Chapter 9: The Second Clip

On the screen, Bryce stood in the rain and looked at the girl in the road.

He didn't run to her.

He didn't kneel.

He stood there with his hands at his sides for nine seconds. The timestamp counted them.

11:42:51. 11:42:52.

Then he got back into my car and closed the door and drove away.

The clip ran on after that.

Rain. The empty road. Her pale dress on the shoulder, not moving.

Four minutes and ten seconds before a pickup truck stopped and a man jumped out waving his arms.

I closed the laptop.

Gran put her hand flat on top of mine.

Neither of us said anything for a long time.

The kitchen clock ticked. The fridge hummed.

"Four minutes," Gran said finally.

"I know."

"He could have called."

"I know, Gran."

She took her glasses off and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.

Then she put the glasses back on and opened the laptop again.

"There's a second file," she said. "Open it. We're doing this once."

The second clip was daylight.

The inside of the gas station this time, a camera over the register. Bright, sharp, every lottery ticket in the rack.

9:10 a.m. the next morning.

The door opened, and my father walked in wearing his seersucker jacket, with the family lawyer behind him carrying a briefcase.

The old man behind the counter set a gray box on the counter.

My father took out a fat envelope.

He counted the bills out onto the counter, licking his thumb. All of them. Slowly.

Then he picked up the gray box and put it in his own jacket pocket and patted it.

I watched him do that twice.

"That's the blank," Gran said quietly. "He paid for a blank."

"He thought he paid for this."

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