Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 70607 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70607 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
I watched her walk away, and then Sister barked, bringing me back to the here and now, and not the contemplation of the woman’s ass.
“Sorry, girl,” I said, starting to walk once again. “Thank you.”
Sister was such a good girl. If I could have handpicked every single attribute that I wanted my dog to have, Sister had every single one of them and then some.
“Bastard,” I heard muttered once she thought she was far enough away.
I turned and slowed, Sister jerking slightly on the leash as she came to a halt with me, and glared at the retreating back.
“Did you say something?”
Heat flushed up her neck and went straight to her cheeks.
“No, not a word,” she lied.
I gave her one of those looks that clearly said that I didn’t agree with her, and then glanced down at where she’d been standing not moments before.
I grunted. “Your dog just shit.”
Her brows furrowed and I pointed in the direction helpfully. “That bag in your hand was hanging on the post for a reason, darlin.’”
She bared her teeth at me.
Grinning, I started walking again, heading for the stairs that led up to the apartment complex that I was temporarily living at.
They were what you would call…in need of improvement.
Though the trail that ran behind the apartment was new, the apartments were not. In fact, they were so old that I was surprised that the trail would’ve been built so close to them. There’d been many times over the past couple of years that I’d worked for Kilgore PD that I’d run calls at this particular apartment complex, and there wasn’t one redeeming quality that I could find about them other than the cost of rent was cheap.
Then again, that was what a newly divorced man needed when his wife took him to the cleaners on the way out the door.
Passing the sign that said, ‘Run where you live,’ I took the stairs two at a time and headed to my new home, the last unit on the right. It was the one I’d handpicked, and nobody besides a neighbor I never saw lived in this particular unit.
Turnover rates for this complex were high, and they tried to fill up the ones closer to the front of the complex, farther away from the tree line, because those apartments were in better shape than the ones like I was now living in.
I’d just made it to the top of the stairs, and was inserting my key into the lock, when I saw a woman—the same woman I’d just been talking to only moments before—walk through the parking lot, heading for the same damn unit as mine.
Except, instead of coming up the stairs after me, she went below them, and ignored me as she did. I heard the door down below creak open, a muttered curse, and then the door close shortly after.
So, she was my neighbor. How…interesting.
The poor girl. Knowing that she was underneath me gave me pause as I briefly felt sorry for the fact that she was below me.
Unfortunately for her, I paced a lot at night.
PTSD was a bitch.
I hoped she enjoyed listening to me walk, because she was about to hear it a lot…and maybe already had.
I’d been in this apartment for two weeks now, and not once had I met her or even heard her come or go.
***
I’d just made my fourth pass, bathroom door to hallway to living room to front door and back again when I heard the tapping.
At first, I wasn’t sure what it was.
It wasn’t loud enough to be much, and I was on the top floor, so it couldn’t be from something dropping or someone walking, so initially, I didn’t give it much thought.
After my pause at the onset of the light knocking, I started the cycle again, not stopping until I heard the sound again.
Frowning, I continued my pacing but stopped when I finally realized what it was.
Tapping—from the floor beneath my feet.
My brows lowered.
Remorse flowed through me as I tiptoed across the floor, and snatched my keys from the side table that was next to my bed.
I’d go for a walk instead…maybe then I could get these nightmares out of my fuckin’ head.
Chapter 3
You had me at ‘make it look like an accident.’
-Katy’s secret thoughts
Katy
I stared at the ceiling, wondering if I’d done something to God to make him hate me.
Three weeks ago, I’d moved out of my old apartment into this one because my old neighbor liked to hold orgies at all hours of the night.
Now, I had a pacer above me that never slept.
“What in the hell have I done to deserve this?” I asked the ceiling.
Step. Step. Step. Step. Step. Step. Shuffle to the left. Step. Step.
Step. Step. Shuffle to the right. Step. Step. Step. Step. Step. Step.
Over and over again it went.