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Regardless, I follow them home and park down the street, camping out with a decent vantage point where I can watch the small cabin she calls home. As the hours pass, I catch her glancing out the window a few times. She can feel me here, but she doesn’t trust her judgment.
Eventually, around nine o clock, the lights go out, and the house falls quiet. Nobody else comes home. And so goes the routine over the next several days as I study her, learning her patterns. I take notes of everything she does. When she shops for groceries, when she makes dinner, when she takes her break at the school. Vasily calls me for constant updates, asking where I am. I tell him I’m in Florida, and that any day now, I’ll have something tangible. That proof he requested four years ago.
On the fifth day, I can’t wait any longer. I break into the school and wait in the janitor’s closet before she gets to work. It’s a risk, but I manage to go unnoticed until lunchtime, when she leaves her classroom. In her purse, I find her keys, and I slip out of the building, taking them down to the local hardware store to make copies.
When I return to the school, I dump her set near the front entrance and watch as the khaki-wearing motherfucker comes to her rescue during the ensuing chaos. He finds the keys during her minor freak-out, and he gets to be the hero. But it doesn’t end there.
I expect her to get in her Jeep and go home the same as she does every night. But tonight, she follows him back to his house. And then she goes inside. I park on the street, contemplating the various ways I might murder him. Burning his face off with a blowtorch seems like a good idea. But as I watch them through the window, eating cake and celebrating what appears to be a birthday, it occurs to me that her heart isn’t in it. The smile on her face is polite but forced. And soon after the celebrations, she takes the opportunity to leave.
It doesn’t relieve me as much as I’d hoped. Because even if she isn’t staying tonight, that doesn’t mean she never will. I shift the car into gear and drive around town for a while, trying to clear my head. Inevitably, I end up back at her place after dark. She’s already asleep when I slip in, and for the first time, I can finally smell her again. I drag in lungsful of that scent like an addict, and then touch everything in her space as if to mark my territory.
I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me. I just know that when I stand on the threshold of her bedroom, watching her sleep, there is finally peace in my soul. For all of two minutes, until I realize that I came here to kill her. That was the job I set out to do. A thought that was much easier when there was distance and years between us. Now everything is fucked up again, and the only thing I understand is that I can’t. Not tonight.
I spend the night on her sofa, staring up at the ceiling, until I hear the creak of her floorboards when she gets up in the morning. At that point, the shower turns on, and a soft throaty hum filters out into the living room as she begins to wash herself. I know I shouldn’t, but my feet are moving before my mind can conjure up all the reasons this is a bad idea.
The bathroom door is cracked open, and through the steam, I catch a glimpse of her naked form behind the glass shower wall. Fuck me. She’s even more beautiful than I remembered. A little softer, a little curvier, and without a doubt, the sweetest poison I ever tasted.
I close my eyes and inhale her scent before I realize how fucking blatant I’m being. If she catches me right now, things could end badly. I need more information before I confront her. I need more time.
Slipping back into her bedroom, I find a cozy spot beneath the bed. When she returns from the shower and drops her towel, I bite back a groan. It would be tempting to bend her over right now and reacquaint her with my cock, but that isn’t on the menu today.
It takes her another forty minutes to get her and the boy she calls Josh ready and out the door. A name I remember well, and one I have every intention of uncovering the mystery behind. But first, I take a tour of her bedroom, searching through the drawers and closet. I check every shoe, cupboard, and box, but they turn up nothing.
