Chapter 21: The Raw File

The girl with the pale braid stood up at the far end of our table.

She had her laptop bag against her chest.

Her knees were shaking, and I watched her make them move.

"I have the only copy," Delphine said again, to the room, with her smile in place. "Nobody can prove anything."

"I have another."

The voice was small and it carried.

Three hundred people turned.

The girl climbed the steps to the stage, and she didn't look at Delphine.

"I'm Delphine's camera operator," she said into the microphone I held out. Her voice cracked. "I was. I quit on Wednesday."

"Sit down," Delphine said, lightly.

"I filmed the lake weekend. All of it. The night Tobin died, I was on the porch."

"Sit down."

"I kept the file."

Mrs. Ashworth rose from her table.

"There is a projector," she said. "I had the technician set it to the club's wall. Plug her in."

A man in black slipped out of the shadows with a cable.

The girl knelt at the edge of the stage, hands trembling, and pushed the grey drive into the laptop.

The big screen behind the podium flickered.

The shot of the Foundation's logo went away.

Then the screen went black, with a thin blue light at its corner.

Boots crunched in snow.

Delphine's voice came out of the speakers, close and low and delighted.

"Okay. Okay. Are you rolling? Good. Tobin told me to stay off the dark patch by the point. He said it twice."

On the stage, the living Delphine did not move.

In the speakers, her breath fogged the lens.