She shook her head as he indicated a black SUV parked in front. “No, must be a guest of one of the neighbors’, because it doesn’t belong to Tommy or Tommy’s boyfriend. There’s rarely any on-street parking around here—at night, anyway—so people park wherever they can, and if they don’t get up and go to work, their car can sit around all day.”
“Does Ethan use the garage?” Dallas checked his watch. “It’s nearly three. He should be off work. Do you think he’s home?”
“He’s got to be off by now, but he doesn’t park in the garage. It’s filled with his mother’s storage. If he was home, his car would be in the drive.”
“Why does he have his mother’s storage in his garage?” Dallas asked.
“She downsized when she moved to San Diego, doesn’t have a big place. She’s planning to come back for it eventually, but who knows when that will be. He’s a Mama’s boy. In her eyes, he can do no wrong, and he adores her for it.”
“We’re lucky his garage is full,” he mused. “Now we’ll know when he’s home and when he isn’t. What does he drive?”
“A brand-new white Audi A4.”
Dallas brought his van to a sudden stop. “Are you serious? He’s living in this house with a roommate while driving a car that’s almost forty grand?”
She rolled her eyes. “I know. I was with him when he bought it. He spent way more than he should have. He always spends his money before he gets it. But his mother gave him the down payment, so that helped. It’s important to Ethan to keep up appearances, and more people see his car than his house.”
“What a pretentious fool.” Giving the van some gas, he went around the corner and weaved back through the neighborhood. He wanted to get a feel for the layout of the streets in case he had to drive off without warning. He didn’t trust Ethan. If Ethan figured out what they were doing and got angry, Dallas would have to protect Emery, not only himself. He figured he’d better be prepared. He didn’t know if Ethan owned a gun or some other weapon, and after what he’d been through with his father, no one was going to be harmed on his watch.
Once he felt comfortable, he cruised down Ethan’s street again and was lucky enough to find a spot to park where they could see the house but didn’t feel they were too conspicuous.
“So now we wait?” she asked when he turned off the engine.
He adjusted his seat so that it wasn’t as close to the steering wheel. “Now we wait. Hopefully, Tommy will show up instead of Ethan, and we will have the chance to approach him.”
“That would be awesome.” She looked at her phone again. “I still haven’t received a response on Facebook, and even though I left my number for Thiago to give him, Tommy hasn’t called.”
“I haven’t given up hope that he will. In the meantime, we’ll do what we can.”
Her face looked pinched, nervous, as she studied the house.
“How long were you and Ethan together?” Dallas asked.
“We started dating about ten months ago. He tried asking me out before that, but I didn’t want to get involved with anyone at work. I’d signed that agreement and meant to honor it.”
“Were you ever in love with him?”
She took a few seconds to consider the question. “I thought I was. I was in love with his potential—but the man he is on the inside doesn’t match the handsome package. I finally had to admit the truth and quit making excuses for him. Whenever he’d be a jerk and we’d argue, he’d blame me for setting him off. It took me a while to realize he was manipulating me, making me feel responsible for his own bad behavior.”
Dallas shifted to get more comfortable. “I looked up revenge porn on the internet while you were in your interview at the coffee shop.”
“And? What’d you learn?”
“That posting a digital image in an attempt to harass someone is a crime.”
She leaned back and put her feet up on the dash. “Revenge porn is called cyber-exploitation. It’s a form of nonconsensual pornography, and it’s illegal in California, but the penalties aren’t very big. And proving what Ethan did was a willful act meant to cause me injury isn’t that easy.”
“How could anyone argue that it wasn’t a willful act meant to cause you injury? You lost your job because of it.”
“But if push comes to shove, he could claim consent—that I knew about the recording and gave my permission for him to do whatever he wanted with it.”
“What woman would give permission for something like that?”
“Someone who wanted the attention. Someone who thought that being in the spotlight might bring future opportunity. Someone like a news anchor who was just a little too eager to ‘make it.’”
Dallas felt his eyebrows jerk together. “Can he change his story after the fact? He’s claiming he didn’t put it up in the first place, not that you gave consent.”
“Because he doesn’t know the defenses that are open to him yet. It’s possible, if he gets the right attorney, they might go that way.”
“I’m pretty sure if the police confiscated his computer, they could prove it came from his IP address.”
“If only they would expend the time and resources.”
“If he was smart, he’d get rid of it right away, just in case. Maybe he already has. That would be a small price to pay to maintain his innocence.”
“It’s possible he didn’t use his computer. If he knew it was a crime, he might’ve been careful enough to use Tommy’s. Regardless, the police are so busy working on
