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Movement.

Fucking finally.

Sluggish footsteps approach from deeper in the house, and then a lock turns. The door opens three inches, stops at the chain, closes again, and opens all the way without it.

Sherry appears in the gap, looking like she crawled directly out of a bottle.

Her hair is greasy and crushed flat on one side, mascara smudged beneath both eyes, lips dry and slightly parted. A silk nightgown hangs crookedly on her body, poorly covered by a thin robe.

The smell hits me before she speaks—a terrible mix of alcohol, stale cigarettes, sweat, and hairspray.

She squints into the daylight. “What the fuck do you want?”

Her hazy eyes move over me from my boots to my face. Irritation soon shifts into suspicion, then assessment.

She’s trying to place me.

Cop?

Dealer?

Debt collector?

Somebody she fucked and forgot about?

“Who the fuck are you?”

I smile. “John sent me.”

Her face twists with confusion, and she asks, “John who?”

And yeah, that pisses me the fuck off.

I move before she can finish thinking.

My prosthetic hand closes around her throat, not hard enough to crush anything, but enough to make the point.

Sherry’s eyes bulge, and a strangled sound leaves her as I walk her backward into the house one step at a time.

Her hands claw uselessly at the black casing around my wrist, nails scraping at it. There’s no sound but her breathing and the drag of our feet across a floor no one has swept since John left.

She kicks once. A blind swing at my shin that misses by two inches and costs her balance I don’t give back.

I shut the door behind us with my heel, lock it, then keep walking her backward until her spine hits the wall.

“John Blake,” I say.

Her face has gone red—dark at the edges, blotchy under the chin where my fingers sit against her pulse. She pulls at my forearm with both hands now, gets nowhere, stops pulling, and just holds on like she’s drowning.

“Father of your son,” I add, sneering when it’s only then I can see recognition in her gaze.

Her eyes water, and her mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water. When I let go, Sherry collapses forward, coughing and clutching her throat.

I step around her.

The kitchen smells like old food and wine gone sour. There are dishes in the sink, a whole tower of them, all streaked with remnants of meals. Two empty wine bottles sit on the counter, corks beside them like spent casings.

A man’s jacket is draped over the back of a chair, and I don’t think it’s Wade’s. Probably the next deadbeat she’s fucking.