LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 3

      “Dirk was right,” Alana muttered to herself. Her boss’s fan mail—the real kind, not email—went to a PO box address, and the accumulation was delivered bright and early every Monday morning. Dirk had a social media presence she maintained for him, too—website, Twitter, Facebook. He couldn’t possibly have managed it all on his own, which was why Juliana had recommended Dirk to Alana and Alana to Dirk.

      And she loved her job. Unlike the glorified but meaningless position she’d had working for her father’s company ever since she graduated from college, she never felt superfluous. She never felt as if no one would miss her if she didn’t show up. Dirk needed her to keep him organized, to keep his fan base happy.

      Not that Dirk didn’t take an interest. He did. He set the tone, gave her the parameters to work from to maintain his public persona. He also read the more interesting posts, tweets and emails she filtered for him. And he reviewed anything that went out under his name, of course. But only once had he firmly put his foot down on Alana’s suggested response, one that would have capitalized on a touching photo of Dirk with his family that had just recently been published, a picture that had been taken without his knowledge or consent. After which she’d gotten the message—his wife and children were never to be used.

      That didn’t mean photos of the DeWinters didn’t circulate. The paparazzi stalked Dirk relentlessly, and Mei-li was incredibly photogenic. But Dirk tried to minimize public access to his twin daughters, including a state-of-the-art security system surrounding his estate on Victoria Peak here on Hong Kong Island, and bodyguards who fiercely protected his little girls whenever they went out anywhere. Nevertheless, pictures surfaced occasionally. That was one of Alana’s more esoteric duties, too. To track the photos and figure out how, when and where they were taken, so Dirk could do his best to prevent others from being snapped in the future.

      Even though Juliana had lived her entire adult life in the public eye, attention that had become even more rabid when she married the King of Zakhar, Alana had never understood just how little privacy celebrities had these days until she’d gone to work for Dirk. Until she’d experienced firsthand what almost amounted to harassment when a photographer had lain in wait and snapped pictures of Alana, the twins and their nanny outside the ladies’ room of the restaurant Dirk had taken them to her first week on the job. And she’d quickly realized the steep price Dirk and his family paid—would always pay—for his superstardom.

      The morning passed in a busy blur. When she’d first started her new job she’d been overwhelmed by the barrage of incoming data. But she had a system now, so she quickly dealt with the backlog of fan communication, divvying them up into her little “buckets.” Adoring. Begging. Threatening. And the category that always made her laugh at how creative people could be: investment “opportunities.” Not a single one was anything other than a scam, but she’d shown a couple of them to Dirk to make him laugh, too.

      Mostly the scam emails were deleted after reading the first couple of sentences, but not the threats. Dirk would have had Alana just delete them, too, but Mei-li had shaken her head, saying in her soft voice, “Don’t respond, but don’t delete. We need to keep a record, just in case...” And when the eyes of the two women had met, Alana had understood without another word being spoken.

      Mei-li was a highly regarded private investigator and a ransom negotiator, and was unwaveringly protective of her beloved husband. She read every threatening communication, ranking them on a scale of one to five, with one being “no threat,” three being “credible threat,” and five being “imminent threat.” The “imminent threat” communications were turned over to the Hong Kong Police for investigation.

      The begging requests were more problematic, because Dirk, Alana had soon learned, had a tender heart. Which meant another of Alana’s duties revolved around investigating the legitimacy of whatever the senders were asking Dirk to do. And on three separate occasions in the past month Dirk had quietly and without fanfare fulfilled a request—including sending money to the parents of a child with a severe form of spina bifida whose dying wish was to visit the Eiffel Tower, and a personal visit to the bedside of a longtime fan dying from cancer.

      But the vast majority of the emails, tweets and posts were of the adoring variety. And Alana had a stock response she sent out on Dirk’s behalf, thanking the sender and promoting his latest movie, including links to positive reviews.

      She’d just replied to the last email when Mei-li walked into the office. “Hannah said you needed to talk with me?”

      It took Alana a moment to come out of the zone she’d been in. “Oh,” she said. “I wanted to ask you...” Her cheeks felt suddenly warm. “The man who rescued me last night. Do you know who he is?” When Mei-li didn’t immediately respond, Alana rushed to add, “You said he and the other men are with a group called RMM. I know you said they don’t look for thanks, but I...” She faltered. “I just wondered.”

      An enigmatic expression crossed Mei-li’s face. “I know, but I can’t tell you.” She sat down in the chair in front of Alana’s desk. “I contacted RMM because they’re my last resort. But they operate in the shadows. And some of the things they do are illegal. Not bad, just illegal. So...”

      Alana nodded. She wasn’t naive...not in that way anyway. She knew the difference. “Last night the driver and the man riding shotgun said I was abducted by members of a triad gang. That other women had disappeared in the same way, and they—RMM, I guess is what he meant—they’ve been after this gang for a couple of months. But...” She trailed off as another thought occurred to her, and she frowned. “How did they know where I was? I mean, I’m incredibly grateful someone figured it out and RMM rescued me, but...”

      Mei-li’s lips quirked into a tiny smile. “Modern technology is wonderful...most of the time. You know those little lockets the twins wear, the ones with a picture of their mother?”

      She wasn’t sure where the other woman was going with this. “Of course.”

      “You probably thought they were a tad young for jewelry.”

      “Well...yes,” she admitted. “But I just figured Dirk wanted the girls

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