“You’re still in bed?” I ask the obvious when I find Noah scowling, reading something.
“Yeah.”
“What’s going on?”
He looks up, his hair dishevelled, but I love seeing him semi relaxed, and in bed next to me.
Dressing quickly, in one of his business shirts and a pair of bike shorts, I climb up on the bed to sit next to him.
“What am I looking at?” I ask, leaning against his arm.
His laptop is open and a series of photos fill the screen. Four similar photos of legs are lined up next to each other, each with a different date stamp. The first three are dated close together, the last from only a few days ago. The lighting on the fourth is not as good as the others, but it still picks up similarities.
“I think I’ve figured out who the woman who attacked you is. That doesn’t mean I know her reasons why. It’s a start though. Honestly, if I hadn’t seen these photos up on the Alliance server, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But see here.” He points his finger at a divot about three quarters of the way up the thigh, and then his finger points at the same on the other images.
“They look pretty similar.”
“That’s what I got too,” he says before enlarging the images and focusing on the first one about six years ago.
“Is this one of your patients?”
“She wasn’t originally, but if it’s who I suspect, I did the second and third operations. I need to check over my file notes, but the scarring is identifiable.”
“I guess all scars are unique,” I murmur, kind of intrigued at the images. It’s just one of those things, if you didn’t have an interest in what’s in front of you, you’d never notice it.
“They’re very similar to fingerprints, actually. And I guess once you’ve been doing it as long as I have, you even get an eye for who did the surgery. Scar reconstruction is such a specialised form of plastic surgery, you get surgeons who, despite not intentionally doing so, leave their mark.”
“How?”
“If you see here, the original wound was actually a result of a car accident. Glass and burns were the cause, and the doctor who treated her initially probably waited too long, which resulted in the puckering. But whoever did it also has a heavy downward motion when he stitches. See that there, everything has a slight left sided weight to it.” Noah enlarges the image and uses the mouse to show me exactly where.
And I guess that’s where years and years of expert training come into play, because I can’t see a lot of difference between the first and second image. The third certainly but the age stamps are evidence of the healing time. The scar is not as clear, but the divot remains.
“I can’t see what you do, but I can see they’re similar, the scar, I mean.”
Noah nods his head before he flicks over to another screen and types an email. I lean against him and watch him work, biting my tongue at his detachedly typed demands to his assistant. When he presses send, my smile has him double checking before rereading his email.
“Lennon, that’s how we talk in our business.”
“I wasn’t saying a thing.”
“Strangely, you don’t need to say a word, but I hear whatever it is you’re saying.”
“I like that, Dr. Teo.” I lean up for a kiss and he keeps it pretty brief and PG, but the twins are back.
“I’ve got a lead on the woman who attacked Lennon. I’ve got a feeling she’s an old patient. I’m getting the files pulled.”
“Do you remember anything else?” Valak asks, his mood slightly snappy. Must have been the cold shower.
“No. Which is why I’ve requested my office to send my file notes over. I’ll have them within an hour.”
“You hope.” I smirk.
“I will,” he promises, giving me a sweet glare at the same time. Passing the laptop over, he climbs out of bed to have a shower. And yeah, my hungry eyes follow each naked step he takes, but all my pack have glorious tight buns. It’d be a shame not to stare.
And I don’t miss the way Gabe turns not too subtly and watches Noah. Of course, Valak doesn’t miss his brother being a perv either.
“What’s going on?”
