Page 64 of Second Chances

Since he was too revved up to head to bed, he worked on building the wood shelving for the pantry. When he was done hanging the last shelf, he was tired and sore. He had decided to paint them all white instead of staining them like he’d originally planned.

Tomorrow, he would conquer the bench with built-in cubbies under it for his mudroom. He’d ordered some rustic seahorse hooks for his coats and hats and wanted to stick with light blues and a nautical theme throughout the house. He’d found some whale’s tail hooks as well but planned on putting those in the bathroom for towels. Olivia had actually picked them out for him along with a few sea-glass lamps and vases to go on the bookshelves.

The more he looked around the house, the more he realized it was beginning to feel like a home. Especially when Olivia and Simona were there.

For the next two days, he worked on the house while looking forward to that weekend and going gift shopping with Olivia. He’d done a little research online about what seven-year-old girls liked as gifts. There were so many choices, so many toys, games, or outfits to choose from. He was hoping Olivia would help him narrow down the choices by telling him what Simona liked or wanted.

Since Rowan had finished his remodel on the bathroom, he no longer ran into the man at the hardware store as much as he had before. But Todd was becoming familiar with a few other people in town.

He hadn’t known who Eric Torre was at first, other than by name. He’d seen the guy walking around in his paint-covered jeans and shirts at the hardware store and had even thought about approaching him and asking him for a quote to paint the outside of his house since he’d seen the sign on the man’s van for T&T Painting.

But then Dave, one of the workers at the hardware store, pointed Eric out. Since then, he’d noticed that the man was always staring him down, no doubt telling Brock every detail about him.

Thankfully, the man hadn’t been any more trouble for Olivia. He had been sentenced to community service, and he’d seen the man on the side of the road in an orange vest, picking up trash along with a bunch of other people.

He didn’t figure there was anything special about Eric, other than he knew everyone in town. Still, most people that knew him seemed to dismiss his behavior, as if the man had always acted crazy.

Even Olivia seemed to be over it. The only way Todd could be sure the man wasn’t going to try anything else was to keep an eye on him. Which meant knowing everything about the man—where he lived, where he worked, and who his friends were.

He dug deep into the man’s past. It wasn’t hard, seeing as that is what Todd had spent most of the last ten years of his life doing for work. He and his team had been paid to know everything about their targets.

He even looked into Olivia’s ex, Brock. After causing a fender bender while high, he’d led the police on a short chase and had ended up destroying two cruisers while he was at it. The chances of him getting out of prison this time were extremely slim.

The fact that he still blamed Olivia for his troubles weighed heavily on Todd. There was video of the man’s court hearing where he punched a bailiff and yelled profanities, all while screaming that he’d get revenge on Olivia. Eric had been sitting in the audience, which assured Todd that Olivia’s trouble with the duo wasn’t over.

As far as his own troubles, there hadn’t been any more word on the murders of his team members. He was still very watchful and continued to try and figure out who could be after them.

But the fact was, his team had gone on over thirty missions together. They had enemies everywhere, in more than a dozen countries.

Naturally, he made a list of the top possibilities. None, however, knew any of his team members’ real names. Which meant either there was a leak or their covers had been blown during the mission. In his memory, he couldn’t think of any mission that had gone sideways so badly. Except one.

Kimber. Shortly after he’d been exposed, another team had gone in and taken out her father, leaving no one to come after him or his team. Not even Kimber had known his real name.

There were other missions that had come close to going sideways but none where they had been as exposed.

All he could do was keep his eye out for anything out of the ordinary. In such a small town, that would normally be easy. But Silver Cove had been flooded the past few weeks with tourists, so he was sticking close to home. He was looking forward to going shopping this weekend with Olivia and for their standard Friday night sleepover.

With Simona’s party next week, he’d figured that he would do something different this weekend with the girls. He wanted to take them out on a full day excursion but hadn’t been sure what to do.

Then he’d run into Adam at the grocery store, and he’d started talking about taking his family out on Saturday on his sailboat. Adam convinced him to bring Olivia and Simona to tag along.

While he was standing in the bread aisle, he sent Olivia a text message and got her immediate reply that they were excited to go along. So he and Adam spent the rest of the time in the store planning out a full day’s worth of food for four kids and four adults. He actually just stood back and let the man do what he was best at.

When he returned home, he had three loads full of groceries. It was satisfying to put everything away in his new pantry.

He’d made a point to purchase some of Simona’s favorite snacks. He figured that a few days after Simona’s birthday, he’d invite everyone over to his place to see all the work he’d done and to celebrate the Fourth of July at his place.

Adam mentioned that, normally, they’d get together on the boat, but since the group had grown so big, they hadn’t planned anything yet. So he’d put the word out that the party was at his place. He had the perfect place for a large gathering of kids and parents. He figured he could grill out while the kids played games in the yard.

He would need some more tables and chairs for outside but there was still plenty of time to either purchase them or make a few picnic tables. He’d started rethinking his yard and doing yard work the following day.

He rebuilt part of the fence that had fallen over and had purchased some blooming flowers, including some lavender, to plant along the house. He’d been told at the nursery that lavender kept the bugs, including mosquitoes, away.

He spent an hour or so trimming bushes with his new hedge trimmer, making them all perfectly round. When he stood back and looked over the yard an hour before sunset, he realized how much better his yard and home looked than before.

He was standing in the middle of the road when a dark SUV pulled down the road and stopped in front of his garage.

“Evening,” Javan said, smiling at him.