond streaks tinges of red and brown.

But the main focus of the image wasn’t the injured person. No. At the centre sat a large, pointy butcher’s knife pointed towards the hair, its blade dripping blood.

A hand clutched the knife, identifiable by the two silver rings bejewelling its fingers – one with a jade stone on it and the other a Celtic lover’s knot.

If she hadn’t recognised those rings, she surely would have recognised the hand and its contours.

That was her hand clutching the knife.

Oh fuck!

The tiny niggle of doubt protesting her innocence snuffed out. Nina shut her eyes and accepted – maybe for the first time since she’d been on the run – that she’d indeed killed somebody.

Even if she couldn’t remember how or why.

CHAPTERTEN

Robert placed two cups – a latte and a black coffee – on the table and slid into the opposite chair.

‘Thank you,’ Daisy said, wrapping her fingers around the mug. She stared at the milk pot. ‘This is fancy.’

Robert shrugged. It was a café that sat at a convenient spot near Daisy’s late-night… or early-morning appointments. It saved them time to meet up there. ‘How are the classes?’

Daisy took a sip of her coffee. ‘Good.’

That wasn’t like her. She usually waxed lyrical about what was going on in her micro and macroeconomics classes. It was always business this, rural economics that, a fifteen-minute lecture on national income and other jargon Robert mostly nodded his way through without taking anything in.

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