Talent to Burn (Hidden Talent #1) by Laura Welling

jumping out at me. “Damn it.” I picked it up and put it into my pocket. I could always throw it away later.
     
     
    I climbed into the rental car in front of the hotel. Jamie pulled out of the porte-cochere into the endless sunlight.
    “You were okay waiting in the café?” Jamie asked easily, as he glanced over his shoulder for a gap in traffic.
    I sighed and laid my head back against the headrest. “For some values of okay.” Before he asked, I said, “Ryder paid me a visit.”
    The car lurched and we nearly hit the curb.
    “Be careful!” I grabbed at the dashboard.
      “What did you say?” His voice clipped and urgent, he shot me a look before turning back to the road.
    “He just wanted to talk.”
    “Shit.” He drummed the steering wheel with his fingers. “I’m glad you got away. What did he say?”
    “That he only wanted to help Eric. That they want to stop him from hurting someone else. That if we found him first we should turn him in.” I didn’t mention his caution against Jamie.
    I turned my head against the headrest and found Jamie looking at me instead of the road. His gaze flicked back toward the windscreen.
    “And what do you think about what he said?”
    “I’d like to talk to Eric about what he wants to do. If we find him.”
    “When we find him.” He sounded confident. “I’m glad Ryder didn’t try to make you do anything you didn’t want to do.”
    Me too. “He was polite.”
    “He’s always polite. He’s still a bastard.”
    “What’s the plan this morning?” I asked, trying to ignore the business card I hadn’t mentioned burning a hole in my pocket.
    Jamie pulled out into the road. “What I really want to do is to swing by that tattoo place and see if anyone knows our mystery girl.”
    We parked near the tattoo parlor, which looked less skanky than I’d expected. We were in a hip part of town, surrounded by bars, cafés, and a few too many guys with goatees for my liking, although only a fraction of the numbers you saw in Seattle.
    Renee’s Tattoos had a double-width storefront, but one of the plate glass windows was painted black. The other side held the front desk and waiting area. They were open for business this morning. Jamie led the way up the three steps and headed off to the side, to a counter that held several photo albums.
    I looked around the walls. I’d never been in a tattoo parlor before, never having been attached enough to any particular image to want it on my skin forever. I wasn’t morally opposed to tattoos—they just weren’t my thing. Jamie had some but I still hadn’t gotten a good look at them. I always seemed to be distracted by other things when he had his shirt off.
    Hundreds of stock designs lined the walls. You could get any of the clichés—roses, skulls, butterflies, Celtic knot work, and many choices of each.
    “This is the good stuff,” Jamie said, and gestured me over. The photo album he had open contained pictures of actual tattoos with much more elaborate designs than the ones on the walls. I concurred that they were more artistic than the clip art ones. Flicking through another album beside him, I discovered they were sorted by theme. Jamie’s book seemed to have mostly Asian-inspired designs, while mine contained fantasy animals.
    “Look,” I said, finding a whole double page of different phoenixes. Or would that be phoenices, I wondered. We really only needed to find one in particular.
    “At least three of these fit the bill,” Jamie said, flicking his forefinger at the lower back versions. “It’s a pretty common idea.”
    I stepped back from the counter, frustrated. “I wish it were unique.”
    “We don’t even know if we’re in the right place.”
    “Sweetie,” the girl behind the front counter interjected, “y’all are definitely in the right place. What can I help you with?”
    “Hey,” Jamie said. “We saw a woman with a phoenix tattooed on her lower back. My girlfriend here liked it and we were