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Zander didn’t bother answering, he just stared him down. In his other life, men used to piss themselves when he showed up at their door. His face would be the last thing they saw before death took them. And look how far he’d fallen. Hadn’t even noticed when a fucking idiot broke into his place.
He shook his head in self-disgust.
“I’m not fucking around.” The guy fidgeted from foot to foot, the hand with the gun back to shaking. “Give me the wallet and keys!”
“I’m not fucking around either.” Maybe he’d developed a death wish. Hell. Maybe death was preferable to this miserable existence he’d landed himself in. But he wasn’t about to be punked. He held his arms out and took a step forward.
The guy backed up toward the door. “What—Hey, what are you doing?”
“I’m not giving you anything, so you’ll have to shoot me, right?” Zander lifted an eyebrow. “Just making sure you don’t miss.” Yep, he had a death wish.
“Don’t move!”
Zander kept moving forward.
“I said don’t move!”
The bell above the entrance tinkled as someone shoved the door open from outside. “Hey, I’ve been calling?—”
The intruder spun toward the door with a shriek. Zander lunged at him, grabbing him by the throat just as the gun went off with a loud pop. The newcomer yelped as the bullet slammed into him and he went crashing back into the door, then crumbled to the floor.
Mother. Fucker.
2
EARLIER
Vince popped the pill into his mouth, then chugged half a bottle of water behind it. He hated taking them, hated being beholden to them. But then he remembered how he’d lost his mind, the way he’d acted, and as embarrassment washed over him for the billionth time, he knew he’d be taking those fucking pills for the rest of his life if it meant he’d never be that person again.
He met his eyes in the rearview mirror, lips curled into a grimace. His generalized anxiety disorder diagnosis came not long after a dark time when he’d refused to accept that the man he wanted didn’t want him back. Had chosen someone else. The rejection set him off, had him doing things he wouldn’t have normally done in his right mind, saying anything he thought would get him what he wanted.
Didn’t work.
He could have lost his life, but instead he’d ended up in an emergency room with no idea of how he’d gotten there. A short stay in a hospital later and he had an explanation for his actions and a second diagnosis of depression. It’d been a kind of relief to know what he’d been feeling, the roller-coaster emotions that had seemed too big to contain and impossible to navigate, had an official name.
But knowing what was wrong with him didn’t do anything to help. He’d had to do the work and now, with medication and therapy, he felt as if he was actually making progress. Well, until his world turned upside down.
Again.
He glanced at his phone, one he’d bought just as he’d left New Jersey. Only one person knew the number and where he was headed. He’d been hoping his vacation time would’ve been spent fixing up his garage, not running for his life from men intent on killing him.
Fuck.
He’d wanted to stay and fight, but his boss at the U.S. Marshal district office in Jersey had insisted he go somewhere and lay low. Somewhere where no one knew who he was, where Murray DuBois’s assassins couldn’t find him. They said you know you were doing your job right when the criminals started coming after you, but Vince could’ve done without that. Murray DuBois was the criminal boss who ran the Jersey underworld, a monster with no compunction about who he killed, and he needed to be locked the fuck up. It was Vince’s job to do just that. But this running for his life thing had thrown a wrench into that.
When they’d gotten word from a confidential informant that DuBois had put a hit out on Vince, Vince had disregarded it. Until the bullets had started flying.
He’d escaped the first attempt with a bullet to the thigh. The second attempt took his colleague’s life, then Vince went home to find his dog missing and his house wrecked. His boss decided they wouldn’t be waiting around for anything else to happen, which was why Vince found himself in a rented Audi R3 under a false name, headed to Florida of all places.
He hated running. But he wasn’t going to put his colleagues in any more danger. He didn’t have a time frame for when he could go back to his life, but in the meantime, he’d be doing all he could to ensure they ended Murray DuBois and his reign of terror.
He’d decided to take the scenic route to his destination, it wasn’t as if he was in a rush, but as he drove through a small Alabama town, smoke rising from the hood of the car caught his attention.
He glanced at the temperature gauge. “Shit!” He tightened his hands around the steering wheel and immediately maneuvered through the traffic until he was able to pull over on the side of the road. The goddamn car was overheating. He didn’t know much about cars, but he knew enough to turn off the vehicle and allow it to cool down, getting out and pacing the small stretch of grass between the three lanes of traffic and his position on the shoulder. He pulled his phone from his pocket. He could call roadside assistance, but how long would it take them to get there?
He shook his head. When he figured it was safe enough to lift the hood, he did so tentatively, groaning when he saw the smoke coming from the engine area.
“Goddamn it.” He crouched down, peering under the car, and yep, liquid—likely antifreeze—was spilling out onto the ground. He used the bunch of napkins he’d shoved into the glove compartment to undo the hot radiator cap and peered inside the container. It was empty. No wonder the car was overheating. With no antifreeze on hand, he scrambled back into the car, retrieving the gallon bottle of water he’d purchased when he’d stopped to fill up at a North Carolina gas station. He poured that into the container and finished up, closing the hood and then getting back into the car to restart it. The gauge had moved a little to a better position, but from what little he knew about cars—he definitely should have paid attention when he’d dated that car enthusiast a few years back—it wouldn’t remain that way for long.
