"The nurse got all hot and bothered for him, which was disturbing enough, and when she turned her back, he switched it off again.
"Toad is smiling in his DMVphoto, but his eyes are empty, just like the ones in the sketch.”
Nasa thought hard about what Dillon was saying, about Ghost's voice. About his eyes. He'd run facial recognition software the second he had faces to compare, and while the match was always within ninety-six percent, the four percent that didn't match was in the eyes.
Not a huge discrepancy, not something experts would necessarily go after as proof if the rest of the face matched up because people wore contacts or glasses that could distort the shape of the eyeball in a photo. However, there was one thing contacts couldn't cover up.
Nasa touched a kiss to the edge of Dillon's jaw, keeping his cheek pressed to hers. “I think you may have just blown the lid off something really fucking important. Will you come downstairs with me?”
“Mmhm.”
Truly, he felt torn between lingering in this moment of comfort between them or going down to his information highway to prove the theory Dillon had just sparked in him. But the sooner he got it done, the sooner she might be able to sleep in peace.
Nasa got up, gently lowering her feet to the ground even as he kept her close. She tilted her head back when he gently tugged on her hair, her eyes glinting in the low light, just like tiger eyes.
“Thank you.”
A few lines puckered between her brows as she frowned at him in confusion. “For what?”
“For trusting me. For telling me what's been scaring you. For letting me hold you. It's been pissing me off, not knowing how to help you or what it is that's keeping you up.”
Her lashes fluttered in surprise, her cheeks washed a warm pink, and her frown disappeared in the blink of an eye. “I should be thanking you. You're the one who came for me.”
“I'll always come for you,” Nasa promised and bent to press a kiss to her forehead, feeling Dillon go soft in his embrace. “Let's go downstairs, okay?”
“Okay.”
*****
“I'm still impressed that you've got twelve screens going all at once.” Dillon dipped her chin to look over her shoulder at him, and Nasa fervently hoped his security cameras caught that look because he had plans to take a still shot and frame it later.
“It's technically all one computer, but I run so much data one screen just won't cut it.”
Nasa leaned forward with his arms around her, feeling the shudder that wracked her in response to the kiss he dropped on her throat.
Because he could, he scraped his teeth across her pounding pulse just to hear her soft gasp.
“So, um, what are we looking for?” she stammered a bit breathlessly. “You said something about me blowing the lid off an important clue?”
“Yeah. I think Ghost is the Dread Pirate Roberts.”
Dillon didn't say anything for a second, then turned to look over her shoulder at him. “Come again?”
“You’ve never seen Princess Bride?”
“Of course, I'm just shocked that you have,” she told him in disbelief.
“I'm not a complete heathen.” Nasa grunted, giving her a quick kiss. “I've run all the images we have of Ghost through facial recognition more than once, and the matches were always within a ninety-four to ninety-six percent. After what you said about the eyes, I think I may have been wrong in accepting that as good enough.”
His heart pounding with adrenaline, Nasa pulled the photos up and put them through the recognition software, focusing on one specific measurement.
“Even if Ghost had reconstructive surgery, even if he wore a wig or prosthetics—which have always seemed far too fallible if you ask me, especially in the heat of the summer around here—there's one thing you can't change: pupil distance.”
Dillon murmured a sound of amazement, her thighs tensing on his as the program spit out the results to say there was no match. Zero percent.
“I can't fuckin believe I didn't do this before,” he swore angrily, mentally kicking himself in the ass.
"Granted, it's not concrete evidence, but it's a start. If we had profile shots, comparing the shape of the ears is also another way to confirm. You can add and subtract a lot with plastic surgery, but the ears are usually left unaltered.”
“That's amazing!” Dillon told him with a laugh. “But how does this blow the lid off anything?”
That was the million-dollar question, wasn't it?
“Andrew Stanfield was the Leviathans’ original wet work guy, but according to what we were told by a few of the gang members we interrogated, no one ever actually saw Stanfield.
“He only spoke to the Leviathans’ President, Wexler, who's now in federal lock up after Perdition helped the DEA put him and a bunch of his guys away.
"It stands to reason, the person I interviewed as Toad took Stanfield's place and took the title of Ghost.
“While he was here pretending to be one of us, the new Ghost might have been consolidating his power and making a move against the Leviathans, without the risk of Wexler recognizing he wasn't the original Ghost.
“It would explain why Toad was here with us for an entire year without doing anything to hurt us, why he helped us take down Leviathan supply lines, why he killed the twelve guys in lock up, and why he gift-wrapped the female recruiters the Leviathans use to kidnap kids off the street.”
“So Stanfield was Ghost, and Toad was Ghost, but Stanfield and Toad are two different guys. How do you prove it?” Dillon asked, a heady note of excitement in her voice.
“I’m not sure yet, but I’m going to start by going over the jobs Toad worked as a PI.”
Nasa had already combed through all the case files for any signs that he was meeting with the Leviathans and came up with nothing, and no murders had stood out as unusual cases
