Intemperance X - the Life We Choose
Copyright© 2026 by Al Steiner
Chapter 1: Every Breath You Take
Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 1: Every Breath You Take - INTEMPERANCE X is the tenth and final novel in the main Intemperance series. As the band headlines its biggest moment yet, decades of music, loyalty, and hard-earned love converge on one unforgettable night—where everything they’ve built is tested in front of the world.
Caution: This Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa Consensual BiSexual Fiction
Port Hills, New Zealand
December 21, 2004
Andrew Conners—known pretty universally as “Drew”—was the kid who had created such a ruckus back in June for trying to climb the cliff from the ocean side at Kingsley Manor to get “the shot” of the Kingsleys in their castle of solitude. He did not get “the shot”. Instead, he got a short trip dangling from a cable on a US Coast Guard helicopter after he became stuck on said cliff eighty-five feet above the crashing high tide that he had failed to take into consideration.
He had learned from that incident. No more cliffs. At least, no more cliffs that required climbing and safety gear to scale them. No more cliffs where death could easily result. He would never forget that horrifying moment he realized that he was stuck. Unable to climb up any further with only thirty feet left to go. Unable to climb down because the beach he had climbed up from had disappeared beneath violent waves pounding into the sheer rocks.
Drew could learn. It just took a near-death experience to drive some lessons home.
On this day, the first day of summer in the southern hemisphere of Planet Earth, Drew was once again risking injury, dehydration, sunburn, and aggressive German wasps. But not death. He could not enjoy the prestige of getting “the shot” if he was dead.
“The shot” was what he was after now as he hiked just below the summit of the Port Hills that separated Christchurch from the harbor town of Lyttleton.
The wind climbed the southern face of the most prominent geological feature on the Canterbury Plain of New Zealand’s South Island in dry, sunbaked gusts, carrying the smell of hot dust and old grass. Drew adjusted his backpack for the third time in five minutes, the straps digging into his shoulders, the tripod knocking against his ribs like a third lung. The trail wasn’t even a trail—just a game path winding through gorse and brittle flax, sometimes nothing more than flattened grass and guesswork.
Ahead of him, Paul Peterson moved like the goddamn wind.
Fifty-three years old, still wiry from decades of crawling through parking garages, ducking under police tape, and, more recently, hiking slopes like this one in every continent with a Nikon and a payday. He never lost his breath. Drew had been watching for it—waiting for that first wheeze—but the man was clean. Gave up coke in ‘93, rehabbed for six months, and had been climbing hills and outlasting interns ever since.
Drew, on the other hand, was panting like a rookie. Which, technically, he still was.
“You’re favoring your left,” Paul called over his shoulder. “Adjust your hips.”
Drew grunted. “You didn’t say it would be this steep.”
“You didn’t ask.”
Two days ago Drew had been in almost-winter Los Angeles. Not exactly Moscow or even Chicago cold, but not balmy either. And now it was the day of the summer solstice down here, and his body hadn’t gotten the memo. The heat was dry and the wind sharp. The sun had that odd angle, too—bright but not overhead, throwing long shadows even at midday. Drew’s shirt was stuck to his back. His boots were too new. Every damn thing he brought with him was heavier than he thought it would be.
But he didn’t complain. This was the job. And it was a good one.
The National Watcher had paid an Air New Zealand booking clerk five hundred bucks for the Kingsleys’ Christmas travel itinerary. Twelve adults, three children. Destination: the family’s known home in the Port Hills, overlooking Lyttelton Harbour. They’d be arriving today. Were likely just landing at Christchurch International after the connecting flight from Auckland. Drew and Paul would be there to “document” their arrival at the home.
The Watcher had called Paul first. He did not work for them, but he subcontracted with them frequently when specific shots were needed. And Paul had called Drew, who he had been mentoring for the past year.
They flew out the day before the Kingsleys, December 18, and checked into a mid-tier hotel in Christchurch. A reporter had come with them and was technically in charge of them. Valerie Sharp—the Valerie Sharp—got a luxury suite. Drew and Paul had to share a standard room with creaky beds and a drain that smelled like sulfur.
Paul had warned him: “This is the big leagues, kid. No one’s paying us to be comfortable.”
Now, a day later, they were hiking into position—south slope, above the house, line of sight on the back deck, where the truth lived.
“You get the mission brief straight?” Paul asked, slowing just enough to talk.
“Yeah.”
“Then hit me with it.”
Drew tried not to wheeze. “We’re here to document the three principals—Jake, Laura, Celia. Aggressively, but discreetly. House perimeter only for now. Hotel shots and airport pickups are already done by the local stringers. Our job’s the private stuff. Real-life material.”
Paul gave a nod of approval. “Why?”
“Because people don’t believe the reconciliation story. Jake marrying Laura again while still living with Celia Valdez? Too neat. Too fake. The Watcher wants the real story.”
“Which is?”
Drew hesitated. “We don’t know. That’s the point.”
Paul smiled. “There you go. You’re learning.”
They hiked on. Peterson plowed straight ahead, not a care in the world. Drew kept lagging behind, going out of his way to avoid clusters of rock or dense brush. Eventually, Peterson noticed and asked what he was doing.
“I don’t want to run into any snakes,” he said. He was not a fan of snakes of any kind but venomous snakes gave him the full-on heebie-jeebies. And he just knew that terrain like this had to be loaded with them. The kind of snakes that his father—a Vietnam veteran—called “two steps” or “one smokes”, meaning that was how long you had to live after being bitten by one.
“There are no snakes in New Zealand,” Peterson said blandly. “Stop worrying about that.”
“What do you mean there are no snakes here?” he asked. “I’ve heard horror stories about how everything here is trying to kill you.”
“In Australia, sure,” Peterson said. “Not here though. There are no snakes in New Zealand. Not a single one outside of the zoos in Auckland and Christchurch.”
“Really?” he asked, wondering if his mentor was fucking with him. Sometimes he did that.
“Really,” Peterson said. “New Zealand broke away from the supercontinent and became isolated before snakes evolved. Australia was twenty or thirty million years behind so it’s crawling with snakes.”
It did not seem like he was fucking with him. “How do you know this?” he asked.
“Celebrity photojournalism 101,” he said. “Always research your environment.” He gave him a look. “You know? Like whether or not there are venomous animals, what the weather conditions will be like, when the fucking tide comes in.”
“Oh ... yeah. That makes sense,” Drew said, embarrassed that his mentor brought up his failure on the cliff. “You’re sure about the snakes though?”
“I’m betting my life on this research,” he replied. “So ... yeah. I’m pretty fuckin’ sure.”
They passed a line of bleached fence posts and followed a footpath that traced the edge of a ridge, the hill falling away sharply on the left. The sea glinted beyond the curve of the land—deep, brilliant blue against a sky that looked like overexposed film.
Paul stopped at a rise and crouched behind a patch of gorse.
Drew dropped beside him, grateful to be still for a second.
“Right down there,” Paul said, pointing.
And there it was.
The Kingsley house, tucked into a terraced notch in the hill, maybe seventy meters below them. Pale walls. Dark wood deck. A large circular hot tub sitting amid a collection of outdoor tables, chairs, and recliners. Even from this distance, the place oozed privacy and wealth.
“Valerie wants images by tonight,” Paul said, fishing out a bottle of water. “We’ll dump cards back at the hotel and let her sort the narrative.”
Drew didn’t answer.
He’d met Valerie Sharp twice now. First at LAX, where she barely nodded at him while arguing about the weight of her second carry-on. Then again at check-in in Christchurch, when she took the suite and gave them a tight smile like a teacher forced to share space with the janitor.
Paul called her “the best writer the Watcher’s got and a stuck-up bitch.” Both were true.
“She doesn’t want pictures,” Drew said, looking at camera angles and concealment. “She wants proof.”
Paul snorted. “She wants a story that can’t be disproven. Big difference.”
“I don’t understand,” Drew said. “What is the difference?”
Paul did not answer him. Instead, he checked his watch. “Eleven forty,” he said. “Earliest they’ll show is twelve-thirty, probably closer to one. Let’s move closer.”
They gathered their gear without a word. Paul led the descent, angling off the ridgeline into rougher terrain. The gorse thickened quickly, shoulder-high in places and full of dead twigs ready to snap. The dry air smelled sharper here—sunbaked scrub and powdered rock.
Drew followed, boots crunching against loose gravel, brushing aside flax stalks and keeping one eye on the ground and one on the underbrush. He still didn’t fully believe Peterson about the snakes. Maybe there weren’t supposed to be any. Maybe one got loose from a zoo. Maybe it mated with a lizard and evolved. He wasn’t taking any chances.
They pushed through for a quarter mile, descending slightly until they reached a broad rock outcropping jutting from the hillside like a dropped anvil. It cast a solid, crooked shadow across a flat patch of ground, partially screened by brush and sun-bleached boulders.
“Here,” Paul said, crouching to study the line of sight. “Good cover. We’re shaded, elevation’s solid, and we’ve got brush behind us to block the angle from the trail.”
Drew dropped his pack and nodded. “You think we’ll have sightlines into the windows?”
“We’ll check.” Paul was already pulling out his tripod, extending the legs silently. “Rules of stakeout in this terrain: stay in the shadows, don’t silhouette on a skyline, and don’t move more than you have to. House can’t see us. Trail can’t see us. Tourists with telephoto lenses can’t see us. Clear?”
“Clear,” Drew said, setting up beside him.
They worked efficiently. Tripods planted and stabilized. Lenses mounted. Angles adjusted.
Drew adjusted the camo sleeve over his forearm and dropped to one knee, scanning through the Nikon. The house below looked placid, still empty. But the vantage was perfect—he could see almost the entire back deck, the slope of the roof, the second-floor balcony, and at least four windows on the west-facing side.
“I’ll be able to shoot through those at night,” he said. “Assuming lights on, blinds up.”
“They’ll leave them open. Rich people always think privacy comes with square footage.” Paul was adjusting aperture settings now. “Mark your angles. Pick two you can swing between fast if anything pops off. Third can be wide.”
Drew nodded, working through his viewfinder. “Got it.”
The air was still. Hot. The only sound was the distant cry of a raptor and the soft click of plastic and metal as they checked and rechecked their gear. Their camouflage clothing—dull greens and grays—made them blend naturally into the scrub-shadowed slope. From even twenty yards away, they’d vanish into the terrain.
Drew eased back against the rock and exhaled.
“We’re good?”
“We’re ghosts,” Paul said.
And they waited.
They’d been quiet for over an hour. No talking. Just the click of aperture wheels, the occasional sip of water, and the slow consumption of a protein bar each—Paul’s peanut butter, Drew’s chalky and unidentifiable. They rationed their four liters of water apiece, packed based on Paul’s calculations: two for the daytime stakeout, one for the hike out, one for emergency reserve. It would be enough.
They’d hike out half an hour before sunset, no exceptions. No after-dark stumbles. No post-sunset shots on Day One. The plan was to return at dusk tomorrow and camp in position until sunrise.
At 12:50 PM, Drew saw motion.
“Vehicle,” he said quietly.
“Where?”
“Access road. Can’t see the Summit Road from here.”
Paul looked in that direction. “That’s them.”
A white Toyota Hilux pickup led the approach, followed by two dark green Toyota Land Cruisers. The Hilux bumped along the narrow paved road first—a newer model, not the 1992 version that was registered to Kingsley. A rental then. The Land Cruisers rolled in behind it, both clearly rentals as well, both full.
The first SUV stopped. Then the second. Doors opened like clockwork.
“Start shooting,” Paul told him. “Ease into rhythm.”
Drew settled behind his camera and focused in.
He immediately spotted Jake, then Laura, then Celia. Caydee came hopping out in a bucket hat with a stuffed dolphin tucked under one arm. Cap was lifted from a car seat, still groggy, and passed to Celia.
Paul began his narration.
“All right. That’s the primary three—Jake, Laura, Celia. Caydee’s the redheaded older kid, belongs to Jake and Laura. Cap is the baby—Jake and Celia.”
“I know them.”
“Yeah, but you don’t know the rest. The one with the hair the same color as Jake’s is Pauline Kingsley—Jake’s older sister, runs their record label. Obie is the guy next to her, her long-time boyfriend. You know him as OB2, the country singer who writes songs about a woman going to get an abortion. They’re not married. They did not get an abortion because the girl with them is Tabitha, their lovechild. She’s ten.”
“Got it.”
“Older couple getting out of the second Land Cruiser—those are Jake’s parents, Tom and Mary Kingsley. Mary played violin on the first two Jake Kingsley and Celia Valdez solo albums. The other older couple with the garment bags? Celia’s parents—Roberto and Maria Valdez. They’re from Venezuela, now living in Avila Beach near Kingsley Manor.”
Drew kept snapping.
“The tall strawberry blonde in the jeans—that’s Grace Best, Laura’s oldest niece. She’s the daughter of Laura’s older brother. The one with short blonde hair and the ‘watch me seduce your boyfriend’ energy is Chase Best, Grace’s younger sister.”
“What about the last girl? Short hair, carrying the duffel?”
“That’s Gina something. We don’t know a lot about her. Valerie pulled her background—name and DOB were on the passenger list. She graduated from the University of Idaho last spring with a degree in Accounting. Unemployed currently. Lives with Grace Best in Moscow, Idaho. Could be a roommate, could be something else. No public info on the relationship.”
“So...?”
“So she’s not important unless she starts sucking Kingsley’s dick or eating out Celia or Laura.”
“Jesus.”
“Welcome to the business.”
They continued shooting—movement, luggage, body language. Jake took two bags at once and walked them through the entryway. Pauline pointed toward the back deck. Obie retrieved a stroller and collapsed it like a pro. Caydee ran after her mother, dropped her dolphin, picked it back up.
Then Drew caught it.
Jake and Celia, at the front door. A brief word exchange. Then a hug—his arms around her waist, hers around his shoulders. It lasted maybe three seconds. Drew took eleven shots of the embrace in those three seconds.
“That something?” Drew asked.
“Maybe,” Paul said. “Could be platonic. Could be the start of our payday. We’ll know more after a few days of patterns.”
“Right.”
They kept shooting. Quiet. Focused. In rhythm.
Below, the Kingsleys vanished into the house.
Above, the ghosts settled back into the shade.
The city lights came up slow—streetlamps first, then the warm scatter of houses on the outskirts, then the full glow of Christchurch proper. They rolled past a shuttered hardware store, a quiet petrol station, and a couple of flickering signs advertising rooms and real estate.
Drew finally got signal. His phone chirped—five missed calls from Valerie Sharp.
“Same,” Paul said, flipping his burner open. “Jesus.”
“She doesn’t sleep?”
“Not when she thinks she smells a story.”
They pulled into the parking lot of a McDonald’s on the edge of the city center. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The drive-thru was still open, but the dining room was closed for cleaning.
They ordered from the car—burgers, fries, Coke, no substitutions—and ate in the parking lot, windows down, headlights off. The food tasted like every McDonald’s Drew had ever eaten—warm, salty, perfectly dead inside.
I flew for sixteen hours to the farthest reaches of civilized man on Earth and what am I eating? Fucking McDonalds. Life is fucked up sometimes.
They were both filthy—sweat, dust, grass stains, maybe a bit of dried blood from Paul’s elbow where he’d scraped it on the outcrop. They still wore camo, the kind that didn’t just blend into terrain but absorbed it.
When they got back in the car, Paul flipped open his phone and dialed.
Drew could hear only one side of the conversation, but that was enough.
“Hey, Valerie. Yeah, we’re back in range now ... Yes, I saw the calls...” A pause, a roll of the eyes. “Yeah ... but there’s no cell coverage up in the Port Hills. Yeah ... but this is not Los Angeles. It’s New Zealand. Yes ... I know there are towers up on top of the Port Hills, but they’re not cell phone towers.”
He took the phone away from his ear for a moment. Drew could hear Valerie’s nasal tone voice chirping away but could not make out what she was saying. When the chirping quieted down, Paul put the phone back to his ear.
“Right,” he said. “In any case we got shots of Celia and Jake hugging each other.” Pause. “No, nothing like that. No tongues involved. Just a hug.”
Drew heard another round of chirping, shorter this time.
“It could mean anything,” he said. “It was a hug.” Another pause. “Well ... sure, I guess. We’re gonna need to hit the showers before we come up though. I smell like roadkill and Drew smells like the irrational fear of non-existent snakes.”
Another pause.
“Well ... I mean, we could come up right now, but the olfactory consequences would be permanent ... Yeah? You promise not to bitch about it?”
Drew looked over. Paul gave a flat little smile, eyes still on the road.
“Okay. Fine. Straight from the car. But you’re opening a window.”
He closed the phone with a snap.
“She wants it now.”
“She doesn’t care we stink?”
“She says she doesn’t. But she’ll care.”
They passed a liquor store with steel bars and neon signs, then hit a string of quiet intersections. The streets were mostly empty. It felt like the whole country had gone to bed—except them.
They were staying at the Hotel Grand Chancellor, a nice, old, established place in central Christchurch with years of experience hosting American travelers. Not the fanciest option, but respectable—quiet carpeted halls, polished brass elevator doors, and a front desk that didn’t flinch at weird hours or weird people.
The Watcher, like any business in the business of making money, employed accountants as part of their corporate structure. Accountants, as any working man or working woman knew, were the true bane of western civilization, the biggest joykillers and cockblockers the race of homo sapiens has ever known. Which was why Valerie Sharp, the designated talent, got a suite on the ninth floor with a park view and minibar, while Paul and Drew shared a standard twin on the second floor near the service elevator.
They stopped by their room first. Paul unlocked the door. Two single beds, one desk, and a minibar locked behind a plastic panel. Drew pulled out his laptop. Paul did the same. They didn’t speak.
Then they rode the elevator up, laptops under their arms, silent and grimy.
Valerie’s suite was at the end of the hall. Paul knocked—two hard raps.
The door opened with a smooth pull and a blast of lemon-scented air-conditioning.
Valerie Sharp stood in the doorway in gray sweats and a black sports bra, her skin lightly flushed, her blonde ponytail flawless and high. Her enhanced breasts were unmistakable, high and firm and perfectly placed—not bouncing, not straining, just there, unapologetic and symmetrical. She was short—five-two, maybe—but moved like a six-foot woman used to commanding rooms full of weak men.
She took one look at them and wrinkled her nose.
“God, you stink.”
Paul shrugged. “I told you we would.”
“You smell like sweat, fear, and socks someone stripped off a homeless man.”
“You said come up.”
“I didn’t say enjoyably.” She stepped back and let them in.
The suite was cool and bright and bigger than any hotel room Drew had ever stayed in. Cream carpet, glass tables, chrome accents, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the park. A half-eaten fruit platter sat on the minibar. A bottle of white wine, half full, rested on a side table beside a hardbound notebook and a stack of National Watcher folders. An empty bottle of what had once been red wine sat next to it.
Drew and Paul stepped in, silently shedding gear like animals dragging kill back to the den.
Valerie didn’t offer them a drink.
She had hardly spoken to Drew since they met—a brief nod at LAX, a quick “You’re the kid from the cliff thing, right?” when they checked in. Other than that: nothing. Not disdain exactly, but something colder. She looked at photographers the way other people looked at dogshit on the bottom of their shoe. Something disgusting that one was forced to deal with.
Valerie had graduated from Arizona State, journalism major, class of ‘86. She started at The Watcher writing advertorials for herbal supplements—fake science headlines that sold fat burners and memory pills to people with expired AARP cards. She climbed the ladder from bullshit health columns to celebrity gossip, breaking her first national piece on an aging soap actor’s gay affair in ‘92. She was thrice divorced—a graphic designer, a lawyer, and a major league baseball pitcher, in that order. She kept the name Sharp and the apartment in Westwood. The 28 year old personal trainer boyfriend came later, a walking muscle group named Brian who, by all accounts, would lose an intellectual debate to a common houseplant.
She was good at her job. Ruthless, calculated, impossible to fluster, and addicted to the taste of a fresh scandal. She also, Drew had heard around the campfire, drank daily more than most people did on vacation—but somehow never seemed drunk.
While they booted their laptops, she circled like a cat around the room, sipping from her glass, scanning them both with mild impatience.
“You have cards?” she asked.
Drew and Paul nodded.
“Backed up?”
“Not yet,” Paul said. “Coming off the cards now.”
“Better be good,” she said, but without heat. It was just a line—something to fill the air.
“It ain’t good,” Paul said. “I already told you that. We got the shots of Jake and Celia hugging and a couple hundred of the three principles doing normal, everyday shit as if they were normal everyday people and not celebs.”
“I’ll decide what’s good and what’s not,” she said.
“Groovy,” Paul said, doing a half eyeroll.
Drew slid his SD card into the slot and started the transfer. The files began populating. His neck was tight. His eyes were dry. He was still in the clothes he’d worn since dawn and smelled like a teenager’s sneakers left in the backseat of a hot car.
Valerie came to stand behind him, glass in hand. Very close to him despite her spoken disgust with his current odor.
She leaned forward.
Her breasts pushed against the back of his left shoulder—warm, solid, and perfectly framed by Lycra. Not heavily. Just enough for him to feel it. It felt like two grapefruits resting on him.
Drew froze.
She didn’t say anything. Just sipped her wine, her chin close to his ear, her breath smelling like chilled sauvignon Blanc and expensive toothpaste.
He didn’t dare move. Part of him wanted to lean forward, just slightly, to break contact. But a smaller, dumber part of him wanted to lean back and see what happened.
He didn’t. He sat still, heart tapping his ribs.
She never flirted. She never teased. She had not so much as made eye contact with him on the plane. And now her breasts were casually pressing into him while she reviewed thumbnails of the Kingsleys like she was scanning MRI results.
Was she doing it on purpose? He didn’t know. But he knew better than to ask.
Paul sat off to the side, stone-faced, pulling up his own files. He didn’t look over. He didn’t say anything. Paul wasn’t intimidated by Valerie. He knew she was technically in charge, but he also knew he didn’t work for her. He worked for himself. He had a reputation. A file at Watcher HQ thick enough to buy him protection. Drew had nothing. Just the pictures. Just the assignment.
The first photo loaded.
Jake Kingsley, stepping out of the Hilux. Sunglasses on, jaw tense, one hand shielding his eyes from the sun.
Valerie leaned in. “Okay,” she said softly. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
The next few thumbnails loaded without comment—Jake stepping out of the Hilux, Laura shielding her eyes from the sun, Celia tugging Cap out of the car seat, Caydee dragging her pink suitcase up the gravel.
Then the photo appeared.
Jake and Celia, hugging.
Arms around each other at the front door. His hands on her waist. Her chin tucked over his shoulder, eyes closed just for a second. The background was blown out in sun-washed blur—just wood siding and suitcase wheels—but the body language was clear, tight, and intimate.
Valerie straightened, breaking contact with Drew’s shoulder as she moved to stand over him again.
He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or upset, but he was leaning toward relieved. His spine unlocked, slightly.
They flipped through all eleven of Drew’s shots and then all thirteen of Paul’s. They all showed pretty much the same thing. In some, Celia’s eyes were open. In some, Jake had a goofy smile of weariness.
“That’s interesting,” she said, sipping her wine.
Paul looked over. “Yeah.”
Drew studied the current image. “Looks to me like two good friends hugging after a long day of travel.”
Valerie snorted. “That’s wholesome. Nobody wants wholesome.”
“I mean, it could be nothing,” Drew said. “They’re close. The whole world knows they’re close.”
“She’s not his wife,” Valerie said.
“He just remarried Laura,” Paul added. “Why didn’t he hug her? Why Celia?”
“Exactly!” Valerie said.
“Maybe because Jake and Laura have been sitting next to each other the whole trip?” Drew suggested. “They’ve been in close contact for the past sixteen hours. Jake and Celia, however, have not been. Celia was probably sitting next to Cap.”
Valerie just looked at him. “That’s stupid,” she said. “Nobody wants to hear that’s what they’re doing.”
“But ... it’s the truth,” Drew said.
Seasoned reporter and seasoned paparazzo both barked out laughter.
“The truth?” Valerie said, shaking her head. “That’s fuckin’ rich.”
“Nobody gives a shit what the truth is,” Paul told him. “They want the story.”
“The story?” Drew asked. He had sold a few shots to the Watcher and publications like them (mostly online these days) but had never been involved at this level.
“The truth is generally boring,” Valerie said. “Boring doesn’t sell papers to middle-aged housewives in Buttfuckit, Illinois.” She turned back to Paul. “Any other shots I’d give a shit about?”
Drew hesitated.
“I got a few of Celia bending over to get Cap out of the SUV. Her shirt pulled up—bit of bare belly. And there’s one of Laura, same thing. She was picking up a bag and you can see some cleavage. She’s wearing a red bra. Nothing crazy.”
Valerie didn’t even blink. “Voyeur shit.”
“Yeah.”
“We’re professionals,” Paul said, flat. “Laura’s tits and Celia’s bare belly aren’t what we’re after here. Celia’s surgery scars and Laura’s tit size have already been done to death.”
“Right.” Valerie stepped away again, crossing to the couch and topping off her glass. “Anything else?”
“No,” Paul said. “That’s the only one worth talking about. Rest is documentation. Jake and Chase left the house in the pickup truck at around 1500. They returned at 1630ish with the back of the truck full of grocery boxes. I got some shots of them bringing things in, but nothing surprising. They bought an assload of liquor and beer, but there’s an assload of people staying there.”
“Keep the shots with the liquor,” Valerie said. “They might be useful.”
“Will do,” Paul said.
She sat down on the arm of the couch. “So what’s your plan?”