7. Nico
NICO
I was in Logan's trailer again, sifting through the mountain of fan mail he'd received over the past few days. The pile was a little smaller today, but I was sure the stalker would send Logan something again.
Normally, his mail would already have been screened by security, with anything that looked like a threat filtered out before it ever reached him.
My nose wasn't as sharp as some wolves', but I was still pretty confident I could tell if something smelled strange or suspicious. Besides, after what had happened with the chocolates, I wanted to see everything for myself.
Isaac had repeatedly insisted that it wasn't safe and that he should at least be there while I went through the mail.
Didn't he already have enough work following Logan around and keeping an eye on him everywhere he went? Just that morning, Logan had needed to be in makeup by three, which meant Isaac had been up and working long before that.
Still, Isaac had finally seemed to relax after the first few times I'd gone through Logan's mail without incident. There hadn't actually been much that was overtly suspicious.
Either Logan's fans were remarkably tame, which I sincerely hoped was the case, or they knew his mail was being monitored so closely that there was no point in sending anything that would immediately get flagged.
If the latter was true, they might simply find less obvious ways of getting to Logan. That was what worried me.
I set aside a few particularly heartfelt letters and some drawings that looked like they'd been made by younger fans, which I was sure Logan would want to see, then moved over to the dressing table, where the flowers he'd received had been placed.
I gently pushed a few bouquets aside until I found what I was looking for. Six long-stemmed white daisies, simply wrapped in kraft paper and tied with what looked like jute or raffia.
They looked almost exactly like the flowers Ailwyn had received during his coronation in the game. They were a symbol of loyalty and devotion.
I picked up the card attached to the flowers. The message was exactly what I'd expected.
To my Lord Ailwyn, King of the Elves. Forever your most faithful servant.
I was almost certain these had come from the same person who'd sent the chocolates. Almost.
The chocolates had arrived in an elegant silver box wrapped in black ribbon, Ailwyn's colours. The card had been handwritten and embossed with motifs from the game, and even the wrapping itself had been distinctive.
When I'd looked into it, the exact wrapper and card weren't commercially available. I wouldn't have been surprised if whoever had sent them had bought them at a Renaissance fair or someplace that sold custom stationery.
There had been details everywhere. This had almost none. It was as if the stalker had course-corrected. Now, everything had been stripped down to the bare minimum.
The card was printed on ordinary paper, the sort anyone could buy from an office supply store or print shop. The message was printed rather than handwritten. There was no unusual design, nothing that would give us a clue about where it had come from.
Even the flowers weren't some rare or exotic variety that might have pointed us toward a particular florist. Someone could have bought them almost anywhere: a florist, a farmers' market, or even a grocery store.
If I hadn't been looking for it, I could have easily dismissed the whole thing as an ordinary fan gift.
Which made me wonder how much the stalker knew. Had they simply changed their approach by coincidence, or had they somehow realized we'd examined the first gift?
I couldn't prove either possibility.
The similarities between the gifts were circumstantial at best. The references to Ailwyn and the theme of devotion were enough to make me suspicious, but they didn't prove the gifts had come from the same person.
And even if they had, this gift wasn't giving us anything we could use to identify them.
All the new mail, including the flowers, had been cleared by security. Unlike the first gift, there was no missing security sticker to make us wonder how it had gotten into the pile in the first place.
We had no way of knowing whether someone had bought them locally and slipped them into Logan's mail, or had arranged for them to be sent from somewhere else entirely.
Until the stalker gave us something we could trace or did something serious enough for the authorities to act on, there wasn't much they could do.
If all the stalker intended to send were ordinary flowers and printed cards, we could spend weeks going through them and still end up exactly where we were now. With nothing.
A knock sounded at the door, and I looked up to find Isaac peeking inside.
“You guys can come in,” I said.
He opened the door wider, and he and Logan stepped into the trailer. Logan looked like he'd just gotten out of costume and makeup, his hair still slightly tousled from the long day of filming.
He looked exhausted enough that I wondered how he'd even made it back here without collapsing.
Isaac directed him toward the sofa at the back of the trailer, where Logan dropped down with an audible slump and covered his eyes with one arm. Without being asked, Isaac reached over and turned down the brightness of the lights.
“Better?”
“Much.” While Logan settled into the sofa, Isaac came over to me.
“Anything?” he asked quietly.
Up close, I caught his scent. Sun-warmed grass and something deeper underneath it, a faint trace of sweat and musk after a long day spent working outdoors.
I tried not to think too much about how much I liked it. Instead, I handed him the card and gestured toward the flowers.
Isaac pulled the card from the envelope and read the message, then turned the envelope over and checked inside, as though there might somehow be something we'd missed.
Finding nothing, he looked back at the flowers. “So... more of the same.”
I nodded. Isaac let out a long breath, and I could see the frustration settling over him. It was different from Logan's exhaustion.
Logan looked as though he simply needed sleep, while Isaac looked like a man who knew exactly what he wanted to do and hated that none of it would make a difference.
I couldn't stand seeing how defeated he looked.
“The gifts aren't random,” I said. “I mean it. I'm pretty sure they're all from the same person. They're all connected to Ailwyn, and there are patterns in the way the messages are written.”
“Even if the gifts themselves have changed?” Isaac asked.
“Especially then.” I gestured toward the flowers. “This is different from the first one, but it's still connected to the game. If they keep sending things, eventually we'll have more information to work with.”
I knew it probably sounded like I was trying to reassure him. Maybe I was, but I believed it, too.
Something in Isaac's expression softened.
“Thank you,” he said. “For all this. You've done a lot more than you had to.”
I shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable with the sincerity in his voice.
A snort came from the sofa, and we both turned toward Logan. He'd lowered his arm from his face. There was a tired grin on his lips.
“I'm not sure how I feel about you two getting along because of my stalker.”
Isaac turned toward the mini fridge, pulled out a sports drink, and tossed it to Logan. It landed against Logan's chest with enough force to make him grunt.
“Drink.”
Logan glared at him for a moment before twisting off the cap. “Thank you.”
Despite the complaint, his tone was genuinely appreciative. He drained the entire bottle in one go before lying back down.
Isaac sat beside him. “Hungry?”
“Not really.”
“You've eaten?”
Logan paused. “Define eaten.”
Isaac sighed. I had to suppress a smile. It was obvious this wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation.
They'd both been on edge since we'd found the first gift. Logan tried to act as though everything was fine, but I'd noticed the way his eyes kept drifting toward doors and windows whenever we were somewhere unfamiliar.
Isaac was worse. He rarely seemed to relax completely anymore, always watching, always alert, as though he were waiting for something to happen.
I wanted to do something about that, give them something else to think about for a while.
“Tomorrow's your day off, right?” I asked.
Logan opened one eye. “From filming, yes. I have a production meeting in the morning and some promotional stuff in the afternoon. Then I'm free.”
“Well, after all that, do you two want to come to the pack barbecue tomorrow night?”
Isaac looked at me. “The pack barbecue?”
“Yeah. Just some good food, drinks, people hanging out.” I glanced between the two of them. “I figured you could both use a chance to relax.”
Tony was sitting at our usual table, right at the edge of the clearing where the trees provided some distance from the main crowd.
I walked over and dropped my tote bag onto the table. It landed with a hollow thump, the empty plastic containers inside clattering against one another.
Tony looked at the bag. “That sounds like more than usual.”
I gave him a flat look. “I barely have time to cook.”
“You never cook.”
“Fine. I barely have time to order food.”
I muttered something about how reheating technically counted as cooking, but Tony either didn't hear me or decided not to acknowledge it.
The problem was that by the time I got home, everything I liked was already closed. Normally, I’d ask Tony to help me out, but he'd been constantly assigned to missions and projects outside the packlands lately, which meant I was on my own.
Tony seemed to consider that for a moment before pointing at my tote bag. “We have to be more careful this time.”
“Why?”
“Griffin noticed we were running low halfway through the last barbecue.”
“That's because you filled the containers too early.”
“You filled them too,” Tony pointed out, then leaned closer and lowered his voice. “So this time, we need to be strategic. Only one or two containers at a time. Then, when people start leaving, that's when we move in. We offer to take home the leftovers.”