The Fidelity Files (Jennifer Hunter #1)(62)

That is... until I saw what was now on my computer screen.

And suddenly I understood.

I let out a loud, pained gasp. My eyes widened as far as my half-awake eyelids would allow them. I simply couldn't believe what I was seeing.

John watched me, his eyes, his hands, every part of his body asking for an explanation... no, demanding one.

I ignored him, staring blankly at the screen. Studying it. My whole body seemed to go into shock. "Where did you find this?" My voice was shaking.

"What does it matter where I found it, Jen? What the f*ck does it mean?"

I scratched my head as my natural instinct kicked in. Find the lie. Find the diversion. Think of a simple explanation and then build a story around it.

But my mind was blank. There was no explanation. There was no lie. And that was all there was to it.

John studied me as I continued to stare at the screen, completely speechless.

Staring back at me... was me.

There were at least half a dozen pictures of me, all taken in random places around my neighborhood. There was one of me picking up dry cleaning, putting gas in my car, driving, eating lunch, coming home from a Pilates class. There was even one of me walking down the street, sipping a latte from Coffee Bean. And the one thing that all of them had in common: They were all taken without my knowledge and, more important, without my consent. Which is pretty obvious from the fact that I'm not even looking into the camera. They almost reminded me of those candid pictures you see in Us Weekly magazine. The kind the paparazzi are paid thousands of dollars for. There's always a caption underneath saying something about how celebrities are just like normal people because they pick up their own dry cleaning or because they drink coffee while they walk...obviously implying that the American public thinks celebrities incapable of walking and drinking at the same time.

But that wasn't the caption for any of these pictures. The Web site wasn't focused on the fact that I was skillfully walking and consuming a hot beverage simultaneously. In fact, it wasn't focused on anything I was doing while the pictures were being taken. But clearly something I had done before the pictures were taken.

Think this woman is hot? Beware!

She goes by the name of Ashlyn, and if she tries to seduce you,

she was probably hired by your wife.

Don't let what happened to me happen to you!

Panic-filled questions raced through my mind. The most imminent being: How did they find me? How did they know where I would be?

The chance that a former assignment had just happened to be there when I was getting coffee and filling up my car with gas and eating lunch and coming home from Pilates, and then just happened to have, from the looks of it, a very professional camera on him every single time seemed ludicrous and out of the question.

No. This person clearly knew where I lived. They had followed me...on more than one occasion. But how? I was always so careful to cover my tracks to diminish the chances of this very thing ever happening. If they had followed me home one day, I would have noticed. Especially with the insanely indirect route I made a habit of taking.

Unless a client gave me up, in a moment of weakness. A desperate attempt at last-minute reconciliation, perhaps. But even they didn't know where I lived. Or my real name to use to track down my address.

Was it possible that I had slipped up somewhere? Used a credit card where I should have paid cash? Drove directly home instead of making my usual six turns? Signed my real name on a hotel room receipt?

I took a deep breath and looked at John. "Listen," I said sternly, "I need to know where you found this."

He could sense the urgency in my voice. He looked from me to the screen and the familiar face in the pictures that was suddenly no longer familiar to him. "The link came in an e-mail forward from a friend."

My eyes widened again, certain I had misheard him. "An e-mail forward?"

John nodded solemnly.

"Because your friend knew that you knew me?"

He shook his head. "No...." He hesitated. "Because he thought it was amusing."

Amusing. The word stung me. My professional career – amusing. My life's work. My mission. My only quest and purpose on this planet was considered... amusing.

"So like, one of those forwards that you pass along to your friends and somehow it manages to circle the globe in a matter of days?"

He nodded again and I felt the room start to spin. I steadied myself on the desk.

"How did anyone even get those pictures?"

"Oh, they have people you can hire for that sort of thing, darling," John explained. "Spy photographers or some shit like that."

My arm gave out from underneath me and I fell helplessly back into my leather desk chair. I held my head in my hands. John knelt down on the floor beside my feet and stroked my head. He still didn't know what to make of any of this. But he did know one thing: It certainly wasn't amusing to me.

"But these pictures were almost all taken on different days. I remember each and every one of these outfits I'm wearing. For instance," I said, pointing at the screen to the picture of me filling up my gas tank at the 76 station down the street in a pair of jeans, a pink-and-cream-colored camisole and a dark gray sweater. "I wore that to a poker lesson I had last Thursday. That means that the photographer has been following me for the last week! It's creepy!"

John nodded sympathetically.