Not wanting her to see that she’d hurt him by being so dismissive, he turned away from her to look out the window. He churned with things he’d like to say to her, arguments and persuasions she was clearly not ready to hear. As he stared out into the darkness, a shadow across the street caught his eye. Zeroing in for a closer look, he realized someone was watching the house. He ignored the screaming pain in his foot and the pounding in his head when he bolted for the door and flew down the stairs.

Sam called out to him.

Blasting through the front door and down the ramp, he was almost hit by a car as he ran into the street. The blare of the car’s horn startled him, taking his attention off the shadow for just an instant, but that was all it took.

“Watch out, asshole!” the driver yelled out the car window.

By the time Nick recovered his bearings the shadow was long gone.

“Shit! Son of a bitch!”

“What’re you doing?” Sam screamed from the porch.

“Someone was there,” he said, his breath coming out in white puffs in the cold air. “I saw him. Watching the house.”

“So you just run out half-cocked, not to mention half-dressed?”

“What else was I supposed to do?”

She had her hands on her hips in a gesture he recognized by now as her seriously pissed stance. “Um, I don’t know. Maybe tell the cop who was in the room with you?”

He limped back to the ramp and started up to where she waited for him. “I didn’t think of it. All I thought about was getting him.”

“And what were you going to do with him once you got him?”

Squirming under the heat of her blue-eyed glare, he shrugged. “I would’ve figured something out.”

“That’s exactly how civilians get themselves killed by the hundreds every year, thinking they can take the law into their own hands.”

“I don’t need you to lecture me or to keep using the word civilian like it’s some kind of vermin.”

“Vermin’s got to be smarter than you just were.”

“I almost had him.”

“You almost got flattened by a car!”

Fuming, they stood there spitting nails at each other.

“Um, ’scuse me, but ah, I’m back,” Freddie said from the sidewalk. “You said I should come here and, um…”

“Come up,” Sam said, never taking her eyes off Nick. “Go in. I’ll be right there.”

“Gotcha, boss,” Freddie said with a sympathetic smile for Nick as he went by them. “Good to see you again, Mr. Cappuano.”

“Likewise,” Nick said, still focused on Sam. “And you can call me Nick.”