Girl Gone Viral (Modern Love #2)(21)

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 in the 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.

He linked his hands together in front of him, because he wanted to grab her. “It’s a security breach. You should have told me.”

The rare rebuke did catch her attention. She blinked up at him. Her robe gaped at the neck, revealing her collarbones.

He came around the desk and glanced at the computer screen, which was open to the tweets he’d skimmed on Jia’s phone. The numbers on the faves and retweets were flipping every second. God, had she been watching this counter all day? He infused calm into his voice. “It will be fine. These things blow over. What’s viral today will be a forgotten meme by tomorrow.”

“Oh God,” she whispered. “I’m a meme too?”

“No,” he said instantly, though she could very well be a meme. He understood computers, but memes still baffled him. “Of course not. It’s a figure of speech.”

She rubbed her temples. “Who would do something like this? This is such a . . . gross invasion of privacy.”

What was privacy now, anyway, in a world where everyone carried a recording device? “She probably assumed it was harmless.”

Katrina swallowed. “Maybe for her.” She straightened and clicked on another window to bring up the spy’s Twitter page. BeccaTheNose was her handle. “Look. Reporting gigs, endorsement offers, a book deal. She got hundreds of thousands of followers today alone. Off of me as content.”

Katrina’s bitterness actually eased Jas. Anger was better than fear or panic.

“It’s bullshit,” he agreed.

“She’s going to benefit from this and I’m . . .”

“Nothing will happen to you, because no one will know it’s you.”

Her breathing deepened. He knew the sound of all of Katrina’s breaths now, and these were long and deliberate, the kind of breaths she took when anxiety was creeping in.

A few weeks after he’d met Katrina, he’d witnessed one of her panic attacks. He’d spent enough time around soldiers with PTSD to have an idea of what was happening. Her attacks didn’t always have a clear trigger, but getting twisted up with anxiety didn’t help.

“What if someone figures it out? How long will it take to track me to this house?” She picked at her cuticles.

“A long time,” he said firmly. He couldn’t touch her, but he eased closer. “Katrina King didn’t buy this house. They’d have to unravel shell company after shell company. Or bribe someone who knows, and that’s a handful of extremely trustworthy people who can’t be bribed.” Katrina’s investment fund consisted of three employees, all vetted and there for the long haul. A couple of select people at Crush knew who she was. Him. Her roommates and their families. Samson. That was it.