Page 27 of Stay Toxic

Then again, a good man wouldn’t have been in her apartment in the first place. Though…

I shouldn’t be at her place.

Fuck, but I shouldn’t beinher place.

Yet, there I was, watching her fall asleep, like some fuckin’ creeper in the corner of the room, after watching her eat her dinner, strip practically naked, and brush her teeth.

I waited until she was well and truly under before I peeled myself away from the wall and continued my walkthrough of her place.

Her place was a disaster.

It looked like someone walked in and blew everything over with an industrial-strength leaf blower.

Mail scattered on the floor.

Plates, forks, and cups scattered over every available surface.

Clean laundry piled up high on her recliner.

She had good security, that was a given.

The apartment complex that she lived in was gated. She was on the third floor. She had a great dead bolt on said door. What she didn’t have was good balcony security.

Either she hadn’t expected anyone to ever be able to get onto a third-floor balcony, or she forgot to lock the door.

Either way, I slipped out the same way I slipped into her place, then scaled the metal balcony to the one below it, dropping straight to the ground once I was at a good distance to do so.

The moment my feet found purchase, I stood out of my crouch and slid my phone from my pocket.

“Lev,” I said the moment he answered the phone. “You get anything?”

Lev, my resident computer genius and hacker extraordinaire, answered despite it being a late hour.

“Sure did,” he said, sounding distracted. “Sent it to your email an hour ago.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Anything I need to pay any attention to?”

“No, not with her.” He paused. “The brothers, though, are the ones that secured your house.”

I blinked. “They are?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You don’t recognize the company name?”

To be quite truthful, though I’d done the hiring of the job, that’d been six years ago now. A lot of things had happened since then.

“Nope,” I answered.

“That’s acceptable since they changed the name when their last brother got out of the military and joined them,” he said. “But other than her brothers being badass construction workers…nothing. She’s clean as a whistle.”

“Good,” I said. “Keep a psychic eye on her, though, just in case.”

“Will do,” Lev said and rang off.

Lev was a good guy.

I liked him a lot.

But he was also extremely introverted, and only talked on the phone with me, because I didn’t give him any other option.

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