Page 59 of Smith

I scrubbed my hands over my face in an attempt to vanquish the images of a sobbing, angry Valerie before she left me. It worked. The images of her crying vanished, but like always they quickly morphed into her lying crumpled on the dirty carpet, beaten to hell.

That was the image I couldn’t erase.

The one that never went away.

The one that haunted me and broke my mind.

Fuck.

“Yeah,Kira, thanks. And sorry again, sweetheart,” I said into my phone, my eyes glued to Aria sitting cross-legged on my couch with her plate resting on her lap.

“Let’s just say I’m praying the prints come back as George Jr.”

“I get that.”

Fuck, did I.

Kira had run the images through her facial rec software. There had been twenty-two poloids that were in perfect condition—likely because they hadn’t been exposed to UV—ten different girls. All of the girls were within a year of George Jr’s age. Meaning, if he’d taken those pictures, and all of the girls had been consenting, well…that put a different spin on it. If the prints matched George Sr. that was something else entirely.Either way, I was still grateful she had taken over and run the pictures.

“The team’s staying in Virginia one more night and will head down to Newport News to pay George a visit before they come home.”

That was an hour drive farther south before they turned around to come home. But the conversation that needed to be had was best done face to face.

“Good call.”

“That’s all I got but I wanted to make sure I gave it to you as soon as I could.” There was a weighted pause and I braced. “Listen, Smith, I know those pictures?—”

“I’m fine. Not the first time I’ve seen shit that skeeved me out and gave me a bad feeling. But it was the first time I could pass something sensitive like that off to a woman so I didn’t feel like I was victimizing a victim. So, again, I appreciate you taking over.”

I was acutely aware, Aria was watching me closely and listening to every word. I was also acutely aware she’d been walking on eggshells since we’d left her house.

The fucked-up part was, I couldn’t fix it without explaining she’d done nothing wrong. I couldn’t explain the memory she’d triggered—a memory without explainingHer,and that was never going to happen. I rarely thought the woman’s name and it’d been at least a decade since I’d said it out loud.

“They weren’t?—”

Obviously her husband had told her about my shutdown and now she was trying to make me feel better.

“Sweetheart, they were. For an adult man with a moral compass they werethatbad.”

“I wasn’t going to suggest otherwise,” she huffed. “I was going to tell you they weren’t degraded, so we got good prints. We’ll know by tomorrow.”

Shit. Of course she wasn’t going to be insensitive about mostly nude teenage girls.

“Sorry—”

“It’s been a shit day. Go spend time with Aria. We’ll see you in the morning.”

With that, she disconnected, and since Aria was openly staring at me waiting for me to fill her in, I did just that. Then I picked up my plate of pork roast she’d cooked in my air fryer and commenced eating.

Aria did the same.

It took her a few minutes to pluck up the courage to address the elephant in the room. And when she did, she was way off base.

“I shouldn’t’ve wussed out.”

“What?”

“If I’d just pulled up those planks and opened the box you wouldn’t’ve saw what you saw.”

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