“So what made you want to become a tattoo artist?”

“I love doing it,” she answers simply, wiping away excess ink.

I’m careful not to move my body when I turn my head to peer up at her face. She knows I’m watching her, but she seems intent on avoiding my eyes. “Who’s being evasive now?”

Her lips press into a tight line, like she’s trying not to smile. And suddenly I wish I wasn’t having this piece done on my side. I wish I’d picked my chest for its location, so I could lie on my back and stare up at her the entire time.

Because I meant what I said: Ivy is fierce, stunning, and captivating.

“I love to draw,” she finally says. “I’ve been drawing on every surface I could reach since I was able to grip a crayon in my hand. Paper, walls, cars, you name it, my parents will tell you I marked it.” A wistful look flickers past her eyes. “And my uncle. He’s what got me into this career of drawing on bodies.”

“The uncle who owned this shop?”

She swallows hard. “Yeah, him.”

“Tell me about him.”

She frowns. “Why?” There’s a hint of suspicion in there.

I need to tread carefully. “Because sometimes it helps to talk about loved ones you’ve lost to a complete stranger.” Even though that’s not why I’m asking, it’s still true. I watch her as she seems to think about that, still working away on the outline.

Only when she breaks to clean the ink do her dark brown eyes flicker to mine. “Have you lost any loved ones?”

She’s already figured out that I was in some sort of armed forces. The army, she assumes. I haven’t corrected her because I need to be cautious. With only a few thousand active SEALs at any given time, it wouldn’t be impossible for someone to connect dots that lead to me.

But I also can’t blow her off now. She finally seems to be relaxing around me, revealing more about herself. “One to a sniper bullet, and two to a roadside bomb. I watched all three of them die.”

She settles a gentle, knowing gaze on me. “I saw my uncle, just after they shot him and ran out the door,” she says softly. “But he was already gone.”

Yeah, I pretty much figured that. “It’s hard to get that image out of your head, isn’t it?”

She averts her gaze to my side, but I catch the small nod.

“So tell me about your uncle,” I prod. “It will help, I promise.”

She sighs. “I’m not really sure what to say. No one’s ever actually asked me that question before. I mean, you either knew him or you didn’t. You either liked him or you didn’t. But how to actually describe a guy like Ned?” She chews the inside of her mouth, until a slight smile pushes through. “He was a real fucking asshole.”

I wasn’t expecting that answer, and I can’t help it. I burst out laughing. Luckily Ivy pulls away a second before my entire body starts shaking. “You can’t move!” she yells, but she’s laughing along with me, and smiling. Trying so hard not to smile, by pulling her bottom lip into her teeth.

“Then don’t be funny.”

“I’m not. He really was an asshole.” She shakes her head. “But man, did I love him.”

“Was that a part of his eulogy?”

She snorts. Reaching over, she pushes my head back to its resting place, where I can no longer stare at her. “He always had a soft spot for me. I’d come in here with my cousin when I was as young as six and watch him work on people. Sometimes I’d just sketch in a corner quietly. He never sent me away. I thought he was the coolest, most badass adult ever.”

I’m trying to picture a six-year-old version of this woman and I’m struggling. However she looked, I can’t imagine this place would have been suitable for her. “Your parents didn’t care?”

“Oh, they cared. They hated me being here, but there wasn’t much they could do. My aunt Jun would watch me after school while my parents worked. But she also had a part-time job, and when she was working, I had to go somewhere. My parents didn’t have enough money to send me and my brothers to day care. I was the oldest and therefore easiest to unload on someone else, so I came here. I pretty much fended for myself growing up.”

No wonder she’s so independent.

“By the time I turned fourteen and they realized that I actually wanted to come here, they packed us all up and moved us to Oregon.”

This is good. She’s opening up, and it seems to be comfortable for her. Oddly, talking to her is easy for me, too. Definitely more pleasant than my typical interrogations. “So they moved your entire family away just to get away from your uncle?”

“I guess that’s what it boils down to, yeah.” I can hear the displeasure over that in her tone.

The needle runs over a particularly sensitive spot and I inhale through the pain. “Sounds like they must have had reasons.”

“I don’t know about reasons. Fears, yeah. My dad was raised by quiet Chinese immigrants; my mom comes from an affluent family of accountants in Spain. They’ve always had strong opinions about Ned’s clientele.”

“Are any of those opinions warranted?”

“Well . . .” Ivy has shifted her body to focus on the midsection of the tattoo. I can just barely catch the way her lips twist with hesitation in the mirror.

“The guy yesterday, in the back. The biker who wanted his arm done. I’d say that your parents’ opinions of him might be warranted.” All this talk of parents makes me think of mine, something I never do when I’m on an assignment. They’re no more than a fifteen-minute drive from here.

She smirks. “So you knew who he was when you tried to provoke a fight.”

“Just like you knew who he was when you stepped between us.” Her tiny body, her delicate fingers, pressing into my stomach. The girl doesn’t back down, even when she’s afraid.

In the mirror’s reflection, I see her smile. “I guess it would make sense that you recognize those kind of people, given what you do for a living.”

“It would. And I wasn’t provoking anything.”

“Sure you weren’t.” She pauses to adjust something on her machine. “But I guess it’s all about who you associate with, right? My uncle Ned, he was just trying to run his business and didn’t really give a shit about what anyone did as long as they didn’t bring it into the shop. But he’s been painted with an ugly brush by my parents. And now the cops are only too eager to somehow pin the blame for what happened to him right back on him. Whoever did this is going to get away with killing two innocent men. Or at least one. I didn’t know the other guy.”

Her expression, her voice, the way her shoulders seem to sag with the weight of that reality—she really believes that her uncle was needlessly murdered, probably collateral damage in a burglary gone wrong. And if she believes that, then there’s no way she knows anything about the blackmail scheme.

“What’s wrong?”

I frown. “What do you mean?”

“Your whole body just . . . relaxed. Not that it wasn’t unusually relaxed before, but I felt it shift.”

Because now I know that I don’t have to kill you. I smile. “Yeah, I guess it did.”