She paused outside of the door to the darkroom, turning to him. “It might be a little hard to see in there. I have to keep the lights off because of the nature of the film.”
He nodded, not focusing on her but staring intently at the door.
Turning around, Augusta opened the door and slipped inside, keeping it open just enough for Ray to do the same. She closed the door and flipped on the light switch.
The dark space lit up with red light, bathing the entire space. She smiled a little at her setup. Ever since she’d witnessed the hit, she hadn’t had any proper time in here other than developing the very photo that had gotten her into this mess.
She missed it. All of it.
Augusta made her way to the developing station and rummaged through the raw film she had hanging there, Ray’s intimidating presence coming up directly behind her to hover.
She tried to shake it off, ignoring him while she looked for the proper strip.
Finally finding it, she unhooked it from the clip and caried it to a small table. She flicked on a lamp, a bit lighter than the red-colored light overhead, and gently slipped the film in front of it to get a better look.
“Did you find it?”
She nodded, putting her thumb on the strip where the photo was.
“Right here.”
Ray leaned over her, his body pressing into her shoulder while he regarded the small image.
“I know it’s kind of hard to see—”
“It’s fine,” he cut her off.
His hand wrapped around her wrist to move it closer to the light. She felt her hips press into the desk when his body molded more into hers.
“Um …”
He cut her off again. “This is when it happened?”
“Y-Yeah … right after. The quality is a little bad because I dropped my camera.”
He nodded, squinting at the strip. “They came after you because of this?”
“Yes. My flash went off. That’s what caught their attention.”
He snorted. “That’s unfortunate.”
It made her want to roll her eyes.Unfortunatewas a bit of an understatement at this point. Right now, it was really starting to hit the disaster-circumstances category with a steady decline in how much she felt like her life was falling apart.
“Do you … know them?” she asked.
He sighed, shaking his head and letting go of her wrist before completely disengaging with her altogether. Again, her body felt cold.
I really need to get it together.
“I don’t. Do you remember seeing if they had any identifying features or tattoos when you saw them?”
Augusta tilted her head, thinking back to the original photo. “I believe one of them had a tattoo of the Virgin Mary.”
“Hmm,” Ray crossed his arms and tapped one of his fingers along his jaw. “Virgin Mary …”
“It was big. On his forearm.” She moved around him and went back to the development station. “Here, let me show you.”
Making sure her chemicals were still active, Augusta went over to her photo lens and pulled up the strip, flashing it onto a piece of photo paper. She could feel Ray’s eyes on her, watching her every move as she made her way around her small studio.