Chapter 27
Through the Glass
JULIETTE
The first thing I did was not panic. Panic belonged to people with less to lose and more time to waste. I had neither.
I stood in the library, the smell of well-loved books and citrus oil suddenly too clean for what was sitting in my hand. My pulse kicked once. My lungs tightened. Then everything in me went still enough to work. My thumb stopped just above the glass of my phone.
I didn't enlarge the image. Not yet. I didn’t swipe. I didn’t blink.
Evidence required isolation, and fear could wait.
Do not reply. Do not delete. Do not forward.
Messaging platforms were notorious for stripping metadata, but forwarding could compress the file further, altering the digital fingerprint.
I checked the timestamp: three minutes ago.
The sender was an unsaved number routed through the lodge’s secure server, which made the violation less random and far more intimate.
I took a screenshot, capturing the contact info, the time, and the image before anything could disappear. Then I locked the screen. I didn’t want to see it, but I needed to know exactly what I had seen.
I looked at the window. The real one.
The glass was high, timber-framed, and currently draped in the soft, deceptive gold of a Mara Khaya afternoon. The glass reflected the room back at me: leather chairs, stacked books, the heavy mahogany table.
In the photo, Nick and I sat too close for professional distance and not close enough for any honest scandal.
My shoulder was inches from his chest. His head tilted toward mine.
Nothing touched, nothing showed, nothing happened that could justify the cold pulse in my throat.
The damage lived in the angle. The photograph turned a ranger trained to watch the edge into a man watching me instead.
It had been taken from above. Not from the guest path, which sat ten feet lower, and not from the main deck. To get that line of sight, someone had to be in the canopy or perched on the utility roof.
Someone had come close enough to choose the story.
Scandal was the bait. I was a grown woman. I could survive a leaked photo.
Of absolutely nothing actually scandalous, I might add.
His hand wasn’t on me. My mouth wasn’t near his. Nothing in the frame could convict us of anything except proximity, and even that required imagination.
But whoever sent it had framed the photograph like gossip for a reason. The message underneath was colder: proof of life. Proof of access.
I can see you, the photo said. And I know exactly where his attention goes when it leaves the perimeter.
A brittle laugh carried in from the bar, too sharp to be amusement.
Beneath it ran the low, restless murmur of guests who had run out of patience and acceptable language.
Glassware clicked. Voices tightened. Somewhere beyond the library wall, civilization was thinning, while someone had photographed me through glass like a specimen.
The side door creaked.
I didn’t turn immediately. First came the breath. Then the CEO mask, seated firmly over the woman who still felt the ghost of a thumb against her jaw.
Nick stepped in, tired enough that the afternoon light carved deeper shadows beneath his cheekbones. But his posture still held a trace of the man he’d been with me before the message arrived. Looser. Warmer. Unarmored by a dangerous inch.
My face stopped him. His shoulders shifted, chest expanding as he drew air. “What happened?”
His voice was calm. That was the problem.
“Someone sent me a photograph,” I said.
I held the phone up, the screen still dark. He stepped into my space, and my body made the mistake of wanting him there. My brain looked past his shoulder, straight to the window. He held out his hand, palm up, an unspoken command for the device.
“You can look,” I said. “Chain of custody stays with me.”
A flicker of something—recognition, perhaps—crossed his eyes. He didn't argue. He leaned in, his gaze dropping to the screen as I tapped it awake.
His face closed. His body organized. The man disappeared behind the job.
The transition was terrifyingly efficient. Hours ago, he’d fucked me in a storage closet with the kind of focus that should have required paperwork afterward.
Now he stood in front of me like wanting me had become evidence. His jaw locked, the muscle jumping once beneath the copper-brown shadow of his beard. Every trace of heat left his face as he mapped the image.
All warmth drained from the air between us. I felt the draft of his withdrawal before he even moved his feet.
“When?” he asked. His voice had dropped into a command register so cold it felt structural.
“Three minutes ago.”
“Did you click a link? Anything attached?”
“I didn’t click anything, Nick. I screenshotted the frame, preserved the sender information, and touched nothing else.”
He didn’t look at me. His gaze stayed on the photo, already measuring it against the lodge.
“That’s the western utility roof,” he muttered, more to himself than me. “Or the leadwood tree near the generator. That line of sight is supposed to be screened by the Acacia. Someone cut a window through the brush.”
He looked at the window, then back at the phone.
“They were too close.” His voice had gone flat. “They waited until the window worked for them.”
“They weren’t threatening me, Nick,” I said.
His eyes came back to mine, hard and flat.
“They sent it to me because they wanted you looking at me instead of them,” I continued. “This isn’t a privacy breach. It’s leverage. They’ve been watching us. They know where you’ve been spending your nights, and they know exactly how to make you look over your shoulder.”
Nick didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The silence gave me everything he refused to say. I was a vulnerability he hadn’t accounted for. Worse, I was one he wanted.
He stepped back. One foot. Two.
“This becomes a security matter,” he said.
“It already was,” I snapped. “Don’t start talking to me like I’m a guest who found a spider in her vanity. I am evidence. They made sure I was the one holding the threat.”
He ignored the bite in my tone. He was already reaching for the radio at his shoulder.
“Daniel, come in,” he said. His voice was clipped, devoid of anything but the mission. “I need a hard sweep of the western utility perimeter. Check the leadwood at ten o'clock from the library window. I want camera logs from the last hour, exterior and service corridors. Now.”
The radio crackled back, Daniel’s voice tight with questions he knew better than to ask. Nick answered in commands.
“Shift patrol patterns,” Nick continued. “Two-man teams. No one moves alone. Secure the library wing. I’m moving Wilder to the main lodge inner perimeter.”
Wilder.
My last name landed like a hand to the sternum. Five minutes ago, he had been a man fighting himself. Now he was a man building a perimeter around the fight.
“You’re leaving on the first cleared transfer,” Nick said, setting the radio down.
“I gave up my seat, Nick. There are people here with tighter connections and fewer options.”
“I don’t care about their connections,” he cut me off, his eyes finally locking onto mine with a ferocity that made my throat go still. “You’re leaving. Tomorrow morning. Dawn. I don't care if I have to put you on a supply plane to Jo’burg myself.”
“Because I’m a distraction?” I asked.
“Because you’re a target.”
“Don’t confuse removing me from the room with removing the problem,” I said, stepping toward him, refusing to let the distance stand.
“You think if I’m gone, the people in the bush will just pack up and leave?
They have proof there is a way past you.
Sending me away doesn't erase the fact that they found the weak point.”
“It reduces the exposure,” he said. He wasn't yelling. He was getting quieter, which was infinitely worse. It was the sound of a man who had already made the decision and was now just enforcing the physics of it.
“Incorrect,” I said.
He went still.
“I'm the person who received the threat.
Me, Nick. Not you.
I'm the one holding the message.
And I know enough about crisis behavior to recognize the difference between protecting me and managing your own panic.”
I held his stare. “You’re protecting me. You’re also trying to control the part of this that made you feel exposed.”
“I’m keeping you alive,” he rasped.
“I’m evidence, Nick. Not luggage. Treat me like a partner in this crisis, or you’re going to learn exactly how difficult I can be when someone tries to manage me.”
He looked at me for a long, agonizing beat. His shoulders held the fight for him—the ranger braced against the man who had tasted adrenaline and salt on my skin.
“You’re not involved in the security decisions from this point,” he said.
It was final. Not cruel. Worse. Operational.
I felt my fingers curl around the phone, the plastic edges digging into my palm. My ribs tightened, my heart becoming an inconveniently audible rhythm in the quiet room.
He didn't say, I want you gone. He said, you leave. Procedure, not preference. Order, not confession.
Which was very nearly worse.
The door opened again. Sarah poked her head in, looking flustered. “Nick? The guests near the transfer board are asking—they heard the radio traffic. They want to know if the roads are blocked again.”
Nick’s mask didn't even flicker. He turned toward her with the ease of a man who spent his life withholding the part that would make people panic.
“No. The road team is conducting a final safety review,” he said. “Tell them we’ll have a formal update at the top of the hour. In the meantime, the bar is open and the afternoon tea is being served on the east deck.”
Excellent. He was suppressing a riot with Earl Grey.
Sarah nodded and vanished.
I turned back to Nick.
“You are not the only person who knows how to keep people calm while withholding the truth,” I said softly.
His eyes flickered. For a second, the distance wavered. My hands were locked together to keep them from shaking. I hadn’t stepped back. Something in my face tightened his jaw.
“I need my luggage,” I said. “It’s still at the bush suite.”
“I’ll send a two-person escort to retrieve it,” Nick said. “You’re staying here. In the library wing. Under guard.”
“I dislike that.”
“Noted.”
“I didn't say I disagreed with the logic,” I added. “I just said I dislike it.”
“Also noted.”
He reached for his radio again. “Elias, take Mbeki. Go to the western bush suite. Retrieve Ms. Wilder's belongings. Check the interior for any signs of breach before entry. Inspect all items before bringing them into the main lodge. Especially electronics.”
“Absolutely not.”
Nick lowered the radio a fraction.
“I’m not consenting to two armed men inventorying my underwear, Nick.”
“That was not a request for comment.”
“And yet here comes one. They can check the exterior. Seals, zippers, pockets, device cases. They do not open my personal items without me present.”
A beat.
“For everyone’s dignity.”
One second passed.
Then another.
To his credit, Nick did not ask.
“Exterior inspection only,” he said into the radio. “Check for tampering. Seals, zippers, pockets, device cases. Do not open personal items unless Ms. Wilder is present.”
He was exact. He was efficient. Watching him work hurt in a way I resented, and competence made resentment deeply inconvenient. He didn’t fall apart. He assembled.
“Daniel is posted outside the library wing,” Nick said, turning toward the door. “He’ll be with you until I can move you to the secure guest quarters tonight.”
“And you?” I asked.
He paused at the threshold. He didn't come back in. He stayed exactly on the line, refusing to cross the boundary he’d just drawn in the dirt.
“I’ll be where I’m needed,” he said.
The answer was both true and evasive. He'd found the one place I could not follow him: duty.
For one last second, his attention returned to me. The human part of him—the part that wanted to step across the two feet of floorboards and pull me against his chest—almost spoke. His hand closed around the doorframe and stayed there, locked against whatever he refused to do.
Then he turned and walked away. His boots were heavy on the stone, the sound fading until the library was silent again.
I looked down at the phone.
This time, I looked past our faces.
I looked at the frame. The glass. The stolen second the photographer had chosen because Nick’s guard was down and his attention was on me.
They hadn’t found a weak point in the fence.
They had found him.