Tempted & Taken (Men of Haven #4)(5)
Yep, one look at that bed and every predisposed notion he’d had of his mystery skip tracer got turned on its head. No way did the woman who slept in that bed match either of the pictures he’d seen online. It was pure sex. A refuge you slipped into with a long list of decadent intent and didn’t roll out of for hours later.
Fuck, who was this woman?
He made quick work of her dresser, carefully checking the contents of each drawer for any stashed information or clues he could leverage. Like everything else in her place, the clothes he found were good quality, but a little shabby. As if she’d bought well to start with and hung on to them a long time, or got them secondhand to start with. Except the bras, panties and silk nighties. Those were still in great shape and covered every sinful hue imaginable.
The closet was more of the same. Nothing stashed away in boxes but the shoes that belonged there. No pictures. No notes. No nothing. Hell, now that he thought about it, he hadn’t seen one damned picture in the whole damned place. Chicks loved pictures. All JJ had were an abundance of wolves and an apparent appreciation for quality merchandise. So, where would a woman with an appreciation for tidiness keep her secrets?
Under the bed.
Grinning, he set his backpack full of tricks on the floor, kneeled beside the sex-o-topia she’d created and tugged up the dust ruffle.
Bingo.
He slid out the two-by-two black plastic tub, making note of exactly how she’d had it positioned as he did so, and popped open the lid.
His chuckle filled the room’s silence, a mix of chagrin and pure delight moving through him. Not exactly the secret he’d been after, but one he couldn’t help appreciating. Arranged on a black velvet cushion was a thick black dildo, a pink finger vibe and a slender violet butt plug.
Oh, yeah. The bed and sexy underwear weren’t a mistake. Whoever JJ was, she had a naughty side. Curious, he plucked a thin box from one corner of the plastic tub and thumbed open the lid.
A simple chrome four-by-six frame sat perfectly nestled inside, the picture inside it drawing his focus to a laser point. Two women stood beside the Dodge Challenger JJ had driven off in this morning, their arms around each other and smiling huge for the camera. Whoever had taken the picture was far enough away to get the whole car in the shot, making details of the women too obscure, but there was no mistaking who they were. One was the woman he’d seen leave the apartment this morning—the same blonde currently reflected on passport and driver’s license records for one Jeannie “JJ” Simpson. But the other was the early-thirtyish strawberry blonde he’d found on older online records buried in obscure but now dead social and professional sites.
A random mix up of identities online he could buy. In today’s technologically centered world, it happened. But the same two women arm-in-arm claiming to be the same person? Hell, no. The whole thing reeked of identity theft, if not something worse.
He snapped a picture of the photo with his phone, tucked everything back up the way he’d found it and headed to the computer. That had to be where the real info was. Hoping for no password and an easy in, he powered up her PC.
No dice.
Powering it back down, he pulled out his laptop, disassembled her hard drive and connected it to his serial ATA. Five minutes later—voilà. No password required.
He scanned her hard drive first. No hidden partitions. No special settings in her BIOS. No locks to prevent or slow unauthorized access, so probably not doing any hacking on the side. He checked her router’s default DNS servers and set them to those at his office so he could monitor future traffic.
Satisfied he had the basics in place, he turned his attention to her search history. Lots of shopping, no social media outside of Pinterest—which had no user picture associated—and some heavy traffic on search sites for skip tracing work. Otherwise, her online presence over the last thirty days was pretty dull.
He opened her file browser. Like her house, it was well organized and easy to follow. Finances were tucked away in one spot, her last few tax returns showing a healthy savings despite a somewhat meager income, which definitely pointed to those clothes and shoes being secondhand. In another folder were her subcategories for each of the companies she provided services for. In another were recipes, most of the selections having a Slavic tilt. At the very bottom was a folder labeled Future.
He clicked on it, expanding the folder and a short list of no more than ten saved articles off the web. His phone vibrated in his back pocket as he opened the first, and an ominous buzz shot across his shoulders. The article was from an entertainment feature Viv had scored from this year’s fund-raiser for Catherine’s Kids, a biker rally where motorcycle enthusiasts from Texas and surrounding states pulled together to finance summer art programs for disadvantaged and financially strapped kids. The picture at the top of the article featured him and the rest of his brothers in a semi-candid moment centered around his and Jace’s bikes. The shot was great. He’d actually saved it himself when the story had been posted, but seeing it on JJ’s computer slaughtered his hopes of JJ being on the up and up.
The vibration from his phone kicked in again.
Knox checked the caller ID, slid the answer button and tucked it between his ear and shoulder. “I take it JJ’s Monday morning excursion is no longer a mystery?”
“Nope,” Beckett said. “Not anymore.”
Clicking on the next article, Knox asked, “Anything interesting?”