Coming Undone (18 page)

“What?”
he suddenly demanded.

She jumped, slapping a hand to her galloping heart as she blinked him back into focus. “Holy crap, you about gave me a heart attack!” Not to mention the imminent eyestrain she’d inflicted on herself in her fierce need to watch him from the corner of her eye while simultaneously looking inward at her dilemma. Pulling her knee up onto the seat, she swiveled to face him more squarely. “What d’you mean,
what?
”

“I mean what the hell was that sigh for? And how come you’re staring at me.”

“Was I staring?” Hey, when caught flatfooted, lie like a politician, that was her motto. “I was just thinking how different things are in Denver since the last time we were together here.” That was actually the truth. She had thought about that more than once—just perhaps not right at this exact moment. “It’s kind of surreal.”

“I can see how it would be.” He glanced over at her. “Especially staying in an uptown hotel just off the Sixteenth Street Mall. How many of our days do you calculate we spent hanging out there?”

“Most of them. I certainly never imagined then that I’d someday stay in a place like the Teatro.” A sudden chill passed over her body and she rubbed her bare arms. “And I sure never imagined having the career I have, let alone the stalker to go with it. I guess I really have hit the big time.”

He reached over the console to give her knee a rub. Warmth sank into more places than where his hand touched. “I will keep you safe,” he stated categorically. “And if the day ever comes when I don’t feel I can do that on my own, I’ll hire a frigging platoon of bodyguards.”

Aw, man. And she was supposed to avoid loving this man
how?

“I’ve been thinking about the situation quite a bit,” he continued. “And it seems to me that this probably didn’t come out of the blue.”

She blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Do you read all your own fan mail?”

“Not anymore. I used to, but then it got to be too much. I receive more mail than I ever dreamed one person could get.”

“So who reads it if you don’t? And what happens to it afterward?”

“I’ve got a fan club that handles it. Why, do you think this guy might’ve written me?”

Jared nodded. “I think the chances are pretty good that he has. This sort of thing usually escalates, so it’s likely that it started with him sending you fan letters. I need the name of someone I can contact at your fan club to see about getting the letters.”

“That would probably be Colleen Borts. She heads the club, at least, and she’s superefficient. If anyone could answer your questions, it would be her. I don’t know her number off the top of my head, but Nell has it on file.”

She sat silent for a moment as he accelerated into the passing lane. But once he’d found a hole in the traffic, moved back into the right lane and resumed his normal speed, she blurted, “Jared, I have to warn you that there are literally thousands of letters.” Just the idea of culling one from so many was daunting.

Not so to Jared apparently, for he merely shrugged. “All the more reason to believe a certain percentage of them come from the fringe element. Let’s just hope the efficient Ms. Borts has culled those out and put them somewhere safe. Because that could give us the break we’re looking for to stop this before it gets really ugly.”

She’d swear her heart stopped beating. Then it kicked in, drumming out a faster rhythm than before. Suddenly a man who had been a minor irritant was a much bigger threat to her safety. Or at least that seemed to be the gist of what Jared was saying.

“Ugly.” She repeated the word, staring at him. “Is that your take on this? That it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better?”

“I don’t know what to think at this point, Peej.” His gaze, when he took it briefly from the road to meet hers, was serious. “I don’t know enough yet to predict what the man is capable of. What I do know is that I intend to find out. In the meantime, though, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. I’d rather you be a little spooked, a little on edge, than forget to be aware of what’s going on around you. So stay vigilant. But know this.” He reached over once again to squeeze her knee. “Anybody looking to hurt you will have to go through me first. You can take that to the bank.”

G
OOD
G
OD.
C
OULD HE HAVE
sounded
any more melodramatic? Jared itched all over every time he thought of his big declaration.

Not that he hadn’t meant it. Anyone wanting a piece of P.J. would have to go through him first. But he had a feeling he might have sounded perhaps a bit too fervent, maybe even to the point where he’d put ideas in her head that weren’t destined to ever pan out.

Hell, what was he doing getting this cozy with her in the first place? This was P.J. he was talking about. P.J., who had meant more to him than damn near anyone in the world. The same P.J. who had disappeared from his life without a backward glance. He wasn’t allowing himself to get that emotionally invested in her ever again. It hurt too much when she walked away, which she was sure to do once he eliminated this stalker business.

He glanced over at her. And promptly had to repeat his mantra when he saw how pale her face had become as she read from the stack of letters in front of her.

Don’t go there, Slick.
Gritting his teeth, he went back to his own stack of correspondence. He wasn’t getting sucked in by that vulnerable aura of hers again. He’d been there, done that already. And look where it had gotten him, with P.J. gone and him picking up the pieces of his life with a big ol’ gaping hole where her support and friendship should have been. Well, never again. He’d learned he could rely on his family and himself and no one else. It was time he started keeping that in mind.

He needed to pull back and put some distance between them, emotionally if not physically, since the latter wasn’t achievable on the professional front. He had never claimed to be the cleverest man alive, but usually he only had to get his teeth kicked down his throat once before he learned his lesson. So they were going to have a talk the minute they were alone. He was going to lay down some guidelines so she couldn’t claim he’d led her on or made her any promises, implicit or otherwise.

“Here’s another I-want-to-marry-you-and-give-you-my-babies entry.”

He looked at Hank, wincing when he saw P.J. shudder from the corner of his eye. “Damn. How many does that make?”

The fan club manager had come through for him. Colleen Borts had overnighted a box of the fan letters that she’d felt were disturbing and another that she’d found marginal. He would’ve preferred recruiting only Hank to help him go through the correspondence, but this was P.J.’s life and he could hardly keep her out of it when she insisted on being included. Besides, it was damn difficult to be the wall standing between her and danger if he was in one room while she was in another.

So here they all were, sitting around the table in the new suite he’d registered for her under his name at a new hotel, reading a disturbingly large number of crank letters.

“Twenty-seven,” Nell said, answering the question he’d put to Hank.

“And how many are in the pile from the group I think oughtta be in jail?”

“Eleven.”

“I guess there’s some consolation in that, huh?” P.J.’s crooked smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “That there are fewer flat-out psychos than guys who just want to keep me barefoot and pregnant between tours?”

Nell scooted her chair closer to P.J.’s, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and giving her a hug. “I’m sorry, girlfriend. This really stinks. Are you sure you want to pore through all this crap? Hank and I could take over for a while if you’d like to go take a walk with Jared or something.”

“No, I’m okay.” Straightening, she reached for another handful of letters from the box in the middle of the table. “It’s creepy and I can’t honestly say it’s not freaking me out. But it’s actually better knowing what the letters say than to be left out of the loop and let my mind provide the content.” Her smile was wry and barely there, but a little less forced this time. “I’ve got a very good imagination.”

There was a knock at the door and everyone froze. Jared looked at P.J. “Are you expecting someone?”

“No.”

“Then stay here. I’ll get it.”

When he reached the door he looked through the peephole, and surprise elevated his eyebrows. “Eddie?” he murmured aloud. He glanced over his shoulder at the group inside the suite. Focusing in on P.J. he said, “What’s he doing here?”

“I don’t know,” P.J. said. “I gave him the name of the new hotel and the room number just like I did Hank and Nell, but I didn’t actually expect to see him.”

With a shrug, he opened the door to the guitar player.

“Hey,” Eddie greeted him, sauntering into the hallway that led to the suite. “Whazzup?” Stopping in the archway, he looked at P.J., Hank and Nell around the table. “Hell, I didn’t know it was a party. I guess my invite musta got lost in the mail.” Coming closer, he peered down at the piles of correspondence on the table and his brow creased. “Whatcha all doin’?”

“Going through P.J.’s fan mail,” Nell said.

Shaking his head, he gave them a pitying look. “It’s Sunday, people. I mean, I love you to pieces, Peej, but reading your kudos is the best you could think to do on our one day off?”

“What are you doing here?” Hank demanded impatiently. “Why aren’t you out with the catch of the day?”

Eddie grimaced and sank down in a chair at the table. “Turns out she was barely nineteen.”

Everyone burst into laughter and Hank said what Jared at least was thinking. “You can’t honestly have been surprised by that.”

“Hey, I make it a point to check their ID,” Eddie said with utter seriousness. He sank lower on his tailbone. “Only it turns out this girl’s was fake.” He shuddered. “Man, I don’t ever wanna find myself up on statutory rape charges.”

“That only happens if they’re under eighteen,” Jared assured him.

“Even so, man. I ain’t interested in babies. They gotta be at least twenty-one.” Picking up the letter closest him, he idly perused it. Then he snapped upright, dropping it on the table as if it had grown teeth. “What the—? That’s one sick monkey!”

Jared picked it up and skimmed it. “Yep,” he agreed, folding it back into its envelope. “It’s another for the oughtta be in jail group.”

“There’s
more
like this? What the hell’s going on?”

With the caveat that Eddie keep it under his hat, he filled the blond musician in. To his surprise, Eddie grabbed a handful of letters from the box and dug right in to help.

They fell back into the easy rhythm that the guitar player’s unexpected arrival had momentarily disrupted. They were quiet for the most part, long stretches of uncomplicated silence broken by the occasional conversation or sporadic joke to ease the tension that far too many of these letters produced.

“This is kind of nice, being around adults,” Eddie said out of the blue. “Young women have great bodies, but how often can you discuss their hair or their nails or what should be done about their bitch of a roommate who keeps helping herself to their shampoo and mascara?”

“Yeah, there’s something to be said for maturity,” Nell agreed without a trace of irony.

Jared noticed that Eddie kept glancing at her. He’d shoot Nell a look across the table, his eyebrows furrowed as if trying to figure out the answer to some deep, dark mystery. Then he’d go back to his stack of letters, only to give her another surreptitious look.

Hank noticed it, too. Jared smothered a smile when the other man hitched his chair closer to hers and draped his arm casually across its back.

Eddie shrugged and looked away. But a short while later he started sneaking peeks again.

P.J. had been growing progressively more quiet and pale by the minute, and Nell abruptly pushed back from the table and crossed to the corner of the room where the box of marginal letters sat. Picking it up, she carried it back and dumped it on the table in front of her friend. “Here. I think you oughtta go through this box.”

“Oh, no, really, I’m fine—” She cut off the obvious lie and gave Nell a wan smile. “Thanks. Some of this stuff is starting to creep me out.”

“No crapola,” Eddie said. “Like I said, tiny thang, there’s some real sick monkeys out there and celebrity obviously brings them out of the woodwork.”

Jared gave Nell a warm smile of approval when she looked his way. He should have thought of giving P.J. the less disturbing correspondence himself.

They had waded through another hour’s worth of reading when P.J. suddenly jerked erect. “Oh my God.”

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at her. “What?” he demanded.

“I think this is him.” She rattled the small bundle of papers in her hand. “Listen to this:

She looked up at them. “The return address is from Tipton, Iowa.”

“Bingo,” Jared murmured and held a peremptory hand out for the papers.

She passed them over.

Nell’s brow pleated. “I get the reference to the honor-thy-mother note that came with the snake,” she said. “As well as the fact that the area ties in with the interview you did the day you mentioned Marvin. But it’s not exactly a threatening note. Why would Colleen include it in the correspondence she considered marginal?”

“Because of the ones Menks sent subsequently,” he answered.

P.J. nodded. “She attached notes to a lot of these explaining why she included them. This was the first one he sent and they put it in a pending file where they hold correspondence for a month before answering. When one arrived that she considered marginal, she looked to see if there had been any previous letters sent by the same man.”

“What does the second one say?” Hank asked.

“The second is actually along similar lines,” Jared said, looking up from reading the last two letters that Menks had sent. “He admires her, she’s one in a million to honor the fifth commandment in this age of parental disrespect, yadda, yadda, yadda. It’s the third one that attacks her for not responding to his first two letters and for what he considers her lack of respect toward her mother.” He looked at P.J. and saw that most of the color she’d regained reading the less disturbing letters had vanished from her cheeks, leaving her complexion pallid once more. “I know this is disturbing,” he told her. “But it’s actually good news.”

“You think so?” she asked coolly. “Because I found that quote about all the men of the city stoning me to death kinda bad news.”

“What?”
Nell stared at them in horror.

“Deuteronomy?” Hank asked, and when Jared nodded he turned to Nell. “The violation of the fifth commandment was a capital offense in the old testament,” he told her. “The Bible references it in several different books. It wasn’t a one-way street, though—Ephesians tells parents to conduct themselves so as to be worthy of honor. Our guy is obviously selective and only chooses the passages that reinforce his beliefs.”

“Which makes him a fanatic, which sounds dangerous,” Nell said and turned back to Jared. “And you see this as good news, how?”

“Because we know who we’re dealing with now,” he said evenly. “I have a name, which makes finding more information possible. And information is power.” He turned to P.J. once again. Waited until she looked him in the eye. “The power to stop this psycho dead in his tracks.”

P.J.
CLOSED THE DOOR
behind Nell and the guys and slumped back against it. She felt as if she’d just stepped off one of those whirling carnival rides; her head was reeling and her stomach felt wonky. Today was supposed to have been an opportunity to recoup from the crazy tour schedule, but instead she’d spent it reading sick letters from so-called fans. The stoning reference had just been the cherry on her sundae. What else could possibly go wrong?

Her cell phone rang from the other room.

She jerked in shock, then reined herself in.
Get a grip,
she commanded herself sternly.
Not everything is bad news.

“You want me to get that?” Jared asked from the suite.

“No.” Pushing away from the door, she strode into the sitting room and crossed over to the desk where she was recharging her phone. Looking at the number on the screen she saw it was her manager and picked it up, pushing the talk button. “Hey, Ben. What’s up?”

“Priscilla, we’ve got a situation with your mother that has to be addressed immediately.”

A sigh escaped her. “I was afraid it was too much to hope you’d be calling to tell me the album went platinum.” Hadn’t she known it would be more bad news?

“Oh, that’s going to happen, as well, and probably sooner rather than later, considering the strength of your sales,” he assured her with his usual no-nonsense Yankee briskness. “Unfortunately, it’s not what we need to discuss today.”

“What did she do this time?”

“She sold an unauthorized biography about you.” He hesitated a second then added, “The working title is
Ungrateful Child.
”

For once pain wasn’t the first emotion she experienced over hearing about one of her mother’s betrayals. Instead pure unadulterated fury pulsed through her veins. “I’ll take care of it,” she said in a tight voice and hung up without bothering to exchange the usual pleasantries with her manager. Then, breathing heavily, she punched out her mother’s number.

A tanned hand snaked around her side to remove the phone from her hand. “Hey!” She whirled to glare at Jared, who had his thumb firmly on the disconnect button. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I don’t know what your mother did this time, but you’re practically hyperventilating. Take a few deep breaths and get yourself in control before you call her.”

She wanted to snap at him to mind his own damn business and give her back the phone. But he was right. Her mother could push her buttons and turn her inside out faster than anyone she knew. This time Mama had gone too far, and P.J. was determined to stop Jodeen’s attempts to make a buck at her expense. To do that, however, she needed to have her wits about her. Doing as Jared directed, she took several deep, calming breaths. A minute later she exhaled noisily and shook out her hands. “Okay. Gimme back the phone.”