The Obsession

She had a home, and in it, she’d watch summer roll in, then feel the change in the air, then the light change as fall painted the world. She’d have fires lit when winter blew, and be there, just be there when spring bloomed again.

She had a home, she thought again as she added the last of the new stock to her page. She had friends, good friends. She had a man she . . . All right, maybe she wasn’t entirely ready for what she felt for Xander, but she could be ready to see what happened tomorrow, or next week or— Maybe a week at a time was all she could be ready for in that department.

But it was a hell of an improvement.

Most of all, she was ready to be happy—all the way happy. To hold on to what she had, what she was building for herself.

Now it was time—past time, she realized as she noted the time on her computer—to go down and put a meal together.

She took the back stairs, reminding herself to hit her list and pick out the lighting for that area, and, singing the Katy Perry that had been in her earbuds when she’d shut down, she all but danced into the kitchen.

To find Mason at the counter, laptop open, maps spread out, coffee steaming, a couple of legal pads scattered among the work debris.

“Hey. I thought you were working outside in the sunshine.”

“I needed more room.”

“I see that. No problem. I have enough room here for the shrimp farfalle I have in mind.”

“I asked Xander to pick up pizza. He’s on his way.”

“Oh.” Already in the fridge, she paused, glanced back. “That’s fine, if you’re in a pizza mood, and saves me the trouble.”

Closing the fridge, she switched modes, decided they could eat on the deck. “Where’s the dog?”

“He wanted out. Everyone’s gone for the day.”

“So I see—or rather hear. I worked later than I’d planned. You have to see my studio space.” The thrill of it bubbled through her. “It’s finished, and it’s awesome. I’m going ahead with that darkroom space—in the basement. I don’t do film that often, and Kevin said the plumbing would be easy down there. So it would be really quiet, out of the way, and make use of some of that space.”

She turned, found him watching her quietly. “And I’m babbling while you’re working. Why don’t I take this outside, let you finish up in peace?”

“Why don’t you sit down? I need to talk to you about something.”

“Sure. Is everything all right? Of course everything’s not all right,” she said, shut her eyes for a minute. “I’ve been so caught up in my own space, my own work, I forgot about Donna and Marla. Forgot about your work.”

She sat at the counter with him. “It didn’t seem real for a little while. Donna’s funeral’s the day after tomorrow, and Xander . . . It’s the second funeral since I’ve been here, the second terrible funeral.”

“I know. Naomi—”

He broke off as the dog raced in from the front, danced in place, raced back again.

“That would be Xander and pizza,” Naomi said, started to rise.

“Just sit.”

“You found something.” She put a hand on his arm, squeezed. “Something about the murders.”

She swiveled in the stool when Xander came in, tossed the pizza box on the counter by the cooktop.

“What do you know?”

“Let me start with this. Naomi, this is the picture you took in the forest just west of here. This nurse log.”

She frowned at the image he brought up on his computer. “That’s right. Why did you download it?”

“Because this is one I took yesterday, when Donna’s body was discovered.” Carefully cropped, he thought, as he toggled to it. “It’s the same log.”

“All right, yes.”

“Donna’s body was dumped just off the track, beside this log. It’s an eight-minute trek into the woods—and that’s without carrying a hundred and fifty pounds. It bothered me right off. Why take her in that far? You want her to be found, why take her so far in—put in that time, that effort? Why that spot?”

“I don’t know, Mason. Wanting a little more time before she was found?”

“No point to it. But this place, right here.” He tapped the screen. “It has a point. You’ve had that photo on your site a couple of weeks.”

The chill skipped along her skin. “If you’ve got some wild idea he . . . this photo inspired him or factored into where he left her, it doesn’t make sense. For one thing, I’ve got a dozen photos up I took in that area.”

“He had to pick one.” Face grim, Xander studied the images.

“It’s just a weird coincidence,” Naomi insisted. “Disturbing, but a coincidence. I barely knew either of the victims. I’ve only been in this area since March.”

Saying nothing, Mason brought up another photo—one she’d taken of the bluff—then brought up another side by side. “Yours, and the crime scene shot. Up on your site, Naomi, for a couple months.”

And that chill seeped in, dug into her bones.

“Why would anyone use my photos to choose where they left a body? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t.”

“Stop it.” Clamping a hand on her shoulder, Xander spoke sharply. “Stop it and breathe.”

Annoyance at the tone shoved the weight off her chest. “It doesn’t make any goddamn sense.”

“And doing what he did to Marla and Donna does?”

“No, no, but that’s—that’s a pathology, right?” She appealed to Mason. “I know enough about what you do to understand that. But I don’t understand how you could take these pictures and begin to think this killer is, what, a fan of my work?”

“It’s more.”

Xander had both hands on her shoulders now, and though they kneaded at the tensed muscles, she understood that another purpose was to keep her in place.

“What’s more?”

Mason took her hand a moment, squeezed it, then brought up another image. “You took this shot in Death Valley in February. I had the locals send me the shots from the body dump.”

He brought it up, heard her breath shudder out. “The victim was midtwenties, white, blonde, lived and worked in Vegas. High-risk vic—stripper, junkie, hooker. It didn’t pop on Winston’s like-crimes search because the locals charged her pimp—who’d been known to tune up his girls—with the crime.

“In January, you took this in Kansas—Melvern Lake. The body of a sixty-eight-year-old female was left here.” Again, he brought up the matching shot. “She lived alone, and as her house had been broken into, things taken, they put it down to robbery gone south.”

“But it was the same,” Naomi said quietly. “What was done to her, the same.”

“There’s a pattern. You flew home for Christmas.”

“Yes. I left my car at the airport. I didn’t want to drive that far for the week I’d be home.”

“A shot you took in Battery Park, and the corresponding crime scene photo. Another high-risk vic. Working girl, junkie, early midtwenties. Blonde.”

“Donna wasn’t blonde. And the older woman—”

“Donna wasn’t his first choice. Neither was the older woman. It’s a pattern, Naomi.”

The cold, a jagged ball of ice, settled in her belly. “He’s using my work.”

“There are more.”

“How many more?”

“Four more I can connect through the photos. Then there are the missings, missing from areas I’ve been able to track you to through the photos. I need the dates—the dates and locations for the last two years. You keep track.”

“Yes. I don’t blog about a place until I’ve left it—I’m careful. But I keep a log of where I was, what date I took what shots. On my computer.”

“I need you to send them to me. If you’ve kept a log further back, I want that, too.”

She focused on Xander’s hands, hands warm and firm on her shoulders. “I have a log from when I left New York, from when I left six years ago. I have everything.”

“I want everything. I’m sorry, Naomi.”

“He didn’t just stumble onto my site and decide to use my photos. He’s following me, either literally or through my blog, or my photos. How far back have you gone?”

“Those two years so far.”

“And you think it’s longer.”

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