Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
If he got fired, he’d deserved it. Wilt had let his personal feelings for a client, before he’d even met them, get in the way of doing his job properly.
He’d made sure all the locations were safe, and had scoped out every aspect to make sure there were no holes in which someone could crawl through. But what he hadn’t done was read the dossier on Indigo. If he had, he would’ve known about her past stalker, and he would’ve been more vigilant.
“Thank you, not sure I deserve it, though.”
She shrugged, the strap of her dress shimmering in the lowlight of the room they were in. “It’s done, now. It can’t be changed. We have to move forward.”
Her forgiveness wasn’t something he’d take for granted.
She was being more magnanimous than he would’ve been if it had been him in her situation.
He nodded, prepared to put it behind him, but there was still a lot he needed to know, and even though he could read it in the file, getting it straight from Indigo’s mouth would be better.
“Before we deal with your phone and the threats received tonight, can you tell me what happened last time? That is, if you want to talk about it. If you don’t, that’s fine. ”
He should’ve thought of how she would feel talking about her stalker before he asked her to tell him.
He was about to say forget about it, when she spoke.
“It’s fine. I can talk about it. I feel kind of bad for him. His mind convinced him of things that weren’t true. He’s getting the help he needs.”
Her compassion wasn’t surprising. He’d seen during the shoot, how considerate she was to everyone who was working around her. Even when the photographer was being overly dramatic and demanding, she’d taken it in her stride, and hadn’t looked annoyed at all.
Again, he was ashamed of himself for making the assumptions he had. Something he hadn’t done in the past, and it was only because he was angry at himself and his injury that he resented being given this job. It really had nothing to do with Indigo herself.
“How did it start?” he asked, pushing aside his thoughts. He would deal with his own self-examination later.
“It started with messages over social media. Nothing too bad initially. Just the usual ones about how he admired me, thought I was beautiful. I get a lot of direct messages. I read some, but I never respond. I saw all of his and didn’t think too much of it.
That was my first mistake,” she said self-deprecatingly.
“I should’ve paid more attention. Anyway, my lack of response made him mad, and things escalated. ”
“In what way?” Logically, he knew stars, influencers, and even authors, got a lot of direct messages, and it would be impossible to keep up with them.
Or even respond. To some people, it wouldn’t mean anything to not get a response.
But, for others, the lack of acknowledgement was a personal affront, and became something bigger than it needed to be.
“They started to get a little more threatening. But they were never about physically harming me. They’d been more about ruining my reputation.
Telling the whole world how I’d ignored him.
He then began to blame Zara, saying she was blocking me from seeing his messages.
Saying she was deliberately keeping him and me apart. Zara, didn’t even see the messages.”
“Is that when you got the police involved?”
“No. Zara and I talked and decided that continuing to ignore them would be the best thing to do. She believed his interest would fade if I didn’t engage.
Then a parcel was sent to Zara’s office.
It contained a large, fake tarantula with a note saying the next one wouldn’t be fake but would be real and venomous, that’s when we contacted them.
” She shook her head as if the significance of that delivery finally hit her. “It was a death threat.”
He moved and squatted down in front of her, placing his hands on her knees. “Yeah, Diva, it was.”
She rolled her eyes at the nickname he’d given her. It hadn’t been a conscious thought to call her that, it popped out. There was no maliciousness in him using it, he wanted to make her smile. “Diva, huh?”
He chuckled. “I guess. It slipped off my tongue, sorry.”
“It’s okay, I could tell you weren’t being derogatory when you said it.” She laid one of her hands over his. Heat seared his skin, and he gripped her knee a little tighter.
He should move. Go back to where he’d been sitting, but he couldn’t make his body obey. There was an intrinsic part of him that wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her.
He couldn’t though. As it was, he was crossing a line by touching her the way he was.
Pulling on his training and the ability he’d honed to push all thought and emotion to the very bottom of his belly, he stood and went back to his seat.
“What was the threat Zara got tonight?”
“Can I look at your phone?”
They spoke at the same time. Wilt shook his head. “I’ll tell you, but I want to look at your phone first.”
“Was it that bad?” she asked, as she held it out. He expected her to argue with him. To demand that he tell her what was said before handing her device over. “It’s open to the only platform I use.”
Wilt should’ve known better and stopped making assumptions about her.
“It could’ve been worse,” he murmured, as he scrolled the notifications.
Someone had tagged her in a picture from today, so he clicked on it. There was a flurry of comments, all saying how beautiful she was. Nothing bad or harmful there.
Others were tagging her in a collection of photos from her various ad campaigns. Again, the comments were all complimentary.
“Most of the bad stuff happens in direct messages. If someone says something awful on a post, they get lambasted by my supporters. I don’t ask them to do that.
I’m not out to rally the pitchforks if someone says something nasty about my face or features.
Or the clothes I’m wearing. And they’re mostly keyboard warriors thinking they know better than everyone. ”
Wilt studied her for a moment. Her shoulders sagged, as if she was tired of holding them up all the time. Her hair wasn’t as smooth as it had been at the beginning of the evening, as if she’d been running her fingers through it while he’d been looking at her phone.
He should let her sleep. Tomorrow was going to be an even bigger day as they had to get the shots done and then head back to the mainland to prepare for a trip to the south of Western Australia in a couple of days to take some photos at a vineyard.
But he couldn’t go, not until he’d told her everything. He wouldn’t tell her that when he got back to his bungalow he was going to do a deeper dive into her social media and search the dark web to see if there was any chatter about her.
Given what had happened to his coworker Andy’s fiancée, Narelle, and how she’d almost been taken by sex traffickers, he wanted to cover all bases. Although most traffickers never took someone high profile, their targets were generally people who wouldn’t be missed.
“How do you cope with it all?” He opened the direct messages. There were so many that it would take him a while to get through them. Tonight, would be one of those nights where he spent it in front of a computer, with endless cups of coffee.
“You learn to ignore it. As I said, I tend not to look at my direct messages. Nothing good can come of doing so. Plus, it comes with the territory, and with all the social media around, everyone is accessible these days. The public feel closer to famous people now, more than they have in the past.”
Because of his past job as an SAS soldier, having a social media presence was never a good idea. After looking at Indigo’s, it reinforced his plan to stay well away from it all.
“They leave a digital footprint, that’s the only good thing I can see with social media, especially in situations like this.”
“What do you mean?” She leaned forward, as though keen to hear what he had to say.
“Every interaction, even when deleted, is still floating around. There are ways to get into the backend of people’s accounts and find out what they’re doing.” Wilt had long ago left his inhibitions about invading peoples’ privacy when they were dirtbags.
“Are you saying that you’ll be able to locate who sent me that threat?”
“I’m not going to outright say yes, because they could be very savvy with the computer and hide their footprints, but even the best users are fallible and make mistakes.”
“But not you?” Her eyebrow rose up, and she pursed her lips, clearly teasing him.
He laughed. “I make plenty of mistakes. I made one with you,” he finished quietly.
“Maybe. Is there anything there?” She pointed to her phone.
He’d been so caught up in talking that he hadn’t looked at the messages.
At least five had come in since he opened that part of the platform.
He scrolled down, trying to see if he could pick out a username that wasn’t common.
Or that looked like someone was trying to hide their identity.
Problem was, there was so many, and none of them matched the email address of the person who’d sent the threat through to Zara. Not that he could see.
“Hard to tell. It’s going to take some time. I think I’m going to have to look at them all.”
“That’s going to take hours. Do any names match the person who sent the threat?”
“Not yet.”
Indigo yawned and looked at her watch. “Are you planning on staying here all night?”
“Do you want me to?” He could easily work here as he could at his own bungalow. He just needed to get his laptop.
“Given you still haven’t told me what the threat was, I only have to assume it’s really bad.”
He hadn’t been consciously withholding that information, but he could see how she would think that.
“The person said that you’d taken the job off a more deserving model, and that it would be very easy to mar your face and your body without anyone being able to stop them.
They finished off with this: Better be careful with what you eat and drink.
You never know what you might find. Or what might happen. ”
“Whoa. I don’t think I’ve ever had a comment about taking a job off another model on any of my posts, let alone twisted into a threat. I have to admit the food and drink thing is concerning.”
“Exactly.” Anyone could be paid to slip something into Indigo’s meals. While he had the program running to check her messages to see if there were any suspicious ones, he was going to make arrangements to ensure food and drinks for the rest of the trip was under their control and no one else’s.
Before they’d left, Jeffrey had said he would work with him on it, too. It would take some managing, but they were going to make sure that whoever prepared the food weren’t the type to be easily influenced to taint it.
Wilt seriously doubted the person making the threats actually had the means to affect the food and drinks they consumed, but he wasn’t going to brush it off lightly.
What concerned him was the physical threat to Indigo. There were many ways and opportunities for someone to cause injury to her.
“Why is this happening to me again? I’m a good person.” Indigo’s quiet plea pulled him out of his thoughts. Going against everything he’d lectured himself earlier about, he pulled Indigo up from where she sat on the couch and hugged her.
This was something she needed. The human contact, to know she wasn’t alone in this situation. That she had him at her back, and he would watch it as diligently as he watched his teammate’s backs.
She tucked her arms around him and buried her face in his chest. Her body melting against his.
This shouldn’t feel so comfortable, so natural, but it did.
“I’ve got you. It’s going to be okay. I’ll put a plan in place to ensure we have every base covered. Every contingency I can think of, I’ll have a plan for.”
Indigo pulled back. “That’s a lot of talk there, Soldier. You think you can really do that? You can’t possibly think of every scenario, because that would be ridiculous.”
“I guess I deserve that nickname, huh?” He didn’t mind her calling him “soldier,” because that was what he was. That had been his identity for a long time, and in a sense, it still was with the work they did for the AFP.
Her lip quirked up in a cheeky smile. “You do.”
“I can live with it.” As much as he loved having her in his arms, he needed to put some professional distance between them. “I’m going to get my computer. Make sure you lock the door after I leave and only open it to me when I knock. I’ll be five minutes, max.”
“You really are going to stay here tonight?”
“I am.” He released his hold on her and stepped back. “My job is to protect you, and that’s what I’m going to do.”