“Without permission?”
“I didn’t say it was a good idea.”
Mara kept looking. The gallery of publicly released images contained photographs from a demonstration attended by investors. In one, a boy in the green coat was walking behind a curtain. The date was a week earlier. In another, the same coat hung on a chair while an adult technician adjusted overhead lights.
Something about the lighting struck her. The shadows fell in opposite directions in two frames of the supposed same room. One backdrop was artificial. Another image had been taken outside.
Mara had been photographing stories long enough to know when people tried to stitch scenes together. The photographs were designed to suggest continuity where none existed.
“What if the boy isn’t a performer?” she asked. “What if the game needs photographs of him that look like he has been disappearing through different places?”
Priya considered this. “Why?”
“Because people will pay more for a story that feels real.”
Priya shook her head. “A missing child is not a clever marketing device.”
“No,” Mara said. “It’s a threat disguised as one.”
Holt called again. Arcadia’s front office was closed despite listed business hours. Simon Rusk wasn’t answering his mobile. His business partner, Celia Morne, had agreed to meet officers at the warehouse in an hour.
“There’s something else,” Holt said. “The boy you’re asking about is not listed as missing. His mother reported him safe last evening. But she is concerned about his participation in this attraction.”
“Why?”
“She says she withdrew consent, and the company keeps using his pictures.”
Mara sat straighter. “Then he isn’t missing?”
“Not according to his mother. And that is why we need to stop inventing answers before we’ve spoken to everyone.”
The caution was justified. Still, a person had tried to enter Mara’s home using a prepared door. The photographic trail had begun in her yard. Whatever Rusk wanted, it reached beyond a questionable advertising campaign.
The library was not open yet when Mara and Priya reached it on Friday morning. Alma had invited them to wait outside until the officer finished looking through the craft room. Through the front glass they could see a paper constellation hanging from the ceiling, each star made by a different child. The display looked harmless. After the previous evening, Mara found herself wondering how many photographs of those stars existed on devices she had never seen.
Priya pointed toward the notice board. A flyer for the Arcadia workshop still hung beside the swimming lessons schedule. Its headline promised children a chance to become the heroes of an interactive story. Mara remembered approving it because the program offered free transportation for families without cars. She had taken that promise at face value. Now the flyer seemed to contain two separate invitations: one to participate in a harmless craft activity, another to surrender the right to decide where that participation ended.
