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“You check the cameras around her place?” Shoving my keys into my pocket precedes further investigating. “Pick up any weird shit?”

“First off, your Old Lady needs security cameras. She ain’t got none. Nada. Perfect zero.”

Yeah.

Definitely gonna fix that shit.

“And as for her neighbors? Can we discuss how or why she lives in a retirement community?”

“Dive.”

“Right. Adding to the later list,” he murmurs in between clacking. “From what I’ve managed to collect most of them also don’t have fucking security cameras. Not even a doorbell helper. The closest one I could get to her house is several streets over and it didn’t tell me shit.”

Fuck. Me.

“I’m going in,” I announce. “I want better answers when I call back.”

“How about a fucking please?” His typing momentarily ceases. “I think I’ve at least earned a fucking please.”

“Answers, Dive.”

Ending the call is instantly followed by removing my helmet, placing it on the seat, putting in wedges, and unholstering my weapon.

From a second visual scan, nothing appears out of place.

Her car is in the driveway.

None of the flowers look destroyed or trampled on.

Even the cardinal that calls her next-door neighbor’s rosebush home is hopping around unbothered.

Nothing seems to be out of the ordinary.

Yet the knot the size of a fucking beachball sitting in the pit of my stomach is insisting otherwise.

And I trust that shit.

It helped me survive growing up.

It’s helped keep me alive as a Misfit.

My approach to her front door is slow and steady, gun ready to fire at any inkling that it’s necessary.

Emmerz front door being locked is a good sign and finding the spare key exactly where she said aids in deflating a bit of the uneasiness swimming around in my veins; however, the second I cross the threshold, and I’m not greeted by the obvious reincarnation of Michael Clark Duncan in cat form, my suspicions on something being fucked up are confirmed.

There’s no fucking way a person gets through that door without his bass voice informing everyone of their arrival.

“Afternoon, Dock,” greets an unexpected voice forcing my frame to whip to the right where there’s a pearl skinned male lurking in the darkness. “It is Dock, isn’t it?”

I don’t answer.

I merely retrain my weapon for a kill shot through the skull.

“You kill me,” the unknown intruder begins, one leg being swung over the other, “she dies.”

The itch in my trigger finger grows stronger.

“Would you care to hear the terms of this exchange?”