“Jia.”
“But she didn’t say you couldn’t guess, I suppose.”
“I am not playing charades with my Katri... my employer’s well-being.”
Jia didn’t seem to notice his almost-slip. She typed something on her phone. “Whoops, dropped my phone.” She tossed it at him and he caught it automatically against his chest. She gave him a meaningful look.
He stared at the tweet blankly.He has ato die for!“What is this?”
“Scroll up to the first tweet in the thread. Katrina’s viral.”
Jas started to read. “What?”
“It means she’s internet-famous.”
“I know what going viral means. But I don’t understand how Katrina—” He stopped as he got to the first photo of her. She was instantly recognizable to him, despite the baseball cap she wore and the halfhearted blurring of her face. He scrolled through the tweets and embedded photos, his disbelief and fury growing as he read them. “What the hell?” He pinned Jia with his glare, though it wasn’t meant for her. “I was there. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it wasn’t... this.” He’d been silently seething in dismay the entire time, trying to read their lips, but even he knew this was a fabrication.
The second-most-liked tweet was the one implying they’d hooked up in the bathroom. That for sure wasn’t true. Katrina had never been out of his sight.
“That’s what Katrina said. I have no doubt it’s all lies this woman spun to fit her own narrative.”
He stepped outside and closed the door behind him. “How is Katrina handling this?” He thought of Richard saying Katrina had snapped at him, and immediately realized that was a foolish question.
Katrina craved anonymity. She invested and gave charitably, yes, but it was all done through layers of paperwork and systems he’d helped her design. Even the local smallbusiness owners who knew her, like Mona, didn’t know her full name.
“She was definitely... upset. I tried to tell her that no one will recognize her, which seemed to be Katrina’s main concern, but I don’t think she bought it. Her face is pretty hidden, though, right? You’re the security expert. What do you think?”
He went back to the first photo of Katrina and used his fingers to zoom in. It might be hard for a stranger to recognize Katrina from these photos, but for someone who was familiar with her? He examined the photo further for other identifiable details, grimacing when he caught a tiny clue. He turned the phone around to show Jia. “Look at her handbag on the back of the chair. It has her initials embossed on the strap.” He couldn’t believe he’d missed that until now, or he would have stopped her from ever carrying that purse.
Jia squinted. “I can barely make it out. Besides, lots of people have the initials KKA.”
Katrina King Arora. Her married name. Hardeep must have given Katrina the purse. The man had been unfailingly generous to everyone in his orbit, which had put Jas in a pickle. It was hard to be jealous of a good man.
“No one will identify her off it, but it’s confirmation for anyone who has their suspicions,” he said grimly. “The idiot who took these photos should be sued.” And Jas should be fired. What kind of a bodyguard was he? How had he not caught the woman at the next table taking creeper shots of her?
“Oh, hey. I can take secret photos so well a CIA agent couldn’t spot me. Don’t beat yourself up over that.”
He hadn’t realized he’d spoken that thought out loud. Jia’s condolences were nice, but he didn’t want to be consoled. He handed Jia back her phone. Not now. He’d feel like a failure later. “Where is Katrina now?”
“In her office.” Jia worried her fingers together. “I stuck close to home today and checked in on her, and she’s been glued to her computer. I’ve been monitoring too. The story’s gaining steam, it’s starting to get picked up by mainstream news outlets.”
Which meant the threat to Katrina’s anonymity was growing. He gave Jia a short nod and stepped around her to head to the front doors of the main house. “I’ll take care of this.”
“It’ll be okay, right?”
“Yes.” He’d make sure it was okay.
Jia trailed him all the way to Katrina’s office. Jas paused. “Give us a moment alone, please.”
She bit her lip and nodded. He knocked once on the heavy wooden door of Katrina’s office, and waited impatiently for her faint “Yes?”
The light from the overhead halogens lit up Katrina’s shoulder-length light brown hair. She didn’t glance up from her computer screen when he walked in, which worried him even more. Katrina was given to dreaminess, but she was hypervigilant if she was completely alone. His heart ached every time she jumped at a noise.
He stopped in front of the desk. He tried to put himself inthe shoes of someone who may not have seen her for years. He remembered when her hair had been darker and longer. A carefully screened stylist came to the house every few months and touched up her highlights—balayage, Katrina had once told him, was the correct term—and trimmed her hair. Her round face was fuller now, her body different. Still beautiful, though. She’d been beautiful then, she was beautiful now, and she’d be beautiful sixty years from now.
Now is not the time for waxing poetic.
“Jia told you,” she said, forestalling his greeting. Her voice was flat, which ratcheted his worry up more. He hadn’t heard her sound like this in a long time. Generally speaking, her voice was as warm and golden as her skin, bubbling underneath, like she was barely suppressing laughter.
