One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
I stepped onto the porch steps and inhaled a lungful of air, the tension easing from my shoulders.
I dug in my pocket, pulled out the lockpick, then propped open the screen door with my boot. I fiddled with the lock until it clicked. Three seconds. It was a shitty lock, and anyone with a bit of skill and persistence would be able to pick it. I’d never bothered replacing it because I hadn’t cared if anyone broke in.
That was until now. And she hadn’t broke in. She walked right in and made herself at home.
I opened the door and was instantly hit with the smell of coffee mixed with coconuts and cloves. The same coconut and cloves that had wafted from the wisps of her hair.
I never really thought about coconuts smelling good before. Fuck, I never thought about them period, but now I was thinking about how good they smelled.
I shook my head.
Christ.
Why the hell did I say a week? One week was too long. Shit, seven minutes was too long.
I moved into the kitchen and noticed a shampoo bottle perched on the edge of the sink of the butcher block island. Cheap shit. Generic. I peered at the label: Coconut Clove Infusion.
A yellow drying rack sat beside the farmhouse sink, holding a pot, frying pan, strainer, three dinner plates, and three glasses. I glanced in the sink and saw a mug with a chip on the rim and a couple small side plates smeared with remnants of icing and bread crumbs.
Three beeps sounded, and I glanced at the coffee maker sitting under the window with a carafe that had two inches of the black sludge sitting at the bottom.
I walked over and opened the cupboard above the coffee maker. I found a gold tin of cheap, generic coffee and a roll of paper towels. No filters.
I pulled out the basket on the coffee machine and frowned.
Why the hell was she using paper towels for a coffee filter? I may not drink coffee, but I worked with men who coveted the stuff. Shit, Deck’s woman Georgie owned two coffee shops. It would be a sin to use paper towels as a filter.
I looked through the rest of the cupboards that contained numerous canned foods like beans, fruit cocktail, and tuna. Stuff that lasted forever and was good on the run. But she wasn’t on the run now. The question was what or who had she and the kid been running from?
I strode across the hall to the kid’s bedroom. And I knew it was the kid’s bedroom because it had a Superman sticker on the doorknob.
I opened the door and stopped, my gaze fixed on the cage sitting on the floor under the window.
What the hell was that?
I walked across the room and peered down at an ugly rodent drinking from a water bottle hooked to the side of the cage. He wasn’t quiet about it either as he chewed on the stainless-steel tubing, causing bubbles to burp to the top of the glass bottle.
Christ. I hated rodents despite the fact I was highly educated on them. You couldn’t expect to hide in sewers, vents, and any other filthy damp place and not encounter them.
The worst were the sewer rats, fearless rodents that wouldn’t hesitate to take a bite out of you. They’d scurry across the subterranean pipes, bald tails sliding over the surface like snakes.
They’d been rampant in the underground where we fought, but ratters, little tenacious dogs, were sent into the tunnels before our fights to keep them away. Wealthy men didn’t like rats scurrying across their expensive loafers, but the blood-splattered fight ring always drew them back.
This thing wasn’t a rat or a mouse. It was a naked rodent with the pigmentation of a jersey cow and huge, elephant-like translucent ears.
Jesus, it was a mini hippo.
The thing stopped drinking and wiggled its nose, long white whiskers twitching as it put its pink feet on the bars of the cage. It stared at me with its bulging eyes as if it was checking me out.
My jaw flexed and my stomach tightened as I remembered the feel of those feet scuttling across my skin and the slither of their naked tails.
I abruptly turned away.
I opened each of the four drawers in the cheap dresser on the far wall and rifled through them. There was nothing inside except kids’ clothes, and most of them appeared new. I checked the nightstand next—three Dog Man books.
A Spiderman nightlight was plugged in beside the bed, the orange dollar-store sticker still plastered on the side. Batman pajamas were folded neatly at the foot of the bed, and there was a pair of Spiderman runners on the floor. The kid sure had a thing for superheroes, but I guessed most six-year-old boys did.