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HOUSE.

It’s not much. But it’s something to stand on.

When Tova asks what we’re doing today, I’ll have an answer.

Inside, I’m coming apart.

My voice doesn’t get to.

Chapter one

Colt

The door flies open before I can reach it.

A woman comes through fast with a phone to her ear and a black bag over one shoulder. Pale hair pulled back off a face that makes me look twice. Tall enough to take up space without trying.

Her bag catches my right arm.

The pain goes up through the shoulder and into my neck, and the first thing I think, before anything useful, is that I wouldn’t mind if she did it again so I could get a better look at her.

“Sorry.”

She says it into the phone, over her shoulder, to somebody she has already finished with.

She doesn’t slow down.

I stand in a parking lot holding my own arm against my ribs, watching a woman walk away from me, and I’m smiling at nothing like a man who has taken one too many to the head.

Three rows over sits an older red pickup, square-bodied, kept well enough that somebody clearly likes it. Black wheels. Dark glass. No unnecessary chrome.

She looks right walking toward it.

I had her in something low and European.

Apparently I was wrong twice in thirty seconds.

She reaches the driver’s door with the phone still at her ear.

Then she turns.

Her eyes find mine across the lot.

No smile.

Her gaze drops to the arm against my ribs, comes back to my face, and stays there one beat longer than it needs to.

Something goes through me that has nothing to do with the shoulder and lands considerably lower, and I’m thirty-eight years old and standing in a parking lot, so I would like it on the record that I didn’t invite it.

I start to smile.

She looks away.

The truck starts with a low growl. She backs out and leaves without another look.

I stay where I am.

Well.