“Ah…” She’d seen him before, not only out in the hallway but also at ZeroSum, and had marveled at his unreal looks, thinking maybe he was a model. And naturally, part of her worried that he knew what she did for a living, but he never seemed awkward with her or skeevy in the slightest.

Besides, if he was attending NA, he had some demons of his own to confront.

“Ma’am? Hello?”

“Oh…God, sorry. Yes, I’m fine—I just really need to watch where I’m going.”

With a smile back to him, she ducked into the stairwell, headed up to the cathedral’s first floor and left through those big double doors in front. Out on the street, she hustled past the rows of cars that were parallel-parked and wished she’d gotten a better spot. Her Camry was down quite a way, and she was biting on her molars from the cold by the time she jumped in and started the ritual of getting the engine to turn over.

“Come on…come on…”

Finally she got a wheeze and a vroom and then she was doing an illegal U-turn over the double yellow line that ran down the middle of the street.

Caught up in her own head, she failed to notice the pair of headlights that slipped into her wake…and stayed there.

CHAPTER
9

As Jim parked his truck a half a block from the Commodore, he thought, Yup, he could see Vin having a crib there. The outside of the building was stark, nothing but glass bezel set into thin steel girders, but that was what would give each of the condos such incredible views. And just from what he could see of the lobby from the street, the inside was pure decadence, all flood-lit, bloodred marble, with a flower arrangement the size of a fire truck smack in the middle of the space.

Also made sense that Blue Dress would live in a place like this.

Shit, he should have suggested just he and diPietro go out somewhere together to eat: With what had happened the night before still so vivid, being in the same enclosed space with that woman was not the brightest idea. And then, hello, there was the complication of his having to save her fucking boyfriend from eternal damnation.

Killing the engine, he rubbed his face and for some reason thought of Dog, who he’d left at home all curled up on the messy bed. The little guy had been out like a light, his thin flank rising and falling, his full belly a ball his little legs had to splay around.

How in the hell had he managed to pick up a pet?