Adam didn’t wait for an answer. He dropped into the other chair and held his hands out in a clear indication for the other cop to get things going. The officer made a grudging noise, but the look he shot Matt made it clear he didn’t intend to cede any ground. His record would come up again and be an issue until they caught the real bad guy.
“I’ve got it queued up to the relevant part.” Johnson woke up the laptop and started the grainy black-and-white video. “Here. Right here is where we see the guy for the first time. No clear shot of his face until later.”
Matt watched in horror as the hooded figure pulled a boxcutter out of the pocket of his sweatshirt and started slashing Taylor’s painting. Seeing the aftermath hadn’t done justice to the violence of the attack. The guy on the video went after the canvas as if it had personally wronged him. Ice settled in the pit of Matt’s stomach, and when he glanced from the screen to Taylor’s brother, he could tell the other man felt the same thing. This was personal. Someone wanted to hurt Taylor.
Once the guy started spray painting, he either lost track of where the camera was or he never knew to begin with. Either way, they got a decent shot of his face. Matt blew out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He didn’t recognize the vandal. It didn’t get them any closer to finding the guy, but it eliminated Matt’s crazy family and any of his old neighborhood contacts from the suspect list. That was the only thing he had to be grateful about the situation.
“Recognize him?” asked Adam.
“No,” said Matt, shaking his head.
The other cop looked on, his wariness etched on his face. “Are you sure no one has a reason to want to hurtyou, Mr. Thorne?”
Matt felt certain the mister was an afterthought in deference to Adam.
“The attack was directed at my sister. It was her name that was painted over, her painting that was destroyed,” said Adam, his jaw clenched tight. Matt had never been so grateful for the Southerlands’ loyalty to one another. If Adam hadn’t been there to keep the focus on keeping Taylor safe, who knew how long the investigation might have meandered around in his past before they found the vandal? Taylor’s brother wasn’t about to let anything happen to her. He and Matt were on exactly the same page.
“Looks that way,” said the other cop, grudgingly.
“So where do we go from here? How do we find the guy who did this?” Matt didn’t know how he was supposed to go on about his life knowing someone out there wanted to hurt Taylor. She was his world, and he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. He’d do everything in his power to protect her, even if it meant reviving a skill set he’d abandoned years ago.
“We’ll run it through the system and see if there are any comps with guys who match this description. I can put his face up on the news and see if we get a hit that way.”
“But it’s a long shot, right?” He didn’t like the direction this conversation was taking. We don’t know how to find the guy threatening the love of your lifewasn’t what he wanted to hear.
“We’re going to do everything we can,” said Johnson. “Taylor’s family. That makes her one of us. We’ll find the guy. It just might not be fast enough.”
“What do you mean?” asked Matt, glancing from Johnson to Adam. His future brother-in-law had his jaw clamped so tight, Matt wouldn’t be surprised if he cracked his teeth.
“He means we might not catch the bastard before he tries something else.”
Johnson gave an almost imperceptible nod and ice flooded Matt’s veins.
“We have the guy’s face. That’s a lot more than we often have to work with.” Matt couldn’t tell which of them the cop was trying to convince. If it was him, it wasn’t working. “Either it’s a once-and-done thing and the guy will disappear, or it will escalate. I can’t allocate resources from this department to look after Taylor.” The other cop sounded genuinely sorry, and Matt decided to forgive his earlier assumptions.
“I’ve got that handled,” said Adam.
“How? You guys have to be stretched as thin as we are,” said Johnson.
“We are,” said Adam, his mouth set in a grim line.
The crease in his forehead was practically etched in his skin, and Matt wondered about the kind of toll the job took on the man who’d soon be his brother. Jude, the oldest Southerland and a doctor, had plenty of stress as did Adam’s twin, the businessman, but they at least had enough money to make some of the other things easier.
Matt suspected Adam had more stress than the other two men combined and with a baby on the way, he had to be feeling the financial squeeze more acutely than before. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, looking like he was getting ready to schedule dental work.
“I’m going to have to call my cousins.”
