After their showdown, where Cher showed him a different kind of fire than her normal—a fire he liked—and a vulnerability she’d never shown before—the kind as a cop and as a Merrick he couldn’t ignore—he wanted more.

It was also because, when he was low, she took his back.

So now that she had the possibility of trouble, he was going to take hers.

If she wanted him to or not.

Chapter Four

Plotting My Murder

Cher

The next day, after I’d dropped Ethan at school, I was about to go out to the garage to get the storm windows when my phone rang.

I moved to my purse in the bucket chair, pulled the phone out, and saw a number I did not know.

I’d learned a long time ago never to answer those kinds of calls. I was careful to program in any numbers that I would need to know, including doctors, dentists, Ethan’s school. I’d learned to do this, because if it didn’t come up as programmed, they were either someone trying to sell me something or someone I absolutely did not want to talk to.

This being someone I didn’t want to talk to, I dropped the phone on top of my purse and headed to the garage.

I had the windows out of the garage, stacked against the side of the house, the screen switched out in the front door, and was moving to the first window when I heard shrieked, “You think I won’t fuck with you?”

I looked left and went still.

My next-door neighbor was cool—Tilly, an old lady. She was quiet. She was also private but friendly and happy to look after Ethan on the rare occasion I needed her. She did this because she was a good woman and she liked us, not because Ethan or I mowed her lawn and shoveled her snow whenever we did ours (which we did).

And she acted like the light of God shone down on her when her asshole son or her bitch-face daughter deigned to pay her a visit, bringing her grandchildren. I was not in my house 24/7, but I didn’t miss the fact that these pilgrimages back home to momma happened rarely. Ethan and I had lived there for over two years and those bastards had shown twice, collectively.

But the house next to Tilly’s was a rental. Not one like mine, where my landlord gave a shit. One where the landlord didn’t, so it was in visible disrepair, which meant the rent was lower and the renters were of the same level.

I’d seen the new tenants. They’d been around a few months. In that time, they’d had one party that was loud, which I’d had closed down.

But they were around a lot, in and out a lot, and had a slew of visitors, so I had a variety of opportunities to see them.

Being a person who was quickly judged, I was not judgmental.

Still, the man had dickhead written all over him, and the woman was a sister in the way she’d convinced herself she couldn’t do much better, so she didn’t try.