Why the fuck would I do that? Seriously. So we can trade places? So I can spend the rest of my life searching for the children who were stolen from me?
And what are the chances this guy is even telling the truth?
No. It’s far more likely that Father Freak is full of shit. Everyone knows JD’s kid is gone. He talked about it for years. This asshole wandered in to something, put two and two together, and then made his move to get me involved in his procreation fetish.
I’m not buying it. He yanked my chain pretty hard upstairs, but the longer I think about it, the less likely it seems.
It’s bullshit, Ark, my inner voice says. Stay the course.
I came to Denver for a reason, and this asshole is not going to derail me now.
I can’t believe they’d leave me alone in here. If it wasn’t so stupid, it might be cute. I mean, I just confessed to Ark that I’m a reporter and everything about that guy says newsworthy secrets.
After waiting thirty minutes—just enough time to be sure they won’t come back and check up on me—I head straight to his unlocked office. The first thing I see is the garment bag, still hanging on his suit rack. Zipped and unused. God, it feels like a lifetime ago that he bought me that outfit with the intention of taking me on a date.
I walk over to it and feel the bag. It’s not some cheap plastic, it’s more like the kind of bag you’d use over and over again. It’s got some boutique store name on it that I’ve never heard of, so it must be local.
He’s got a suit coat hanging behind the garment bag and a few of those blue ties dangling down as well. I’ve never seen him wear a proper suit, so I stop and picture it for a second.
Ark is fucking hot.
JD is hot too, but in a dangerous way, like he used to be the all-American hero, but then life shit on him and now he’s irreversibly damaged. The hot you feel between your legs when those blue eyes stare at you and you can’t look away. The hot that sends a chill up your spine when he takes off his shirt and those muscles ripple and stretch because they say, I’ll leave bruises before I’m done, so make sure you know what you’re getting into. The hot you desire, because he’s so full of testosterone, everything about him screams lust.
Ark is hot in a very different way. Like he’s got all these compartments and he only lets you open one of them at a time. But you know, if you could just open two or three at once, you’d find something amazing. He’s the kind of hot that only comes in movies filmed in the dead of winter when everything is cold. Where the government is corrupt, the city is dirty, the characters shady, and the sex is nothing but a way to forget the fucked-upness of life.
Both of them come with warning signs, and if I was smart, I’d get the hell away from them before the shit gets complicated.
But I can’t. For so many reasons, I can’t.
I owe Janine. If she’s dead like Ark says JD’s girl is, then I need to know. Her story needs to be told. And if her baby is alive, then that baby needs to come home. That baby deserves to know who her family is. Needs to know that once upon a time her mother was so much more than what she ended up being.
I owe her.
I sit down at Ark’s desk and shake the mouse so the monitor comes on. And nope. Not locked. Which, if I was a suspicious bitch, I’d take as a signal that he knows I’m going to snoop tonight and there won’t be a single file on here with anything useful.
When the desktop comes up, there are only three file folders to choose from. One is called In progress. One is called Completed. And one is called Blue.
The satisfaction that I get from having him figured out evaporates when I double-click the file and images come up in a cascade of windows.
What the fuck is this?
I really expected a note. Hey, Blue, I got your number, you snoopy bitch. I’m normal, JD is normal. Now be a good girl and open your legs and wait for us on the bed.
That note is not a bad way to go. I’m just saying.
But that’s not what this is at all. These are the photos he was looking at the other day when I was in here. Beautiful, retouched photos. Black and white artsy photos that have the lights and shadows manipulated in such a way that you only see what he wants you to see.
And they are not just of me, but all three of us. Dozens and dozens of them in the tub. Ark on one side, JD, with me in his arms on the other. The steam from the hot water obscuring our faces, but not the intentions of the people.
Most of them are blurry, because he was using a long exposure time to capture the light bouncing off the mist in the air, and we were moving around. But there are enough in focus to fall in love with this newly discovered artist side of the strait-laced wannabe.
“Goddamn,” I whisper. “Could you be any more perfect?”
There are also several videos of that scene out on the terrace where they both had their fingers inside of me.
Those make me wet. No. Those make me throb.
I wonder how far Ark wants to take this threesome stuff. He doesn’t act bisexual at all. JD I can see. He seems more open.
Maybe because he’s a porn star, stupid.
Right.
I close all the windows and open up the other folder called In progress. This one has two movies with last Sunday’s date. The day JD brought me home. The day he made these movies with us in the tub.
My jealousy kicks in because these movies are of a girl sucking off Ark, not JD.
Asshole.
Why this ticks me off, I’m not sure. But it does. I open the attached documents to see if I can find out who she is, and there is one contract and the sum she was paid. Ten thousand dollars.
Jesus Christ. If I had an ID I could make one movie and go home.
No, my mind interrupts. I can’t go home until I find Janine and write this story.