AllFreeNovel
Share Us
With shaking fingers, the young man activated his iPad.
"Here. Look here. I downloaded it, but on the camera, it was motion activated."
May saw that the nocturnal scene was visible in stark black and white with a time stamp that showed when the footage had been seen.
The man fast forwarded past a brief shot of something that looked like a small squirrel darting along a path. And then, three hours later, something came into view that caused May's heart to accelerate.
A woman. Running directly into the camera's view. Her blond hair streamed around her face. The expression of terror was visible on the camera screen.
May gasped. This was twenty-year-old Chloe Terry. Without a doubt, these were the terrified features of the local celebrity beauty queen who was tipped to be in the running for Miss USA. She'd been a winner in the recent county pageant.
"It's Chloe," she whispered to Sheriff Jack.
"It is," he nodded, his face hard.
Both of them were aware of the circumstances surrounding Chloe's disappearance, which her mother had begged to be kept private.
Mrs. Terry, Chloe's mother, had contacted the police privately just two weeks ago. She hadn't wanted to make a fuss. But she'd been very worried by the fact that her daughter had disappeared.
There were extenuating factors. She'd been having second thoughts about the pageant and wondering if she should have taken a modeling contract with one of the big fashion houses. She’d even been rethinking the modeling career entirely, Mrs. Terry had said.
And she'd been threatening that she was going to “take a break” and “get away from things” to think about this. In fact, Mrs. Terry had been expecting her to do just that. She’d done something similar before.
Then Chloe had disappeared.
Mrs. Terry had told the police that she thought this was very sudden, and that it was surprising that her daughter hadn't told her when or where she was going. She lived on a cottage on a homestead. The owners that she rented from didn’t interact with her much as she had her own separate entrance and grounds.
After being unable to get hold of her on the phone, Mrs. Terry had gone around to her cottage and found it locked up and empty.
She was desperately worried, she'd told the police, but in view of her daughter's budding career and the fact she'd said she was going to take some time out to make a decision, she had not wanted to make a fuss about it.
"If I've gotten it wrong, I don't want to destroy her reputation and prospects. She could just have taken time out. But I'm scared of what it will mean if she hasn't," Mrs. Terry told the police, twisting her hands together, looking agonized.
Both May and Sheriff Jack had sympathized with her predicament. They'd asked if there was any trouble, any crises in her life. But Mrs. Terry had said no. She’d been unwilling to discuss the matter further.
May and Sheriff Jack had spoken in detail about what they should do in this delicate matter, where a young woman's safety might be at risk, but if they overreacted, her career prospects could be jeopardized by the adverse publicity.
In the end, they'd put a private APB out to all police departments to be on the lookout for her, and May had been especially attentive to any news of anyone fitting her description since then.
Now, this was a bombshell.
Without a doubt, this was their missing person, running, terrified, through the woods. May felt physically shocked by this as if someone had punched her in the stomach. How had she ended up here, two weeks after going missing?
Had she been kept prisoner somewhere and managed to escape? That was May's first gut feeling after watching that shocking moment play out.
"Is there any further footage?" she asked, after watching the woman hurtle past the camera. If she was running, who or what was chasing her? That was the question on May’s mind now.
"There is something. A minute later."
May watched with narrowed eyes as their witness fast forwarded to the next footage he had. But this was blurred and further away. Still, May realized with a chill that it was an obvious pursuit. Someone in a heavy jacket and a baseball cap had been racing after her, but the angle at which he'd run meant that all they could see was a momentary glimpse.
How tantalizing and how frustrating to have this partial evidence of a dramatic, terrifying, and potentially deadly scene that had played out in the woods shortly after midnight, according to the time stamp.
"There's no more footage?" she asked, wishing that the angle had been different, to give them more information on this pursuer. They didn't have enough and could tell very little from those few moments that he'd been partially captured on film.
"No more. I checked all the cameras. I had three up, but the rest of the footage was normal. Squirrels, foxes, and suchlike."
"Did you hear anything last night?" she asked the man, wondering if they might get any further clues or information if he had done.
