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I was used to the hustle and bustle of having a kid around twenty-four seven. Even if JP was a genius and spent a hell of a lot of time acting like an adult and not a normal kid, she was still exceptionally loud.
Her tablet was always running—even if she was watching some how-to show on something new and exciting for her to learn. She wasn’t hard of hearing, but the volume was always a shade too high. Clumsy and absentminded because she never ventured far from that tablet, the excess noise included stomping through the house to go to the bathroom or scrounging her way through my kitchen.
That was another thing I had to be careful about.
Groceries.
When I got home, I idly tried to figure out what I would do for dinner for her.
But then I remembered they were having pizza—gag—and tried to find something for myself.
When I came up empty, I headed back outside, careful to lock everything up and rearm the alarm.
After spending years running from Lisbeth and Farrell and finding out last year that they’d finally got enough of my evading by putting a very real and very somewhat scary “hit” out on me—to the tune of two and a half million dollars—I’d only gotten smarter about my habits.
Hence ensuring that I was not only locked up but that I had a way to ensure that they wouldn’t be in there despite me being locked up.
Using Kobe’s designs for his security business, I’d built myself a knockoff security system that encompassed our entire fifteen-hundred-square-foot home. The home itself was modest, but it was in one of the best neighborhoods in the state. I’d made sure that was the case.
Though the neighbors had no clue that by forcing them into an HOA—homeowner’s association—I’d done them a huge favor. We now had a fence around the entire neighborhood, one that was monitored by me and damn well, if I did say so myself. Also, we had huge gates that only let you in if you had a car tag on your vehicle. If you didn’t have the car tag, you had to be vetted by a homeowner and given their unique guest codes, so we could see who was coming in and to see whom.
Funny enough, the safeness of our neighborhood hadn’t been missed by anyone in the area, and now not only did we have our original homeowners, but we also had a few bright and shiny cops.
A recently married couple, both deputy sheriffs, lived in a middle house between me and the entrance. And then none other than our sheriff himself—Sunny Summers.
Yes, his name was real.
According to his onetime Myspace profile, the reason for his name was due to his mother’s love of all things hippy and Sunny being the “sun of her eye.”
Or whatever that meant.
Also, not only did our neighborhood members get vetted, they had to get approved to move in. Something that pissed off a lot of potential people.
The vetting was done solely by me, not that everybody knew that.
Needless to say, my neighborhood was safe because I made it that way.
On the drive out, I not only saw Sunny with his new girlfriend, Sara, who also happened to be best friends with Davis, another member of the Gator Bait MC, but I saw Silvy and his wife, Karen. Karen and Silvy were the sheriff’s deputies. And Karen was even sporting a baby bump.
Karen had gotten pregnant within about three months of the two of them dating, and they’d had a shotgun wedding at the courthouse. Not that anybody else knew exactly why they’d gotten married so fast. I was just that good at investigating.
After waving at them all, I drove out of the neighborhood, and that feeling of safety left me.
Always on my guard—always, always, always—I drove to the nearest grocery store, where I moved around with a growing knot of dread in my belly.
Usually, this knot of dread was something that was just an awareness thing. Something that was there but didn’t affect me.
But lately, I knew that I’d messed up.
It was time for me to leave.
Sadly, I’d put down roots. I’d found a friend in Morrigan, and now I was paying for that mistake.
I couldn’t make friends. I couldn’t get too comfortable.
If I did, they found me.
I also knew another thing.
