Page 2 of Death is Familiar

My test was ready. For when I dared to look. The Muffin Man’s timing couldn’t have been worse.

“When I took the tape off the window, I didn’t expect you to break into my home five minutes later.”

“Didn’t want to risk being shut out again before we had a chance to speak. Came over as soon as I saw the tape gone.” It sounded like he had been waiting outside my window for the entire month I’d spent with the Almeidas. Which was altogether unsettling. Stalker-level unsettling. “I have something for you. Something you’re gonna want to see.”

The Muffin Man reached into his back pocket.

He could have been reaching for anything. My mind had been so preoccupied on … other matters… that I’d failed to search him for weapons. For all I knew, he could have been reaching for a gun.

“Slowly,” I warned. There wasn’t much I could do against a gun, but I could handle a knife. If he planned to stab me, at the very least, I’d be able to grab one of the pillows off my couch to absorb the blade. Then I could knock him senseless. In theory.

But the Muffin Man didn’t pull a weapon. He pulled an envelope.

My chest tightening, blood pounding in my ears, I inhaled a short breath. The envelope was addressed to me, and the handwriting—I checked once, twice, three times—belonged to Lawrence.

“Your brother said to give this to you, if something ever happened to him.” Even though Lawrence had died over two and a half years ago, the Muffin Man seemed… apologetic, almost sad. “I held onto it while you were in prison. Figured it best to give it to you in person.”

Trying to hide the tremble in my hands, I tentatively closed the distance and took ahold of the letter. Lawrence had left something for me.

My fingers itched with the urge to peel back the paper, but I was not going to open Lawrence’s last words to me in front of a stranger. I’d do that in private. Just me. And what was left of my brother.

I tucked the envelope into my back pocket.

“You’re not gonna read it?” The Muffin Man stared at me like I had two heads. “Do you even know what kind of case he was working when he died?”

Of course, I did. “You said you needed to talk?”

“Jesus. You in a rush, Delilah?”

I was actually. But first I needed answers, so I wanted the freckled man to hurry up and get to the point. My body responded in kind, by crossing my arms and cocking my hip out to the side, waiting for him to get on with it.

“I waited over a month to speak with you. You can spare five minutes.”

“Is that so?”

“Don’t you want to know why I have a letter from your brother? Don’t you want to know that he was assigned a Seal?”

Before his ‘suicide’, Lawrence had been working undercover with Solomon’s Seal. A cult that had been a no-go zone for years. And for some reason, Leslie’s Pies assigned him to the case alone, when everyone knew that new cases should never be worked solo. But I wasn’t going to reveal what I knew to the stranger before me. I trusted him about as far as I could throw him, and given that he had at least a hundred pounds on me, that wasn’t very far.

“What I’d like to know is if I can trust you. To know that what you are saying is the truth, otherwise, this conversation is of no interest to me.” That was a lie, but I wanted to drive the point home that he was very much unwelcome.

He made a cross over his heart. “I’m telling the truth. I swear on my life.”

“Then say what you came to say. Answer my questions. Then leave.”

“Fuck, Lawrence said you’d be rough around the edges but I didn’t expect so much hostility.” Even if his tone suggested that he was pleased, something about the way he said “rough around the edges” caught my attention. “Mind if I sit?”

I gestured to the armchair. Sitting in it would put him in prime position for the security cameras I set up in response to his previous unauthorized visits. Though I didn’t hold out much hope. With Todd living in the apartment across the hall, there was no going in or out without getting caught on his doorbell camera, but somehow the Muffin Man had been able to slip by completely undetected each and every time.

I was hoping this would be different.

Taking me in, the Muffin Man sat. He leaned his elbows on his knees, then straightened, drumming his fingers on the armrest. Finally, he said, “You just gonna stand there? Or can we have a nice sit-down conversation?” His hands shot up, palms out. “Sorry. Sorry. You don’t know me. I get that. I do. But I know you, Delilah. Shit, that sounded⁠—”

I raised my brows. His mouth wasn’t doing him any favors, and there was no way I going to make myself any more vulnerable by sitting.

The FBI had let me know that the Muffin Man had been on my tail for a few years. Keeping his distance. But they didn’t know why.

What they did know, was that the Muffin Man and Lawrence had been in contact, so I steered the conversation there. “You knew my brother. Tell me how, then we can get into why you’ve been keeping tabs on me.”