Chapter One
Hugging the backstage wall, Danni Knorr crept in the shadows with her SIG tucked into her skirt and a flashlight in her hand. The only light in the wings came from the red exit sign. The band’s frenetic sound matched her heartbeat as it raced to its own crazy-ass rhythm. Espionage beat the hell out of spending the day in a biochemistry/physics lab. Undercover as rock star Alex Hardy’s girlfriend/bodyguard, she had discovered a new high. Like drinking expensive French champagne, she got off on danger.
This was a new thing. Before she’d been kidnapped, Danni had never thought about her body more than keeping it in shape and healthy. Had never thought of holding a gun, let alone buying one and practicing with targets weekly. Had never realized just how many threats were out there and how little she’d been able to do to save herself.
Honing her body into a fighting machine with Krav Maga had been her first step to taking charge after she had been kidnapped. Then she’d taken classes on tactical awareness. She’d read up on the FBI and various police trainings. She’d even thought about joining the Jenkins Security agency, but Nick Jenkins had turned her down because of her lack of experience. At least he’d been honest with her.
The last step in her “recovery” was to take ownership of her pleasure. Sex with the famous superstud Alex Hardy was to be the ultimate statement of her proclaimed freedom. She hadn’t yet made up her mind whether she should seduce him.
Right now, acting only as his bodyguard suited her perfectly. Her idea to guard the musician after discovering that he was being stalked had been serendipitous. A year ago, when Jax the Jerk, her ex-fiancé, had left her at the altar for a teenager with more enthusiasm and experience with sex than she had—or so he’d been happy to tell her—Danni had been unable to bite the bullet and seduce any guy. Since then, there was only one man who’d tempted her to open up and be vulnerable as well as passionate, and sadly, it wasn’t Alex, no matter how much she tried to persuade herself to give him a chance.
Danni stopped and hid against the black concrete wall, searching for the location of the backstage crew before she went into the greenroom. She could easily bullshit about why she was wandering backstage, away from Alex’s performance, but she’d rather not draw attention to herself. And she preferred to avoid creepy Frank, Alex’s childhood friend and head of security.
The murmur of the crew’s voices could be heard outside the stage door where they took their breaks to vape cancer. They had twenty minutes of downtime before the next scene change, allowing Danni less than fifteen minutes to search the belongings of the band and the traveling staff before the backstage crew would be back at work, and the band would take their break in the greenroom.
She knew she was grasping at straws trying to connect the band and staff to Alex’s stalker. But Danni was determined to find how the stalker had accessed Alex’s dressing room to leave the third threatening letter at the last concert in Portland.
Posing as Alex’s girlfriend, she had flown to every city for the last four weeks to hang with the band and the groupies and have her picture taken with Alex. She had declined traveling in the almost all-male—except for Luna, the drummer’s girlfriend and the band’s massage therapist—tour bus, no matter how luxurious their RVs were.
Six cities and all their fake PDA, hoping to bait the stalker to reveal herself, and they had nothing except for another letter. Danni was no further along, with not one lead on how the stalker had breached Alex’s dressing room in Portland.
She slowly opened the door to make sure that the greenroom was clear of the catering staff or aggressive groupies.
Despite the name, the room where the band members hung out during breaks and before the show wasn’t green. As the headliner, Alex had his own dressing room. The greenroom in LA was no different from any of the other performers’ backstage rooms she’d seen the past months.
She decided to snoop without Alex’s knowledge. He was too close to his band and would never believe that one of them could be the stalker. And he most likely was right since there was a ridiculously low probability. But the band and traveling staff all had access to Alex’s dressing room, and they were the only consistent factor since the backstage crews changed in every city. She needed to be absolutely sure that the stalker wasn’t a disgruntled band or traveling staff member.
Guitar cases, gym bags, and backpacks were scattered across the worn industrial carpet. Being on tour wasn’t as cool as everyone imagined. It was exhausting, with boring hours of tedious downtime for the two-to-three-hour high of performance. But, like her newly found danger addiction, performing was a high that fed on itself.
A half-open leather backpack was propped haphazardly against a guitar case. She knew exactly which mess belonged to which member, making it easy to start—Roland Young, drug addict and the lead guitarist, made the top on her list. She didn’t have a clear connection between his addiction and stalking Alex, but he was the only member who raised red flags.
She hurried across the nondescript room, which was painted purple to create an edgy feel in the utilitarian square space. Kneeling next to the beat-up leather backpack, she began a methodical search. She didn’t know what she might find, but she trusted her instincts to recognize a clue.
Her hands shook as the adrenaline surged through her body—part of the thrill of the hormonal rollercoaster. Maybe she had read too many Nancy Drew novels as a young girl.
She went through each pocket—a row of condoms, spiking hair gel, a bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Pretty dull findings. Despite being a junky with an oversized ego, nothing suspicious linked Roland to the stalker or even revealed obvious drug paraphernalia.
The center of the pack held deodorant, and two rolled-up T-shirts that he’d change into at the breaks in the set. She shook out both—nada.
She scooted over to Roland’s guitar case and unlatched it. Besides being illegal, this was a ridiculous waste of time.
Danni stopped in response to a possible sound from the hallway. Her heart jolted at the fear of being discovered. She turned quickly to the crew’s side door, where she had just entered. She strained to hear whether anyone was approaching. Part of the downside of the adrenaline rush was it made you hyperalert and a bit overreactive. A possible advantage when your life was in danger. Not great when you’re just snooping and needed to remain undetected.
When no one appeared, she rifled through Roland’s case. Nothing but extra sets of strings and picks. Although Roland was a slob, he took good care of his guitars.
She methodically went through everyone else’s gear with no findings. Checking her phone, she realized she better hurry back to Alex’s dressing room to make sure there were no surprises waiting for him during his break. She now checked Alex’s room before he returned between sets.
Danni was hurrying back toward Alex’s room when the dressing room door opened. She stepped to the side of a giant speaker to watch who was leaving the room. The only person with a credible reason to be in Alex’s room at this point in the show was the wardrobe person.
Her skin tingled as she watched creepy Frank look both ways before he silently closed the door. Why was Frank in Alex’s room? As head of security, he was supposed to verify that the guards were in place to prevent anyone from sneaking backstage during the intermission.