It didn’t occur to him not to check the room. Grady didn’t half-ass anything, and it made sense to confirm all was well in the bedroom while he was here. There was a rug just inside the entrance that might easily soak up a lot of water before being symptomatic of a problem. So he thought nothing of opening her door. He did look around to tell her he was going in, but he couldn’t see her, so he assumed she was kneeling in the kitchen hidden behind the counter and the noise was prohibitive to calling out.

Turning the knob, Grady stepped inside. There was no immediate squelching of the rug, which he trod over back and forth to be sure as he assessed both it and the nearby flagstones for signs of water encroachment. Satisfied all was well, he turned to exit when his gaze fell on several canvases leaning against the wall.

Curious as to just what kind of painter Suzanne St. Michelle was, he paused to give them more of his attention. Grady blinked. Nudes, apparently. He recognized the famous figures on the canvases at first glance, and it took only a few moments for him to realize that Suzanne had talent.

Grady may not have had an artistic bone in his body—he couldn’t even draw a straight line with a ruler—but clearly the woman could paint. It was on second glance, however, he realized something startling.

Something outrageously startling.

His face staring out from each of the five canvases. Not his body but most definitely his face.

What. The. Fuck.

Chapter Five

Grady blinked and blinked again. Shaking his head, he grappled with what he was seeing, trying to make sense of the images that were familiar but not. His thoughts were spinning like a tumble dryer, and he couldn’t concentrate with the vac rumbling like a goddamn jackhammer in his brain. Switching it off, he dropped the head of the apparatus on the rug and moved closer to the paintings.

She’d…superimposed his head on famous works like David and that dude with the four arms and four legs that da Vinci—or maybe it was somebody else?—had done. The reproduction of the subjects was very good but, with his head substituted for theirs, the paintings looked surreal. Like those big boards with people’s bodies printed on them and a cutout where their faces should be so other people could stick their heads in for a funny photo opportunity.

Grady did not think they were funny.

Maybe she was just a frustrated classical artist hiding behind silly doodles, and she was here to try her hand at serious art. And failing. Giving up at the last hurdle and…painting his face instead.

It was very definitely him. She’d captured with startling accuracy the hardened loner who stared back at him from the mirror every morning. There was nothing caricature-like about the detail of his face or that haunted kind of look in his eyes. And then there was that circular puckered wound placed beneath the right clavicle on every painting.