Chapter 3 - The Live Stream
From inside, Arthur’s deep baritone barked with effortless authority. "Just an ice dam giving way, Peter! Get inside before the pie gets cold!"
Peter hesitated, lingering at the railing for two heart-stopping seconds. If he looked ten feet further into the shadows beneath the spruce boughs, he would see my face. But the cold bit into his dress shirt, and he flicked his cigarette butt into the snow and stepped back into the warmth, sliding the glass door shut with a final, decisive thud.
I exhaled a ragged cloud of steam. My trembling hand touched the snow around me, and my fingers hit something hard and rectangular beneath a dusting of powder.
It was an iPhone.
Not mine—mine had been smashed on the hardwood upstairs before Dad threw me out. The screen of this phone was cracked across the top corner, but the display was brightly lit. It had fallen out of Lily’s pocket when she had rushed upstairs during the initial shouting match, slipping through the broken window frame onto the snowbank below.
The screen was alive with scrolling text.
A tiny red dot pulsed at the top corner: *LIVE - 48:12*.
Lily hadn’t just been filming an aesthetic holiday vlog for TikTok; she had left an uninterrupted Instagram Live running on her vanity stand right next to the open master bedroom window when the struggle began. The camera angle from her room had captured the hallway mirror’s direct reflection.
My frozen thumb slipped across the glass. The chat was moving at lightning speed.
*@sarah_m99: DID HE JUST PUSH HER?!*
*@truecrime_daily: SOMEONE CALL ANCHORAGE PD RIGHT NOW.*
*@alaska_native907: She fell out the window! He literally said 'She'll get up' and shut the curtains!*
*@kenai_nurse: She's in the snow. Look at the audio feed, you can hear her breathing!*
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Over twenty-four thousand people were watching the stream. Lily had forgotten her phone upstairs, completely unaware that her phone had tumbled out after me into the yard, its microphone still picking up every ragged breath I took and every word drifting through the broken casement above.
They weren't just witnesses. They were a digital army watching a crime unfold in real time.
