An ache scored across my chest as I picked up the small stack of photos.
Skye and Jamie.
Jamie, Skye, and Lorna.
Five photos of them at different stages of their lives.
It was the final photo that made me slump down on the bed in confusion.
It was a photo of me on my own, one of a bunch Skye had taken with her phone and printed later. I was sitting down, my elbow on a bench table, my chin resting in my palm, and I was laughing at the person behind the camera—Skye. My eyes were bright, my dimple creased my left cheek, and I looked happy.
I caressed the image with my fingertips, tears burning in my eyes.
I couldn’t remember the last time I was that happy.
Remembering the day it was taken, I choked down building emotion. I was seventeen, and Skye and Lorna and I had spent a girls’ day at Disneyland. I’d had a secret that day.
Jamie.
We were seeing each other in secret, and despite our secrecy, I was in heaven. In love. Excited for the future.
Why did Jamie have this picture? Why did he keep it?
After he had Lorna deliver his letter to me, she’d packed up his stuff and put it in storage. I’d have thought she would have destroyed all evidence of my existence, but this photo must have escaped her.
And Jamie had kept it.
If someone didn’t love you anymore, if someone did, in fact, hate you, why would they hold on to a photograph like this? Why would they keep it close?
Deciding I didn’t have time to ponder the complex nature of Jamie’s feelings toward me, I shoved the photos back in the drawer and tried to force them out of my mind. Back at his desk, I flipped through his little black book, ignoring a few phone numbers written beside women’s names, until I found his password list.
There was one password that didn’t have any information next to it, and I guessed this was his main one.
I guessed correctly.
Shaking with anticipation and the knowledge that what I was doing was not only very wrong but illegal, I made my way through the folders on his desktop. The curious bookworm in me wanted to read his works in progress, novels and short stories, but if I could refrain from reading Doe, I could refrain from reading those too.
I groaned at that realization, eyeing the manuscript I wanted to steal but knew I wouldn’t.
Finally, I came across a folder titled The Count of Monte Cristo. Frowning, I clicked on it and my breath caught.
Laughing under my breath, I shook my head. “Jamie, you sneaky bastard.”
It was his revenge folder.
He’d named it after a famous revenge novel about a guy who was framed for a crime he didn’t commit.
There were five folders with people’s names on them.
Foster Steadman.
Frank Kramer.
Elena Marshall.
Ethan Wright.
Jane Doe.
Foster: The producer who raped Skye and framed Jamie for armed robbery.
Frank Kramer: Foster’s right-hand man, and the guy Jamie had deduced was the one behind the setup.
Elena Marshall: the cashier who lied and identified Jamie as the robber.
Ethan Wright: the crooked cop working for Foster.
I clicked on my folder first. Jamie had collected a copy of my legal name-change document, a detailed and correct résumé, my closest friends (pitifully short list of one: Asher), my work colleagues, the films I’d worked on, and my Hollywood connections. He had a list of all the galleries in California who bought and sold my artwork.
There were photographs of me. They looked like surveillance shots.
And that’s when I found Jamie’s notes file. This document was written almost like a diary. Every time Jamie found a new piece of information, he wrote it down next to the date and time. I scowled as I read his emotionless descriptions of my relationship with Asher. He questioned why Asher didn’t spend the night with me, and vice versa, and pondered the depths of our connection. He surmised, however, that we spent enough time together to be important to one another.
I cursed him under my breath when I read his notes on bribing my neighbor Sheila to sublet her apartment to him. He’d told her it was because he’d grown up in the building and wanted to “come home.” In reality, it was so he could get a “better handle on Jane’s personal life and what was important to her.”
There was a document on Asher, and I realized why when I saw a single file titled “Jane: Most Important.” Written on it were