Hands shaking, I read the anonymous letter again.

You filthy whore, I hope you rot in hell.

Watch your back.

Your time is coming.

“Kinsey, I don’t know what to do. The letters keep coming. My manager says I should just ignore them, but they’re getting uglier and uglier.” I sat with the unfolded page spread across my lap and stared at the heavy writing, blocky and childish, scrawled across the thick paper. “I just…”

“Maggie, you’ve got to call the police.” Kinsey’s sweet voice soothed my raw nerves. It always did. Since the day we met, both of us lonely ten-year-olds crying ourselves to sleep in the boarding school dorms, she’d been there for me. Even after she’d married, she always took my calls.

“My manager did call them… after the third letter.” I took a deep breath and swallowed down the rising panic this latest missive had generated. “The police told her they can’t do anything.” I bit my lip. “They don’t know who this guy is, and without a name…” I drew another calming breath. “We sent the first couple of letters to them, but they couldn’t recover any fingerprints other than mine. They said to call back if we learned anything more.”

“Maggie…” she paused, and the line went silent.

“What, Kinsey? Don’t hold back on me now.” I laid the letter in a row with the rest I had spread out across my trailer floor. There were seven now, each one more vile than the last.

“Well, Mason knows a guy…” She started.

“Of course he does. Mason knows everyone.” I rolled my eyes, waiting for her to drop the other shoe.

“Yeah, well, this guy’s expensive.”

“Really, Kins? Expensive? Money isn’t the problem. My producer will take care of it. He says my record sales are doing really well. And guess what—he’s hoping to expand this into a world tour soon!”

Kinsey’s little bout of living on her own without the Hendrix fortune had changed her world view. She actually worried about things like money now even though her husband was a self-made billionaire and her latest innovation in the biotech world had made her a fortune of her own.

“Yeah, well, you’re a little tough to work with, Maggie.” She chuckled.

“Me?” Outraged, my voice rose at the end. I’m not hard to work with!

“You, ah, tend to do what you want,” she stammered, choosing her words carefully.

“Kinsey, this is me you’re talking to. Shall I remind you about your reputation at school?” Two could play at this game. She was a holy terror back then, hiding snakes in beds and gluing the teachers’ desk drawers shut.

“You promised never to speak of that again!”

“Yeah, well, don’t preach to me then, Kins. My producer will do just about anything to keep me on the road and recording.” I had come a long way from playing dive bars and back rooms, and I still had a long way to go, but too many people had too much invested in me to let a crazy stalker derail my career.

“You’re the one who has to bend on this, Mags.” Scolding me now, she started using her serious maternal tone. Motherhood had really tamed my wild and crazy friend.

“I’ll try,” I said. “That’s all I can promise.” Resigned to the intrusion of increased security in my life, I just hoped this new firm was reasonable.

“Maggie, you are amazing. When you hit it big, millions will hear your words, but you have to take care of yourself.” I heard her husband Mason and the kids in the background. “I want you to talk to this guy. He and Mason worked together as teens.” She hollered something with her hand over the mouth piece to muffle her words. “Sorry about that. The kids are going through the terrible twos. Anyway, he’s a little prickly. He’s been Special Forces for years, but he recently started his own security firm. He specializes in situations like yours.”

“Prickly… I don’t really do prickly.” I chewed on the end of my pen. “I don’t know. It sounds like overkill. You know, Kins, I overreacted. I think I’ll be fine. I’ve got a security team already.”

“Mags, you have rent-a-cops.” Her voice turned stern again. “Promise you will talk to this guy… please?”

Lights flashed in time with the steady beat of the music. The crowd cheered, danced, and clapped as they anxiously watched the stage for my appearance.

I peeked out at the writhing crowd. Its energy flowed over me as the music radiated out from my center, my heart beating with the rhythm, my body beginning to sway.

“Maggie! Time to hook up your mic! You ready?”

“Yeah!” I shouted to be heard over the crowd. “I’m ready!”

Butch, my sound guy, crouched behind me and clipped the transmitter to the waistband of my leather pants. He fished the cord up under my bustier and hid the mic in my cleavage. He fed the cord for my in-ear monitors up through my teased hair, running it straight down my back and plugging it into the transmitter.

He stood up and nodded. “Okay, you’re all set.” His voice came through crystal clear with the in-ear monitors filtering out the ambient noise from the crowd.

My stage manager Julie swooped in to check my hair and makeup one last time. “Maggie,” she sighed and shook her head. “Look at you. I can’t believe you’re such a mess. What are you thinking? We don’t have time to fix this.” She pursed her thin lips. “You’ll have to do.”

“Julie—” I started to apologize. I never could meet her standards.

“No! Go! No time! Get ready! Scoot!” She herded me into place with the rest of the band, a disgusted look on her face. “Your mother was right—you really do need a keeper. You would never make it on your own.”

Suddenly, a voice boomed over the sound system. “Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome to the American Arena Maggie Lane and Indigo!”

The announcement echoed out over the waiting crowd, and I shook off Julie’s insults and strutted out on stage, framed by the spotlight. The thick powder on my face absorbed the sheen of sweat already forming under the harsh stage lights. Bruce, Elijah, Dylan, Levi and Aiden followed, taking their places with their instruments and immediately laying down a beat.

“Good evening, Las Vegas! How are you doing tonight?” The crowd erupted in cheers as I grabbed the microphone off the stand and began to strut back and forth across the stage. “We are so excited to be here tonight! You guys are gonna get one helluva show! Everybody ready?” I took a deep breath. You can do this. You have to get used to this. You’re going to be a star.

The band increased the beat, playing louder and adding a melody as I counted in my head. I joined in on the upbeat as we all launched into our opening number. Losing myself in the music, my lips gave form to the words pouring straight from my heart.

For two hours straight, we performed. We played every single one of our number-one hits, mixed in a few new numbers, and gave three encores. By the end, I was limp. My body was spent. Every last ounce of energy had been drained from me, leaving my body covered in sweat. I was starving and dehydrated. I’d probably burned ten thousand calories during the performance, but it was a success. I felt strangely energized and depleted at the same time.

I swayed slightly as I walked off stage. My sweaty hair stuck to my forehead, and I pushed it back off my face. Unplugged my mic and pulling the cord up out of my purple leather bustier, I tossed the whole set at Butch as I passed by. Julie handed me a robe and a band for my hair, and I sighed as I pulled the heavy mass of wet curls up off my neck, securing it in a messy bun.

“Maggie, I’ve got you a hotel for the next six hours. The bus will be ready to pull out at 4am…” Julie kept talking as she ran to keep up with me. “Maybe you can sleep away some of those dark circles. You look awful. Oh, and you were flat in the last song. You need to work on—”

I held up my hand to quiet her. “A hotel would be lovely, but I’m not getting out of bed for the next 12 hours. Forget the hotel room. I’ll just go straight to the bus. We can leave whenever the crew is ready.” With that, I brushed past her.

I couldn’t handle another word about where I had screwed up. I knew I could have done better, and I would do better. I had to. I was going to make it in this industry no matter what anyone said. I would prove to my parents I hadn’t ruined my life going into show business.

I scooted out the back with the band, and we all scattered to our respective buses, leaving the roadies to break down the stage and pack us up so we could get on the road.

Walking into my trailer, I slammed the door behind me, shutting out the world. I shed my clothes one piece at a time, leaving a messy trail behind me for the maid or for me to clean when I woke up. I was too tired to pick up after myself. I practically crawled back to the bathroom and stood barely three minutes under a hot shower before falling face down, wet and naked onto my silk sheets. I was instantly asleep, too zoned out to notice the subtle inconsistencies between the way things were and the way I had left them that morning.

It wasn’t until the next day, when I finally awoke, that I realized someone had been in my trailer. I knew instantly it hadn’t been part of my crew. A stranger had broken in, touched my things, and violated my privacy. The changes were subtle. The first thing I noticed was that the pen I’d kept in a notebook on my nightstand was missing. I didn’t really notice at the time, but later I would spot other things out of place.

The cleaning crew came around mid-morning, and the lady who tidied my bus hadn’t been in after I’d left. I made sure the same person on the crew cleaned my space every time. It helped cut down my anxiety over having a stranger in my space. Julie knew I was OCD about those kinds of things and tried to keep the changes to a minimum. I couldn’t control everything else. My life was so hectic on tour my trailer became my little corner of sanity, my safe space. It was a place for everything and everything had its place. That’s my motto.

The sunlight crept under my sleep mask, waking me. I rolled over, pushed the mask up, and cracked one eye open to check the time. I groaned when I realized the glowing red numbers read 8:00am. Burying my face in my pillow, I hid from the new day. I hadn’t just fallen into bed at 2am—a heavy metal band had set up residence in my skull, thumping between my ears in time with the wheels of my bus as they bounced along the highway.

I pushed the mask further up onto my forehead and tried to rub the sleep out of my eyes. My eyeballs felt gritty, dry, and far too big for their sockets. I sweat so much on stage it didn’t matter how many bottles of water I drank before and during the performance. I almost always woke up dehydrated.

Reaching one hand over, I groped the top of my nightstand for my water bottle. That’s when I realized my pen was gone. I always tucked it into my notepad, clipped on and close by in case the muse hit and I needed to write down music or lyrics in the middle of the night.

“What?” I sat up, disoriented and confused. I pushed the mask further up onto my head and squinted. I leaned forward to hang over the side of my bed. Half on, half off the mattress, I flailed around until my fingers felt the pen wedged between the nightstand and the base of the headboard. “How the hell did this get down here?”

“Julie?” I called out, dragging myself back up onto my bed and pulling the tangled sheet up under my arms. “Julie, are you out there?” The emptiness of the coach echoed back at me. She liked to come over the morning after a show and review all the things I’d done wrong and needed to do better. She always saw things I never noticed while performing.

I exhaled forcefully and thanked God she wasn’t there yet. Sitting up, I swung my legs over the edge of the mattress and in one fluid movement, bounded out of bed and snagged my purple silk robe off the back of the bathroom door.

I slipped into the robe, feeling the smooth fabric glide over my naked skin. I tied the sash around my waste and opened the door to the living room, enjoying the peacefulness of my space. I never could have maintained such a grueling tour schedule sharing my space with someone else.

Reflexively, I reached out to re-align the framed photos of my parents. For some reason they weren’t angled to face the door. I always kept them turned that way so they were the first things I’d see when I walked in. I always kept those two pictures on a shelf, parallel at 45-degree angles, lined up in a row. It was like having my parents watch over me.