Photographic Read Free Page A

he shimmied further down the tree, the front of his jacket snagged on something and hampered his progress. He wasn’t a very big man. Then Jane got a good look and realized she’d been mistaken; it was a woman, rigged up in a camouflage hat and jacket. The woman struggled to free herself, flailing like a fish on a hook, but couldn’t maneuver because of the backpack and the camera, the one with the tell-tale lens gleam, hanging off one shoulder. She was still a good twenty feet up.
    Jane moved to stand beneath her. "Who are you?"
    A brief silence. "Marta." 
    “Drop your stuff.” 
    "So you can stomp it."
    "I might." She held her arms out, as winded as if she’d run for miles, having burned through all the adrenalin her body had to spare.
    “No way.” The woman panted from her struggle. 
    Jane gaped up at her. “You’re not in a position to argue, are you?”
    Marta clung to the tree, muttering. She shrugged one arm out of a strap of the backpack and transferred the heavy camera from one shoulder to the other. There was a rustle and the flap of material and something dark and huge plunged down. Jane lurched away from the trajectory of Marta’s body, now in a heap at her feet. Everything was frozen and still.
    Marta rolled on the ground. She made a sound like an animal.
    Jane crouched down next to her. “Are you okay?”
    “Damn, damn, damn.” 
    She saw Marta’s camera on the ground next to her, the overgrown lens in one piece, broken from the body of the camera. Jane almost said, “Sorry,” but thought better of it. 
    Marta wore a cap with flaps over the ears and a kerchief around her neck. Out for a day of hunting. Her heart-shaped face was the only uncovered part of her body. We’re the prey, Jane thought, looking at her get-up. A foreign and insidious predator. This had never happened when Ian was gone. They seemed to know when Ian wasn’t there, so they didn’t bother coming.
    She sat huddled on the ground, holding the two pieces of the camera together as if they were whole.
    “Are you hurt?”
    “This can’t be fixed.” Marta cradled the camera. She darted a look at Jane. Her dark, slanting eyebrows were drawn close together. “My ankle.”
    Jane eyed the camera. She took a breath and looked through the gate, out at the road. “How’d you get here?” 
    “I drove. It’s the only way to get to the boonies.”
    “Can you get yourself back out?”
    “I don’t know. It’s my right foot.”
    Jane looked back up the drive, to the house peeping through the trees. “I thought you might have a gun.”
    Marta set the pieces on the ground. “Why would I have a gun?”
    “Why would you have a camera?”
    Marta shrugged and fiddled with her lens. “I think you know.”
    “What am I supposed to do with you?”
    “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”
    “I can imagine. We’ll have to go back to the house.” Jane picked up the backpack. She unzipped it and held it open. Marta put the parts inside. Jane slung the pack over her shoulder and held out her hand. Marta took it and pulled herself up. She put her arm over Jane’s shoulder, and they started up the drive.
    Getting out of the truck, up the steps, and into the house was a painstaking business. Anything that touched her ankle or leg sent spasms through her. They hobbled through the front hall and living room into the kitchen. Jane pulled out a couple of chairs. Marta sat down with a sigh and propped up her leg.
    Jane untied the black tennis shoe, removing it and her sock with care. "Your ankle might be broken. You need an X-ray.” Jane turned away to get ice from the freezer, turning the cubes upside down over the plastic ice bin, where they rested whole and interconnected until she tapped them with the ice scoop. They shattered, the sound cacophonous in the silent kitchen. Once she had corralled the cubes into a plastic bag, she wrapped a thin tea towel around it and draped the pack over Marta’s ankle. “I don’t know if