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He gathers himself and turns away from me. He knows he doesn’t have to touch me to hurt me. And thankfully, his threat dies there as he notes the cameras all around this place. The central square guys don’t fuck around when it comes to security. Or their families.
He gathers himself, his swagger returning. “See you around, Katy. Sorry I had to be the one to ruin your day, but sometimes evils are necessary.” He chuckles at that, thinking he’s so very funny.
Cayden saunters like a prideful alley cat toward the exit, and the moment he’s gone, the door slamming shut behind him, I collapse to the floor. Air tumbles past my lungs only to rush back in. Thank God he left. Thank God, he didn’t touch me.
My gaze drops to the images spread out before me. The cold stone beneath my ass stiffens my muscles to the point of rigor. The pages shuffle through my hands one after the other in an endless cycle as I search for something—one fucking thing—that will tell me these are bullshit.
Only I can’t see beyond Bennett on top of this woman.
Leaving them where they are, I dive into the pool, starting my laps at a brutal pace. My mind swirls and tears threaten, but I can’t reconcile what I know of Bennett to those pictures. I need to call him. I need to speak with him and face this head-on. I finish my lap and pull myself up and out of the water, go for my towel, and wrap it around me. The photos are on the ground beside my phone, and as I reach for it, something in one of the images catches my attention.
It's night in the photo. As in, the crack of an open shade reveals a dark window beyond. I was home by the time it was dark out, and he was there making dinner. Lifting the picture, I examine it. I realize it’s not a full time stamp, just a date, but no actual time. I spread out the images one by one and scrutinize each one carefully.
His hands holding hers are weird. It’s so subtle that if you didn’t look closely, you might not see it. But her fingers look almost cut off and misaligned with his.
Interesting. Hope starts to shake in my chest like an earthquake, but I’m not yet ready to scream hallelujah. I need a few more details first.
I don’t call Bennett. Not yet. Instead, I make a totally different type of call.
Vander’s gravelly voice crackles through my ear. “Kit-Kat?”
I fold my legs, still wrapped in my towel. “How easy is it to alter pictures?”
“Depends,” he says. “What do you mean by alter?”
“Remove a person and replace their body with someone else’s.”
“To make it look authentic, that can be pretty difficult unless the person who is doing this reenacts the original image precisely, but far from impossible if someone has the right software.”
“These aren’t even the actual photographs. They’re photocopies of photographs.”
“Even easier,” he says. “You can alter an image and print it out to look like a photo. But again, the person doing all of this would have to make the body swap almost identical to the original. What’s going on?”
A weird, demented, almost psychotically giddy laugh chokes out of me and now the tears do start coming. “I need a favor. It’s a big one.”
“Anything. You know that.”
“It’s asking you to do something you shouldn’t.”
“Just tell me, Kit-Kat, and I’ll do it. Let me worry about the rest.”
God, I love my family. “I need you to run absolutely everything on a Cayden Craw. I want you to go as deep and dark and dirty as you can. I don’t care how you do it, and I won’t ever ask. I want every speck of dirt on the motherfucker you can find. He’s made what I think are bullshit photos of Bennett with another woman to hurt me. More than that, he threatened me, Van. He said he’s been following me and if I hadn’t pointed out the security cameras in the corner…” I trail off on a heavy gulp.
Vander is silent for a very long moment, and I fling my legs out in front of me, folding myself in half and pressing my forehead to my knees. I hate putting Vander in this position. His father never intended to teach him how to hack, but that didn’t last long. But when Vander got arrested in college during a hacking war with another top school, Lenox made him swear he’d stop. To Vander, that meant only doing clean hacks, and this is anything but.
“Can you just do this for me, Van? I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need it. I need to find a reason to get rid of this guy once and for all. I’ll go to the police regardless, but I want more than just a threat to get him by. But if it’s too risky?—”
The door to the pool area opens again and Bennett comes walking in, searching around for me, and when he sees me sitting on the ground, bent in half with the phone pressed to my ear and the pictures surrounding me, his expression crumples, all the color draining from his face, and his expression growing desperate.
“Katy, those aren’t real,” he says, running over to me and collapsing on his knees beside me. He takes my arm, squeezing it, almost as if he’s afraid I’m going to shirk him off or run. “You have to listen to me,” he implores, his voice shaky and his speech rapid. “Please hear my words. I never had sex with that woman. I swear. I’ve never seen her before in my life. Those images are fabricated.”
“I know.”
“No. You don’t understand. Katy, please. I’m telling you. However these photos came to be, that isn’t me. I mean, it’s me, but it has to be photoshopped or something. I never in my life had sex with that woman. I don’t even know who she is or where those pictures were taken, but they’ve been altered somehow to have me on them.”
“Bennett, I know. I believe you. I realized that before you even got here.”
He falls back on his haunches, staring at me as if he’s never seen me before. His hand covers his heart, and then he falls forward, wrapping his arms around me and holding me tighter than he ever has. “Thank God.” He pants out one breath after the other. “Thank you for believing me. Thank you for trusting me. God, Katy. I’ve been going out of my mind since I saw them and when you didn’t call me back, I left work and ran straight here.” He pulls back and cups my face, his eyes glassy. “I love you. I’d never cheat. It’s what I told you last night. You’re the only one I’ll ever want.”
