Page 59 of Capturing You

It was done. She’d either win or not win, but she was out of time.

If Arthur were still alive, he’d ask if she’d done everything she could. Knowing she had, she could practically hear her old mentor telling her to trust God with the outcome.

Capturing His beautiful world is reward enough. If people want to buy your photos, that’s just icing on the cake.

Translation: Don’t worry. Much easier said than done when you had a mortgage to pay.

If she shared her fears with Lois, she would remind Brooklynn of how talented she was.

If the judges don’t see that, then they’re fools.

Maybe not fools, though. Beauty was subjective. She might get the best shot of her life, but that didn’t guarantee the judges would even like it.

Lord, You know how much it means to me. Please, let my photograph win. Save my business, my dream.

Either He would or He wouldn’t. Now that the prints had been ordered, it was out of Brooklynn’s hands. She needed to quit fretting about it.

She closed her laptop, grabbed the Pledge and the rag she’d found earlier, and headed down the hall. She had time to get some cleaning done before she needed to start dinner.

And if she happened to find something interesting along the way, who could blame her for doing alittlesnooping?

CHAPTERTWELVE

Forbes had scoured every inch of his father’s office and found exactly…nothing.

It was maddening.

Dad had to have left something about the smugglers he’d done business with. He’d kept meticulous records regarding every other aspect of his real estate enterprise. Surely, surely he’d recorded information about the people who ran a smuggling operation through his property.

The Network.

That was all Forbes knew. He had a fleeting memory of one of the murderers—the woman—using those words.

“The Network trusted you. You betrayed us.”

But who was The Network? What had they trusted Dad to do? Had Dad really betrayed them? He’d vehemently denied it. He’d begged them to believe him. He’d assured them that nobody in his family knew anything about it.

But they’d shot him. And Mom. And Rosie.

And Forbes had done nothing to protect them. He’d hidden like a coward.

He knew what his therapist would say.You were eight years old, Forbes. What could you have done?

Something. He could’ve donesomething.

He could have tried to get to a phone. He could have tried to protect his mom and his sister. If he had, maybe he’d have died with them. Probably. But he wouldn’t have had to live with this guilt and regret.

But Rosie had shoved him into the hiding place, and there he’d stayed.

Even now, so many years later, he could see his father’s body fall. See his lifeless eyes.

Forbes hadn’t seen his mother’s murder or his sister’s, but he had never forgotten the sound of the gunshots.

He’d stayed in his hiding spot, listening to shouts. He didn’t remember most of it, but one phrase had lingered.

Find it. We have to find it.

They hadn’t found it, whateveritwas. Sirens had cut their search short. They’d escaped moments before the police swarmed the house.