Just get back to the camera again

Eventually, Jack had enough of browsing the folders in his daughter's computer, even if his first few findings still bothered him. It wasn't what he came there looking for however, so he decided it could wait until later, and instead he plugged in the camera to see what else that creepy young stalker had been up to.

Once again he was amazed by the sheer amount of pictures taken, and with a better overview it was easy to see that just about every single one of them was somehow connected to his own house or family. Whatever had drawn the kid's interest, it seemed indeed like he'd spent several days just sneaking around in the bushes outside.

It wasn't just any quick snapshots either, as Jack came to realize when he noticed the high quality of every picture. It suddenly seemed unlikely to him that a young kid would have the expertise to use the camera to such an extent, even if the piece itself was good enough to make up for a slight lack of skill on the user's part, and it made him wonder if there could be someone else in league with the boy he'd caught.

The few pictures at the end seemed to contradict this new thought however, as they too were taken with the same precision, and Jack was fairly certain that there was none else in the area when he managed to catch the young intruder red handed. It seemed unlikely for other reasons as well, even if none of his theories should be dismissed just yet.

Returning to the beginning again, it seemed like the stalking had actually started just a couple of days ago, with the first picture dated to Thursday noon. It started innocently enough as well, with just a bunch of pictures taken from various angles of their house. Then there was a few with members of Jack's family on them, but even those didn't really show anything too explicit, even if it was alarming enough just to know that someone had been watching them for several days.

Later on the same day there was also a couple of pictures of Jack himself, and it seemed like the photographer had tried to follow him for a while around the house, which seemed a bit odd considering how Jack had assumed from the start that the girls were the natural targets in this case. Still there was nothing odd going on in these pictures really, and it wasn't until Saturday lunch, when Jack had been off to work a couple of hours as usual, when his wife had been caught with an unknown man in the garden.

Even then there was but a few pictures taken of the action however, which seemed really strange considering how many there was in total. It was like the stalker had deliberately avoided any scenes like that, and had even missed out on some of the most essential parts, such as the face of the man who was with Shirley that day.

The rest of the pictures were all pretty much the same, with the stalker following Jack's family in their everyday life, and it seemed like they didn't even stop to pay some extra attention to the girls when they went for a swim in the pool. In a way this lack of interest was almost insulting to Jack, even if he'd be the last to say that his daughters should be ogled more often than they already were.

While he didn't get much wiser by watching all those pictures to the end, it definitively made him wish for another chat with the young photographer. Not just to scold him, but by far more so to ask about their ulterior motives. And perhaps even to commend them on their expertise with the camera.

All of this needed some thinking about, and it was pretty late already when Jack managed to fix himself a quick lunch. Then the girls returned home just a short time later, with Kate having fixed them some sandwiches at work which they could have for dinner...