Chapter 12: The Archive

Nobody in the meadow moved.

At the edge of the crowd, in the long dark coat, Keir Halverson stood with his gloved hands at his sides.

He had come to watch me, and he had kept his word and stayed out of it.

Now every camera swung to him.

"Mr. Halverson?" Tiffany said, sweetly. "Do you want to answer?"

He looked at her, and then at Colson.

Colson was not smiling anymore.

He was staring at Keir, and his face had gone very still.

"No," Keir said.

He turned and walked away through the snow, through the crew, who parted for him without a word.

The producer found her voice at last. "We are going to a break."

The red lights on every camera went dark.

I stood in the center of the gravel with my crutch dug in and my heart going hard.

Tiffany reached me before I could move.

She stepped close, and her voice dropped, still soft.

"He's using you," she whispered. "Ask yourself why a man like that wants a girl like you. Ask what he wanted from the first day."

"You tried to poison me."

"I made you tea." She smiled, thin and tender. "You can't prove anything."

She walked off, and Colson followed her without a glance at me.

I didn't go after Keir.

I went to find Ben.

He was sitting on an overturned crate behind the production trailer with his rig across his knees and his cap in his hands.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Left Her to Bleed, So She Healed the Untouchable from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.