Page 12 of Protecting Bianca

I’d been doing this job long enough to know that a person’s past didn’t dictate their future. However, sending a bloody pig’s head indicated it wasn’t the perpetrator’s first time sending a message or getting his or her hands dirty. No, this one had experience.

After pulling out those employee records, I checked their browsing history using the company’s Wi-Fi. People were stupidenough to search for things at work when they believed no one was watching or thought deleting cookies would be enough to erase their searches.

While the searches were questionable, only one raised the hairs on the back of my neck. The stalker.

He had looked up the best knots to keep hands secure, and the cost of tasers and guns. This man had a plan, or at least was making one.

I went to bed that night feeling unsettled. My stomach was in knots and my fists clenched. Something about him had me itching to get to work. I tossed and turned until it was finally time to head to the office and find out what this guy was up to.

As I walked up to my car in the garage beneath my condo building, I spotted my brother, Will. He wasn’t my brother through blood, but we’d shed enough of it together in the army that it bonded us forever.

“Morning,” he said with a nod. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks, so do you.”

“Did you have a bad night?”

“Not more than usual,” I said.

He tilted his head. “You’re lying. You look like you hardly got any sleep.”

I pressed my lips together. No one knew how little I slept, and I preferred to keep it that way.

“I was up doing some research for this job. I probably shouldn’t have stayed up so late.”

He watched me closely. Will was always the most patient one. The best listener. And the one we all tried to stay away from when we had something to hide because he was usually the best to sniff out our bullshit. And his nostrils were flared right now.

“I’ll catch you later, Will. I’ve got to run.”

He said something, but I didn’t quite catch it as I revved up the engine of my car.

As I drove to Grapevine’s head office, I wondered if I should talk to Will about my trouble sleeping. But if two years of therapy hadn’t helped, I didn’t want to trouble him with worrying about me.

The security guard was waiting at the door with the thumbprint scanner. “Good morning, Mr. Payne.”

“Good morning, Mr. Travis. Any issues this morning with the device?”

He shook his head. “None at all, sir. Works like a charm.”

“Glad to hear it,” I said, patting him on the shoulder before walking to the elevator.

My shoes echoed across the marble floor. It was the only sound, as not many people started work at seven in the morning except for the cafeteria staff.

I wanted to arrive before anyone else on the tenth floor. So, as the elevator doors opened, I was pleased no one was there yet. No one chatted in the hallways and no telephones rang. Only the sound of my shoes on the laminate floor.

I reached the ‘stalker’s’ office and booted up his desktop computer. I typed in the password from the list of passwords Janis had given to me yesterday, but I would have figured it out easily enough.

He had done a good job hiding his browsing history, but I’d already seen that last night. This morning, I wanted to see what he had stored in his hard drive.

I opened the typical business folders and client files. This man handled sponsor accounts for special events. I saw Bianca’s name on a few documents, and while there was nothing unprofessional in those files, an unsettling feeling came over me.

I hovered the mouse over his stored photos. Hundreds of events were listed in folders. I opened one after another and while most of the photos were innocent, I noticed a pattern.Bianca was featured prominently in several of them. And mainly from behind.

I closed that folder and opened another. It was the same pattern. More photos of Bianca. This time, it wasn’t part of the event. It was before or perhaps after—moments she wasn’t expecting to have her photo taken. For example, there was one of her bending to set down some boxes. Then, another of her with raised arms, tying her hair into a ponytail. The pose pushed her breasts together, and it reminded me of how someone would look if their arms were tied up over their head. I’d seen soldiers in this position when they were prisoners of war. I didn’t particularly like that I was now associating that image with Bianca.

Opening a new folder, I delved deeper into this man’s files. At each event, someone had photographed Bianca while she was unaware of the camera. My fist clenched next to the keyboard and heat ran through my neck and over my face. I blew out a breath to let out some steam, but I was pissed.

“What are you doing?” a man’s voice called from the doorway.

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