Page 17 of Resisting His Target

“No.”

“Printer?”

“No. Strange, now that you mention it.”

“She sent us an email. How did she do that?”

“Probably a cell phone. She could be a technophobe, you know. Or she could be hiding something she doesn’t trust to a computer system or the cloud.” Sloan opened a cigar box. “Whoa, hello there, Mr. Smith & Wesson.” The old revolver was tarnished and worn.

“What, Wesson doesn’t get his own mister?”

“I find a fucking gun and you correct my grammar?”

“Technically, it’s a personal title.”

“Suck my dick.”

Razorback lifted the weapon. “Not loaded.” He smelled it. “Hasn’t been fired recently. I wonder if Jackie would still have those bruises if it had.”

“Ah, you’re a Republican. You’re right. We shouldn’t talk politics.”

Truth be told, he was an independent—choosing to vote for whomever he felt was the best candidate for each position—but he kept his mouth shut just so Sloan would leave him be. He replaced the gun. “So, we’ve got nothing. We went through the whole upstairs and there’s nothing to give us a clue about the real reason Jackie Desjardins was attacked.”

“All we learned is she’s a gun-toting technophobe with pretty underpants.”

Razorback’s mind flashed to Jackie in the tiny thong and nothing else.

“You’re smiling,” said Sloan, pointing at him. “You like her.”

“Shut up.” He gestured to the hallway. “Did you go through that closet over there?”

“Not yet.”

Razorback opened it. It was narrow, with shelves from floor to ceiling stuffed full of random cleaning supplies. A hand vacuum cleaner. A mop bucket. A clear plastic bag full of spray sunscreen, another of tiny individually wrapped soaps. He pulled a box off a high shelf. It was addressed to Jackie, its postmark faded and illegible.

He set it on the ground and opened it, flipping through old photo albums and binders. One was full of genealogy information, photocopies of handwritten census sheets, birth certificates, and black-and-white photographs. A color wedding picture of Jackie in a strapless white gown fell from the pages, her smile radiant with the promise of good things to come.

His own marriage had been the same. Two kids barely old enough to rent an apartment, promising to love each other until the day they died.

Such bullshit.

He went back to the album. It was full of pictures of Selena, but no more from a wedding. After turning the final page, he opened a pocket built into the back cover and pulled out several more pictures. There was the groom, handsome enough, with straight dark hair and light skin, one arm around Jackie’s back. Razorback frowned, mentally comparing Jackie’s husband to the much darker Selena. Perhaps the girl was adopted, but she resembled Jackie too much for that to be very likely. Could the girl have been the product of an affair or a relationship after her marriage collapsed? Perhaps the reason it had fallen apart.

Sloan joined him in the hallway. “What’d you find?”

Razorback tucked a handful of three-by-five images back into the pocket. “Wedding pictures.”

The other man took the album from his hands and walked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.

“What are you doing?” demanded Razorback.

“Dropping the kids at the pool. Going to see a man about a horse. Building a log cabin. Want me to go on?”

Razorback shook his head. “I don’t think you can.”

“Taking the Browns to the Super Bowl. Letting the dogs out. Releasing the Kraken. Holy shit!”

“You all right in there?”