CHAPTER 4 - The Three Photos

“Zack, what the hell?” Chloe asked, frowning deeply at her best friend’s outburst as she put a hand over her chest. But Zachary didn’t listen to her, he kept staring at his phone screen with a look of pure disbelief etched onto his face.

“Did you find a new one?” Thea inquired, picking up Orion again.

“No…, not exactly,” Zack quietly responded, staring at the phone for a few more moments, scrolling through more pictures before suddenly pocketing it. “C’mon, I’m gonna show you.”

The ginger and the blonde exchanged a confused look as the dark-haired boy motioned for them to follow him, but they did stand up to go after their host. Zachary took them all the way down into his room in the basement.

“Well, I gotta say that’s not how I expected to visit this room,” Thea mumbled, and Chloe elbowed her with a disturbed expression.

They sat around the room and watched as Zack went to the desk and booted up his laptop. He quickly accessed his cloud drive and seemed to check the photos he took again, now on a bigger screen. Nodding to himself, he swiveled around in the chair and urged for them to come closer.

“Okay,” he said, showing them the screen. “Tell me what you see.”

“Brandon goofing around,” Thea responded at the photo of Brandon making funny faces at the camera as he worked behind one of the food tables. Likely the one his mother had put up.

“Alright. Next?” Zack changed the photo to a familiar one.

“That’s the one you took of us,” Chloe mumbled, staring at the shot of Thea with her arm around her and smiling brightly at the camera, her own smile much more muted.

“And this last one?” The Bishop boy prompted, changing the picture once again.

Althea let out a chuckle. “That’s Holly trying to look tough.” The third photo was the one of Holly with her arms crossed and staring defiantly at the camera.

“I don’t get it, Zack,” Chloe raised an eyebrow. “What’s so special about those pics?”

“Let me go back to the one I took of Brandon,” he responded, doing so. “Okay, you two, now look very closely. Not just at Brandon.”

Chloe and Thea frowned and squinted their eyes at the picture, moving toward details other than the main focus. The blonde was the one who guessed it correctly. “Wait, is that your mother dancing rather close to Mr. Reed?”

“Bingo,” Zack nodded at her. “Now do the same with your pic.”

This time it was Chloe who spotted it. “Damn, that’s Aunt Monica with Dean Wade,” she whispered, pointing at Monica smiling at something the younger man had said, him leaning sideways on the porch of the McRoses’ house in a quite suggestive manner.

Zachary didn’t comment on it this time, now he just found Chloe’s gaze and wordlessly changed it to the photo of Holly. His best friend held his gaze and then moved her own to the screen, where she instantly found the background detail at the same time Thea let out a gasp. Far behind Holly, at the corner of the photo, Monica was slow dancing with none other than Roy, Chloe’s father, his hands splayed on her waist as her own arms looped around his neck. Charlotte was nowhere in sight, though Zack knew she got back there moments after he snapped that photo to order Holly to help her, and by that time, his mother and Roy weren’t dancing anymore. It had been just a small window of time between the moment he and Holly observed Monica trying to teach Charlotte a cheerleading routine and the time the latter came back to the street, but apparently, it had been long enough for Monica and Roy to dance a little.

“So, your mother was dancing and… flirting… with some of the men?” Thea inquired.

“Seems like it,” Zack answered and then started passing through some of the pictures. “Look at these other pics,” he showed them a few photos taken of the party in general. “I didn’t have a focus in these ones, but we can see both Dean and Mr. Reed staring directly at me from different spots on the street, and of course, Chloe’s dad knew I was taking photos.”

“Is your mother that flirty?” Thea was the one who asked, her gaze switching back-and-forth between the screen and the boy in front of it.

Zack sighed. “She’s been single for a long time and looks quite young and good for her age. Plus, she’s always been like that, like the room instantly perks up when she steps in,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t mind if she dates, but let’s be real. With the exception of Mr. Reed, the other ones aren’t exactly compatible with her.”

Althea frowned and let her mind ruminate on it for a few moments. “So what you’re implying is that one of these men might have taken your camera to hide possible indiscretions with your mom? Or maybe to stop you from finding out?”

“It’s the only theory I have,” Zack took a deep breath, as if what he just discovered was a lifeline to the surface of a murky ocean preventing him from finding his prized camera.

“Are you listening to yourself?!” Chloe suddenly blurted out, glaring at her best friend. Orion mewled softly at the noise. “My Dad and your mom, Zack? Really?!”

The young man let out another sigh. “I’m not saying he was the one, Chlo, just that he fits the pattern we just discovered.”

The redhead rolled her eyes. “Let me tell you, then! My Dad would absolutely never cheat on my Mom,” she affirmed with complete conviction. “They’re always sweet with each other, almost disgustingly at times. Mom has this delusion that we have like some sort of wolf curse in our family and Dad is her mate. Trust me, he’s completely whipped by her, there’s no fucking way!”

Zack stared into her pretty sky-blue eyes, almost able to count her faint freckles, as her face got all red by the defending of her parents’ relationship. “Okay, I believe you,” he honestly told her. “But that doesn’t invalidate the pattern, and we still might be on to something with Dean Wade and Mr. Reed.”

Chloe sighed. “Which one of you talked to them earlier?”

“Zack and I got Mr. Reed, and he claimed he didn’t know anything about the camera. He took a bit of a long time to think about it, though,” Thea responded. “Dean’s house wasn’t in our path.”

“Let me text Brandon and ask if he and Cody caught him home,” Zack said, pulling out his phone.

Half a minute passed before the phone buzzed with an answer.

Zachary then proceeded to type all about the theory they had just developed, bringing the other boy up to speed, while Thea said she was going to tell Cody about it, even though she conceded that he probably didn’t care much about the whole case. When Zack finished his text chat with Brandon, the three teens fell into a brief silence, just awkwardly staring at each other.

“So, what’s the plan?” Chloe broke it. “How are we gonna find out if Mr. Reed or Dean had anything to do with it?”

“We gotta ask them. Again, in Mr. Reed’s case,” Thea suggested.

“Well,” Zack crossed his arms. “If they really took the camera, they won’t just tell us.”

Thea snorted. “So what? You wanna break into their houses or something?”

When Zack didn’t answer, Chloe’s eyes widened in panic. “Zack, no! You’re not seriously considering that?!” She demanded, but he remained silent. “Are you?!”

Zachary sighed. “Like I said, they won’t just tell us,” he nervously scratched the back of his neck. “Look, if I’m right, they’re the ones who brought it upon themselves by stealing my camera!”

“Holy shit…,” Chloe mumbled in disbelief, rubbing her temple.

Thea sighed, plopping down on the back of the couch. “Okay, look, if we’re really doing this, we need a plan. A solid one,” she warned. “I don’t wanna be caught breaking and entering less than a month before leaving for college.”

“Agreed,” Zack sighed again. “And in the meantime, I guess I should investigate my Mom. I refuse to believe she had anything to do with it, but I wanna find out if she’s involved in some way with any of these guys. If anything, it can give us an even stronger reason to suspect them.”

A snort came from Chloe. “Well, she and my Dad are friends,” she sassed, resembling her younger sister at that moment.

Zack then stared into her eyes again and then reached for her hands, startling Chloe a little. “Would you mind looking into him a bit, Chlo?” He asked, and when she seemed about to protest, he quickly explained his meaning. “Just to clear our heads. I don’t think they’re getting it on, either,” he grinned. “You were very thorough in explaining how your parents’ relationship works.”

Chloe faintly blushed at the memories of several sickeningly sweet moments between her parents. “Okay,” she finally said, shaking her head a bit. “If it’s gonna make you feel any better.”

“Alright, we should probably go now,” Thea proposed. “Let’s sleep on it and then decide tomorrow if we’re really going through with this.”

“I scared you, didn’t I?” Zack gave her a rueful smile as the two girls stood up to leave.

Thea smirked and then leaned in to give him a brief kiss on the cheek, surprising both him and Chloe. “No, it just made you more exciting than pretty much any guy in my year,” the blonde winked at him, causing Chloe to giggle before the two girls left his room, his skin tingling where the older girl’s lips had touched it.

Chloe was almost like family, she could show Thea the door, he figured, sagging on the chair as he daydreamed about a sexy, sassy blonde neighbor. Orion meowed on the floor, right by the chair, and Zachary smiled before picking up the kitten and petting him on the the top of his small head.

“You like her, buddy?” He cooed. “Yeah, me too.”

Later that night, Zack was in his bed, already ready to doze off, Orion long asleep in the cat bed. He was just checking the last news and posts on The Pulse when the notification of a new text message popped up on the top of the screen.

Thea? What does she want? He asked himself with a silly grin, recalling the moments they shared earlier in the day. His overall mood had improved a bit now that he had a possible clue on where his camera could be. He touched the screen to open the message.

Zachary shifted his gaze away from the phone, the gears in his mind spinning fast. If the wife was the one who cheated, it could very well have been with Dean Wade or Eric Reed. If Zack had to guess, though, his money was on the former. Then now, the guy wanted to make any evidence of hitting on another neighborhood woman go away. But Mom is single, and well…, they were talking in sight of everyone at the party, he thought before a slightly different angle crossed his mind. Was it to hide it from Taylor and me?

The phone buzzed, now that the screen had darkened during his self brainstorming.

A moment passed, and then Zack saw she was typing again.

He chuckled at the sudden change of subject, but felt somewhat grateful for it.

The easy grin on Zack’s face vanished as soon as he impulsively typed that and hit ‘send’. Fuck, why did I do that?! He chastised himself, and was about to try and salvage the situation when he noticed the three blinking dots that meant Althea was typing a reply. It was probably the longest handful of seconds of his entire life.

Zack could almost see the grin behind that reply, his heart beating faster and cock twitching in his boxers at it. He decided to bite that bait and see where it took them. It felt too exciting not to.

He waited with bated breath and then came the new reply.

That sent another jolt all the way to his groin, an almost inaudible gasp escaping his lips as the young man quickly typed his reply, his fingers flying through the screen as his imagination went overdrive.

About twenty seconds passed before Zack got an attachment instead of a new reply. He swallowed hard before touching it, and his cock throbbed painfully at the photo Thea sent him. It was a selfie, giving him a view of the blonde lying on her front, wearing a flimsy white tank top above a light-blue bra, leaving her medium-to-large cleavage on display, her toned ass hugged by a pair of blue boy-shorts, and her lovely bare feet up and crossed above her rear. The pose, his damn kryptonite. She was grinning teasingly at him while staring into the lens of her phone. He unconsciously reached down and gave his cock a couple of strokes over the fabric of the boxers before typing a reply.

Zack groaned and reached down once more, this time slipping his hand into the boxers to hold his hardened shaft, stroking it a few times before pulling back. He groaned as his thumbs returned to the screen to type another message. He didn’t know what they were doing, but it felt too good to stop.

Zachary’s icy-blue eyes widened, his heart rate quickening once again as he let out another gasp. Was he seriously about to get a show from that sexy blonde who seemed intent on forcing him to make a mess of himself? Go big or go home, he finally decided, and was about to type his positive response when Althea began typing instead, making him freeze in place.

In the middle of the excitement and the sudden disappointment due to the interruption, Zachary only typed out a quick goodnight answer and let his head sink into his pillow, a long sigh escaping his lips. He looked down at the long tent on his boxers and sighed one more time.

Fucking hell, what am I gonna do with this thing?!