*
“Mr. Grayson? Will you come this way?”
The secretary smiles and gestures for me to follow her, and I get up from my seat in the waiting area. She leads me down the corridor, then steps back and lets me precede her into an office.
It’s large and flash, overlooking the harbor. I don’t have time to look around though, because all my attention focuses on the guy sitting behind the desk. He’s looking at his laptop, but he glances up as I walk in and smiles automatically as he says, “Hello…” Immediately, though, his smile vanishes and his brow darkens, and he gets to his feet. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
I close the door behind me and hold up a hand. “Mr. Blackthorne, please, let me speak.”
“Only if the words that come next are ‘I’m incredibly sorry for physically assaulting you in the restaurant.’”
I bristle. “I’m not here to apologize. My job is to keep Ms. Ashford safe, and that’s all I was doing. I need to speak to you about another matter.”
“I’m ringing security.” He picks up his work phone and presses a button.
I take my phone out of my pocket, swipe it open, then turn it around and show him the photo.
He stares at it. Then, slowly, he lowers the phone and puts it back in the cradle. “What. The. Fuck.” He walks around the table and stands in front of me. “How the fuck did you get that?” He’s furious. I don’t think he’s faking that.
“Sir, may I ask if you took this photo?”
“Yes, I took it. How the fuck did it end up on your phone?”
“It was sent to Aurelia by text, and we intercepted it.” I turn off my phone and pocket it again. “I need to ask you, sir, did you send it?”
“Of course I didn’t fucking send it. Why would I do that?”
He seems genuinely indignant and shocked. I hesitate. That changes things somewhat.
“Can you check for me, please,” I ask, “and see if it’s still on there?”
He continues to stare at me, though. “I don’t understand. How did someone else get it? And why did they send it to her?”
“I’ll explain everything, sir. Can you check first though, and tell me if you still have it?”
Slowly, he pulls out his phone from his jacket pocket. He opens it and scrolls through his photos with his thumb.
“Can you remember when you took it?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “It was the day before we broke up.”
Does that mean it had something to do withwhythey broke up? Foreboding makes my stomach flip.
Eventually, he says, “There they are.” He turns his phone to show me his photo library. The photos are only partly visible in the rows of squares, but there are at least half a dozen of her in roughly the same position.
He looks down and flicks through them, but doesn’t show me.
I swallow hard. He’s remembering being with her, doing those things to her, and taking photos of her in that vulnerable position.
“She has a stalker,” I say icily.
That snaps his gaze back up to me. “What?”
“He sends her emails and texts. Comments on her social media. Sends her gifts. He sent the roses.”
His jaw drops.
“So far, it’s all been relatively innocuous. Unpleasant and intrusive, but unthreatening. This is the first time he’s sent something like this.”
