Jazz watched impatiently as the images scrolled by. After a few moments, she slowed it down a little more. “I’m not seeing anything.”
“Good,” Morgan said, lying beside her. “I don’t want to think of my brother’s body up for public viewing.”
She shot him an understanding look. “That has to be tough.”
“What about the third image?”
“I don’t have a digital image,” she said. “They took it away and never emailed us one.” Except he was already sending a text asking for a copy by the time she was finished.
She was tired. And needing rest. But how much rest was she going to get? Without realizing it, she’d laid back down on the bed even though they’d pulled a camera out of the headboard earlier. She’d already relaxed about it. At least for the moment. She couldn’t see ever making love here again.
But knew Morgan could make her forget anything.
“Here it is.”
“Here what is?” she asked absentmindedly.
“The third image.”
“Already?”
“Yes. I’m forwarding it to your email.”
And sure enough, it was there in seconds. She quickly repeated the process of the other two and set up a search. It might get a few close matches, although it was poorer quality. And where had they gotten these images from? From the bodies… or from the websites.
“What if this person is a graphic artist and not a tattoo artist?”
“Then the cops should be able to find that out. Maybe.”
“Maybe, but maybe not.” She pointed to the screen. “If they digitally enhanced the image then printed it off and did a poor quality copy several times, it’s going to be that much harder.”
“Harder doesn’t mean impossible.” He straightened, his fingers busy on his phone. “We actually have something specific for the cops to work on. It’s more than anyone has found to date.”
The computer search came up fast, so she set about scrolling through the images. Most weren’t even close on this round. She figured it was the poor quality of the copy. How any image could be found if the original was so crappy?
Unless the original was crappy as well. She stared at a similar image in front of her. “Here it is.”
“What?”
Morgan leaned closer. “That’s identical. Including the number 2.”
She swallowed hard, fear choking her throat. “It is,” she said in a low voice. “But look at the website it’s posted on.”
“It’s too small; bring it up in a new tab.”
Obediently, she opened the page the picture was posted.
And heard his gasp.
The image was on her own store website.
*
Morgan waited for someone to answer his call. He kept a wary eye on Jazz. She looked wrecked. Then he was sure he was looking a little peaked too. Talk about a shock. He hadn’t even considered someone targeting her website. Why would they? But at the same time as there’d been so much about tattoos, it made sense that her website would be in the mix.
“Morgan, what’s up?” Shaun answered his own question with a yawn. “Sorry. Long day.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Morgan muttered. He walked to the window and looked out, but with the darkness he couldn’t see much. He quickly explained about the images they’d found and the one on Jazz’s store website.
“Interesting. Seems to confirm she’s the target here.”
“Somewhat. It’s not like the image was a good example of her work to put on display so it’s just an oddity there, more as a prank to see if they can fool her.”
“More like a message to say ‘I can do whatever I want and you won’t even know,’” Shaun said.
“Implying this asshole is just playing with us.”
“He’ll have a specific reason for his actions, but that doesn’t mean any of it is clear to us yet. Maybe never. If the person has just gone off the deep end, then something has triggered this and everything else just grows out of it.”
“So we need to figure out the starting point?”
“Exactly.”
Jazz walked over to him and put her arms around him. He hugged her close. “I can tell you the starting point for Jazz was when I walked back into her life a few days ago, and the starting point for me was Billy’s death.”
“Yes, everything comes back to that.”
“Did you find out anything about him? His life? Problems?” He hated to think Billy’s life had been so shitty it ended up with him getting murdered, but someone had killed him, and blowing his face off was too damn personal to be accidental.
“We’re working on it.”
Morgan hesitated. “I’m going to check around a bit. Figure out what he was up to the last few days of his life. I know I haven’t had much to do with him the last year, but I knew him well before that.”
“That’s fine, but remember someone killed him, and that someone is going to want to keep it all a secret.”
“Good, then he’s going to be forced to show his hand.”
There was an odd silence. “I understand wanting revenge on your brother’s death and needing to find your stalker, but consider how Jazz is going to react if anything happens to you. Particularly if you are killed in this process. What’s to stop this guy from going after her then – when there’s no one watching out for her?”
Morgan put his phone away, his anger abating slightly at the cop’s words. He was right, but that didn’t change the fact that this needed to end. He had no intention of getting killed but doubted his brother had planned for that either.
And it had still happened to him.
Jazz returned to sit at the computer. Not working. Just staring at the website. Her website. Her business. Her life. Another violation. Another personal attack.
His heart ached for all she’d been through. Guilt ate at him. He’d brought this to her door. If he hadn’t contacted her, could she have remained removed from this mess?
Still the core connection was tattoos. Maybe it had nothing to do with his brother at all. Maybe it was Jazz instead.
Maybe it was his brother’s and Jazz’s connection? The non-existent relationship?
Damn it. There were always more questions. So far, damn little in the way of answers.