Overexposed

Chapter 12

chapter

twelve

Stella

S ergeant McBride asked me a few pointed questions on the drive after I explained the assault. He wanted me to come down to the station to make a full statement. There was also the matter of pressing charges against Dillon, should I choose to.

“Mr. Griffiths was a witness?” the sergeant pressed.

“Yes, but whether or not he knows the man in question, I can’t really tell you.” The last thing I wanted to talk about was Dillon. He was crazier than I remembered. I could still feel his hands around my throat as he slammed my head against my car. “He saved me. That’s it.”

That was all I was going to say on it. Any injuries he inflicted on Dillon were in my defense. Dillon himself could get fucked. Officer Bright pulled up near my baby, and I glanced at the car. Thank fuck she was still here and not towed somewhere.

“Yours?” Bright confirmed with a hint of breathless wonder.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s my baby.”

“When can we expect to see you at the station to record your statement?” McBride asked.

Not groaning, I checked my phone for the time. It was almost ten. I hadn’t been home since the day before. “This afternoon? I’ll try to be there by four?”

I couldn’t promise sooner. I needed to check on Dad. One, I needed to confirm he hadn’t heard about last night and he had a check-up with the neurosurgeon this morning. No messages from him or Mom as yet, but that didn’t mean they weren’t coming.

“Four,” McBridge confirmed. “We’ll be there.” Then he let me out of the back of their black-and-white.

“Thank you,” I said to both of them. “For the ride.”

“You’re welcome.” The sergeant passed me a card. “Those are my numbers. If you need to reschedule, call me. If you need a ride to the station, call me.”

I frowned down at it. The more I thought about going in the more my stomach dropped. We’d tried pressing charges against Dillon before. He always seemed to slip through them or it came down to a case of he said, she said.

Dad barely remembered his attack. He couldn’t conclusively say it was Dillon. Particularly after the surgery and subsequent brain-damage diagnosis.

“I’ll do my best” was as close to a promise as I could get. “Thank you again.” After giving a jaunty little salute I was definitely not feeling, I slid the card into the pocket of my skirt before I headed toward my car.

A moment later, the door shut firmly and then the car pulled away. I blew out a breath as I circled my car to the driver’s side. At this point, I just wanted to?—

The driver’s side window was shattered inward. There was broken glass all over the seat. I swung my head around, scanning the area like I’d see the guilty party right here. Someone broke into my car. Why—oh shit. My stomach dropped and I went icy hot as I reached in to pull on the trunk release to pop it.

Even half expecting it, I couldn’t suppress the shudder at the empty space where my equipment should be. My camera. The backup battery. The lenses. Everything.

It was just gone.

Bracing my hands against the trunk lid, I tried to suck in air past the constriction on my throat. There wasn’t anything left in the trunk at all. Not even a scrap of material from the nylon bags.

The thief would have gotten all the memory cards too. The memory cards with the previous evening’s photos. Backing up a couple of steps, I sat abruptly on the curb and bent my head between my knees.

I was hyperventilating and I had to stop it. Right now. I couldn’t throw up or throw a fit. Even ordering myself to pull it together wasn’t making a dent. Surging back to my feet, I slammed the trunk shut and did another sweeping scan.

Of course there were no cameras right here. It was why I’d parked here. A little blind spot in the hotel security. Fuck. My. Life.

Right, blind spot except I had a dash cam. I hurried around to the front of the car and pulled open the door. Even before I leaned in to check behind the rearview mirror, I already knew—the camera was gone.

Of course it was.

Goddamn vicious, backstabbing, needle-dicked weasel. Not only had he taken my equipment, he’d taken that camera, and if he did that, he probably took the drive. I opened the glove compartment, and sure enough the drive was gone.

If I’d been at all thinking clearly the night before I would never have let Olivier walk me away. I had evidence of Dillon’s assault on camera. It wouldn’t have been great evidence cause the camera was aimed toward the front of the car, but it would have been something.

Gone.

A few thousand dollars’ worth of pictures. Maybe not a lot to some people, but it was another week of Dad’s treatments. Another payment to the hospital. Part of the rent for his house. It was a drop in the bucket of all the bills, but I needed every single damn drop.

Not only had I lost all of it, but I couldn’t just replace the equipment. That was thousands in equipment, memory cards, lenses…

I was lucky if I had lint to rub together in the bottom of my purse. What savings I’d had were gone. So were Dad’s. Every dime we had, we’d sunk into keeping him alive. Working freelance didn’t come with a great health plan. Mom worked as a nurse, and that got us some discounts, but the expenses just kept piling up.

Dad was at the doctor today.

He could need another round of treatments. More surgery. More care.

It all cost money. A lot of money.

Fucking Dillon. He attacked Dad and that put him in the hospital in the first place. The tumor wasn’t his fault, but right now, I didn’t care. Attacking me was his fault. Taking my equipment was absolutely his fault.

I should never have dated him in the first fucking place. Dad hadn’t wanted me to. He’d said he didn’t like Dillon’s vibes , but that was nothing new. Dad never liked any guy I dated; it was basically in the Dad handbook to disapprove of any potential love interest. Torn between screaming and crying was not a state I liked to be in.

What I needed were solutions…

Think, Stella , I ordered myself. Think .

Crying wouldn’t replace the equipment or pay the mortgage or even get Dad another week on chemo. I paced away from the car and then back. I also needed to get my fucking car fixed too.

Asshole.

I raised my phone and lowered it a dozen times. Who was I going to call? I already had to go down to the police station. Did I file a report on the stolen equipment? If I did that, I needed to have them come back here.

That made the most sense, though, right? File a police report? Then I’d have that to file with insurance. You know, if I hadn’t let that insurance lapse to cover Dad’s far costlier procedures. Protecting my equipment or saving his life?

The choice was a no-brainer.

Tears burned behind my eyes. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I forced myself to breathe. Breathe. Think it through. What options were available to me? Short-term? Long-term?

My savings were tapped. The photos I’d taken the night before would have netted me a tidy sum. So I was not only out of money in the bank, but I would be short what I could have made from last night’s work.

Those were facts.

There were always events. I could go to another, get more shots, and sell those. I straightened and looked at my phone.

Yeah, even with all the improvements they’d made to smartphones, they couldn’t replace a telephoto lens or the clarity of high definition. Could I make it work? Possibly.

It wouldn’t be ideal and the struggle to get anything worthy of selling would be intense. So while it could fill in for the short-term, it wasn’t a good fix and it had no guarantee of fiscal return.

What I needed was my equipment back or new equipment. Those were the two best-case scenarios. No doubt existed within me: Dillon had taken it. If I was lucky, he kept it in one piece and back at his place. I’d have to go to him and probably beg to get it back.

I’d sooner fuck a fire hydrant.

Worst case, he’d already destroyed the equipment. It was far more likely. Shattered it, sold it, gotten rid of it. So even if I filed charges, well, that probably would take more time I didn’t have and not get me anywhere. I had no problems with filing the assault, but the robbery?

Did I have anything I could pawn to make enough to replace the equipment? My gaze landed on my car.

Oh, hell no…

Before I could follow that thought to its very negative conclusion, my phone rang. Dad’s face popped up and I answered it immediately. “Hey, Dad, I thought you were at an appointment.”

He coughed. “I was, but we got home an hour ago and I napped. Now I’m calling my Shutterbug.”

I winced.

“Someone didn’t come over this morning. Or go home last night.”

“Dad,” I said on a long sigh. “Are you checking up on me?”

The wheeze of his laughter pulled a reluctant smile to my lips. “I might be, but I’ll never tell. You know I protect my sources.”

“Yeah, you do.” Even as much as the answer terrified me, I asked, “How was the appointment?” They always took so much out of him. It was why he had in-home care and only went in for very specific appointments.

“It was a lot of poking and prodding. Your mother is fussing enough for both of you. We won’t know anything until the tests come back.”

I sighed. Mom was a huge help, as one of Dad’s paid home helpers, but they’d divorced when I was only eight, so she couldn’t be there around the clock. “Yeah, I guess I should have seen that coming.”

“Think you could see your way into coming to see me and—” The hesitation was deliberate. I could almost picture him scanning the area around him in the living room where we’d set up his hospital bed. “And,” he continued in a stage whisper, “bring some pizza for the inmate and maybe some of those garlicky breadsticks.”

“Mom restricting your diet again?” Not that I could blame her. He had a hard time keeping down food. The richer the diet, the harder it was on him.

“You know how she is.” Another cough escaped him, and then another.

The sound wracked him and it carried even if he covered the mouthpiece on our old landline phone. It was plugged in and parked right next to him. He also had a cell phone, but he liked the big phone.

“Sorry,” he said, sounding winded and weary. “Needed a drink. Hate the cough, but sometimes, it’s just easier to get the unpleasant stuff out of the way. Especially if it’s not gonna hurt anything in the long run.”

He had a point.

Dad always had a point.

“Tell you what,” I said. “You had a big day today, but I’ll see if I can swing around tomorrow with the pizza if Mom says you had a good night and your numbers are good. I don’t mind tangling with her so you can cheat, but I don’t want to bring you anything that’ll hurt you either.”

He grunted. That could be code for Mom was right there or he didn’t like the offer. Or maybe both.

“Deal?” I said, staring through the broken window into my car. Sometimes, it was better to get the unpleasant stuff out of the way. Especially if it wouldn’t hurt anything in the long run. Words to live by.

“Fine,” he muttered. “Deal. But you’re going to get a good report about me.”

“I’d like that,” I said, smiling. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Dad.”

“Shutterbug?”

So close.

“Yes?”

“You’re okay, right? You’re doing okay?”

“I’m fine, Dad,” I promised him, lying with a straight face. The silence that followed my statement demanded that I fill it in. It was how Dad got me to talk when I was a teenager. The day I’d figured that out, I could have kicked myself.

I counted to sixty in my head, but before I got to fifty, he said, “Good. I worry about you.”

“I know, Dad. Just worry about you tonight.” Then he let me go and I exhaled a long breath.

Better to just get the unpleasant stuff out of the way . The words niggled into the back of my mind and jarred loose a fact that I’d been steadfastly ignoring since leaving the Harrison house earlier.

“It might work,” I said to myself before I moved to clean the glass out of the driver’s seat. It was a damn mess, but I didn’t want to sit in it to drive. “It might not,” I countered like I was really having this argument but I started the car anyway.

Instead of the police station or home, I headed back to the Harrison household. Seven Harrison wanted something from me.

It was a card I could play.