Page 1 of All He Takes
PROLOGUE
They say a photograph can capture the soul. That was what June Lockheart believed, anyway. As she made her way through the antique store, passing by rows upon rows of vintage clothing, she knew exactly where she was going: the camera section at the back. These days, this was one of the only places she could still see real Polaroid cameras.
And as she passed by the racks of dresses, she couldn't help but smile.
She was in her late twenties, and she'd been taking photographs for years. She was self-taught and had seen plenty of success with her work. She'd shot weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, engagements and even the odd wedding proposal. But it wasn't just her work that had been successful—it was also the people that she'd been photographing. She'd been showing some of her work around and had even managed to sell a few prints. That hadn't been enough for her, though. No, she wanted to do more with her work. She wanted to do something special. She wanted people to see that her work was worth something.
And that was why she was standing in this antique store, where she'd been hoping to find a Polaroid camera to work with. She'd been struggling to find a way to showcase her work properly. She wanted to find a way to take her photographs and make them special. And while she'd been looking, she'd also been thinking. She needed a real challenge. She needed something that would really stretch her as a photographer. She needed to prove that she could capture amazing, emotion-invoking photos, even with old technology.
That's the reason she was looking for a Polaroid camera. And now it was time to choose. She'd been through the aisles and it was time to settle.
She reached the back of the antique store, and as she did, she couldn't help but smile. There were so many cameras here. They stood on the shelves in front of her, cameras and lenses of all kinds and types. She reached out and grabbed a camera. It was one which had seen better days. It was old and the lens was scratched, but it was a beautiful camera that she could tell took good pictures.
But as she took a step closer, she noticed a small shelf that contained a pile of Polaroid photos. Someone must have brought them in! June couldn't resist her curiosity; she had to take a look, so she went over to the shelf and picked up the pile, then began to sift through them.
She grinned when she saw the first few photos. They were all of a young couple and the two were clearly very much in love. She could tell just by looking at the photos and their subjects that this was a couple that cared deeply for each other. As she looked further, she saw other photos of the same couple. They were all here, in the pile.
They had been taken at a variety of different places, and as June looked at each one, she could tell that they were from different periods in the couple's relationship. In one, the young man was holding his new wife close and the two were clearly very much in love. In another, the wife was holding her husband's hand as they walked through a field. June could tell that they were out on a picnic, just the two of them. The smiles on their faces were genuine and the two were clearly very much in love. June couldn't help but smile. These photos were beautiful.
She'd been taking photos for years. She'd taken photos of the same subjects on many different occasions, and she knew that people could tell a lot from photos. She could tell when a couple had been together for a long time. She could tell when a couple was in love.
But as June flipped through more photos, the subject matter changed. It shifted from old family photos, to portrait-style pictures of young women.
Then, she reached halfway through the stack, and a photo gave her pause.
It was a woman lying on a floor in a white dress.
But something wasn't right. There was red all over her dress, and--
June's blood froze over. In the photo... the woman's throat had been slit.
June could feel her heart beating in her ears. And she could feel her stomach turn over. She felt like she was about to throw up, and she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Her hands trembled as she reached for the next photo, and she felt her heart sink even further.
This had to be fake, right? But it looked so real, and her stomach was queasy. She had seen a lot of fake bodies in movies and all that, but this was different. The woman's eyes were glazed over in a way that looked so real.
Suddenly paranoid, June looked over her shoulder. Across the shop, she could see the store owner, a friendly old man, behind the counter, writing something down.
She didn't know who took this photo.
Maybe it was him.
Maybe it was someone else.
All she knew was that she needed to take this to the police.
CHAPTER ONE
Agent Nicky Lyons of the FBI sat in her car in the parking lot of the prison, watching from a distance, studying the tall gray walls and the barbed wire fences. It was morning, and the sun peeked over the back of the prison, bringing light and life to an otherwise drab, dreary scene.
She needed to get back in there. But she had to be tactful.
Inside that prison was Felix Anderson, a kidnapper who Nicky had put behind bars not that long ago. Felix also happened to be a deranged psychopath who had been leading her on with clues about her missing sister, Rosie. Nicky had been kidnapped with Rosie when they were teenagers by an unknown man.
Nicky escaped.
Rosie didn't.
And ever since then, now twenty-nine-year-old Nicky had dedicated her life to missing persons cases. There was one issue... she had never found her own sister, who Nicky believed was still out there somewhere.
