Spence was far from alone. Among the straphangers who were drawn to such events, a woman who’d been pointed out to her as Eva Mumford’s mother hovered vigilantly in a corner of the large tent, rushing outside whenever Eva was called forth. Spence could not help but miss the self-satisfied gleam the woman had in her eye each time she returned with her daughter in tow. That all changed the moment Tracy Ireland appeared at the entrance. In a heartbeat, Mrs. Mumford made straight for the modeling agency’s chief executive, leaving her daughter on her own huddled like the others around the heater and clutching a Styrofoam cup of tea as she struggled to warm herself up.
Spence came to her feet when she saw Pamela duck back inside and head toward her, eyeing the thermos and shawl Spence was holding at the ready.
“Dear God, it’s cold out there,” Pamela exclaimed as Spence wrapped the shawl around her friend’s bare shoulders. “I swear that artistic director is a complete and utter sadist.” She smiled her gratitude as Spence neatly poured her some hot tea and handed it across. “I see Eva’s guardian dragon has flown off to pester Tracy,” she added as she took the cup from Spence, holding it under her chin a second as she savored the warmth rising up from it.
Spence grunted. “That woman is the type who gives stage moms a bad name. She could be the star of her own reality show, Obnoxious Mums of the West End.”
“Damn, why couldn’t the cow have waited until I’d warmed up?” Pamela asked mournfully even as she headed toward the young girl, tea in one hand and shawl clutched tight in the other.
“What, and give Tracy a nanosecond of peace?” Spence replied as she followed Pamela.
“We’ve a lot of work to do, pilgrim, and not much time,” Pamela muttered.
“Hiya, Eva, how’s things?” Without waiting, Pamela plunked herself down on a stool beside the girl. “I’m sure you remember Spence from Milan.”
For the first time, Spence carefully studied the young model, who was not much more than a girl. Although she knew from Pamela that Eva was eighteen, she looked far younger. Her heart-shaped face radiated an innocent and fragile vulnerability that Spence decided was probably her main attraction, for both the fashion clients her mother courted and the stalker she feared. Spence offered her hand as she smiled encouragingly. “You attended my cyber self-defense course, didn’t you?”
Before she could reply, Pamela took the girl’s free hand in her own. “Eva, have there been any more of those messages you showed me?”
Eva’s eyes dropped to the floor whilst Spence and Pamela waited for her to answer. When she did, her voice was little more than a whisper. “I’m not supposed to talk about it.” A sudden surge of fury caused Spence to tense up as the girl’s thin shoulders hunched further together under her wrap. But before she could voice the anger she felt over the way Mrs. Mumford was handling this sordid affair, a warning glance from Pamela stilled her.
Satisfied she’d checked her friend’s righteous indignation for the moment, Pamela gave Eva’s hand an encouraging squeeze. “What if I told you we’ve found a way to deal with the slimebag, one I think your mother wouldn’t object to?”
Eva’s head jerked up, her eyes darting between Pamela and Spence. “You could do that? Mum said the police wouldn’t be interested in bothering with that sort of thing.”
“Really?” Spence muttered, doing her best to rein in her anger even as she was scrounging up a reassuring smile. “We can and we will, provided you agree to play along. Everything we’re about to propose is not only legal, but we won’t need the police.”
Pausing, Spence took a long, calculating look at the young girl whose face had lit up in the space of a moment. “Besides ridding yourself of this problem, you’ll get your own website and blog, one that’d be fully under your control. No one else’s.”
“Could I put what I want up on it?”
“Yep.”
“Within reason,” Pamela interjected. “You don’t want to create a whole new slew of problems for yourself.”
“No, of course not,” Eva replied as she gave Pamela a reassuring shake of her head before turning her attention back to Spence. “I could separate my modeling and my real life online, just like you told us to do on the course,” she murmured, more to herself than Spence.
“Yep.” Spence grinned. This girl had actually been listening to what she had been telling them, and had taken her advice to heart. Setting that thought aside, and with Pamela’s help, she turned her attention to explaining briefly how the new blog would work and how they would catch the stalker.
A pretty frown creased Eva’s face for a long moment as Spence sat back. “Can you talk to Mum?” Eva asked as she bit her lip.
“Yes, of course,” Spence replied.
“Only don’t tell her just yet about the other bit of the plan,” the girl implored in a painfully shy voice, one that reminded Spence of the way she would have done not all that long ago had she been in such a position.
Reaching out, Spence laid a hand on the girl’s arm, one covered in tiny goose bumps. “Rest assured, Eva. I’ll do whatever you want.”
The next couple of weeks crept along at what Spence felt was a glacial and all too often painful pace. In setting up Eva’s blog, Spence had to endure putting up with the constant “advice” and guidance of Eva’s mother, a woman who Spence imagined would be a wonderful selection to play the role of the Wicked Witch of the West in a remake of the movie The Wizard of Oz. While she was doing this, with Pamela’s help and Tracy Ireland’s permission, she monitored cookies on the agency’s site, keeping tabs on Eva’s stalker as he continued to send lurid and obscene messages and images to the girl with a regularity that left Spence and Pamela needing to spend several hours on the phone with the increasingly distraught model every week, calming her down, bucking up her spirits, and reassuring her all would be well in the end.
Despite her early confidence in the project, after seven weeks Spence found herself beginning to doubt her plan. Had she raised Eva’s hopes unfairly? Was the stalker smarter than her? How long could she keep telling Eva and Pamela that these things took time before the two of them lost faith in her and abandoned the effort?
On the Monday of the eighth week, all that changed.
4
Spence looked up from her monitors where a customer’s mobile application that she was currently running a batch of penetration assessments against continued to flash its garish logo. Stretching her neck, she glanced around the room to see what her colleagues were up to. Tommy, who had recently acquired an endoscope, was busily investigating the innards of a new router without needing to break the warranty seal. Andy was doing the sort of thing he was good at but hated, which was looking after the administrative end of the business. At the moment he was slowly making his way through a stack of invoices stacked neatly on the desk before him, painstakingly cross-referencing each against time sheets and statements of work.
In need of a break, Spence got up, put the kettle on, and without needing to ask, made tea for the three of them. Milk, three sugars, and orange as a builder’s boot for Tommy, just milk for Andy, and lemon and ginger for her. When all was ready, she dropped each off on her way back to her desk, getting the usual grunt and nod from one and a distracted and perfunctory thank-you from the other. After taking her seat, she looked at her monitor to see the batch job she had started earlier was still running as she sipped her tea. Seeing it still had a ways to go, she sighed before turning to her personal laptop, hoping that maybe, just maybe, today would be the day when something of use popped up on Eva’s blog.