Daniel stared at her.
He had forgotten the camera for half a second.
Then remembered.
The recovered card.
The final images.
The reason he had returned.
His hands began shaking.
He looked down at the rear screen.
Kessler took one step forward.
Daniel immediately pulled the camera against his chest.
“No.”
The officer stopped.
“I’m not taking it.”
“You tried.”
“I asked to view it.”
“Then grabbed the harness.”
Kessler looked ashamed.
Good.
Daniel pressed playback.
The images he had taken that evening appeared first.
Ocean.
Railing.
Ramp.
Sunset.
He switched cards.
A warning appeared.
CARD 2 — RECOVERED FILES.
He entered playback.
Ava’s world returned.
Four years earlier.
Frame one.
A seagull on a lamp post.
Frame two.
Her friend Kayla laughing with powdered sugar on her shirt.
Frame three.
The Ferris wheel reflected in a shop window.
Frame four.
Daniel’s own hands holding two lemonades.
He had forgotten she photographed that.
His breath caught.
Melissa moved closer but did not touch.
Kessler remained several feet away.
Daniel advanced.
Ava had been seventeen.
She was studying photography because Daniel taught her.
That fact had become poison after her death.
People said she had inherited his risk-taking eye.
Claire had once screamed during an argument:
“She learned to chase the shot from you.”
Daniel had carried the sentence for four years.
Frame twenty-seven.
Boardwalk railing.
The sun lower.
Frame twenty-eight.
A maintenance cart near the north ramp.
Frame twenty-nine.
A man in an orange vest carrying a rectangular metal railing section.
Daniel had seen this one that morning.
It was why he came.
He advanced.
Thirty.
A wider frame.
Open walkway.
Missing rail segment.
Two orange cones.
One upright.
One lying on its side.
No chain visible across the opening.
Daniel’s stomach turned.
Melissa gasped.
“That.”
He looked at her.
“That’s what it looked like.”
Kessler stepped closer without thinking.
Daniel immediately raised one hand.
“Stay.”
The officer stopped.
Daniel advanced.
Frame thirty-one.
The ocean through the open gap.
Ava had apparently photographed the sunset from several feet inside the walkway.
Frame thirty-two.
One cone now farther right.
A shadow entering frame.
Frame thirty-three.
The maintenance cart again.
A worker walking away.
Frame thirty-four.
A slightly blurred image of the boards.
Perhaps Ava moving.
Thirty-five.
The gap.
Closer.
Thirty-six.
The edge of a trash barrel.
Thirty-seven.
The final recovered frame.