“You mean that bitch fired her even though she ultimately got what she wanted?”
Demi’s expression shifts a little. I wouldn’t say she looks angry, but she does look a little upset. “No. Ashlyn quit before giving Deborah what she wanted.”
“What?” I ask. Because I don’t know what else to say.
Demi nods before clicking her tongue. “You know what? I’ll leave you and Bentley to your shopping,” she says, planting a kiss on the top of Bentley’s head. Then she looks up at me. “Talk to her.”
* * *
After we get home, I feed and bathe Bentley and put him to bed. Then I grab my laptop and sit on the couch. For a second, I just sit there because I am still in shock.
Ashlyn quit her job. She quit before the photos were published.
“She didn’t take the photos,” I say out loud before wiping my hand down over my face. Then I stop.
Okay. So if she didn’t take them, then who did?
I open my laptop and start digging. I look at all the photos that were taken the night I first slept with her. They’re not terrible. The person knows how to take photos, but they’re blurry and low quality. It looks like the work of a fan or a stalker, not a photographer. Just someone who can’t afford a decent camera.
Then I look at the recent photos. High quality. A better camera. Other than the sex photo, they’re all taken from another room. Like me getting out of the shower. There’s enough steam in the room to blur things. But they’re taken through a cracked door.
Same with the gym photos and sleeping photos. All the angles suggest the photographer was hiding.
They’re all so invasive. So private. Especially the one of me sleeping. I mean, it’s one thing to take photos when I’m naked, but it’s another to take photos of me asleep. Guard down. Unaware.
Then I stop.
I zoom in on the photo where I’m sleeping.
The angle is obvious that the person was standing in the doorway. It’s been filtered to black and white. My chest is exposed, and I am fast asleep. But I’m not the only one. On the other side of me, slightly blurred out on purpose, is the soft silhouette of Ashlyn laying on her side, facing away from me. It’s so shadowed that if you weren’t looking for it, you wouldn’t see it. And considering most people are probably looking at my abs. I don’t say that to be vain. It’s just the audience.
But the point is, if she is laying there, dead asleep, there’s no way she could have taken the photos. And considering this particular photo, I don’t believe she hired someone to do it either. I don’t think she had anything to do with it.
I set my laptop aside and grab my phone, going to the security app. I go through the footage from the three remaining cameras from the night Bentley was dropped off as well as the night I met Ashlyn. I can’t find much, but there is one thing.
In the footage from when Bentley was dropped off, in the dark distance there is enough movement to confirm he was dropped off by a woman on foot. A little zooming in confirms that it was, in fact, Nikki. Not that I didn’t already know that. I’d know her frame anywhere. She made the mistake of wearing shorts, not pants, and the tiny butterfly tattoo she has on the back of her ankle is visible.
I switch to the footage of the hot tub crashing night, because that was before I took down most of my cameras. If there was movement that night, it would make sense that I wasn’t alerted. There was a lot of movement that night, thanks to Ashlyn. I skim through it, one minute at a time, one camera at a time until I see it.
The photographer wasn’t just taking photos outside. They were in the hallway. I know this because there is a mirror in the hallway and a mirror in the room we were having sex in. Both mirrors reflect each other and show a camera, though it’s too dark to make out the person.
“Alright,” I say, skipping ahead. I switch to one of the property cameras and sure enough, there is someone leaving the property. Someone who has a butterfly tattoo on their ankle, I recognize.
“Holy shit…”
Chapter 41
Ashlyn
“Areyou sure you don’t want to go home?” Hannah asks. “Becca will totally cover for you.”
“I will,” Becca nods.
But I shake my head. “No. We have a full house of kids today. And it’s craft day. Craft day is chaos,” I tell them.
“Craft day is fun!” a little girl named Lila runs by with two handfuls of glitter that she got from God knows where and throws it everywhere.
“Yeah. Fun,” Hannah says with a smile and wide eyes that might be sarcasm and might not.
