“I was going to call Spencer and tell him that I was concerned about your personal safety. Today, in fact. But I, ah, was waylaid by a person very competent with pepper spray.”
“Wait a minute—my attacker, did you see him again? Around here?” Fear continued to rise in her gut and she tried to squelch it but couldn’t stop the tremor that rolled through her skeleton.
Holden’s hand was on her shoulder, warm, protective. And she didn’t bristle, but accepted it with a smile that she knew must look wan at best. Exhaustion poured over her and she sank onto the nearest seat, a sofa cushion.
“No, and if I did, I would have already had you out of here. I’m sorry I didn’t catch him earlier.” A tendon on the side of his jaw clenched and she knew he was annoyed. At her, at losing track of the attacker, probably both.
“I thought it might be you.” Except she’d heard his voice telling the attacker to stop. His voice had steadied her, even in the grips of a probable killer.
He chuckled. “I don’t blame you. No, it wasn’t me. You can verify with your brother or any other MVPD officer. I called in the incident as soon as your attacker took off.”
“After you made him let go of me.”
“I can’t take credit for that. It was the circumstances.”
“Of you forcing him to flee. My brother told me when he brought me back to my car. All of MVPD is in awe of how you handled the situation. You stayed cool and forced the attacker’s hand.”
She regarded him, liked how he didn’t so much as twitch under her scrutiny. “You followed us from the hospital, didn’t you? I knew I saw you there.” She saw him again in her mind’s eye, how he’d leaned up against the nurses’ station and kept his face averted as she’d walked out of the hospital. But she hadn’t trusted her memory, not so soon after being knocked out.
Holden nodded. “I did.”
“How did he knock me out?”
“You don’t remember?”
She shook her head. “One minute I was at the file cabinet and the next I heard this awful voice, then all went black.”
“He had a voice box on, over a facemask and hoodie. I saw it.”
“Terrifying.” But it didn’t answer how he knocked her out.
“He used a sleeper hold on you. I saw it as I came into the room. You were already out—there was nothing I could do to protect you from being knocked unconscious.”
“You kept me from a lot worse.”
“Maybe.”
He was being modest but she wasn’t going to call him on it. Not yet, not until she figured out why he was here, now. The FBI was interested in the pageant, confirming her suspicions that there was more going on here than a scholarship contest.
“I’m a reporter. I’m not hiding my motives for being here from you. Unlike you.” She knew she really needed to back off the accusatory attitude but it was hard. Federal agents had a reputation of not looking fondly upon the media.
“True on all accounts. Answer my question, Bella. Why are you here?”
She ran over all the reasons to not tell him but they didn’t make sense. Not when she was looking up at him, the red, blotchy skin of his face a reminder that he’d calmly taken an all-out attack from her, yet remained cool and calm. The ultimate professional. No wonder having him as a security guard had seemed like overkill. He looked and acted like he was tops in his field at the Bureau. Whatever Holden was, he appeared to be a man who got what he wanted.
“I’m doing an undercover report on pageant practices, specifically Ms. Mustang Valley. Not just this year’s, but the last ten pageants or so.” The time span that Gio had participated. Before eating disorders and resultant poor health had taken her, too soon.
“What kind of ‘practices’?”
“I want to find out if they ever made, or still do make, the contestants diet or be a certain size or weight. If they encourage any kind of unhealthy behavior that had a long-term effect on the contestants.”
“You look down in the dumps about it. I can’t say that I’d find that surprising. Would you?” His astuteness rattled her. How did a stranger see right through her?
“I, I’m doing it because I lost a friend who spent half of her life competing in pageants, including this one. She never won, but never gave up. And it killed her.”
“What killed her? Exactly?” His voice, low and deadly, unexpectedly buoyed her. Holden was a man who sought justice every day, who probably understood her motives better than she did.
“It wasn’t foul play, if that’s what you’re asking. Not with a visible weapon, anyhow. To be fair, I don’t know what really took her. In the end it was classified as malnutrition due to an eating disorder. No matter what the death certificate said, she’s gone forever and while I blame the pageant industry as a whole, I’m especially furious at Ms. Mustang Valley. I can’t rest until I know the persons who tortured her the most, who bullied her to turn herself into someone she wasn’t by alternatively bingeing and starving herself. I suspect the pageant board and maybe some of the judges are to blame.”