Page 280 of The Trouble With Bad Boys

It still made no sense to me. I got up and walked to the kitchen to grab a bottled water when I heard a knock on my door. I walked over to unlock it, then opened it for Chris. “Come on in, Loundes. I have a few questions for you.”

The agent followed me into the living room and after I offered him a water, he declined it, then pulled out his own laptop. “Okay, but I need to show you something. I think Gemini is about to make a move, so we need to act fast.”

“A move?” I asked. That would be quick.

“Yeah, look at this footage from earlier tonight.”

I scooted closer and watched as Shelby drove to the bank. It was dark outside and could’ve very well have been after she’d left Syn. Having already requested exterior footage from Ryder, I knew exactly what time that had been. Usually, I’d only be given access to something like that with a warrant, but seeing as I was trying to help Hawke in the midst of cracking this case, it was given to me without opposition.

“Is this time stamp right?” I asked when I noticed it in the bottom left hand of the video.

“Yes.”

“And it’s Mountain Daylight Time and not Pacific Daylight Time?”

“Of course. Why would it be Pacific?”

“You did just come back from California.”

“Does that hour make a difference?”

“No,” I lied, although it made all the difference in the world.

If the woman was at the bank at the time this video indicated, it couldn’t have been Shelby. Right around the time this woman was cleaning out the ATM machine, my submissive was coming on my cock. I wanted to jump up and proclaim her innocence for her, but that would open up questions I didn’t want to answer right now, especially to this agent.

“And this was tonight?”

“Yeah. You’re acting weird, Bradford. Is there something wrong?”

“No, I’m just a bit tired and trying to wrap my mind around everything. Could you send this to me? I’d like to look at it after I’ve gotten a few hours of sleep.”

“You do look like hell, so you probably need it,” he told me and I flipped him off.

He chuckled, but then pulled up our secure email site, and seconds later, the notification of new mail came through. “Let me examine this new evidence and we can meet back up later to go over it.”

“Sure thing. You really do need to try to get some sleep, though.”

“I will,” I assured him, and Chris left right afterward.

I moved back to my laptop and tried to ignore my uncontrollable yawning, but Loundes was right. I did need to get some sleep. I was sure Shelby was doing the same right now so there would be nothing to miss. I could look at this evidence in a few hours. Only as I reached my bedroom, something didn’t sit right with me.

My mind was a wasteland at the moment, so I pushed those concerns away. I undressed, got into bed, and only managed to sleep for about three hours before I awakened. Since my body and mind were still tired, I made a pot of coffee, then returned to the video the agent had dropped off.

Again, Shelby pulled up to the bank and withdrew some money, but as she was backing away, one of the bills slipped from her hands. She was wearing some dark pants and the same sweatshirt she had on at Syn. As she bent, something caught my eye. It was a flash of color. If it had been red, it might not have piqued my curiosity too much as she was likely to have several reddened welts on her body after our scene.

I ignored the time differences and chose to focus on the woman. Freezing that frame, I zoomed in and saw something purple, blue, and pink. While those colors could be indicative of bruising, the colors in this shot were so vibrant. I took out my cell phone and snapped several shots of it, quickly realizing that this was a tattoo. Shelby was terrified of needles, and she had no tattoos. While some people could lie about them, I knew she hadn’t. Hours earlier, I had saved every inch of her sexy body to memory, and there were no tattoos anywhere on her hip.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear you had a twin,” I said to the woman currently bent over.

I restarted the footage, eventually stopping and starting it on various places. That was definitely a tattoo and not Shelby. Relief flooded me until I realized there was also fear. We’d already looked at immediate family and she’d been an only child. She had no twin, so I had no explanation for what I was seeing. Without something concrete to clear her, Bob would continue along this trail until she was eventually apprehended and arrested.

I loved the sight of Shelby in handcuffs, but when at my mercy and not that of the Denver Police Department. I had to have something else that could be used to contradict this video, and that was when I remembered that I had requested and watched the footage of Shelby leaving Syn.

Outing a member there was the last thing I wanted to do, but then again, letting an innocent woman go to jail for twenty five years was as well. I also pulled up the other video from Ryder’s email, then rewatched it. Shelby had kept her head down as she exited the building and rushed over to a waiting car. It wasn’t her own, and she was wearing jeans instead of dark exercise pants.

Her hair was also tousled, and she and I both knew why while the woman at the ATM was put together very well. The mystery woman was at the bank during the same time Shelby had been at Syn. That could be corroborated with video showing the time she arrived and the time she left. These two women were not one and the same. Could someone be framing Shelby?

It sounded as farfetched as Shelby having a twin when we both knew she did not. There was only one way to get to the bottom of this. I needed to know more about her house guest, and Shelby in general. I’d go about getting answers differently this time, and I would not fail.

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