Page 27 of Montana Heat

She nodded, pulling away a little so she could see my face. I hated seeing the sadness that lingered in her dark-brown eyes. A turbulent storm shone in their depths, and all I wanted to do was make it disappear. I wished she didn’t have to deal with any of this.

“I’m sure you have to be thinking I’m overreacting.” She stepped back completely out of my hold.

I found myself wanting to pull her back in, but I stuffed my hands in my pockets instead. “I don’t. Not at all. I promise.”

“I just want this to be over.” She wrapped her arms around herself like she was trying to keep herself together.

I moved over to her side, staying close but not touching. “It will be. I’m sure of it.”

She stared out in front of her. “This past July, I posted about an upcoming series of seminars I was hosting. Different aspects of commercial real estate. I’ve done these for a while now, and they’ve always been pretty popular. Gives people a chance to know what to expect in the business.”

I wasn’t surprised to hear her seminars were popular. Kenzie was obviously friendly and engaging. People would respond to that. “I’m sure you sell out your classes.”

She shrugged. “They’re generally pretty full. But for some reason, this summer, my seminar posts kept getting floodedwith vicious comments on social media sites. At first, my friends and I thought they were bots attacking the classes.”

“But they weren’t?”

“No, bots are usually fake posts trying to get people to click on fake links. These posts were personal attacks against me.”

I didn’t fucking like that. Involuntarily, one of my hands clenched into a fist. “In what way?”

She shrugged again. “You know, the usual cyber abuse—commenting on stuff like my clothes, my hair, my weight, my gender.”

“What the hell?”

“How I should shut up and stop talking about things I don’t really understand,” she continued. “The comments upset me, but I’d dealt with them before. It comes with the territory of having a bigger following. As more people became aware of my online presence and posts, the creepers, particularly men, commented and sent me DMs.”

My eyes narrowed. “What did you do?”

“Mostly ignored them. It’s a male-dominated industry, and there are always guys who get butthurt over a woman breaking into their good ol’ boys’ network.” She shot me a side glance. “No offense.”

I rolled my eyes. “Any man who’s threatened by a woman’s legitimate success is not much of a man at all.”

She gave me a short nod of respect.

“In August, the messages became more abusive online, but they seemed to come from the same source. I told myself it was just the fuddy-duddy, disgruntled agents I’d dealt with before or ex-coworkers from previous employments. I had phone calls to my office line where they’d hang up. Annoying, but nothing too bad.”

“But then it escalated.” She wouldn’t be hiding out here in Garnet Bend otherwise.

“Yes. I think someone tried to run me off the road, but I had no proof. My office was vandalized.”

I narrowed my eyes. “The cops did nothing?”

She shook her head. “Not at first. They said nothing could link the events together. Said the driver might have been drunk. The vandalism wasn’t necessarily related to any stalking since other vandalism had happened recently in the area.”

She pulled out her phone and scrolled through pictures. I scowled when she handed it to me. A photo of her showed X marks over her eyes. The next picture showed a typewritten letter that readYou’re not welcome here. Get out.

“Fucker,” I breathed. I thought I said it under my breath, but she must have heard because she nodded in agreement.

“I got that in my mailbox in September. And in October, I was walking to my car one evening after work, and someone shoved me from behind. I was knocked to the ground. Whoever it was disappeared before I could get a look at them.”

“Were you hurt?” I asked.

She swallowed hard. I knew this was hard for her to talk about—not that anyone would blame her for that. “Bloody knees, skinned hands. Nothing awful.”

“But still damned scary.”

“Yeah. And frustrating. I don’t want to say that the police weren’t helpful, but it sure felt that way. They kept saying the incidents were isolated, so they couldn’t really do much.”

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