Page 134 of South Beach Bodyguards

She nodded. “Can you believe that? Crazy coincidence, huh?”

Except I don’t believe in coincidences. “I’m going over there.”

I tried to hear the guy’s voice in my head again. But I hadn’t been paying close attention. But obviously if it was Max, Miranda would have known.

“What are you going to say?”

“Don’t worry about it, I’m charming.” I was going to tell him to fuck off, but in a friendly way. “I won’t kill him unless I have to.” Her face grew alarmed. “I’m joking.” Sort of.

“I’m going with you.”

“Just stay here.”

“No.”

Given the mulish look on her face, I decided it wasn’t worth it to argue. “Fine.”

We walked the three feet to the neighbor’s house and I knocked, noting again the flowers in pots, the chairs for porch sitting. It didn’t indicate a crazy loner lived there. We waited. No one answered. I knocked again.

Miranda frowned at me. “We heard him inside,” she whispered.

I shrugged and gave a third knock. Nothing. I couldn’t hear a TV or anything. So I decided to go around the back of the house and poke around a little.

“Where are you going?” she asked in a fierce whisper. “You can’t go back there.”

“Why not?” I asked mildly. “Isn’t it your yard too?”

“We have separate patios.”

“Then I’m just getting the lay of the land.” I winked at her. “It’s my yard too since we’re so hot and heavy.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea. I left the knife in the house.”

That made me snort. “I don’t need a knife and neither do you. Promise me you won’t get into a habit of strolling around the yard all jumpy with a freaking knife in your hand.” That was a downright terrifying image.

“I can take care of myself,” she said.

I wasn’t going to argue that point with her, but I hoped the neighbor was just a regular Joe and we were being overly cautious.

The house had a fair amount of scrubby foliage, like most yards in Miami that weren’t tended to on a regular basis. It was overgrown but half of it was dead. The back stucco hadn’t been repaired in years and the windows looked original. I knew Miranda had been attracted to the nostalgic feel but the place was kind of a dump. Each patio was enclosed by a low-slung cinder block wall. Very midcentury.

I went right up to the window of the apartment next door and looked inside, expecting to see him in his kitchen. Nothing.

“You’re being too obvious,” Miranda said. Her stage whisper sounded fretful.

I just waved her off. Being obvious was talking so that someone would hear us.

The kitchen and the room beyond it had almost no furniture in it. Something felt off. It looked more like a surveillance setup than an actual apartment. There was no fridge in the kitchen and the countertop was littered with electronics, not a toaster or a coffeemaker. There was a laptop and a scanner and a small table with two chairs. Not okay. Every alarm inside me went off.

Was it a drug dealer’s house? That seemed unlikely. This looked like an FBI setup. Who were they watching though? There would be no reason to follow Miranda. Maybe it was the prior residents in her side of the duplex.

Or maybe, worst of all, it was somehow related to Max.

I nudged Miranda and nodded my head in the direction of her side of the duplex. She understood and walked quickly to her patio. “The back door to my side is locked.”

“Just keep going around to the front.”

She obeyed and within a minute we were back in her apartment. “I’m not letting you live here alone,” I told her. “I’m moving in until we figure out what the fuck is going on.”

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