Page 162 of Daddy's Wild Girl

Her home in San Francisco.

Her parents and the TV ad forThe Benner Life. She’d dipped into her public email and seen so many messages to her about it. The panic had made her pull back out immediately.

When she’d told Corbin, he’d forbidden her from checking that email again or any social media unless he was with her.

Pretty high-handed of him, but he hadn’t been thrilled with how upset she’d gotten, so she’d agreed.

“What’s wrong?” Corbin asked.

“Tried to call my dad again. Left another message.” She rubbed her forehead. “I can’t believe they’re ghosting me. I’m not calling again. Screw them. They’ll return and find I’m not there in a few days. If they even care to contact me.”

“I’m sorry they’re such shitheads, baby.”

She gave a humorless laugh. “Yeah, shitheads is right. I wonder if they’ll even care that I was attacked. That you were hurt.”

His knife wound was healed, although it still looked red. Doc had checked it a few times and was happy with it.

But she still felt awful when she saw it.

“Hey, what happened wasn’t your fault.”

“Maybe not.”

“Definitely not,” he said firmly, reaching out to grasp hold of her chin. “My job is to protect you. And I’m not talking about the job where I get paid, understand? I can take look after myself and you.”

Bebe nodded. “I know you can. You’d think my parents might want an update, though.”

“Hmm, well, Kent is pretty damn angry that they aren’t answering his calls. I have to go to a meeting, and then I thought I’d cook us spaghetti bolognaise for dinner.”

She sighed happily. “A man who knows the key to my heart.”

“What? Pasta?” he asked, grinning.

“You got it.”

Corbin losthis grin as he walked into the meeting room where Hayes and Kent were sitting already.

He sighed as he sat, setting a folder down.

“This doesn’t seem like it’s going to be good news,” Kent said.

“It is and it isn’t. I think I’ve worked out who the stalker is.”

“Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Hayes said.

“Yeah, well, but wait until you find out who it is first. I tracked the IP address to the San Francisco Public Library, as you know.” He’d managed that a while ago. “They don’t keep their camera footage for longer than seventy-two hours, so I couldn’t get hold of that to find who might have used their computer. I tried to look into records of who had signed into their library accounts on the day the threats were made. That took a long time and ended up fruitless because when people didn’t have their details, the librarians would use a generic sign-in.”

“Right. So what did you find?” Hayes asked impatiently.

“When I looked at all the messages, I noticed something. All of them had spelling mistakes.”

“How does that help?” Kent asked.

“Well, they’re not spelling mistakes exactly. They’re how words are spelled in the UK rather than how we spell them here.Likepretenceandlicence.” He showed them the print-outs. “There aren’t many so it wasn’t immediately obvious.”

“Jesus,” Hayes muttered. “English? You think it really is her mother?”

“Barb hasn’t lived in the UK for years,” Kent said. “You really think she’d make a mistake like this?”

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