Free Caught by Jami Alden Page A

his cheeks even as heat gathered in his groin. Damn, he loved watching her squirm in her seat.
    Her withering glare lost its impact under all that pink. “I’m sure you would know better than I,” she said, presenting him with her profile as she turned back to her screen.
    Damn straight. “I’d be happy to demonstrate any and all of them.”
    Her mouth gaped as she gave him a disbelieving look. “Are you seriously hitting on me while we’re talking about the sexual habits of teenage girls? Could you be any more inappropriate?”
    He held up his hands. “The offer was made purely out of professional courtesy.”
    She shot him a glare. Licked her lips. Shifted in her seat. Yeah, for all her offense, she was thinking about it.
    “All right, so Kstar90 got kicked out of the virgin club for being too skanky,” he said, letting Toni off the hook for the moment. “Besides the V-Club, what do you think her tie is to Kara?”
    Toni clicked on a link to additional photos. Ethan sucked air through his teeth. He thought the picture of Kstar90 on her home page was bad, but these had crossed the line from racy to lewd. There were half a dozen, showcasing Kstar90 in various states of undress, every body part displayed for anyone with a Web browser to see.
    All except her face, which had been painstakingly blurred out.
    Toni’s mouth got tighter and her jaw took on a hard set as she clicked on one of the photos and called up another program. A separate window popped up with a grid full of data and a smaller version of the picture. But this time the subject’s face was clear.
    Kstar90 wasn’t connected to Kara. Kstar90 was Kara.
    “Fuck,” Toni swore, echoing his own curse.
    She quickly clicked through the remaining photos and ran them through the same program.
    “That’s an EXIF viewer?” Ethan asked.
    Toni looked shocked that he had any clue what she was doing but nodded.
    “My brother Derek is more up on digital forensics than I am, but I try to stay current. What program are you using?”
    “It’s my own program,” she said, clicking back over to Kara’s main page.
    Ethan was grateful. He liked a naked woman as much as the next guy—hell, probably more. But looking at nude pictures of his client’s teenage daughter with Toni less than six inches away made him feel all kinds of dirty.
    Toni sat back in her chair, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. “These files have been altered and compressed, so I can’t get all of the information about the original pictures.”
    Ethan didn’t have in-depth knowledge of digital photo forensics but he knew that depending on the file size and type, you could find out everything about a picture, including whose camera shot it when, and, if you had a camera that recorded GPS information, where on the globe it was taken. You could also, without much effort, extract unretouched thumbnails of pictures that had been altered.
    Toni propped her elbows on the desk and put her head in her hands. “I told her to be careful about what she puts out there. And she goes and posts naked pictures of herself.”
    Ethan didn’t say anything as Toni scrolled down the page through Kara’s most recent messages.
    “She hasn’t posted to this page,” she said, voice vibrating with concern.
    “Why would she? Her parents wouldn’t know to look here. She’s probably fine. I know this looks bad, but it doesn’t change the likelihood that she’s just holing up with a friend.”
    “I want to believe that. But I never thought she’d do anything this stupid,” she said, gesturing at the screen.
    “Teens aren’t famous for thinking things through. Even smart kids like Kara. Doesn’t mean she’s in trouble.” Ethan knew all about kids making dumb moves, especially kids whose home life was falling apart. When he was sixteen, he’d disappeared for a week to see if his dad would emerge from his black hole of obsession to come looking for him. In the end, his older brother Danny had found