Farah’s phone buzzed in her pocket, alerting her to a new text.
Are you getting all this?
She checked the levels on the camera, smiled at John Senior, who was working on his computer, and quietly excused herself from the study. She didn’t dial Wayne’s number until she was out on the front steps.
“Hey!” he yelled excitedly into the phone. “So are you getting all this? The women?”
“Yeah, I’m getting it. The story broke in the middle of the night, but I’ve been with them all since dawn, basically.” It was nearly three o’clock.
She didn’t tell him that, as of forty minutes ago, the Bright men and their partners were staging some kind of protest at the oak tree. She didn’t tell him that she couldn’t hear what they were saying or see the expressions on their faces. It hadn’t raised any alarm bells at first. The oak tree was a camera-free zone; she’d agreed to that for Philip’s sake. They’d gone out there to check on him, which wasn’t a thing anyone normally did, but it wasn’t a normal day, and any person could see that he was having a hard time with the news. So they’d all gone out there—JJ, Spencer, Charlie, Ian, Mary-Beth and Chelsea—ostensibly to check on Philip. That was forty minutes ago. No one had left the tree yet, and it was beginning to seem like they were hiding out there together. They were hiding from her cameras.
Through the window, Farah could see their mouths moving. Sometimes it looked like they were laughing. Other times, they were all just sitting around saying nothing. Yes, they were definitely just hiding from her.
“There’s gotta be more bad news coming for these guys,” Wayne said. “I want you on them nonstop. No way is this over. What’s the wife doing?”
Farah drew a line in the driveway gravel with a stick. “She’s been in her room all day. I haven’t seen her.”
“You gotta get in there, Farah!”
“I know, but bedrooms with closed doors are off-limits. I have to wait for her to come out.”
“Fine, just make sure you get the confrontation, the real blowup. They might be waiting for you to be gone, so you can’t disappear for even a minute.”
Farah could feel her heart in her chest again. This was the feeling she waited for. In all the documentaries she had worked on, there was always a moment when she could sense the purpose of the film coming together, nearing a crescendo. It could be an animal approaching its prey or a dam about to break. She would have experienced this moment as unadulterated pleasure if not for the fact that she was watching a family fall apart. This wasn’t her job.
But there was no one else there to do it, and so it was.