Having finished, Spence remained at the front of the room as she watched the models depart, pleased with herself over the way things had played out. At least some of them had taken her message to heart she decided as she powered down her laptop and packed everything away. She was still doing so when Ms. Ireland, followed by the tall girl she had noticed earlier with the striking cornflower-blue eyes and flaxen blond hair, came up to the lectern.
“That seemed to go rather well,” Ireland declared. Judging by the reaction of the tall blonde standing next to her, Spence guessed that comment was, for Tracy Ireland, high praise indeed.
“This is Pamela Dutton,” Ireland announced as she indicated the blond with a casual wave of her hand. “She has agreed to work with you on the other part of the operation we discussed.”
Spence found herself shaking hands with a young woman whose firm grip matched her own and whose eyes now danced with a hint of mischief. “Hi, Pam. I’m Spence. I noticed you found some of the questions from the other, erm…” Spence paused, wondering how far she should go.
The blonde smiled as she finished Spence’s comment for her. “Less ‘technically oriented’ girls?”
“Yeah!” Spence admitted gratefully. “I take it you know your way around computers.”
“I did A-level Math and Computer Science in my last year at school,” she replied with a very proper British accent that was neither haughty nor put on. “It’s something of a hobby for now, one I might take further when I finish modeling.”
Eager to get back to her office, Tracy Ireland quickly cut in. “As I was saying, Pamela has agreed to work with you on this. Aside from being chosen as the face for Emmanuel Zspartov’s new collection, which in itself makes her a prime target if we have another spate of problems, she’s rather more mature than most models her age as a result of her background.” Without explaining what she meant by this last comment, Ireland got ready to leave. “There are things I need to tend to, so I’ll leave you two to get started.” Then, with a quick smile, she turned and headed out the door.
The two young women looked at each other for a moment, unsure as to what “getting started” actually meant, before Spence slung her laptop case over her shoulder. “Well, I’ve talked myself hoarse for the last four hours. What do you say to grabbing a coffee at the place around the corner?”
Within ten minutes Spence and Pamela had escaped the agency and had settled in the corner of the busy coffee shop where Pamela sipped a skinny latte whilst Spence nursed an oversized Americano. “I don’t mean to pry,” Spence ventured after they’d both had an opportunity to savor their drinks, “but Ms. Ireland mentioned your background. May I ask why she did so?”
Pamela laughed. “I expect it’s because I’m an army brat. I’ve lived in seven different homes and four countries in twelve years.”
Spence to burst out laughing. “Snap! Air force brat. Ten sets of quarters, nine schools, and five countries in eighteen years.”
“Is your dad still in?”
“No. He bailed a few years back. He’s now a director with Symantec in California. Yours?”
“Oh, he’s still soldiering on. He’s just got back from Afghanistan, which makes both Mum and I very happy. Well, until the next posting order hits the mat. At least now I’ve got my own place here in London, which means I won’t have to cram my whole life into bloody cardboard boxes when that happens.”
Spence smiled, remembering how happy she had been to finally have a place of her own that didn’t have an air force asset number attached. After taking another long slurp of her coffee, she regretfully turned her full attention back to business. There’d be time for chitchat later she expected as she looked quizzically over her mug at the English girl. “Do you understand what you’re letting yourself in for?”
“You mean setting myself as bait for some troll to have a go at, by acting like a poor fragile blossom with a tenuous grasp on my self-esteem and no idea how to protect myself whilst you hunt the scumbag down and deliver them up to Tracy, who I expect will cut their balls off and feed them to her precious little shih tzu?”
Spence winced at the description. “Yeah, though I wouldn’t have put it quite like that.”
“Dad always said to never be afraid of calling a spade an f’ing shovel.”
Spence goggled for a moment, trying to put together what she’d just heard in a posh English accent with the image of the extremely elegant and apparently demure English rose before her. Then she guffawed, nearly spraying coffee everywhere and drawing the attention of pretty much everyone in the coffee shop. When she finally pulled herself back together, she wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes. “I see we’re going to have an interesting ride, Pam. Do you think Ms. Ireland knew what she was letting herself in for when she put us together?”
“Not a clue,” Pamela replied as an impish grin lit up her face.
4
The next three days passed in something of a blur for Spence, who couldn’t remember the last time she had worked so hard, or under so much pressure. At least half of each day was spent at the agency, either fielding technical queries from the models who had attended her course or chasing down their unknown assailant’s latest and increasingly nasty attacks, many of which were now targeting Pamela. Spence didn’t mind working with Pamela while dealing with the attacks. If anything, she was beginning to find she enjoyed the rather quirky humor of the British girl as they worked together to come up with new and inventive ways of teasing her abuser. The only hitch in this was the way she was being treated. Having always worked with either Andy or Tommy on a case, she was finding being a one-girl geek squad a challenge, one that was about to become even more so.
Earlier in the week Spence had managed to squeeze a few hours into Tracy Ireland’s demanding schedule, when the two of them worked to identify all the possible people who harbored a grudge against the businesswoman. As Spence had feared, the list was long and, given who was on it, quite impressive. What she hadn’t been prepared for was just how vicious and brutal the modeling industry really was.
When Ireland noticed the look on Spence’s face as she scanned the final list, she couldn’t help but smile cynically. “Every model you met the other day is already at the top of her career. Even so, they are still in competition with every other model out there, as well as countless other young girls fighting tooth and nail to break into the field. All are terrified by the prospect that someone younger, prettier, or more striking will suddenly emerge on the scene and knock them off their perch. This is coupled with the knowledge that their clock is ticking. The average career of a fashion model is three to five years. It should therefore not come as a surprise that everyone involved in this business takes these attacks to heart, for a model is more than a mannequin on which the latest fashions are draped. The second they walk out onto the runway, they represent the designer and his or her company’s reputation just as much as the clothes they are wearing.”
With the target list in hand, Spence returned to the office of Century Consultants, where she dealt with the post, e-mails, and messages left on the answering machine as quickly as possible. Fortunately, there was nothing from either Andy or Tommy, both of whom were enjoying extended holidays. The last thing Spence wanted to do was tell them what she was up to until she’d brought this case to a successful conclusion.
With all her office chores tended to, Spence spent the balance of the day online, hunting for examples of the writing of everyone on Tracy Ireland’s grudge list and comparing them to the database of online attacks that had been steadily growing more vicious as Milan fashion week approached.