He stared down at the notepad, chewing on the corner of his bottom lip. Then, he looked at me again, hesitancy in his eyes. “Ihaven’t shopped inside a grocery store in a long time. I wouldn’t know what to buy.”
Anything you want.
I grabbed my wallet from the kitchen counter. Handing him my credit card, I smiled at the shock that passed over his face.
“Dude, you have a lot of trust. You should really be careful who you give your credit card to.”
If you steal from me, you’ll be my next victim.
It was the truth and I saw that he knew it, too, by the way he swallowed visibly. “Yeah, good point. No stealing from you.”
I patted him on the head. “Be good,” I mouthed, exaggerating the last word.
“I’m not a child,” he muttered.
I made a sound of amusement and took one of the spare keys off my keyring. Passing it to him, I pointed at the front door and made turning gestures with my hand.
“Front door key. Got it.” His tongue swiped over his bottom lip and I couldn’t help but follow it with my eyes. Pink and wet, how would it feel against my dick?
I shook my head and grabbed my backpack with my work gear. With a wave, I headed to the front door and locked it behind myself, half out of habit, but also because I didn’t want him to go shower and forget. Even though I lived in a nice suburb full of families and middle-class seniors, no one was fully trustworthy. I was an example of that. My neighbors had no idea who lived next door to them.
Except, according to my brain, Ezra could be trusted—a strange revelation that could get me into a lot of trouble if I wasn’t careful.
Eleanor Summers stood in her front yard, layered in thick winter clothes, including her favorite pink beanie with a yellow duck, and a steaming coffee cup clutched in her gloved hands. She was in her seventies but didn’t look a day over fifty. The one time I’d asked what her secret was, the answer had been wine. With her gray hair coiled in a bun with strands hanging out, she still only appeared half awake.
“Hello there, Sam!”
I waved at her and grinned.
“It’s cold this morning. Quite the storm we had last night. I thought I heard screaming but realized it was just the wind.” Eleanor took a long sip of her coffee and made a noise of contentment. “I do love winter.”
I didn’t. I hated it because it made things so much harder when it came to taking down a kill. I nodded at her.
The storm last night meant we had another six inches of snow and the hard work I put into my driveway yesterday amounted to nothing. Usually I’d make the time to shovel the snow out of the way, but my Land Rover meant I didn’t need to, I could drive right over it. When I looked up at my bedroom window, Ezra was staring down at me with a thoughtful expression. This was the second time I’d caught him contemplating me, and like last night, a spike of pleasure zipped through me. I liked him looking at me with those hazel eyes because there was something deeper in the stare, a strange sense of excitement at seeing me work.
“Who’s that?” Eleanor asked, attention locked on Ezra in the window. She’d turned her body fully toward my house, eyebrows knitted in confusion and coffee forgotten. She’d always been a gossip.
A range of answers came to me. Cousin. Brother. Friend. I didn’t use any of them, though.
“Boyfriend.” My voice sounded scratchy and the one word made my throat burn, but I felt the need to say it aloud.
She turned wide eyes on me. I don’t think she’d ever heard my voice before. “I didn’t know you were gay.”
Neither had I until Ezra came along. I didn’t label myself as gay, though. I didn’t know what I was. He’d come into my life last night as an unknown entity, but I had determined that he fit inside my house nicely. For now. I blamed loneliness. It was a beast.
I shrugged at her and smiled again before I went to my Land Rover Discovery, which was parked in the garage beside my house. After reversing the large SUV, I drove to work, which was a fifteen-minute trip at the most.
Zinc Laboratories conducted all sorts of experiments, from testing blood cultures for doctors to trialing new and exciting authorized treatments on willing participants. I helped different departments, depending on who needed me the most. Today I was with the blood testing crew, which meant I was doing most of the work while the pathologists pretended they were busy. They got the money and recognition while I handled the mess. I didn’t mind much, though. I preferred to be out of the limelight. Keeping a low profile helped with my extracurricular activities. The bosses didn’t know me and that made me unrecognizable if anyone came asking questions.
The weirdly shaped white building was in the east side of New Gothenburg in an industrial part of the city. Factories of all types were dotted around the area, with their tall chimneys reaching for the sky, smoke billowing from them. A few years back, one of the billionaire owners of a plastics company hit on his personal assistant. When she rejected him, he fired her andsent men to beat her up. The courts deemed there wasn’t enough evidence and he was let off with a slap on the wrist.
I’d added his name, David Tamper, to my list, and a few months later, I’d fed his body to the pigs at my cousin’s farm. Dalton was one of the three people who knew what I did. Ezra now made four.
Once I had the SUV parked, I strode inside, past security where I had to swipe my badge, and into the elevator which took me to the third floor. As soon as I made it through the glass doors, I grabbed my white lab coat and slid it on. I got to my desk before Louisa, the closest thing I had to a friend in this place, came bouncing up to me.
She had her sandy blond hair tied at the back of her head today and a new pair of black-framed glasses sitting on her nose. These ones were nicer than her old pair, with flowers on the temples.
“Hey! So, funny story . . . .”
