She looked at him and said, “I don’t want to see it.”
“I get that,” he said, “but I need you to.” He thumbed through his pictures on his phone.
She swallowed hard and looked at it. Her face blanched slightly because it was obviously a chunk of human flesh. And then she frowned.
He watched her as she studied it, her gaze narrowing and becoming more focused. “It’s not my signature,” she said. “It’s been altered.”
“That’s what I was wondering, when I saw your signature on one of the paintings on the internet.” he said. “Has it been altered by the killer, or has it been altered by whatever process the killer used to preserve it?”
“It’s possible the killer altered it,” she said. “Can you email that to me? I’ll bring it up in an art program.”
“Do you use software?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Sometimes I just have to get a different visual of what it is I’m trying to do.”
He quickly emailed this photo to her. At her desktop, she opened it up and studied it carefully, going in pixel by pixel.
“It’s been painted over,” she said, pointing it out. “Here is my original signature, side by side with your photo. And you can see that paint has been applied over the top and above here. See these different layers?”
“So, you don’t think it’s the software process?”
“The software gives it more of a caricature look,” she said, “but it was painted over first.”
“So, it’s yours but not yours.”
“Exactly.”
“So, somebody’s imitating your work?”
“No,” she said. “This isn’t imitating. This is stealing.” And she quickly shut down the program.
*
Naomi sobbed quietly. She’d been in the same damn position for at least twenty-four hours. Her body ached. Her hands had gone numb. Her feet were beyond numb. And she kept trying to figure out if anybody would even report her as missing. She had yet to see her captor. He had come and gone but always on the far side of this room.
As she’d slowly adapted to seeing in the darkness around her, she’d realized just how much of a cesspool of mental sickness she was in. This was unbelievable. She found paintings, artwork of some kind, and these big round stretching boards. She didn’t even understand what kind of canvases were used here, but it looked like hides or skin.
She shuddered because she was on a bigger stretching board herself. She’d been given some water, but, even when he’d done that, he had kept his face in the shadows. His body was nondescript, covered in jeans and a long-sleeve shirt. He was slender, tall, and she was pretty sure male, but not enough light was here to make that definitive assertion. All in all, she was just terrified about where she was. Any time she pleaded to be released, he would just say her time was coming.
Only now was she wondering if that meant she was to be released from life into death.
And she cried all that much harder.
Chapter 22
Today was the day. Cayce’s big installation would be open for public viewing. Cayce was up early—six in the morning—and still no further progress had been made on Elena’s case. Thankfully no more deaths either. She and Richard had shared every nonworking moment together, and it already had become something so comfortable that having a hug from him was like being wrapped up in her favorite blanket. Cozy and cuddly. And she didn’t want to let go of it.
They had breakfast together most days and dinner sometimes too. He’d been called out for other cases, and she found herself worrying that it could be something connected to her nightmare, but he’d always come back with a smile and a shake of his head before crawling into bed with her. That little indication did a lot to stop her worries. And still their relationship was platonic.
She smiled as she remembered the long hard ridge that had been pressed up against her this morning when she woke up. She’d seriously wondered about pushing it further here.
He leaned over, kissed her on the neck, and said, “Dammit. I really want to be here.”
She rolled over, pulled him toward her, and had kissed him with all the passion that she’d kept bottled up.
When he lifted his head, his voice was thick and raspy. “You’re packing a heavy punch, sweetheart. But I’m late for work, and I can’t be late today.”
She chuckled and said, “Well, save that thought.”
He’d leaned over, kissed her hard, and raced to get a shower.
She stretched, loving the sexy and invigorating feeling of knowing that a man truly cared for her and was really interested in her. It seemed like it had been a long time coming. For many, many years she had had nothing to do with men at all. But Elena had helped Cayce adapt afterward too. She surely didn’t want what was going on here with Richard to have anything to do with her abusive fiancé, which always reminded Cayce of the abuse her stepfather had dished out to her mom too.
Richard was nothing like those two sorry excuses for men.
And such comparisons would bring up all kinds of stuff that she had wanted to keep hidden. Her mind made the leap, now wondering if Richard had found the other two people in Elena’s will.
When he came out to dress, his clothes now hanging in her closet, she pushed herself up into a sitting position, leaning against the headboard. “Did you track down the other two people in Elena’s will?”
He shot her a glance and said, “One of them but unfortunately also deceased.”
“Isn’t that a lot of deaths?”
“Three were pretty straightforward, a bad car accident and cancer,” he said. “The last one was a drug overdose.”
“Oh. That would be Kiddy,” she said. “That likely leaves only Kenneth.”
Richard looked at her in surprise. “You knew Kiddy?”
She nodded. “Kiddy was a childhood friend. Elena had said that, if she could
