Her Bodyguard. Peggy Nicholson

till then,

      WRITE ME, YOU BITCH! (HA-HA—Just kidding!!!) your loving Sarah XXX

      WITH A SHUDDER of disgust, Trace dropped the letter on his desk. He stood, switched off the lamp, then moved to the window and leaned out, greedily breathing in the sweet night air, as if the letter’s cloying brew of need and hatred had contaminated his lungs as well as his mind.

      His office looked out on the front grounds of Woodwind. Even with his thoughts elsewhere, his eyes roved automatically over the darkened lawn below, seeking movement, any shape that departed from the normal outlines of the lush landscaping. Nearly midnight and not even a skunk waddled across the lawn in search of grubs.

      He glanced back to his desk. He’d been combing through Sarah XXX’s letters for the past hour, searching for any clue he might have overlooked. That letter was number four of the collection—rather, a copy of number four, since the original was filed with the Newport police. The stalking case against Sarah XXX had to be meticulously documented so that if—when, he corrected himself—Trace finally tracked her down, they could prosecute.

      Like all the other notes, number four was a textbook example of the kind of mash note celebrity stalkers sent the objects of their twisted affections. Whatever the words, the underlying theme was the same: terrible, unappeasable neediness. The echoing emptiness of a person who has no identity in the normal sense of the word. Because for whatever pathetic reason—neglect, abuse, psychological dysfunction?—the typical stalker possesses no self.

      Like Dorothy’s Tin Man, who realizes he lacks a heart, the stalker is still human enough to know he lacks something. Even if he can’t describe the problem, still he senses the void within—the black hole that in a normal person is filled by a sense of selfhood. By a soul.

      And the stalker knows he needs to fill that void. Yearns most horribly to fill it. Believes with unshakable faith that to ever be happy, to ever be normal, he must fill it.

      So just as the Tin Man set off to ask the Wizard of Oz for a heart, the stalker goes bumbling through life, searching and searching outside himself for a solution to the. problem that lies within.

      Until one fine day the answer comes to him. He has a black, sucking hole where his identity should be? He’ll fill it with someone else’s identity! Someone else’s soul.

      And since the void is so big, he’ll need a big identity to fill it. Somebody important, however the stalker defines importance.

      A generation ago, importance was a politician. Today, importance is most often a celebrity. So one day, the stalker flips the pages of a magazine—and sees a photo. Or turns the TV channel just as a certain actress walks into a room—and wham!—there it is. A person staring into his eyes, seemingly speaking to him and him alone, promising him the solution to his whole rotten, lonely life. Promising recognition, belonging—identity.

      All he has to do is win that person’s love, the stalker thinks. Except he doesn’t know what love is. His underlying urge is darker, deeper. He doesn’t want love; he wants possession. Wants to merge with. Become. Seize that soul and swallow it whole. To eat it.

      Trace switched the lamp back on and sat again. So with zombies like that wandering the world, what does Richard Corday do for his new, beautiful young wife?

      Already the creator of five hit TV shows, Corday sets out to create a showcase series for Lara. The perfect wedding gift for an actress, he must have thought. A role to die for. Like a master jeweler crafting the perfect setting for a matchless diamond, he creates an evening soap opera called Searching for Sarah.

      In which, for the past thirteen years, Lara had played the part of beautiful young Dr. Laura Daley, who has a secret sorrow. At the age of seventeen, Daley sold her illegitimate baby in a black-market adoption and used the payment to finance her way through college, then med school. Lara had assumed the role when she was thirty—at that age, she could still play the part of a teenager—and she’d been playing it ever since. The role had evolved over the years, with Dr. Daley changing from career-driven girl, to brilliant med student, to sexy resident, to glamorous pediatric surgeon in a big city hospital. She needed only one thing to make her life perfect: reunion with her lost, never forgotten, deeply regretted daughter. Because, since episode three of the show, Dr. Laura Daley had realized her dreadful mistake. She’d been frantically searching for Sarah for thirteen years now.

      The premise was guaranteed to speak to every wacko in the country—at least every female wacko, and doubtless some of the males. What could be more seductive to the loser nobody needs than a TV diva who needs you and you alone? For somebody lost to know that lovely Dr. Laura Daley is frantically searching for you?

      Searching for Sarah was like a Help Wanted ad, broadcast one night a week for thirteen years. The one part waiting for an actor to fill it was the role of the missing, longed-for daughter.

      Was it any wonder Sarah XXX wanted the position? The only wonder was that Trace didn’t have a dozen—a hundred—wannabe Sarahs to contend with. Lara had been damned lucky to escape a serious stalking as long as she had.

      How serious a stalker was Sarah XXX? That was the question.

      Six days after Sarah XXX mails this letter from Boston, promising—threatening—a mother-daughter reunion, somebody pushes Lara over a cliff. The simplest explanation wasn’t conclusive, but Trace firmly believed in starting with it first: one wacko, not two.

      So all I have to do is find Sarah XXX.

      And maybe he had. He reached for letter number five, then selected, instead, the top page from a thicker stack of papers. Gillian’s résumé.

      He paused as the buzzer tucked in his pocket quivered soundlessly against his thigh. Lara. He waited, eyes unfocused, breath deepening, preparing himself for action if this was a call for help—then let out a little sigh of satisfaction when the buzzer stopped vibrating after three seconds. Good. And good night to you, too, Lara.

      Buzzers were a bit of proprietary technology that Brickhouse used in any case where physical attack was a possibility. The client was instructed to wear a special locket on a chain around his or her neck at all times. Press the button concealed in the locket’s design, and a silent buzzer would alert the Brickhouse bodyguard that he was needed—and needed now.

      He glanced at his watch. Midnight. Which meant it was nine in Seattle, not too late for his night-owl younger sister. He picked up his phone and dialed.

      “Mmm, ‘lo?” a drowsy voice murmured in his ear.

      “Asleep already?” he said easily. “Lazy bum.”

      “Dozing,” Emily insisted. “I’m lying here on the couch with Duncan on my chest.” Duncan was one of her four tomcats, the surly orange one. “And he’s emitting sleep rays. I was fighting valiantly, but—”

      “Well, throw him off and go look at your computer.” Trace had scanned Gillian’s résumé into his computer, then e-mailed it to Emily an hour ago. “Got somebody I want you to check out for me.” His younger sister was not a partner in Brickhouse, God forbid, but an associate. They farmed out much of their research to her, especially anything that could be learned over the Internet.

      “Rush job or in my own sweet time?” she inquired around a yawn.

      “Like prontissimo. I want it yesterday.”

      “So my—lemme go, you cockleburr!” On the far side of the continent, something heavy hit the floor—twenty-two pounds of cat, Trace assumed. “So my brainstorm worked?” Emily continued. She’d suggested Trace run a want ad seeking a personal assistant for Lara, because if Sarah XXX had come to Newport in May, then maybe she’d stayed.

      That wouldn’t be untypical—the stalker’s life spiraling inward in tighter and tighter circles around her target as her obsession grew. And if she’d stayed, then she’d be frantically seeking some way in past Woodwind’s unbreachable walls. “So offer her a way in,” Emily had urged. “Run a want ad with the Woodwind address and see who applies.”