Chapter 1
S he was insane. That was what he thought at his first glimpse of her. She must have been waiting and watching for him, proving his theory that she was a creepy stalker, because she poked her head out her door and spoke as soon as he arrived home.
“Got a minute?”
He hadn’t been expecting her, hadn’t been expecting anyone to accost him when he was about to reach his inner sanctum and unwind. So maybe he jumped and yelped a bit; it was only natural.
Did his neighbor have the good grace to apologize for scaring him? No, she giggled, a hand mashed over her mouth the only attempt to stifle her rude behavior. Before he could say a coherent word, for instance, “What are you doing here and were you waiting for me to get home?” she spoke again.
“Which appeals to you more?” He watched in amazed confusion as she reached inside her house and jammed her two fists in his face, each loaded with a bag of unknown substances.
“What?” he asked, confused and alarmed. Was she gifting him with something?
She sighed impatiently. “Which one, which one?” Her hasty, impatient tone matched the whole untethered vibe she had going right now—messy bun gone to the dark side of messiness, unwashed sweats that had seen better days, and was that…was that mango on the side of her face?
“I guess this one?” he said slowly, his words tilting uncertainly. He touched the one on his right, her left. She beamed at him.
“Me, too. Thanks.”
And then she was gone. He stood blinking at her now closed door a few seconds before shaking his head—shaking off the odd interaction, really—and letting himself inside his apartment. So that’s my neighbor, he thought, thoroughly unimpressed. He had sensed she was odd, based mostly on her nocturnal habits and continued invisibility. And this was his first glimpse of her: messy, bedraggled, and eccentric. He could only hope that would be his last sighting of her.
He set his briefcase beside the door, took off his shoes, set them on the tray, and loosened his tie. Then sat on the couch and let out the sigh that had been building since he left home that morning. Home. Dexter wasn’t a sentimental man. No corny knickknacks lined his shelves, no picture of family or friends dominated his walls. But there was something so relieving about being home, about being free to be himself and not have to watch every word he uttered, every step he took. If people didn’t believe the world of restaurant supply was cutthroat, they should try working for The Russians. Rumors swirled that they were in the mob. Dexter didn’t believe them to be true. It was just that American culture was so different from Eastern European culture, so much more obsequious. Americans thought people were angry if they weren’t overtly friendly, if they didn’t smile for no reason. Dexter’s half-Polish upbringing had taught him differently, had prepared him well to work for The Russians.
Who am I kidding? There is no preparation for them. The family was half intensely charismatic and half intensely psychotic. Dexter was the only outsider who worked for them, likely the only one who could handle their combined egos and rule branding. They partied hard and also liked to keep up the Orthodox pretense. Enigmas, all of them.
With as volatile as they were, Dexter was always in a state of insecurity over his job. He had the feeling they wanted it that way, wanted to keep him so off-kilter he was desperate to toe the line and hang on. And, really, they had nothing to fear from him. He was as solid as solid could be. And they paid him well, incredibly well, more than enough to cover the occasional emotional outburst that left him reeling or cleaning up one of their messes. And with The Russians, there were always messes.
After staring into the abyss a sufficient amount of time, Dexter wrenched himself off the couch and went to the kitchen to make supper. He wasn’t one of those bachelors who ate out every single meal, but neither was he a secretly and dynamically gifted chef. He was mediocre, able to fry a burger or scramble an egg so he didn’t starve. If he applied himself, he supposed he could get better, but what was the point? His boring attempts at creating sustenance had so far kept him alive.
The kitchen wall was the one that adjoined with his neighbor. They shared a house, one of those brick Victorian monstrosities that had been wisely broken down into smaller units. Their house only had two units, two halves of a too-big house. The neighborhood was a little shady and the price cheap, but Dexter was locked in, mostly because he told himself he was. He didn’t like change, tended to find a path and stick on it forever. Some people might see it as a rut, but he liked ruts. Ruts were safe and secure.
On the other side of the wall, his neighbor dropped something big and heavy and emitted a word that sounded like something she made up to substitute for a curse. Weird. So weird. It satisfied him somehow that she turned out to be exactly as he suspected when he saw her things being moved in a couple of months ago. Based on the items he’d witnessed—a giant copper cauldron and a well-used boat oar—he thought maybe she was a witch. Some kind of latter-day earth mother who would steal snippets of his hair for her man-hating potions, then sell them to similarly embittered women. At least his sighting of her dispelled that notion. She hadn’t looked like a granola cruncher or even embittered. She’d looked frazzled and exhausted.
His eyes fastened on the wall, in speculation this time. What could make someone so young look so panicked?