Photograph, p.1
Photograph, page 1
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PRAISE FOR PHOTOGRAPH
“There are moody scenes involving darkness, wind-driven rain, and lonely roads that bring to mind the opening chapters of a Stephen King novel. And those roads twist a lot as Freeman unloads one surprise after another…May there be more Shannon Wells tales to come.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“If a picture is worth a thousand words, a photograph is worth a thousand twists in Brian Freeman’s latest blockbuster, Photograph. The novel explores family secrets, the despair of losing a mother, and the lies we tell for those we love. Photograph proves once again why Freeman is one of the best thriller writers working today.”
—Alex Finlay, bestselling author of Parents Weekend
“Riveting, heartwarming, and profound, Photograph needs a warning label: Will cause insomnia, obsessive thoughts, and heart palpitations as you race to unravel this web of multilayered mysteries. Along with top-tier suspense, it’s a tale of family—blood and found—and how far we’ll go to protect our loved ones and reclaim our power. All the stars.”
—Elka Ray, author of A Friend Indeed
“Photograph is everything I crave in a mystery: a protagonist as layered and complicated as the case she’s chasing, questions that linger long after the last page, and a story that probes what it means to be alive—and to remember. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Lauren Myracle, New York Times bestselling author of Plays Well with Others
“[Freeman] pulls out all the stops here, delivering a suspenseful, surprising, and extremely satisfying thriller. A note about Shannon Wells: She’s a very well-drawn character, with strong series potential. More, please.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“With its unique plot, emotionally charged characters, and the right amount of suspense, Photograph kept me turning the pages.”
—Capes & Tights
PRAISE FOR BRIAN FREEMAN
“A master of psychological suspense.”
—Lisa Gardner, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Some of the most literate and stylish writing you’ll find anywhere today.”
—Jeffery Deaver, #1 New York Times bestselling author
BOOKS BY BRIAN FREEMAN
standalone novels
Spilled Blood
Thief River Falls
Infinite
I Remember You
The Deep, Deep Snow
The Ursulina
Break Every Rule
Photograph
robert ludlum’s jason bourne series
The Bourne Evolution
The Bourne Treachery
The Bourne Sacrifice
The Bourne Defiance
The Bourne Shadow
The Bourne Vendetta
The Bourne Escape
the frost easton series
The Night Bird
The Voice Inside
The Crooked Street
the jonathan stride series
Immoral
Stripped
Stalked
In the Dark
The Burying Place
Spitting Devil (e-short story)
Turn to Stone (e-novella)
The Cold Nowhere
Goodbye to the Dead
Marathon
Alter Ego
Funeral for a Friend
The Zero Night
the cab bolton series
The Bone House
Season of Fear
PHOTOGRAPH
BRIAN FREEMAN
Copyright © 2025 by Brian Freeman
E-book published in 2025 by Blackstone Publishing
Cover design by Alenka Vdovič Linaschke
Author photograph by Malyssa Woodward
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-6651-0994-9
Library e-book ISBN 978-1-6651-0993-2
Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
Blackstone Publishing
31 Mistletoe Rd.
Ashland, OR 97520
www.BlackstonePublishing.com
For Marcia
CONTENTS
I. Green Eye
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
II. Blue Eye
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
About the Author
Begin recording.
Look closely at my eyes, Shannon. Do you see what makes them special? One eye is green, and one eye is blue.
Heterochromia.
That’s right. Very good. It’s called heterochromia, and it’s quite rare. My eyes are here to help you, Shannon. The vision that’s troubling you is hidden behind my eyes. That’s what you need to find.
I can’t sleep.
Yes, I know.
It’s been two years. I can’t sleep. He’s always there when I close my eyes.
Slow down, Shannon. Wait for me. We need to make this journey together. What I want you to do is choose one of my eyes. One blue eye or one green eye. Which one calls to you?
Green.
Okay. Focus all of your attention on my green eye. It’s like the glitter of an emerald, full of bright light. Get lost in it, as if you were diving into an endless sea. See how deep it goes? Let that vast, wide sea pull you in, Shannon, as if you were swimming all alone, just you and the warm green water. Are you ready? Because now we will begin.
I’m ready.
Very good. We’re going back into your past. Don’t think about anything. Don’t try to remember anything. Simply let your mind take you where it wants to go. Let your mind be your guide. Somewhere in your past, somewhere behind my eyes, your vision begins.
I’m getting closer.
Good. Keep falling into the green sea. Go down and down and down.
I’m scared. I feel him near me.
Don’t be afraid, Shannon. You’re safe. Nothing can hurt you here.
I hear something.
What is it?
I hear glass. A window breaking.
Where are you?
I’m home. Someone’s in my house.
Remember, Shannon, none of this is really happening. This is just a memory of what has already been.
He’s here.
Who is it? Who’s there?
I don’t know. I hear him downstairs.
Tell me where you are. Picture the scene for me.
I’m in my bedroom. It’s early morning, before sunrise. I’m wearing a robe. I just got out of the shower. My skin, my hair, are still damp. No one should be here. I’m alone in the house. My husband is on a business trip. My daughter is in college.
Your daughter? How old are you, Shannon?
I’m forty-four.
Shannon, you’re only thirty years old.
No, I’m forty-four. My birthday was in June.
Can you tell me your name?
It’s Jenny. My name is Jenny.
[There is a long silence on the recording.]
Hello, Jenny. My name is Maro. I’m here to help you. Can you tell me more about yourself? About your family?
My husband is Christopher. We’ve been married for twenty years. My daughter is Olivia. She’s a freshman at Notre Dame.
What year is it, Jenny?
It’s 1995.
All right. Your name is Jenny, and it’s thirty years ago. And someone is in your house.
He’s coming up the stairs.
What are you doing now?
I’m calling the police. Oh, damn, oh no, the phone is dead! He must have cut the line! Jesus!
Remember, you’re safe, Jenny. This isn’t real.
There he is! He’s in the doorway. He’s in the shadows. God, he’s just a kid! A teenager!
Do you recognize him?
No! No, I don’t know who he is!
What’s happening now?
I’m telling him to go. I won’t say anything! I’m asking him what he wants, money, jewelry, he can have whatever he wants! But I’ve seen him. He knows I’ve seen him.
He can’t hurt you, Jenny. This is a memory. It’s not actually happening.
I’m screaming at him. He’s telling me to be quiet. Oh God, he has a gun! He’s pointing it at me! I’m begging him now. I have a husband, a child. Please, I swear I won’t say—
Jenny? Jenny?
[Silence]
Shannon? Are you there? What’s going on?
[Silence]
Come out of the sea, Shannon. Wake up now. Come back to me.
[Snaps fingers]
Oh! Oh, wow, I drifted off there for a second. I’m sorry. When do we start?
We’re done for today, Shannon.
Done? But that’s crazy, nothing happened.
Actually, something did happen.
Did I say anything? Did I tell you what I remembered?
Yes, I think we’ve made an interesting discovery.
End recording.
PART ONE
GREEN EYE
ONE
“You wanna piña colada, mama?” Rina asked me, which was unnecessary, because the answer to that question was always yes.
“Do fish swim?” I replied without looking up from my keyboard.
Rina grinned and scribbled the order on my tab. She did a little “Hips Don’t Lie” dance to the music on the overhead speakers as she wandered toward the bar. I didn’t need to tell her to add a squeeze of lime and use Myers’s Dark instead of the crappy light rum that Hector gives the tourists. Rina knew what I liked. She also didn’t give me grief about the fact that it was only ten in the morning.
Okay, yes, technically, I was drinking on the job, because I was already in my office and had my laptop open in front of me. But here in Florida, we have a fairly relaxed division of work and leisure. Also, I’m my own boss, so I don’t complain to myself when I decide to have an early drink after a bad night. And I confess, most of my nights are bad these days, which is why I like to start my mornings with a visit to Margaritaville.
You’re probably wondering about an office where waitresses serve fruity drinks and thinking: Hey, I’d like to work there. Sorry, this table is taken. In fact, let me paint the picture for you. I was sweating in the sticky August heat under a striped-pink sun umbrella in the corner of a Daytona tiki bar called Beachside. The bar was true to its name. I could pick my way down the wooden steps and hike on a perfect white stretch of Atlantic sand as the surfers rode the waves.
Beachside was attached to a ten-story hotel on the A1A called Sunrise Shores. I lived on the hotel’s top floor (balcony, ocean view, microwave, kitchenette), and I ran my business from a table in the outdoor bar. The hotel owner didn’t complain, because the owner was my father. He’d bought the hotel years ago as a tax write-off against his seven-figure income as a cardiac surgeon at the University of Florida hospital in Jacksonville. I was pretty sure he’d never set foot inside the place. When my parents divorced and my childhood house went up for sale, my father offered me the opportunity to live at the hotel rent-free for a few weeks so that I could “get my head around the idea of the split.”
Four years later, I was still here.
Postdivorce, my father now lives in a spectacular three-bedroom condo in Jacksonville Beach with his springer spaniel puppy. And my mother—well, my mother, my life, my best friend in the world, swallowed a bottle of pills a year later. She left a note to say how sorry she was for leaving me on my own and telling me how much she loved me. I didn’t blame her, because I understood why she did it. Loneliness is a slow poison. No, I blamed the man who showed more affection for his new dog than he had ever shown his wife during twenty-six years of marriage.
Yeah, my father and me? Things are not good between us.
Nonetheless, family is family. Once a month, I trekked ninety minutes north for an obligatory father-daughter dinner. He served prime steaks and expensive cabernet, and we talked about manatees, rocket launches, the inland waterway, Savannah pralines, and who the Jaguars would take in the draft this year. We never talked about my mother or why he left her or whether he’d ever truly cared about another human being in his whole life. Then I drove back home in the darkness rather than staying with him in his beautiful, expensive, awful condominium.
Once a month with my father was coming up again tonight. Sometimes I could make an excuse to get out of it, but I’d bailed on him last month, and he didn’t tolerate two missed dinners in a row. He’d already texted me at 5:00 a.m.—his usual wake-up call before his daily six-mile jog on the beach—to confirm that I would be there in the evening. I’d stalled my reply as long as I could, so I finally tapped out a message on my laptop.
Yeah, sure, Dad. See you tonight.
With that unpleasant task done, I pretended to focus on work, but I was easily distracted. I killed time watching the treasure hunters swing their metal detectors across the beach. If you asked them what they were looking for, they’d probably say Spanish doubloons from sunken pirate ships, but in reality, it’s mostly gold watches and engagement rings that tourists lose when they’re swimming. I hypnotized myself with the ocean view for a few minutes, then forced my eyes away so that I could review the details of my open cases.
I may be exaggerating a bit when I say cases, plural. Business is slow.
When I looked up from my laptop again, I saw Rina heading back across the bar. Alas, she had no piña colada on her tray.
Rina was twenty-two years old, Cuban and ridiculously gorgeous, a waitress five days a week, and a really fantastic punto singer on Fridays and Saturdays. She’d been a client of mine the previous year. My very first client, actually. After I resolved her ex-boyfriend-is-stalking-me problem, I’d gotten her a job at Beachside to pay the bills while she tried to get her band out of the local clubs and onto Spotify. She was grateful; so was her whole family. There were perks, because cubano nightclubs in North Florida never charged me a cover now.
Anyway, Rina has my back. She is my one unofficial, unpaid agency employee. She’s like my receptionist slash front-of-house security, a pit bull with 34DDs fighting their way into a halter top.
“Hey, some girl’s asking about you in the lobby,” Rina announced.
“Who is she?”
“She says her name is Kate Selby. No appointment. She wouldn’t tell me what it’s about, but she says it’s important.”
The name Kate Selby stirred a vague memory with me, but I wasn’t sure why.
“What does she look like?”
“Little bit like you, I guess. Dark hair, blue eyes, skinny, no ass. She’s a lot younger, though. Twenties, definitely.”
Ouch.
I’d been thirty years old for all of three months, but to Rina, I was already on the far side of over the hill.
“You want me to tell her to go away?” Rina asked with a flex of her muscles. “Call you up, leave a message or something? I mean, no appointment, that’s not right. Somebody wants to see you, they should make an appointment.”
True, Kate Selby had no appointment.
On the other hand, my iPhone was open to the calendar app, and nobody else had an appointment today, either. I like to think I’ve finally found my calling in life, but so far, life hasn’t gone out of its way to confirm that by providing me with any kind of steady income. My father helps with my bills, which bugs the crap out of me, but I take the money anyway.
Kate Selby.
Why did that name sound familiar?
“That’s okay, Rina,” I said. “Send her back here. But don’t forget my piña colada.”
