Page 99 of Shadowed With Fear

“Let’s go, pretty boy. We got some pictures to edit.”

* * *

It’s amazing how quickly she can go from giving me a fantastic fucking blowjob in my studio, while taking pictures of it, to being spread out in my living room floor, chugging a Dr. Pepper like it’s the elixir of life, messing around on Photoshop and studying the guide Professor Logan gave her.

She has my computer and hers setting in front of her, legs crisscrossed, back leaning against my knees as she works quietly. I had offered to grab her clothes, but she insisted she was much more comfortable just in the hoodie she had on earlier and no pants. So, who am I to convince her otherwise.

Currently, a picture I am particularly fond of, taken of her from the back, as she looks over her shoulder at the camera, is what she’s editing. Her dark curls spill down her back in waves as she’s perched on her knees sitting back on to her heels. In her eyes, is that uncertain, shyness that Dahlia wore at the beginning of the photoshoot, but her body language and the opposite. There isn’t a hint of her doubt in the way she hugs her body. She looks like she’s cherishing it, loving it, and it has my heart swelling.

“I like that one a lot,” I nod to my computer when she looks back at me.

“I do too. Thank you for helping me.”

“Of course, sweet girl.” I kiss the top of her head and she giggles, reaching forward to get her computer.

She clicks around through a PowerPoint, when an image catches my eye.

“Wait, go back.”

“This one?” She asks lifting the laptop up toward me. I nod, taking it from her hands.

The picture shows a cloudless sky overlooking a small little pasture. It’s postcard worthy, but it’s not what catches my eye. It’s the shadow falling across the ground, taking the shape of a body. Directly beside a large oak tree.

“Hang on a second. Don’t move.”

I jump up running to my room and grab my duffel bag. My mind whirls as I think about the odds of what I’m thinking.

It’s pretty fucking crazy, but maybe…just maybe…

Dahlia’s still sitting by the couch, confusion painting her features.

“Gonna enlighten me?” Her brow lifts expectantly.

“Yeah. I mean, I might be crazy, but I think I know where this picture was taken.”

I dig through the folders at the bottom of my bag, pulling out stray papers, and clothes I have shoved inside.

“Here,” I murmur, taking out a folder with pictures poking out. “These are from cold cases in East End. Alex thought they could help us. He gave each of us something to kind of focus on, to search for things the cops might have missed.”

I sort through a few crime scenes, Dahlia cringing at the images.

“I don’t— “

“This one,” I wave a photo, grabbing her computer and place it side by side. “Look familiar?”

The picture I had was of a similar field by the angle was wider, and there are people mingling around the grass wearing Coroner marked jackets, and a few cops are standing close beneath the oak tree.

Dahlia gasps, taking the picture and studying it closely. “Is it the same place?”

“I think so,” I sigh. “The image in the slideshow, where’s it from?”

She blinks, looking between the pictures. “It’s examples from Ethan’s portfolio. Professor Logan added them to the assignment PowerPoint to help us.”

“This guy again. What the hell is going on?” I growl. “The picture Alex gave me was from a body that was found about four years ago. It was a girl; she was in some sorority or something. It didn’t go to the media because her family paid off the newspaper to keep it covered up.”

“But Ethan just so happened to take a picture of the exact place her body was laying, and included it in a portfolio titled “Hidden In Sight”?”

“Not really that creative, is it?” I pull out my phone, dialing Alex’s number and she does the same with Brahm’s. We have lots to talk about.