She remembered Edwin Sharp’s slow, patient scan of her face and body in the restaurant that day. How he’d carefully read all the information on her ID card. Stalkers, she knew, were experts at getting information on people—both the objects of their obsession and those who threatened to impede their access. Edwin certainly had shown he was good at such research, knowing what he did about Kayleigh’s associates.

But maybe it was a coincidence. There might have been some electrical or plumbing issue and workers had had to come into the room, despite the sign on the door. She called the front desk but the clerk didn’t know if anyone had been inside.

She made sure all the windows were locked and the chain securely fixed to the door and she conducted one more examination of the park, through a crack in the drapes. The moon had emerged but it was still too dark and hazy to see much.

The orange glow of the cigarette flared as the smoker inhaled deeply. Then the dot dropped to the ground and vanished under a shoe or boot.

She saw no other motion. Had he left because she’d shut the light out and presumably gone to sleep?

Dance waited a moment more then climbed into bed. She closed her eyes.

And wondered why she bothered. Sleep, she knew, would be a long, long time coming.

Chapter 7

REELING THROUGH HIS mind was Jackson Browne’s “The Load-Out” from the seventies album Running on Empty, the tune an homage to roadies.

A sort-of homage. You got the impression the singer came first.

But don’t they always?

Still, nobody else ever wrote a song dedicated to Bobby Prescott’s profession and he hummed it often.

Now, close to midnight, he parked near the convention center and climbed out of the band’s Quest van, stretching after the marathon drive to and from Bakersfield to pick up the custom-built amp. Kayleigh Towne preferred that her musicians use amps with tubes—like old-time TVs and radios. There’d been a huge debate about which was a better sound: solid-state amps versus the tube models, with the tube purists contending that that older technology produced an indescribable “clipping sound” when played in overdrive, which digital amps had never been able to duplicate. Not surprisingly this had been Bishop Towne’s philosophy and when the Old Man, as his own roadies called him, was performing, the stage was filled with Marshall JCM2000 TSL602s, Fender Deluxe Reverb IIs, Traynor Custom Valve YCV20WRs and Vox AC30s.

Bobby was a guitarist as well (there weren’t many roadies, techs or personal assistants in the music world who couldn’t sit in at a show if they absolutely had to). He himself thought the richness of tubes was noticeable but only when playing blues.

He now unlocked the stage door at the convention center and wheeled the big unit inside. He also had a box of light mounts and safety cables.

Thinking again of the strip light falling that morning.

Jesus …