Chapter 10
Caleb
Birds have been spies longer than any intelligence agency existed.
Ancient Romans examined their flight patterns before battle—augury, they called it. Reading the will of the gods through avian movement. Except it wasn't divine intervention. It was reconnaissance. Birds fly high, see everything, report back to gods who could understand.
The Norse had Huginn and Muninn—Odin's ravens. Thought and Memory. Flew across the world each day, returned to whisper secrets in their master's ear. Every culture has a version. Messenger birds. Oracle birds. Birds that watch and tell.
They didn't need cameras or satellites.
They already had wings.
Ryan Adamson.
Thirty-four years old.
Six-two, 190 pounds.
Dark brown hair, short on the sides, a little longer on top.
Brown eyes.
Square jaw, straight nose, slight cleft in his chin.
Good genetics.
Covered in bird tattoos that tell a story about love—intricate and highly custom.
So it is, ironically, the birds that give him away. Because the art on his body has a very particular style.
Just like the work on mine.
But I didn't use the same inkologist for every piece. My theme is… specific. I didn't want any single tattoo artist sitting with me long enough to start studying the theme. Didn't want them wondering what kind of man inks his body up with images of sexual domination.
One artist, one piece, then find another. That's how I did it. So the canvas of my torso, arms, thighs—every available surface—represents a carefully curated gallery. The styles vary deliberately, wildly even.
I wasn't interested in coherence. I rather like the chaos. It's an interesting side to my personality, I think. It reveals a spontaneity in me that almost never surfaces elsewhere.
Ryan Adamson didn't have the same one-and-done mentality when he commissioned his ink. He was committed to his inkologist in more ways than one.
Her name was Posie Little.
I last saw Posie Little three years ago. She was inking up Scarletta's face on my body. It's a throat fuck scene. One of my favorites, actually, that sits right below my sternum. I see it in the mirror every day.
Posie nailed the look of erotic exaltation in the eyes. The stretch and bulge of the throat. My hands on both sides of Scarletta's face.
Sometimes, just looking at that piece gets me hard.
Sometimes, I come on the mirror image of it.
Anyway. The point is, I know Posie.
Knew her.
Since she's dead now.
She was local to Jackson Hole—worked in a shop on Cache Street that catered to wealthy clients who wanted art, not flash. Her work was distinctive, recognizable even from across a room.
She had this particular shading technique, a way of layering grey wash that created depth and dimension most artists couldn't replicate.
It gave her pieces an almost three-dimensional quality, like the images were trying to crawl off the skin. Collectors knew her style instantly. Other artists tried to copy it, and failed.
When you saw one of Posie's pieces, you knew it was hers.
And everything about the art on Ryan's body says Posie was here.
Since she's dead, I couldn't just go in and ask her about the work.
But the shop on Cache Street wasn't hers.
And it's still open. Stella Six Feathers owns that shop.
Local. 24 now. Grew up on the Wind River Indian Reservation.
Bought the parlor on Cache Street when she was nineteen after doing four consecutive consensual-non-consents in one year for the auction house.
Stella was one of the first girls to come through and I wanted to make sure she was OK after she 'retired', so I went into the shop two years later to check up on her.
Anonymously, obviously. She didn't know who I was. Didn't know I ran the auction house.
But I like to make sure the girls are getting on well, especially after CNC's, and was delighted to find that Stella had turned her year of rape fantasies into a very lucrative business. She had five other artists working for her.
Posie Little was one of them.
While I was there, I fell in love with Posie's work and booked my first appointment.
This morning, I went back into that shop and started asking questions. Stella, who didn't know me from Adam, but recognized Posie's work when I privately showed her the tattoo Posie did, got immediately chatty about the 'psychopath with the bird tattoos.'
She told me… a lot.
And now… I'm starting to think Ryan Adamson might need his scales balanced.