Then the movement stopped.

She decided it wasn’t movement at all and never had been. Just a hint of light, a suggestion of shading.

Though still, she heard a series of troubling clicks and snaps and groans-from where, she couldn’t tell-and felt a chill of panic bubble up her spine.

Him…

The man who had written her hundreds of emails and letters, intimate, delusional, speaking of the life they could share together, asking for a strand of hair, a fingernail clipping. The man who had somehow gotten near enough at a dozen shows to take close-up pictures of Kayleigh, without anyone ever seeing him. The man who had possibly-though it had never been proven-slipped into the band buses or motor homes on the road and stolen articles of her clothing, underwear included.

The man who had sent her dozen of pictures of himself: shaggy hair, fat, in clothing that looked unwashed. Never obscene but, curiously, the images were all the more disturbing for their familiarity. They were the shots a boyfriend would text her from a trip.

Him…

Her father had recently hired a personal bodyguard, a huge man with a round, bullet-shaped head and an occasional curly wire sprouting from his ear to make clear what his job was. But Darthur Morgan was outside at the moment, making the rounds and checking cars. His security plan also included a nice touch: simply being visible so that potential stalkers would turn around and leave rather than risk a confrontation with a 250-pound man who looked like a rapper with an attitude (which, sure enough, he’d been in his teen years).

She scanned the recesses of the hall again-the best place he might stand and watch her. Then gritting her teeth in anger at her fear and mostly at her failure to tame the uneasiness and distraction, she thought, Get. Back. To. Work.

And what’re you worried about? You’re not alone. The band wasn’t in town yet-they were finishing some studio work in Nashville-but Bobby was at the huge Midas XL8 mixing console dominating the control deck in the back of the hall, two hundred feet away.