Page 12 of You Found Me

“Her life, her career, hell even her bra size…everything is public,” Annie continued. “When the band split up, she was called everything from bitch to…well use your imagination. Now, she’s back with her sisters and she’s a Bellamy Babe again, though there’s an underbelly of resentment that’s more hostility than I’d want to face in three lifetimes. That said, most of the comments are from rabid fans who would die in a fire for her. She’s turned her own ship around, and it wasn’t easy. It’s taken almost five years, and a lot of constant effort, but she did it with that beaming smile on her face. She bounces like one of thosekids who falls off their bike over and over but gets right back on the damn thing.”

“Any idea why she sold her penthouse?” Spencer asked. “She doesn’t have any property listed in her name right now, and if she’s leasing there’s no record of it. That’s a little strange. She has to live somewhere, right?”

“She’s been couch surfing the way I understand it,” Ward said. “She rotates between sisters and hotels while she looks for a place.”

Spencer looked thoughtful. “If we can’t secure her residence, where were you planning on stashing her while we hunt for the stalker? We could set up a safe house near your apartment. It’s not a bad area.”

“It’s a street full of bars,” Ward said with a shake of his head. “That would be catnip to her. We need to keep her far away from any flashing lights and party sounds. She’s agreed to stay in Piper’s house here in LA.” Ward gave Spencer the address so he could pull up the basic specs of the place.

Several shots of a bungalow nestled behind impressive fencing with security hedges appeared on the central monitor.

“I love the ivy,” Annie said. “And the pool.”

“If I had that place, I’d never leave,” Spencer said around a mouthful of muffin.

“That’s because you like nesting,” Annie said. “You’re basically a rat who collects gadgets.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing, but rats are actually pretty cool. They can lift more than their body weight and their jaws can exert as much as seven thousand pounds per square inch. They can also survive a fifty-foot drop without injury. I would definitely like to have that ability.” Spencer took a long drink.

“The point is,” Annie continued with the air of a teacher trying to get attention after the bell rings, “Della doesn’t nest.”

“Think she won’t cooperate?” Ward wished Annie wouldn’t call their principal by her first name. It made it difficult to keep emotions out of the equation. But they’d had that argument too many times to count, and he valued Annie’s people instincts. He’d learned to live with her need to get chummy with their clients.

“Oh, I think she’ll try. At first, anyway.” Annie tilted her head as she considered the images. “Once the initial scare fades, I’m not so sure. She’s so used to beingonthat she doesn’t know how to beoff. I can’t see her sequestering for a long game of hide-the-prize while we hunt the nut, can you?”

“No,” Ward admitted. “But Renic assures me she’ll listen to reason. Her sisters are behind the push to hire us, and he tells me they’re tight. It might be enough. If we work fast.”

“Or it might be wishful thinking.” Annie tapped her finger on the table. “Better start thinking of plan Bs just in case.”

“Already on it,” Ward said.

Annie raised her eyebrows. “Oh? Thinking of hiding her in that tattered cabin of yours? She’lllovethat.”

“No. Not the cabin.” Ward couldn’t imagine the pop star sitting still for two seconds in a house made of logs without electricity or an audience. No, he had something even worse in mind. “I have that house in Pennsylvania we can use.”

Annie raised her eyebrows. “Really? You want to take her for a visit with your family?”

“It’s unconnected to her and familiar to me.”

“Uh-huh.” Annie took a casual sip. “It’s a small town filled with people who treat you like the prodigal son every time you visit, not to mention, let me repeat,family.Are you sure that’s a good place to try to ditch the grid?”

“It’s a backup. Let’s make sure we don’t need it.” Ward turned to Spencer. “What did you find on our stalker?”

Spencer flicked a button on the remote and a letter appeared on the center display.

“I started by analyzing the dressing room letter. The vocabulary and syntax indicates that the writer is male, not to mention eighty-seven percent of stalking perpetrators are male. I then moved on to the emails he mentions, since her nonresponse seemed to be the trigger for the escalation.”

“That might have been a trigger for the letter, but it didn’t trigger him,” Annie said. “And I agree he’s definitely ahe. The letter feels creepy uncle to me. Personal. Intimate. I think he knows her. Somehow.”

“You might be right,” Spencer said. “It certainly sounds that way in the emails I found, plus three out of four stalking victims know their stalker.”

“You found the emails?” Ward leaned on the table. “Great work. Let’s see.”

Spencer shrugged off the compliment, but Ward could tell he was pleased. “It’ll take more time for my data crawler to go through them all. She literally has hundreds of thousands of mostly unopened emails, and that’s just her main address. Her label has more that I haven’t even touched. There’s a surprising number of messages that indicate psychopathy, but so far, I can only pinpoint three that I think came from the same guy who left the letter. They use the same signature, the same sentence structures and grammar, and they all start the same way.”

Spencer clicked and the letter was replaced by an email. “This first one is dated just after theWe AreBellamy Sisters Reunited tour kicked off in New York.”

He read the letter out loud in the same way a good narrator might read a romance novel. “‘Sweet Della, I hope you’re enjoying the reunion but I have to say I miss you terribly. I thought of going with you. I’m sure if you saw me there in the crowd you’d be too distracted by love to finish the shows and Iknow how important they are to you. Can’t wait to see you back home. Yours now and always.’”

---