“Oh, yeah. You haven’t seen it.” Dani smiled. “I find that fascinating, by the way.”

“That I don’t do movies or that I don’t know who you are?”

“Both. Anyway, Clair was engaged to be married…she meets the best friend, they fall in love, Derik’s heart gets broken—he was the fiancé—and the wedding at the end was for Clair and Brian…not Derik.”

“And the clown-faced guy equates himself to Derik?”

“That’s just my guess,” Dani said. “I don’t know what else it could be.”

“Well, I don’t know how much shadowing you’re going to be doing if I’ve got to keep an eye out for a damn clown stalking you.”

Chapter Six

“A clown? A clown threw red goo on your car?”

Harper nodded. “Yeah.”

Lieutenant Mize looked over at her. “A stalker?”

Dani nodded. “Yes. Like I told Harper—Detective Jeremiah—I had no idea he would follow me here. I don’t see how he could possibly even know that I was here in the first place.”

He tapped his fingers together a few times, then folded his hands, resting his elbows on the desk. “I’ll need to run this by the upper brass, but our main concern here, Ms. Stevens, is your safety. Having you riding along with Harper makes you a little vulnerable, I think. We may need to rethink this operation.”

“Vulnerable? Quite the opposite, Lieutenant Mize. What could be safer than me riding with a police detective?”

“From Harper’s account of the incident, if this guy had had a gun, you’d be dead. He was that close to you.”

“As I told Harper earlier, I don’t think he wants me dead.”

“Stalkers stalk. It’s a mental thing at first. But eventually that’s not enough. They want physical contact as well. If your guy followed you here, if he got that close to you where he could actually touch you if he wanted…then I think he’s at that point.”

“The guy was in my house while I was sleeping. If he wanted to physically touch me, he could have.”

“Maybe he wasn’t at that point yet.”

“So what do you suggest? I go back home and deal with it there?”

Lieutenant Mize looked at Harper as if for confirmation. Dani was surprised that he appeared to be leaving it up to Harper to decide.

“The police there, they don’t really have a handle on it, Lieutenant. Maybe they see too many cases of celebrity stalking, but they don’t appear to be taking this one too seriously.”

“And you think we should?”

“I had already resigned myself to having her ride with me for a week anyway. Might as well stick to the plan. Maybe we can catch the bastard.”