Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
After Detective Murphy left, Danica asked to use the guestroom shower. Between the run and rolling down that hillside, she felt sticky and gross. And a few minutes away from Noah didn’t hurt, either. Just to get her head on straight.
Sitting on Noah’s motorcycle, feeling him behind her, all she’d wanted was to run away with him for a little while. Steal a few moments that would belong only to them. She’d been tempted to make that story of his a reality instead of just a cover.
It was a good thing she’d honed her willpower to precision levels as William Foster-Grant’s daughter.
She was going to keep this completely platonic. They had enough to deal with already.
Danica turned the water to cold, bowing her head as the spray thundered against her neck.
She didn’t know what to think about the arrests. It was fantastic news, of course. But Detective Murphy had seemed eager to pin the entire kidnapping plot on the three men they’d captured today—not the man with the tattoo.
The tattoo Murphy hadn’t even remembered.
After she was clean, she got dressed. Ginger had given her a soft pair of pajama pants and a T-shirt that said 60 is the new 20.
Danica checked her phone. Her father had written, asking for updates. She let him know what Detective Murphy had said, and that she was staying at Noah’s house for the time being. Her father wasn’t going to be happy about it, but at least he did her the courtesy of not arguing with her.
Then the phone chimed with a new email. Detective Murphy had written.
Danica knocked on Noah’s bedroom door. He’d left it cracked open. “Come in.”
“I got the email with the surveillance videos.” When she walked inside, she didn’t see him at first. But then she spotted him through the open doorway to his bathroom. Noah was standing in front of the mirror, running a comb through his damp hair.
“Hey. I’ll be right there.”
She was trying not to think of him in the shower. The salt and sweat washing away from his skin. Beads of water dripping over his lips, like that day in the rain…
Nope. Not thinking about that.
Noah had a cozy sitting area by a bay window. She curled up on the sofa and opened the detective’s email on her phone.
“So the detective followed through?” he asked.
“Yeah. There’s a bunch of clips.” They’d have to sort through them one by one.
Noah lowered himself to the cushion beside her. He’d changed into jeans and a light green polo shirt, the same preppy look he’d always favored, and he smelled like peppermint shampoo. But she was glad he hadn’t shaved. She liked a little edge to him.
“Want to watch them now?” he asked.
She nodded, opening the first file and waiting for it to load. Noah leaned in, his arm pressing into hers as they looked at her phone screen.
The video was in color and had a timestamp running at the bottom. It showed the lobby of the museum. At just after five o’clock, the man in the dark overcoat pushed through the entrance doors and approached the ticketing desk.
Danica pointed at the screen. “That’s him.” Her heart thrummed like a bird trying to escape its cage.
The man had his collar popped up, just as she’d remembered, so his neck wasn’t visible. The black ball cap obscured his face.
He approached the desk, and Anderson appeared to greet him. There was no sound, but they saw Anderson take cash from the man and hand him a printout from the computer.
“This was before you arrived?” Noah asked.
“Yes. Around fifteen minutes, I think.” She’d been on her way to the museum in the Range Rover at five o’clock. They would’ve been pulling off the freeway into West Oaks after the long car ride from the airport.
Danica clicked on the next video in the detective’s email.
This one showed the man in the overcoat walking through the museum’s hall of evolution.
He seemed to be examining the displays and reading the informational signs.
He was keeping his head down, the bill of his cap still blocking his face from the cameras.
Danica clenched her jaw. If the camera hadn’t actually caught his face, it was no wonder facial recognition hadn’t identified the man.
But there were still a lot of video clips in the detective’s message.
In the next clip, the timestamp had skipped forward to around 5:30. That was when Danica had arrived at the museum. This clip showed the man in the overcoat looking at his phone and typing on his screen.
Come on, she thought that. Look up. Give us something.
She increased the playback speed, and the video moved rapidly forward. Then Noah touched her hand.
“That’s you, isn’t it?”
She played the video at regular speed. She saw herself and Anderson walk past the camera, chatting.
The man in the overcoat glanced over, then looked at her again. She could see the change in the way he was holding his body. The moment before, he’d been relaxed. But as soon as he’d spotted Danica, he’d seemed to go rigid. It was obvious even with that bulky coat.
It reminded her of the way her martial arts teachers held their bodies right before they demonstrated a move.
“You see that?” she asked. “How he’s holding himself?”
“I’d bet he’s got training of some kind. Maybe even military.”
Without thinking about it, Danica put her hand on Noah’s knee, seeking out his solid form to steady herself. She didn’t like thinking about this mystery man having the kind of training and experience that someone like Noah had.
“He definitely recognized you.”
She was relieved to hear him say it. Danica felt confident about what she’d observed, but you could only take so many people doubting you before you started to wonder.
She cued up the next clip.
The camera angle had switched back to the lobby, where the man was speaking into his phone.
This had been just shortly before he left the building.
Danica remembered the unease she’d felt as she watched him.
The conviction that he’d been studying her and listening to what she and Lindley had been saying.
The man turned and headed for the exit, the front of his coat flaring open as his body moved.
Danica leaned forward, staring at his neck, ready to point out the tattoo so Noah could see it. So she could finally show him what she’d been talking about all this time.
But the video seemed to jump forward a split second. The man pushed out of the doors and was gone.
She’d missed it somehow. That was the only thing that made sense.
“Hold on. I’ll slow it down. I’m pretty sure he was facing the camera for a moment there, but it’s really fast.”
Noah didn’t say anything. He was staring at the screen in concentration.
She moved the video clip back by a few seconds. She hit play again, but this time ran the playback at a lower speed. The video was now moving in slow motion.
And as she watched, nausea threaded through her stomach and up into her esophagus.
This wasn’t possible.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “He had a tattoo. It should be right there.”
But as the man’s body turned, the video cut forward. One moment, his coat was about to flare open. The next, he’d already turned, and the front of his neck wasn’t visible.
But that brief moment in the middle was missing. When the man should’ve been facing the camera directly.
Danica’s chest was starting to tighten. Every breath of air took more effort.
Noah took her phone and moved the timestamp back yet again. “Let’s just be sure.”
But nothing changed. His coat was about to flare open, and then he’d already turned.
Noah rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin. “Are you sure the tattoo was on the front of his neck? Maybe you saw it when he was at a different angle.”
She was trying not to panic, but frustration snuck into her voice. “It was at the front of his neck. And it was huge. A black two-headed eagle. Like this.”
Danica closed the video and pulled up her photos instead. She’d taken a picture of the drawing she’d made last night.
As Noah studied it, Danica touched her own throat, where the man’s tattoo had been.
Noah handed back her phone. “Let’s call Detective Murphy. It looks like a technical glitch.”
She nodded, grateful. That had to be it. “Okay. Yeah. I’ll call her.”
Danica pulled up Detective Murphy’s number and held her phone to her ear, trying to stay calm.
Noah was right. There was an explanation for this.
“Are you sure this is the original footage?” Danica asked.
“Of course,” the detective said. “Is there a problem?”
“Maybe. There was a distinguishing mark on the man’s neck. A tattoo. I mentioned it earlier?”
“Oh, right. I wasn’t sure what you were referring to.”
She bit her cheek in exasperation. “I definitely saw it. But it’s not in these video clips. Even though it should be.”
“Unfortunately, the camera didn’t catch it.”
“Is there anything else? Another clip?”
“This is everything. Maybe the tattoo just wasn’t visible at these camera angles.”
“That’s not it. There’s a moment that the man should be facing the camera, but then it skips forward. Isn’t that strange? Could it have been tampered with?”
The detective sighed. “Cameras skip. Glitches happen. Ms. Foster-Grant, I think our departmental resources are better spent questioning the men we caught today, not chasing far-fetched theories.”
Danica lowered her phone.
“No luck?” Noah asked.
She shook her head. Her initial frustration had turned into numbness.
What was happening right now?
“I should ask Lindley.” But even as she called the executive director, Danica was already remembering that Lindley hadn’t noticed the tattoo. Anderson hadn’t mentioned it either.
Still, she double-checked with the museum employees. Their answers didn’t waver.
No one except Danica remembered the tattoo.
Noah was staring at her with a wrinkle between his eyebrows. She could see him from her peripheral vision.
“You still think there’s an explanation?” she asked.
“Maybe just one.”
“I swear, Noah, if you say I’m confused or reading too much into this or just imagining it…”
“That’s not what I’m thinking. At all. Hey.” His fingertips touched her chin, gently turning her head so she faced him. His gaze was tender, but completely confident. “What do you think happened?”
Her breath skipped in her chest. She’d been afraid he would say she’d lost it. Danica felt like the heroine of some old black-and-white Hitchcock movie who saw conspiracies everywhere she looked.
But in those movies, the conspiracies were real, weren’t they?
“I think someone altered the surveillance footage,” she said, “so that man couldn’t be identified. At least, not as easily.” It just didn’t make sense that the camera skipped at the single moment the tattoo would’ve been visible. Not when the rest of the videos looked crystal clear.
“You realize what that would mean,” Noah said. “That the person who altered it is involved in the plot to kidnap you. And so is the guy with the neck tattoo.”
“Yes. Do you believe me?”
Please, she thought. If Noah didn’t believe her, then she’d have nowhere to turn.