Chapter 36
36
Belinda stopped the narcotic pain medicine, weary of its numbing effects on her senses. Though the trade-off meant enduring more discomfort with only over-the-counter analgesics, she welcomed the clarity it brought. After taking another lengthy afternoon nap, she woke in time to say goodbye to Arthur. He had to take Sally to a doctor’s appointment, so Ivy was staying with her now.
She settled on the sofa with her feet propped on top of the coffee table, and a smile graced her lips as she delved into the memories captured in the photographs from the morning she crossed paths with Aaron in the park. The majority of pictures were ones she had taken from pre-dawn until Aaron came running on the beach. The serene beauty of nature, the antics of the waterfowl, the ever-changing bay at sunrise. She spent most of her time drawn to the ones that called to her, doing little to edit them and then making sure she ordered prints from a company she trusted to do the best work.
Ivy sat gently on the sofa beside her and looked at her computer screen. “Oh, my, that’s a really good picture of you two.”
Smiling, Belinda nodded. “Even though we’d gone out a year ago, and I’d had such a lovely Thanksgiving with all of you, this picture showcases our beginning.”
Ivy nodded, then said, “I assume Aaron has talked about their mom?”
Belinda heard Ivy’s hesitancy in her voice and rushed to assure her, “Yes. In fact, that’s what he was talking about the morning this picture was taken. That’s when he let his walls down and let me in.”
Ivy let out a sigh of relief, and her body relaxed. “I’m really glad, Belinda. Believe me when I say that all the Bergstrom men had to deal with their mom leaving. I knew Andy in high school, and he was a pain in the ass. He had seen me and my mom together since she was a teacher and hated that his mom wasn’t there. We had a lot we had to get past, even as adults, to get to where he acknowledged and accepted how much the sense of abandonment had affected him. Even though Arthur is so sweet, supportive, and a good dad, he couldn’t erase the fact that their mom just left.”
Normally, Belinda would never have talked about Aaron’s mother with anyone else, but she knew Ivy already had heard the stories and understood. “While Andy felt a sense of abandonment since he was seven, Aaron felt she disappeared because of him needing so much help as a child with his conditions.”
Shaking her head, Ivy let out a small growl. “I can’t imagine how anyone could do that!” She gave Belinda a side gaze, then asked, “Did he happen to mention that she tried to contact them about the time they were in high school?”
Belinda nodded. “Aaron said that he was curious, but it was obvious that Andy didn’t want anything to do with her. Aaron took his cues from his big brother. And he doesn’t regret that. As far as he’s concerned, Andy, Arthur, and Sally hang the sun, moon, and stars.”
Ivy laughed. “It’s nice to see them so close, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely. I missed my parents when they moved to Florida to care for my grandparents. Being with all of you and Bess makes me feel like I have a larger family here on the shore again.”
With the heavy conversation left behind, Ivy looked over her shoulder as they continued to scroll back through the photos. “Isn’t it weird that I expect to see somebody peeking through the shrubs?”
Belinda laughed, but it sounded more like a chortle. “I know. Me too.”
“Oh, I love the concrete ships for the breaker! Did you ever take a field trip to Kiptopeke in high school and learn about them?”
“Yes, yes! Mr. Wing’s biology class in tenth grade.”
Ivy nodded emphatically. “Yes, every year, he would take students to the park, and we’d spend the day. He’d lecture on the birds, the trees, the animals, the flora and fauna, and then we’d end up on the beach where he would lecture about the nautical ecology underwater where the ships formed the breaker.”
“Isn’t it funny that I can remember back that far with such clarity, and I’m sitting here looking at these pictures that were just taken about five days ago, and I have trouble remembering what I was looking at! This, to me, is why I love to be a photographer. Otherwise, there are so many memories we forget.”
“It’s cool how kayaks and canoes can go right up to the concrete ships. I’ve never done that, but now that I’m looking at these pictures, I think I’ll ask Andy to take me out sometime.”
“Aaron took me out on the bay last year, but I’d love to go again.” She continued to gaze at the photos. “Now that I’m looking at these, I can see a small boat just on the far side of the concrete boat on the right. I was snapping so many pictures, trying to get the right light as the dawn was just peaking from behind me. I probably took over a hundred!”
“Oh, that’s funny.” Ivy laughed, pointing as Belinda quickly scrolled through the pictures, creating a film of flipping photos.
“It’s like a kinetoscope,” Belinda said.
“Damn, girl. I knew what it looked like but would never have come up with the name.”
“It’s like you can see the boat moving,” Ivy noted. “They must be fishing.”
Belinda stared as the front half of the small boat became visible. It was in the shadows of pre-dawn, but she could tell two men were inside. “I guess so, but they don’t have poles. Maybe they’re dropping crab pots.” A strange niggling began crawling through the back of her mind. She fiddled with the laptop and enlarged the photos. The sun barely brought them out of the shadows, but it was evident that they had something large that rocked the small boat as they hefted it over the side.
“It doesn’t look like any crab pot I’ve ever seen,” Ivy murmured.
“No.” Belinda barely eked out the one word as she concentrated on the screen. As the sun came from behind her, she could now see one of the men a little more clearly since she was facing west. Her camera had been focused on the concrete ships, so she’d never noticed the small boat to the side while taking the pictures. But now, staring at the photos, she sucked in a hasty breath as one of the men stared straight at her.
“It looks like he’s… he’s looking at you,” Ivy said, her voice barely above a whisper.
Belinda only nodded. She didn’t recognize him, but there was no missing the way his gaze never left her, even as he spoke to the man with his back to her. She had no idea how she knew, but she felt menace radiating from him.
She jumped as the door opened, and Aaron walked through with Andy on his heels. Ivy stood quickly and moved straight to Andy while Aaron made a beeline for Belinda, who was sitting on the sofa.
He kissed her lightly, then leaned back. “Hey, sweetheart. How are you feeling?”
“Good. Um… good,” she stammered.
His brow lowered as his intense gaze stared straight into her soul. “What’s wrong?”
By now, Ivy and Andy had moved closer. She looked up to see the same concerned expression on Ivy’s face as Belinda was certain was on hers.
“Belinda,” Aaron called and her gaze moved back to him. “What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Honey, you’re worrying me.”
Ivy spoke up to fill the empty space left when Belinda couldn’t seem to get the words out. “Guys, we found something in the photos Belinda took that might be important.”
Aaron whipped his head around to stare at Belinda again after seeing the lip-chewing, scrunched-nose expression on Ivy’s face.
“What the fuck? Show me,” he ordered, more harshly than he meant. Seeing her wince, he immediately scooted closer. “I’m sorry. Please, show us what you think you found.”
She still balanced his laptop on her knees and glanced at his small dining table. “Let’s take it over there so that we can all look at the same time,” she said.
He gently lifted the laptop from her as he stood and offered a hand to assist her. Keeping his fingers linked with hers, he walked over to his dining table and set the laptop in front of one of the chairs. She eased herself into the chair, and he grabbed the other one and slid it close. Looking over his shoulder, he said, “Ivy?”
She shook her head and said, “No, you sit there. You need to be close. Andy and I will stand right behind and look over your shoulders.”
He was once again thankful for his sister-in-law’s kindness. Sliding into the seat, he scooted it until it touched Belinda’s chair, and with one hand around her shoulders, he leaned in closely. Their heads were only a few inches apart as they stared at the screen. His heart was pounding, unable to imagine what she found that Hunter and Brad had not.
“I went back to when you and I were at Kiptopeke Park?—”
“The guys at work had just started on those pictures today. What did you find?”
“At first, I was just looking at the pictures I had taken of you and me. I actually took more than I thought, and I wasn’t thinking about anything else. But then I kept going back earlier in the morning before I saw you?—”
“Hunter and Brad are getting to those first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Well, I had a chance to look at them today. I arrived at the park just before sunrise. I wanted to get those pre-dawn photographs over the bay of the water birds, the beach, and even the concrete ship breakers. Ivy and I were looking at them because I took so many more than I remembered. I just kept clicking because I wanted to have every possible choice of getting just the right photograph for my new website.”
She held his gaze, and it was all he could do to keep from urging her to show him what she found. But he knew what she said was important, so he focused on what she was trying to tell him. Early morning. Pre-dawn. The sun just rising. Nodding, he said, “Okay, I get that. You’re telling me the light wasn’t very strong, right?”
She nodded and then turned her gaze back to the laptop screen, using her right hand to scroll through the pictures. When she found the one she was looking for, she said, “Start looking here.”
He instantly discerned what she was talking about. Just a hint of light was breaking across the sky, the concrete ships creating a dark shadow in the bay. He felt Andy lean down closer and was glad his brother’s eyes were also on the screen. She continued to scroll, and he reveled in the beautiful photography for a second. The dawn stretched across the bay, beginning to illuminate the beach, the water, and then the breakers. He stared but could see nothing untoward in any of the pictures.
“Here is where you’re going to start seeing what we saw,” Belinda said. She pointed at the right side of the photograph, at the edge of the last breaker.
Aaron continued to stare as she slowly clicked through the pictures. Almost like a slow-motion movie, he could see the edge of a small boat peeking behind the shadow of the last ship. It came into view just enough for him to see two men.
“At first, we thought they might be fishing,” Ivy said.
Belinda added, “We were just talking about how people could go straight up to the ships, and we assumed they were probably sightseeing or fishing. Then here, as you can see, they’re lifting something to put into the water.”
“I told her it wasn’t like any crab pot I've ever seen,” Ivy added.
As Belinda continued to click through several pictures, Aaron placed his hand on her right hand to stop her scrolling, and he leaned in closely to the screen. Andy’s head came between them, and he stared, too. “Can you enlarge this?” he asked.
Belinda nodded, and with a few clicks of her hand, the image was enlarged.
Definitely two men, one facing away and one still in shadows. But they were maneuvering something heavy, long, and unwieldy overboard. It was dumped right at the edge of the last breaker on the right and sank quickly. Taking over the laptop mouse pad, he clicked the next few pictures and could see the two men were facing each other. Then one lifted his gaze and stared straight toward the camera, although the shadows still blurred his features.
“Fuck,” he whispered his curse, hearing the same word emitted from Andy.
“He sees her,” Andy said.
As much as Aaron wanted to deny that this man could see someone taking his picture, Aaron was too good an investigator to deny the possibility. The man facing away turned slightly but then continued staring out toward the bay with his back to the shore as Belinda continued taking photographs. But the man who had stared at her for so long finally looked down, and the boat moved away from the shore and then headed north.
Sitting back, he scrubbed his hand over his face and sighed.
“It’s important, isn’t it?” Belinda whispered.
It gutted him to know she was the target, but this was their first lead. “Yeah, sweetheart. It is.”
The group was momentarily quiet, and Aaron’s mind raced about what he should do. He twisted around and looked at her, then slid his gaze to Andy. “I’m going to call Colt and get him up to speed. Then I’ll call Sam and Hunter. I can’t do much right now, but I’ll be at the station as soon as I can in the morning, and I know Colt will want to meet with everybody.”
“Get copies of those pictures to me,” Andy said. “The VMP can at least search to see if we can find identification on the boat, and then we can track to see who the owner is. It’s a small outboard motor, so there’s a shit ton of them in the area. But we can at least try to find some identification.”
With nothing else to add, Aaron stood and turned, pulling Ivy in for a heartfelt hug. “Thank you for everything.”
She smiled and nodded and then stepped over to gently hug Belinda while the two brothers embraced. Andy offered a cheek kiss to Belinda, and then Aaron stood at the door and watched the other couple leave.
“I’m sure you’re hungry,” Belinda said. “Carrie brought more food, and all I have to do is stick it in the microwave.”
He could see the tension lines bracketing her mouth, and her eyes were not as bright as he’d like them to be. “You should rest, honey. I can take care of that.”
“I assure you that I can handle the microwave one-handed. I know you want to take care of your phone calls, so go ahead and do that. When you’re finished, we can eat.”
He nodded gratefully and placed his first call to Colt, filling him in.
“You take care of your girl, and I’ll call Hunter. He and Brad can get to the office as early as they need to and start working on the pictures. They’ll be able to enhance the photos more than she could.”
“I can’t imagine what the hell they were doing, but the fact that he was staring at her makes me feel that somehow he was able to identify her and what they were doing with something he didn’t want a witness for. But he was in a boat, and she was on the shore. How the hell could he have figured out who she was?”
“It’s too early for conjecture, but we’ll talk about it tomorrow. Try to get some sleep, and I’ll see you first thing.”
“Tell Carrie thanks for the food.”
Colt chuckled. “What can I say? My woman likes to feed people.”
After disconnecting, he called Sam, who was less circumspect than Colt, as he growled, “Goddamn, fucking hell!”
“I know,” Aaron groaned. “But we’ll process it tomorrow.”
Walking from the bedroom back into the living room, the scent of the food Carrie had brought hit his hungry stomach. He and Belinda sat at the table and enjoyed their first dinner alone together since she’d gotten out of the hospital. The food seemed to revive her, and he purposely kept the conversation away from their discovery.
He cleaned up after dinner, and then they showered together. It was hard to keep his cock under control with her beautiful, naked body so close to his, but there was nothing he would ever do to hurt her.
That night, curled up in bed together again, he thought she was asleep when she whispered in the dark. “I know it’s too soon. I know this might freak you out. But after having been shot, I don’t want to keep anything in anymore that should be said. So Aaron, I’m just letting you know that going to bed with you, lying in your arms, feels like coming home.”
Her words pierced his heart, filling every empty spot he’d ever felt. “You make me whole, sweetheart.” With that, she fell asleep, but he lay awake for hours. The sight of the man who stared at her for so long was the only thing he could see.