from her trust fund—and which she loved even more now than she had the first day she moved in. It wasn’t huge—three bedrooms, two baths—but it was the perfect size for her, and the open spaces, geometric lines, dark trim, and jewel-toned colors she’d chosen to fill it suited her. It was a far cry from the muted and overstuffed—in more ways than one—house in which she’d grown up, and in which she’d never felt comfortable. Where her mother’s style could be best described as Colonial condescension, Natalie’s was more cottage cozy. And that didn’t relate just to their decorating styles, either.
After stowing her carryout in the fridge—not surprisingly, she hadn’t actually been hungry when she ordered—she went straight upstairs to her bedroom to change clothes, opting for a baggy white T-shirt and even baggier pajama pants decorated with cartoon cats. Then she washed her face of the makeup she’d donned for Finn Guthrie’s benefit—for all the good it had done—and made her way to her home office. Zip, her silver tabby, jumped into her lap the moment she sat down in front of her computer, and Natalie absently scratched her ear as she skittered the mouse across the pad to bring up a screen. She clicked on her Internet icon, which automatically opened on Google, but she hesitated a moment before typing anything into the search box.
Finally, on a whim, she typed in the name Steve Jobs in quotations. More than sixteen million hits came up. When she’d done the same thing for Russell Mulholland earlier in the day, fewer than one million had come up. Why would that be? Certainly Steve Jobs had been around longer than Russell Mulholland, but the two men’s success was comparable, and the huge discrepancy hardly seemed justified.
That was made more evident when she Googled Finn Guthrie’s name for a second time and realized again that his name appeared nearly as often as Mulholland’s did. Why would a man who was worth as much as Russell have only as many hits as a man whom he employed, even if that man was constantly at his side?
One thing Natalie had learned early on about the Internet was that it was rife with complaint and misanthropy, particularly where celebrities of any kind were concerned. There should at least be a handful of websites—if not more—devoted to bashing Russell and his game system, thanks to malcontents who hadn’t been able to get their hands on one or who didn’t know how to use it properly. And those sites wouldn’t include mention of Finn’s name, because people wouldn’t know or care about him in that context. There should also be plenty of business and financial articles about the billionaire that wouldn’t include Finn, because even if they mentioned his cadre of bodyguards, few would bother to specify any of them by name.
So why were Finn and Russell virtually always linked, and why were there so many fewer mentions of the billionaire than there should be? There could be only one explanation, Natalie finally concluded.
Russell Mulholland was hiding something. The billionaire had a secret he didn’t want getting around. And she’d bet every cent she had that Finn Guthrie’s job was to protect that as much as he did the billionaire.
She’d read an article not long ago about a type of business that was beginning to thrive because the companies were able to, through finagling or bribery or outright threats, have removed from the Internet any number of pages or sites that referred to their clients in less-than-stellar ways. It made sense that someone who valued his privacy as much as Russell Mulholland did would pay for such a service. If Natalie could afford it, she’d pay for such a service herself. To this day, she continued to be mocked about the dress she’d worn to Sybil Garrison’s twenty-first birthday party, because there were still photos floating around out there in cyberspace. Well, how was she supposed to know how enormous her butt had looked
After stowing her carryout in the fridge—not surprisingly, she hadn’t actually been hungry when she ordered—she went straight upstairs to her bedroom to change clothes, opting for a baggy white T-shirt and even baggier pajama pants decorated with cartoon cats. Then she washed her face of the makeup she’d donned for Finn Guthrie’s benefit—for all the good it had done—and made her way to her home office. Zip, her silver tabby, jumped into her lap the moment she sat down in front of her computer, and Natalie absently scratched her ear as she skittered the mouse across the pad to bring up a screen. She clicked on her Internet icon, which automatically opened on Google, but she hesitated a moment before typing anything into the search box.
Finally, on a whim, she typed in the name Steve Jobs in quotations. More than sixteen million hits came up. When she’d done the same thing for Russell Mulholland earlier in the day, fewer than one million had come up. Why would that be? Certainly Steve Jobs had been around longer than Russell Mulholland, but the two men’s success was comparable, and the huge discrepancy hardly seemed justified.
That was made more evident when she Googled Finn Guthrie’s name for a second time and realized again that his name appeared nearly as often as Mulholland’s did. Why would a man who was worth as much as Russell have only as many hits as a man whom he employed, even if that man was constantly at his side?
One thing Natalie had learned early on about the Internet was that it was rife with complaint and misanthropy, particularly where celebrities of any kind were concerned. There should at least be a handful of websites—if not more—devoted to bashing Russell and his game system, thanks to malcontents who hadn’t been able to get their hands on one or who didn’t know how to use it properly. And those sites wouldn’t include mention of Finn’s name, because people wouldn’t know or care about him in that context. There should also be plenty of business and financial articles about the billionaire that wouldn’t include Finn, because even if they mentioned his cadre of bodyguards, few would bother to specify any of them by name.
So why were Finn and Russell virtually always linked, and why were there so many fewer mentions of the billionaire than there should be? There could be only one explanation, Natalie finally concluded.
Russell Mulholland was hiding something. The billionaire had a secret he didn’t want getting around. And she’d bet every cent she had that Finn Guthrie’s job was to protect that as much as he did the billionaire.
She’d read an article not long ago about a type of business that was beginning to thrive because the companies were able to, through finagling or bribery or outright threats, have removed from the Internet any number of pages or sites that referred to their clients in less-than-stellar ways. It made sense that someone who valued his privacy as much as Russell Mulholland did would pay for such a service. If Natalie could afford it, she’d pay for such a service herself. To this day, she continued to be mocked about the dress she’d worn to Sybil Garrison’s twenty-first birthday party, because there were still photos floating around out there in cyberspace. Well, how was she supposed to know how enormous her butt had looked
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