by Dale Mayer
He pursed his lips and pulled out a second picture from his jacket pocket. The one he’d planned to show her from the beginning. He dropped it on the table.
“What about this one?”
Jazz reached out and picked it up slowly. She studied the long male body lying on his stomach. The head up at the top of the image was mostly off the page but from the bit showing, she could see it was the same male. From this perspective, the male appeared leaner and longer. She studied the hairy legs and large bare feet with the odd bruising pattern, then let her gaze rest on the bare buttocks and the small tat on the left cheek.
Her breath caught in the back of her throat. A small dragon flew toward the crevice between the cheeks. Her signature tat. One she only used for lovers. Only lovers she cared for.
With one big difference.
“Who is it,” she asked, tears clogging her throat at the pain this poor man must have gone through. “Tell me,” she said in a stronger voice.
“You don’t recognize him?” he asked incredulously. “Do you always sleep with men that you don’t know well enough to recognize them?”
“What?” she turned to stare at him. “I don’t recognize anyone given there is no face here,” she tapped the image. “And I swear I’ve never slept with this man.” She frowned. She’d made a few poor choices in her life, but she’d hoped she’d recognize every man she had slept with.
“Are you sure?”
She shrugged. “As sure as I can be without a face to see. I doubt most people would recognize him.”
“Yeah, and the tat?”
“What about it?”
“You don’t recognize your own work? The tat you put on all your lovers,” he said mockingly. “I wear one. So does he.” He tapped the photo. “Or can’t you recognize your own work either?”
Just to make sure, she turned, grabbed one of many magnifying glasses she had lying around, and used it on the image. She couldn’t tell the artist from his work.
She shook her head. “I already knew, but this just confirms it. That’s not my work.”
*
Could it be? He stared at her in shock, but she stared back at him so calm and composed, he had to consider it. What if she was correct? Maybe this wasn’t his brother.
Hope slowly rose.
He’d been so sure, based on that tat. Billy had said it was Jazz’s work. He knew Jazz’s lovers sported a tiny dragon. He had his own. He’d asked a different artist about changing it and had even made the appointment to get it done but had chickened out. How could he remove the reminder of the best days and nights of his life? Needing that connection, no matter how small, he’d finally made peace with it and the tiny bit of her he was privileged to carry.
Now…now he didn’t know what to think.
“So tell me. Stop the damn games. Who is this?”
He took a deep breath. “I thought it was Billy.”
Silence.
He watched the blow hit her. She’d already been prepared in a small way, but nothing could mellow the shock and the pain. Her face blanched and her gaze pivoted from the image to him and back again. Stricken. Then she reached out a hand.
This totally surprised him.
“I’m so sorry.”
He couldn’t believe it. Her fingers gently stroked his forearm. “I can’t imagine how you are feeling right now.”
Not what he expected, and he didn’t know how to respond. Her compassion hit him in the heart. It was a shitty day. This was a horrible way to find out about his brother – if it was his brother.
Regardless of the emotions overwhelming him, he was finally understanding one thing… something was seriously wrong.
He took a deep breath. “Are you sure this isn’t your work?”
She kept her gaze on him but let her fingers slowly slide off his arm. “Yes. I know it’s not my work.”
“Damn.”
“Why?”
“I was hoping you could identify this man.” He glared at the image. “I’m afraid it’s Billy.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t say.” Her gaze strayed to the picture again. “I don’t know the artist of that tattoo either.”
“But isn’t it your image?”
She slowly nodded. “With a difference.”
“What difference?” He looked at the image. It looked like what he’d seen before. But could he guarantee that it was the same? How fast a glance had he’d taken? It was his brother’s ass, after all. Billy had shoved his shorts down to show Morgan the tat. Morgan wouldn’t have believed it otherwise. But he’d seen it. Enough to identify the artist.
That had been enough. He’d walked out soon after. Hating her for being deceitful. A huge emotional mess trying to do the right thing. Now he wondered all over again.
Why would Billy show him the tattoo and tell him that Jazz had been the artist if she’d not been?
Then again, he was assuming that this male was his brother.
Maybe it wasn’t.
That would be huge. He wanted to believe it wasn’t, really wanted to believe it. But that tattoo looked too much like the one he’d seen on his brother’s butt. If it wasn’t his brother lying there on the cold table, then who was it? If it was his brother, then he’d lied about Jazz having done the tattoo.
Or Jazz was lying.
Shit. He slumped back, trying to sort it out, and realized he couldn’t; he didn’t have enough information.
“Will you come to the morgue and look yourself?”
At her shocked look, he added in a low voice, “Please.”
She shook her head. “God, I don’t want to.”
“We need to know if it’s him.” He held his breath, hoping and knowing he didn’t deserve it but desperate to know. “The tat might look different when you see it on him.”
“It won’t make any difference.”
He frowned.
“It’s not my work.”
He nodded but couldn’t let it go. “Maybe seeing it up close would help you to identify the artist.”
She chewed on her bottom lip as she stared at it. Then nodded. “Fine, but we have to go now before I lose my nerve.”
Chapter 3
The building rose in front of them. It was late enough that the streetlights shone down on the plain-looking building.
“We’ll go in here.” Morgan led the way to an entrance at the side of the building.
“Are you sure we can be here?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
She didn’t really believe him, but it wasn’t worth wasting time and energy on it. The idea of what she was doing consumed her. Still, she’d said she would do this, so here she was. Morgan had been quiet since she’d agreed to come. Maybe a little before. She was the one who had chattered unnecessarily for the trip. Anything to keep her mind off the upcoming viewing.
Morgan knocked on the door, his cell phone in his hand. He sent a text. The door opened a few minutes later.
“Hey, Dave, we’re here.”
“Good. Come on in.” The older man smiled at Jazz and held the door for her to enter. “Thanks for coming.”
She nodded mutely as she followed the two men forward. He took her to a set of double doors. “Normally we don’t do it this way, but as the photos aren’t enough…”
As if understanding what the hell he was talking about, she gave him a small smile, hoping her face didn’t look as dead white as the poor man she was coming to see. She walked into a small empty room to see a body covered with two sheets in front of her. Her breath caught in the back of her throat.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded. “I’ll be fine.” But she said it mostly to reassure herself more than him. With a deep breath, she walked closer. The older man walked to the other side of the body before carefully folding back where the sheets joined. He turned on an overhead lamp.
Light shone on the tattoo.
And she understood something that blew her away. The tattoo was identical to the one she put
on her lovers, but… in a mirror image. Instead of pointing to the hip, the tail of the dragon pivoted toward the crevasse between the rounded cheeks.
In every other way, it was a copy of her tat design.
Yet, it wasn’t her work. She used color differently, and the edges were not as crisp. Not bad. But it wasn’t hers. She leaned closer, pulled out the magnifying glass she’d thought to push into her purse before leaving her shop, and studied the scales in the tattoo. There was something there. Something different.
“What do you see?”
“A number,” she said quietly, her voice low, intense.
“What?” The older man leaned closer. “What kind of number?”
“This tattoo is older.” She straightened, her heart sick and her mind furious at the cruelty of others. “But the number is new.”
“What?”
She stepped back to let the others look, her mind wondering what to make of it. The tattoo had been done a while ago, the skin long healed, the color still bright.
The older man looked up at her. “You do this type of work?”
“I’m a tattoo artist,” she acknowledged. “In fact, a favorite design is the mirror image of this one. I have never done one with this layout, and I never would. This is not my work.”
He nodded. “I’ll take a few more images and blow it up so we can see it better. We’re running DNA, but if it turns out to not be Morgan’s brother… we’ll need everything we can get to identify him.”
She spun to look at Morgan. “I understood there was no blood connection.”
Morgan’s gaze hardened. “We have the same father.”
“Oh.” She frowned, not knowing how that worked. She thought it was the matriarch DNA that mattered. But what did she know? All she wanted at this point was to leave. Go home, pour a hefty drink, and take it into the bath. Soak for an hour or two to wash away the odor and sight of this poor man. Too bad she wouldn’t be able to get rid of the image from her mind.
She stepped back, well past ready to leave.
*
“Okay, if there’s nothing else we can do here,” Morgan said, “I’ll take her home. You have my cell phone number if I can help with anything else.”
“We’ll run with this and see if we can track down the artist.” The older man looked at Jazz. “You don’t recognize the artist?”
“No,” she said shortly, “And I do know a lot of artists. The thing is that it is my design, so they’ve seen it or taken a copy of it from somewhere.”
The man nodded. “Is this a design you’d have lying around somewhere? Easily accessible?”
“No.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t have a pattern or a paper version of this lying around.”
“So the only way they’d have seen this design?”
“From one of the people I have inked it on.” She sucked in her breath as if waiting.
In fact, Morgan said, “You’ve only ever used that design on a specific segment of the world, correct?” He wanted to laugh at her hooded gaze, but this wasn’t anything to laugh about. She wasn’t appreciating him volunteering information, but he knew the cops would get there on their own. He just wanted to get there faster so they could solve this. If this was his brother, he needed to know. And if it wasn’t, there was another family that needed to be informed.
“What?” Dave asked. “What am I missing?”
She closed her eyes. “This design is only on my previous lovers.”
Silence as both men studied her. Morgan wanted to laugh but the older man looked like he’d sucked on a lemon.
“Sounds like I need a list of the men…or women…who you have inked with this design then.”
Her face twisted with distaste. Morgan could relate.
“We need to track down what yours looks like so we can compare the two,” said the older man.
She nodded. “In that case, you don’t need me.”
She turned around and walked back outside.
Dave looked over at him. Morgan sighed. Damn, she’d turned the tables on him very effectively. “So do you have a camera?”
“Yeah, why?” Dave stared at him in puzzlement. He walked over to a door on the far side of the room.
“Get it, please.”
Dave shot him a puzzled look but disappeared for a moment. Morgan paced the room, hating the next step. Jazz was likely laughing her fool head off.
The sound of a door closing had him turning in Dave’s direction. The older man waved the camera. “Okay, so where are we going?”
Morgan snorted. “Right here.”
He reached for his belt buckle.
Chapter 4
Jazz waited, her back against the door. She stared up at the light. She couldn’t believe she was standing outside a morgue waiting for Morgan of all people. This wasn’t what she wanted. Neither was it the way she’d expected her life to be today. Roxy would never believe her – or be happy about this turn of events.
Was it Billy lying in there on that cold slab? It didn’t bear thinking about. Their last meeting had not been nice and was a memory she’d be happy to erase. One that seemed so much worse if that was him in that damn building.
For all their differences, she’d never wished he was dead.
She’d not seen him naked but had seen him without a shirt on. She couldn’t remember any birthmarks or other distinguishing marks. The man on the table was roughly the same height. The same weight. The same skin tone. Without seeing a face, she had no idea who it was. There was no guttural inside feeling that said it was him. Why would there be? It wasn’t as if he was someone she’d known intimately, no matter what Morgan seemed to think. There had been only one man in that room wearing her ink, and he’d not been on the damn table.
The cool night breeze drifted in through the valley. She wanted to go home and forget about death and bodies. She wanted to go back to when the only thing in her mind was her next masterpiece. She lived for her art. Loved everything about it. Knew she was blessed to be able to make a living of it. It blew her away every day. Other people had to get up each day and go to work. She got up and went to her business and her art.
Life was freakin’ awesome. Or had been until Morgan arrived. She looked at his bike and wondered if she could just leave. Or would he track her down? She was so damn tired, she just wanted to go home and to bed.
Yes. Her hormones sat up and cried for joy at the sound of bed, remembering better times. Hell no. Not with Morgan. Never again with Morgan. She knew better. He was deadly. He’d shown her another side to her personality. One she’d never realized existed. A hot seductive woman who had learned to love the skin she was in. It had made her a better person. A better artist and a better friend – even to herself. When he left, he’d taken the best part of her.
Repairing her self-confidence and her broken heart had been almost impossible. She wasn’t willing to risk that again.
Liar. She was up for a ton of sexual reruns right now if she thought there was a chance she could do it and keep her heart intact. Other women managed it. She didn’t know how. In fact, she’d been celibate since Morgan. And that just sucked.
She’d tried, several times. She’d been desperate to erase the memory of Morgan’s touch. To prove to herself that it had not been Morgan’s magical touch that had brought her alive. That she wasn’t just hot for him but that her body, now awake to the wonders of the heat locked inside, could enjoy a passionate encounter with anyone she was attracted to. Then after the last particularly embarrassing scenario where the young man had flung himself out the front door, she realized she wasn’t ready to love. It felt like a betrayal to her. Not fair, and it didn’t make any sense, but there was no sense to the heart. It was what it was. Now a year later, she’d actually been planning on attending a party this weekend with the hopes of finding someone gorgeous to let her frustrations out on.
Other women could have sex with anyone. Why couldn’t she?
She just had to get over that damn block
age first. She threw her leg over the gorgeous Harley she’d bought a few months ago and turned on the engine. She’d head home alone. Screw waiting for Morgan. She didn’t owe him anything.
She’d done what he asked. That was enough.
With a kick of her boot popping the stand, she rolled forward before hitting the gas and ripped out the parking lot. Take that, Morgan Ashton.
The night was mild and mellow, with the earlier threat of rain never having materialized. Crossing the town to her home only took ten minutes, then she was parked outside her small bungalow. She locked the doors tight and checked them twice. Maybe it was the dead man that made her do that last bit but whatever it was, she was no fool. She’d no plans to be on the table beside him.
Not anytime soon.
She texted Roxy the news then pulled out a bottle of wine and poured herself a hefty drink. It was over. With any luck, she’d never have to go inside a morgue again.
She shuddered and took another long drink. The phone rang. Her assistant, Perl, was gratifyingly upset for her. Perl had heard the news from Roxy. Hesitantly, she said, “I might have identified him. We were lovers for a time.”
They were? Jazz stared at the phone in shock. She hadn’t known. She’d not have cared either.
“I didn’t know. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“He didn’t want you to find out. He was sweet on you.”
Jazz snorted. “Right. Like hell. He was a kid with an attitude.” Besides, if he was sweet on her, why was he screwing Perl? The bastard. She wanted to ask Perl what she’d been doing with him but knew it would bring up bad memories for her. Better leave it alone. Besides, if Billy gave her a few happy nights, then it was all good. She deserved them.
“He thought you were the best thing ever.”
“He’d have outgrown that fast enough,” Jazz said with a snicker.
“Are you sure it wasn’t him?” Perl asked.
“Hell, no I’m not. I don’t know anything. I do know it’s not my tat on his ass though.” And something she might need to reconsider doing. Morgan wore the last one she’d ever done.