Read Don't Be Afraid for Free Online Page A

called and asked for you. Specifically.”
    “What does she want?”
    Black shrugged. “Call her and find out. Probably a date. She goes for that Latino charm.” He faked a Spanish accent and a few of the other cops milling about laughed.
    Mark gave him the finger and dialed the number, turning his back on Black and the room. He stared out the windows at the parking lot, watching the chief pulling up in his Jaguar.
    The voice that answered was nervous, but determined. “Is this Detective Juarez?”
    “Yes, ma’am. What can I do for you?”
    “Service me, please,” Black hissed in a falsetto behind him. Mark resisted the urge to deck him and waited for Amy Moran to get to the point.
    “I found something. In Sheila’s desk. I think you need to see it.”
     
     
    The word BITCH on the envelope had stunned her, but it was nothing compared to the shock Amy felt when she saw the photos inside.
    They were all of Sheila, six black-and-white shots ascending from partial to full nudity. It wasn’t clear if she knew she was being photographed, but how could she not have known? They were taken in her bedroom. Amy recognized the bed, the dresser.
    Were these taken by some disgruntled lover? By Trevor? There was a coldness to the photos, a starkness that made the hair on Amy’s neck prickle.
    She checked the envelope, but there was no letter or note, no explanation of any kind beyond that one awful word in red.
    She shuffled through the photos a second, then a third time, forcing herself to look with a dispassionate eye, trying to figure out who had taken them and why.
    At first she thought that they’d all been taken at one time. Looking closer, she realized that Sheila’s clothes and hair were different in the two where she was partially dressed and that the nude shots had been taken from different angles.
    “I think whoever took them was in her house,” Amy told Detective Juarez when he laid the photos out on a table at the police station. She’d brought both envelopes in at his request, telling only the receptionist at Braxton that she was leaving, and not specifying where. She didn’t want to reveal the photos to anyone else. It seemed like a violation of Sheila to have them displayed at all.
    The detective didn’t seem disturbed by them. He’d ushered her into a room that had only a plain industrial table and chairs as furnishing. It was a sharp contrast to the room at the realty office where she’d carried the photos after taking a quick glance at them. She didn’t want anyone else to see them and she’d locked herself in one of the conference rooms. It was designed to give clients an impression of wealth and luxury, with a mahogany table and chairs, plush carpet and some nouveau impressionist paintings in gilt frames on the wall. It was quite a contrast to this room, where there was nothing on the walls except a large industrial clock, which ticked the seconds loudly as the detective silently examined both envelopes before carefully laying the photos out.
    He’d donned latex gloves before accepting the envelope from her and Amy realized belatedly that she’d touched all of the pictures without thinking of them as evidence.
    “It’s okay, we’ll just take your prints to eliminate them,” the detective said. “Why do you think the photographer was in her house? Couldn’t these have been taken with a telephoto lens?”
    Amy let go of the strand of hair she was nervously twisting and leaned across the table. “These, yes,” she said, pointing to the two shots where Sheila was partially clothed. In one, she was obviously about to unhook her bra, and in the other she was free of a bra and pulling down her panties. “These could probably have been taken outside a window. But not these.” She indicated the other photos, where Sheila was lying on a bed, doing some sort of exercise or stretching. In all of these she was naked. “I think these are in her bedroom and I think they were taken there.”
    “So