“Are you hurt?” The blue-eyed stranger ran his hands up and down my arms and legs and turned me around to look me over.

“Stop!” I shouted. “Stop! I’m fine!” I shook him off and backed up. “Who the hell are you?” My voice shook, and I had to brace myself against the wall to stay upright.

“I’m Liam. Mason sent me.”

“Mason sent you?” Relief flooded through me, followed by exhaustion as the adrenaline drained away. I had to fight the urge to throw myself at him. I started shaking. I wanted somebody to hold me, and I realized I had no one.

“He said you had a stalker.” Blue Eyes glanced back over his shoulder and then back at me. “This looks like a little more than a stalker.”

“I am so stupid. I am so, so stupid.” I slid down the wall, my legs no longer able to support me. “I can’t believe I was so stupid.” I wrapped my arms around my knees, and my head fell to rest on them.

“Are you sure you are okay?” He knelt down by me, pushing my hair off my forehead. “Maggie? Is there someone I can call?”

Who would he call? Julie? She was my manager. Even though we’d been friends since high school, I didn’t want anyone I had to pay to spend time with me.

“Maggie?” He crouched down next to me. “There are dead guys in your living room. I need you to talk to me.” I lifted my head, and it felt like a lead weight attached to my neck. I was suddenly so tired. “Come on, Maggie,” he said, “snap out of it.”

It took a minute for my eyes to focus. “I have no idea who these men are. Why did they break in?” My voice rose at the end.

“They were looking for you. Talk to me, Maggie.” Blue Eyes grabbed my hands and stood, pulling me to my feet and walking me over to the bed. “You’re in shock, Maggie.” Obediently I sat down where he put me and gazed at the blood-drenched wall in silence. Can you paint the inside of a tour bus? What would the room look like in lavender? I started to rock, and the soothing movement slowed my racing heart.

“Maggie? Stay with me, Maggie.” He yanked the blanket off the bed and wrapped it around me. Then he pulled a phone from the pocket of his black cargo pants and paced back and forth. From another pocket, he produced a crinkly foil and plastic pack of gum, pushed out one piece from the case, and popped it in his mouth before shoving the pack back where it came from.

“Where is your security team?” Blue Ey—er—Liam looked around as if expecting them to pop up from the shadows.

“Gone.” I didn’t stop rocking. I felt a low cry forming in the back of my throat, trying to bubble up and keen through my lips.

“What do you mean?” He stopped.

“I got rid of them. They annoyed me.” I pulled the blanket tighter and rolled over, curling into a ball in the center of the bed. “I was getting ready to go to bed. I told the goon squad I was going to the bar with the crew.” I pulled a pillow to me, buried my face, and it muffled my voice. “The guys wanted to go get a drink, but I had a headache and didn’t want to go.”

“That doesn’t tell me where my team is, Maggie. I need more.”

“They’re probably sitting outside the bar.” I pulled the pillow away and looked up at him.

“Why would they be sitting outside the bar?” He came and sat at my side on the bed.

“I had Julie dress up like me and go with the guys. Security thinks I went with the crew.”

“You did what?” Liam’s voice roared through the bus, shaking the walls with his anger. “They fell for that?”

“We’re about the same size, and I’m really good with costumes and makeup.”

“Ah, fuck!” He hit a button on his phone and held it up to his ear.

“Hello, Ben? Where the hell are you?” He paused, and I could hear Ben’s voice answering. Liam shook his head furiously. “She’s not at the fucking bar.” I zoned out while he yelled into his phone. My body started shaking again as my mind replayed the last ten minutes over and over. Then, his hands were on me again.

“Maggie.” He shook me. “Maggie, look at me. I need you to tell me what happened. I need to call the police.”

“I don’t know anything,” I whimpered. “I really don’t know anything.”

She was even more beautiful in person. Tiny, barely 5’2”, with riotous red curls framing her milky white skin, she kept biting her luscious lips stained a deep, kissable red. Her vivid green eyes were full of tears. I sat so close to her I could see a smattering of tiny freckles across the bridge of her nose. I never noticed them when I saw her in magazine photos or on TV—the wonders of photo editing and stage makeup, I guess. The freckles made her seem real, vulnerable.

As beautiful as she was, I really wanted to strangle her for being stupid enough to slip her security team. At the same time, I marveled at her ability to outsmart a team of highly-trained special ops soldiers. I was going to have to ride the guys really hard for this fuck up.

“I need to call this in, Miss Lane.” I reached for my phone again, this time to call the police.

“I don’t want publicity. I have to call Julie. I can’t have bad publicity.” She rocked faster, chewing on her lower lip. “Julie can fix this. You have to call Julie.”

“Miss Lane, we don’t have a choice. I have to call the police. There are dead men in there.” I nodded toward her living room.

“When I fuck up, Julie fixes it.” She muttered to herself at first and then wailed, “Oh God, this is a nightmare!” She turned those teary green eyes on me, begging me not to contact the authorities. I had to turn away from her pleading gaze to make myself place the call.

I’d expected a more confident celebrity. Her reaction was odd, but then again, what is the right way to react to a break-in? How does one confidently respond to such an attack?

“This is Colonel Liam Fox,” I said when the police picked up. “I need to report an attack.” I gave the address to the dispatcher and ended the call. “They will be here in five minutes. Is there anything I need to know before they get here?”

“No, nothing.” Shock set in and her teeth started to chatter. She looked forlorn like someone had stolen her puppy. In that state, she appeared no more than 16 years old. Her face washed clean of stage makeup, her hair loose and flowing over the blanket she clutched tight around her, she in no way resembled the polished pop star whose face they plastered on magazine covers.

“Okay, Miss Lane. Look at me.” I touched my finger to the underside of her chin, and tilted her head up.

“Mmmm,” she mumbled, the rocking slowing a bit as she lifted her heavy eyelids.

“Let me do the talking when the police get here. You say as little as possible. I’ve been through this before.”

“Boss!” Ben came barreling through the door, and I broke eye contact with Maggie. “I can’t believe she gave us the slip. I feel like an idiot.”

“You are an idiot.” I really was disgusted that she had managed to pull this off. It made the whole company look bad. “You knew she didn’t want security. You should have known she would try and pull something like this.”

“Hey, this one is still alive!” Leo hollered from the living room. “Toss me some zip ties, boss!”

Woop! Woop! Woop!

The sound of sirens reached us as black and whites pulled in at odd angles between the trailers and an ambulance skidded to a stop just outside the door.

“Colonel Fox, can you tell us what happened here?” The sweaty town sheriff hitched up his brown pants. His heavy tool belt made them sag below his ample belly.

“I was alerted to a problem in Miss Lane’s trailer. I entered the premises, neutralized the threat, and located the victim.”

“Ahh, yes.” He eyed me suspiciously. “And you were alerted to the threat, how exactly?”

“Miss Lane called me.” It sounded totally lame, but I needed to get Barney Fife to back off. There was just the matter of the dead guy and his partners, who were in the hospital instead of jail. Mason may have actually under reported the severity of Maggie’s situation. “She had been receiving threatening letters. The situation then escalated to break-ins. Miss Lane retained the services of Scorpion Security. This occurred during the operation of providing personal protection. She asked for some privacy. They broke in. She called us.”

“Well, Colonel Fox. We will need Miss Lane’s statement as well.” He hitched up his pants again. “The two men in the hospital aren’t talking.” He smoothed his tie before hooking his thumbs in his pockets. “We ran their prints. They have a history of for-hire breaking-and-entering and assault. It looks open and shut, but we just have to make sure.” He smiled. “You understand.”

“Absolutely, officer.” I passed him my card. “I will bring Miss Lane to the station as soon as she is feeling up to it.”

“Soon, Colonel Fox. We need to talk to her soon.” The short, stout sheriff looked up as I nodded my agreement. Then he tipped his hat to me before ambling away.

Maggie Lane’s situation was way more complicated than I had thought. The whole thing was a mess, and so far, we hadn’t helped it any. I needed to get my head on straight and start thinking like the accomplished fixer I was. This jumpy, twitchy feeling just under my skin had me distracted.

I kept pushing down all the uncomfortable emotions welling up. Being back in the states and near a vulnerable woman brought back memories of Jeannie. I’d always had a savior complex, and the military was a perfect fit for me. I’d joined up right after high school. Helping people, doing what was right just came naturally. Things went great until they didn’t. After the accident, the military wanted me to see a shrink, but I took my discharge and left, preferring to bury myself in my new company.

Maggie needed help. She and I needed to have a heart-to-heart about her situation. We needed to form a plan, and then I needed to get back to my real life. There were too many bad things in this world, and every little bit Scorpion Security did to help made the world a better place mattered. We’d cut the head off one small faction of the human trafficking ring, but there were so many others to track down and neutralize.

A foreign diplomat in Switzerland had a daughter who ran away. There was tribal unrest in a small country in Africa. A private contractor needed security to work in Afghanistan. We got calls all day, every day. There was so much more I could do overseas. There was no need for me to be stuck protecting some celebrity. I had people for this.