Wes took the memory stick. He had his computer with him, and it would only take a few minutes to run the diagnostic with his software. “That I can’t do. Once the layer is deleted, you can’t get it back, not once the new image has been saved.”
The muscle in Declan’s jaw flexed, but he dipped his chin. “Run that test.”
Wes got up to retrieve the computer from his messenger bag and returned to the sofa, sticking the USB into the port.
There were only a handful of files on the drive, and it didn’t take long for Wes to find the photo in question.
“What’s going on?” Cara asked, coming back in the room.
“I’m running an ELA on the photos. The photo of Declan is definitely fake, but the same car after the accident is most likely real. Do you want me to run the rest of the pictures, too?” Declan nodded.
Her forehead crinkled. “How is that possible? You love that car. I think you would have noticed if it had been in an accident. Where is it now?”
“I sold it.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
“It was after…” He stopped, paced to the windows, and shoved his hands in the pockets of his suit pants, his head down.
Cara bent over Wes’s shoulder to watch. “See the green and red places?” He pointed at the screen. “That shows where the photo was manipulated.” He pulled up the metadata. “Looks like they did it on a MacBook Pro.”
“Who’s?”
“Maybe if they uploaded it to their cloud, the IP could be traced from the server, but there’s no reason for the server company to have done that. It’s a picture of someone at a tollbooth. It wouldn’t have raised any red flags.”
Wes began running the other pictures. “The rest appear to be originals. The ones of the car and… also, there is a photo of you with a broken arm.”
Declan turned back. “My broken arm?” His expression shuttered, and Wes looked to Cara with a question in his eyes, but she shrugged.
“The photo of me driving looks real though, doesn’t it?”
“To the average person, yes. Unless someone knew what to look for, they look genuine.”
“Our father must have thought they were real.”
“No.” Luke's voice was firm as he rejoined them.
“He had to have!” Declan shook his head bitterly. “Why else hide them? Why not ask me about them?”
“You don’t know that—”
“What’s the date on the police report?” he asked Luke.
“Apri, two years ago.”
Declan exhaled harshly through his nose. “I was here in Ireland. That was when Seamus... had his trouble.”
“What trouble?” Cara asked, but Declan shook his head, refusing to answer the question about his older half-brother.
“What did James say?”
“He is going to check on it and get back to me. He’s going to call in a favor so that none of our fingerprints are on this. Just in case.”
CHAPTERFIFTY-SIX
The food arrived,but none of them had much of an appetite.
“So, what do we do next? There has to be a reason Dad wanted me to get these from the vault.”
