Jacob spread his suit jacket carefully with two fingers and reached in just as gingerly with his other hand to lift out a cell phone. It was another one with a large screen like Bennington had had for his wife’s pictures.
"If you do anything violent, we will hurt some of these nice people," Jacob said.
"I’ll rip the hot waiter’s throat open, just for you," Nicky said, almost a whisper, and smiled while he said it.
"I’m more practical, Anita. I’ll hurt whoever is close," Jacob said.
I nodded. "The foreplay is getting tiresome, just show me." But I didn’t like the buildup; it promised that whatever they were going to show me would be bad. My pulse was speeding up, but the lioness was not hurrying toward the surface of me. She was afraid; afraid of these men, these lions. She was attracted to male werelions, never afraid. What was wrong with these two that she could sense?
Jacob made the screen light up, pressed something on it, and said, "When you want to see the next picture, just slide this with your finger."
The first picture was of Micah, Nathaniel, and me on the sidewalk holding hands; laughing. The next picture showed Jason leaning in from just behind us, me leaning back listening. We were all smiling. The next picture was a bad angle, and too far away, but it showed us at the booth in this restaurant the day we all came in together. I watched the pictures of that lunch slide across the screen.
"Is there a point to this?" I asked.
"Keep going," Jacob said.
I went back to the screen and found pictures of Micah driving, going into office buildings, going into the television station for an interview. The next images were of Nathaniel going into Guilty Pleasures at night for work, going down the alley where the dancers’ entrance was, then daylight and going in to practice the new dance routine on the stage without customers. Jason was in some of those shots. Jason going into the club at night and driving his new car around town. Jason parking at the Circus of the Damned parking lot, and pictures following him all the way to the door.
I swallowed past the pulse that was trying to come out my throat, and gave a cold, blank face to them. "So you’ve been following my boyfriends, what of it?"
"You’re almost to the end of the pictures," he said.
I kept sliding my finger and moving the pictures. I saw Micah walking down the sidewalk, toward an office building. I knew he had meetings all day. But this time there was a picture, then a picture of the camera used to take it; same street, same everything, but a second camera taking an image of the other camera. Then the next image was of a rifle, a very nice sniper rifle. The next image was back on Micah, and the last shot was of the camera and the rifle side by side.
"Is that it?" I asked, and my voice was squeezed down tight.
"The other two are still asleep. They worked last night, but when they get up we’ll have men on them, too."