by Lindsey Hart
The glass is only a few inches away when the spider, of course, chooses to leap at me like a flying squirrel. It explodes off the wall, all legs, and hair, and fangs, and it launches itself right at my face. The bastard suckered me in. It is a worthy adversary, and it tricked me completely.
As promised, I drop the glass and run out of the room and down the hall, screaming and swatting at myself again. I’m sure it didn’t end up on me since I didn’t feel any hairy spideriness anywhere on my body, but I’m done. This isn’t a job for me. I need help.
Before I even realize what I’m doing, I throw open the door and stalk down the sidewalk and across the lush lawn, in my pajamas and bare feet, over to the neighbor’s house—the very same neighbor who might be a criminal or something worse. Right now, I don’t actually care. I just know he’s often awake at night. There’s a light on deep in the house as I can see a glow filtering through the blinds at the front window.
I don’t actually care if he’s part of the mob at the moment. His killing skills might even come in handy. I need someone to do a dirty deed for me—to commit an atrocity. I’ll hire him for a hit myself if it comes down to it.
One way or another, the spider is going down.
CHAPTER 4
Wade
A wild pounding at the front door at nearly three in the morning was the last thing I expected to hear when I hunkered down and started prepping the living room for the first renovation project I was going to undertake—painting the kitchen cupboards.
I had thought about ripping out the carpets first but given that the painting would probably make a mess on said carpets, I changed my mind. After our conversation, I texted Rob back, asking him to order me a few rolls of clear polyester film. I hadn’t been overly enthusiastic about furnishing the house. I went with the bare minimum and had the real estate agent purchase it for me with money deposited into a separate account. He was happy to do it for a large bonus, which also included keeping his mouth shut about his client.
After the poly arrived via a courier, I shoved the couch, coffee table, TV stand, and flatscreen into a small the area in the living room and spent the rest of the afternoon hanging up the poly all over the walls and along the carpet. I did think about sanding and painting it in the garage, but that meant leaving my car parked out in the driveway and also making a huge mess of the garage, which I didn’t plan on remodeling or repainting, so I decided against it. The living room, along with the other rooms, would all be painted a neutral grey, and I’ll replace the old carpets with hardwood, so it didn’t actually matter if I made a mess. Still, I didn’t want to be too messy, hence the poly.
I cleaned out the entire kitchen, which wasn’t much of a job. I don’t have many dishes, or much food stockpiled. Everything got placed in the first empty bedroom down the hall, and then I started tackling the dismantling of the cupboards. It wasn’t easy going either. If I wanted to demolish the whole thing, I guess it would have been a quick job, but the cupboards are oak, and it doesn’t matter how rich I am, my first instinct was to save, sand, repaint, and reinstall them along with granite instead of the cheap countertop currently in the kitchen.
Once I start a job, I don’t stop until I’m done. I like the feeling of accomplishment, and I don’t like leaving loose ends untied. So, there I am in the kitchen at three in the morning, trying to wrangle a particularly tough upper cupboard off the wall without wrecking either the wall or cupboard. The battle has been ongoing for an hour, and I’m starting to wish I had a sledgehammer or a saw.
I step back and blow out a breath of frustration. At least I’m doing something. The strain in my back and the burn in my arms feel good. It feels like real work. After a month of sitting around, I should be thanking the cupboards for the extra workout.
I’m about to retrieve the pry bar I’ve been using when a hard pounding at the door stops me in my tracks. I turn, puzzled, to glance over my shoulder. It is three in the morning. I’m not wrong on that. It’s still the middle of the night.
So why on earth is someone pounding at the door like a rabid cow broke loose and is rampaging through suburbia?
I palm the pry bar just in case. You never know who could be standing out there in the middle of the night. It’s not normal. My heart beats a little harder, and my palm grows damp around the tool I’m clutching when I make it to the door. The thing doesn’t have a peephole. What if it’s some reporter out there? Someone with a microphone and camera at the ready.
Surprise, we found you.
Maybe it’s best to put down the pry bar. That way, I won’t be tempted to use it.
The pounding doesn’t let up, and I don’t set anything down. Instead, I slide back the two deadbolts and throw open the door.
Of all the people out there, it’s my neighbor. Lu-Anne.
She literally tumbles headlong through the open space but catches herself just before she can bowl me over. She straightens, her cheeks on fire, and clears her throat roughly.
“Please help me. It’s an emergency!”
The hair on the back of my arms stands. I have a plain black t-shirt on, which is pretty sweat-soaked, and my usual black jeans. I don’t know what I smell like at the moment, but it sure as shit isn’t a fresh, sweet daisy. Lu-Anne doesn’t seem to notice. Her eyes dart around the room, stopping on the plastic before they rush back to my face. They’re huge, dark pools of panic and terror.
“What is it? Come in. I’ll call the cops.”
“N-no…” She swallows hard and breathes in even harder. She’s obviously trying to steady herself. “It’s not that kind of an emergency,” she finally says on another rough exhale. “There’s a spider. It’s in my bed. I need you to come over and kill it. Or find it and trap it. Please. It’s huge. I tried to do it myself, but it attacked me.”
I actually have to step back to take this all in. I glance at her wild eyes, mussed mahogany hair, and parted lips. Her face is ashen, so the color riding on her cheekbones is even more noticeable. And even more beautiful. Her throat bobs with hard swallows, but my eyes don’t stop there. Lu-Anne is wearing a tiny black camisole, which is lowcut with lace edging around the top. It ends right before a set of even shorter black shorts with lace trimming along where the hem starts, leaving a gap of pale, exposed midriff. Her legs are gorgeous and shapely. Long. Unending.
I finally get to see what she looks like from the shoulder down.
And it’s every bit as gorgeous as I imagined, which makes me take another step back and angle to the side a little to hide the growing excitement becoming very obvious in my jeans. Now it’s my turn to clear my throat. Thank god Lu-Anne is so flustered, she doesn’t look down.
“Let me get this straight…” I brush a hand over my dark hair. It’s normally shorter than this, but it’s grown out, and I haven’t gone for a haircut. Obviously. My hand comes away with bits of debris from the cupboard, and my hair is damp to the touch. “You came over here screaming bloody murder because there’s a spider in your house?”
“A big one,” she snorts indignantly. She crosses her arms over her chest, which pushes up her pert breasts. She’s not wearing a bra, and the shape of her nipples is clearly visible now.
I glance away quickly, but not before my balls jump all the way from south of the border straight up into the back of my throat.
“You pounded on my door like the spider was an ax-wielding maniac.”
“Yes! Because it’s bad. The thing is huge! And it launched itself at me! I don’t have the skills to deal with this. I’m afraid of them, and I tried to do the nice thing and let it live, but I–I just—it attacked me!”
“I highly doubt it,” I say dryly. “I think you’re overreacting. You need to calm down. Don’t go pounding on people’s doors like your place is burning to the ground, and you barely escaped with your life.”
“It might as well be!” She insists. She stares me down. I stare back. She stares harder. I don’t move. She keeps staring. Finally, she lets out an exaspera
ted cry. “Why are you just standing there?!”
That should be obvious. “Because. This is ridiculous. I’m not going into your house to kill a spider.”
“But it’s a matter of life and death!”
“Clearly. I’m not going to do it. It’s three in the morning, and I’m in the middle of something. If it’s that bad, you should wait until morning, sleep on the couch, and call an exterminator.”
“It would hunt me down! The thing is probably heat-seeking. That’s how it found me in bed in the first place!”
“Ah yeah, I’m sure it has a good memory. It has totally learned to equate nighttime with you being in bed, asleep and helpless. And of course, it knows you are an easy target since it’s an above-average spider. Obviously, it must have evolved amongst the fittest and strongest.”
Lu-Anne opens her mouth to say something, but then she realizes I’m making fun of her, and she presses her lips shut. Her hands fly to her hips, and she blasts me with a frigid look of pure rage. “You’re an asshole. You know that? You moved into this neighborhood and haven’t made a single attempt to introduce yourself or be friendly.”
“That, I believe, is a two-way street.”
That’s all it takes for Lu-Anne to turn scarlet right up to the roots of her hair. “Thank you for being so helpful. Why would I want to come over and introduce myself when you’re so clearly off-putting?”
“Off-putting? Because I don’t want to go into your house and kill a spider in your bed at three in the morning? You—a complete stranger who I have never actually met before.”
That makes her even more flustered, but I can tell it also pisses her off further. She starts spluttering, not actually forming words. She’s searching for just the right insult to throw at me, or maybe something more logical to help me understand. Either way, she’s utterly adorable doing it. It’s an inappropriate observation, but I can’t help but notice. Just like I couldn’t help checking her out because—hell, I have eyes, and she has some really fine attributes that are very much on display at the moment.
She seems to realize I’m checking her out again at the same time I did. Her hands ball into fists, which she removes from her hips. She presses them down hard against her sides. Her arms are so rigid that I can see the muscles straining in them. When I sweep my eyes back up to her face, she looks pissed off enough to take a bite out of me like the spider tried to do to her. Maybe I should call for an exterminator myself.
This whole situation is not helping me maintain my cover. Now she’s going to be thinking about me pissing her off and refusing to be noble by killing the poor damn spider.
If there even is a spider. For all I know, suburbia has driven this lady crazy, and she’s over at my house trying to lure me into her bedroom for god knows what reason.
My dick seems to think any purpose would be a fine one, but my head has other ideas, and not just because of the fact that I’m supposed to be hiding out here, which includes not banging my super-hot neighbor. It means not getting involved with her in any capacity, especially not that way, since it’s totally inappropriate. Even before this, it’s not me. I’ve had a few serious girlfriends, but none of them worked out. It didn’t make me bitter, but I don’t do the whole one-night stand thing, and this lady, she lives right beside me. Things could get ugly fast.
“Thanks for the help,” she seethes. “And for being so neighborly.” Her eyes shoot daggers at me. I nearly step to the side since she looks capable of breathing fire. “And by neighborly, I mean very un-neighborly,” she confirms, just in case I had some doubt. “Actually, you’re a huge asshole. You’re a douchewad douchebag. I hope you choke on the poop you will undoubtedly eat for breakfast.”
Her strange parting shot complete; she whirls in a curtain of shimmering brown-red hair and storms down the sidewalk. She spots my recycling bin, which is empty, and hilariously enough, decides to take out her rage on it. She gives the thing a swift kick and nearly knocks herself over in the process. She mutters something under her breath, pushes it over onto its side, and stomps over my lawn. Crossing over to hers, she storms into her house.
I think the whole neighborhood hears her door slam shut. I can practically hear her stomping around inside, muttering obscenities and curses at me.
I shut the door, shaking my head. I hope no one was awake to witness that. I’m not in the mood to become the day’s premium bit of gossip. I do the locks back up and, shaking my head at the strangeness of what just happened, stalk back into the kitchen.
I stare at the lone cupboard still hanging on the wall. I imagine it staring back, gaping open, the shelves mocking me, the door long gone and neatly stacked with the others.
Bring it on, pussy. That’s right. Have at me.
I curl my hand around the pry bar I’m still holding. “You’re going down, you bastard. One ass kicking coming right up.”
And no, in case anyone is wondering, I don’t think it’s strange to be standing in my kitchen in the middle of the night, talking to a cupboard. Not after the encounter I just had. Not after the past few months. After all that, conversations with cupboards are pretty much on par for the loners.
CHAPTER 5
Lu-Anne
I wait until an appropriate time the next morning before I dial Leanne’s number. She answers on the fifth ring, her voice heavy with sleep.
“Hello?”
“Leanne! It’s me.”
“What’s wrong?” She instantly sounds more awake and alert.
“Nothing. I mean, no. There isn’t an emergency. But there is something. Okay, there was a bit of an emergency, but I’ve dealt with that.”
“What are you talking about?” She sighs into the phone. Then, in a shriek, she exclaims, “My god, it’s seven in the morning! What kind of depraved, sick animal are you that you’d call me at this hour?”
“I have something to tell you. It couldn’t wait.”
I spent a sleepless night stalking around my living room to cool down after my encounter with the ultra-hot, ultra-creepy neighbor. I got an eye-full of his bulging hot muscles last night. He was rocking the t-shirt he had on in a big way—a seriously big hot way. His arms were toned and bulging out. His freaking pecs and eight-packs were clearly outlined by the cotton he had on. He also towered over me. And oh, he smelled good. A little woodsy. A little sweaty. But it was a strange mix, and it was even stranger that I thought it was hot.
What I did not think was hot was that the guy was an asshole. And exactly as I thought, a dangerous one. When I finally cooled off after I stormed back to the house, I realized how stupid it was to go over there. I clearly interrupted something. Now he knows I caught him doing something sketchy. The guy was holding a freaking weapon and had plastic all over his living room.
“Hello? Are you still there? I’m waiting for some crazy good story as to why you’re calling. Are you going to leave me hanging now that you’ve so rudely woken me up?”
“I’ve been up all night,” I sigh. “It all started with a spider.” As I pour myself a cup of coffee in the kitchen—the sixth one since four this morning—at least I think—I recount the incident with the spider and how I ran over to the neighbor’s house for help.
“Are you crazy?” Leanne interrupts me. “Why would you go over there at three in the morning?”
“Well, I know the guy is a night owl or whatever. I could see the lights on. I knew he was probably awake.”
“Still. That’s just wrong.”
“Well, what was I supposed to do? Try and sleep in the bed with the spider? Jesus. Did you not hear me describe it and its obviously evil intent? It was trying to kill me.”
“Right. So, you went to your neighbor’s house for help. This doesn’t have anything to do with your super weird obsession about him?”
“No! It was panic. I didn’t even think about it! I’ll admit it was stupid, but it didn’t feel stupid at the time.”
“So, what did he do?”
“He didn’t help me,
” I snort. I sound miffed, and I know it. “But that’s not it. He answered the door holding a freaking pry bar.”
“A what?”
“A pry bar.” I sip slowly at my coffee. It’s the end of the pot, bitter as old medicines with the fuzzies at the bottom of the brew settling down in my cup. “You know, the thing you like break into people’s houses with.”
“No, I wouldn’t know,” Leanne responds dryly. “How do you even know what it is?”
“Well, you know. When I got this house from my grandma, it needed repairs. I do have a general working knowledge of tools.”
Okay, so my dad and brother basically did all the work here before I moved in. Still, I did help to the best of my ability, which admittedly, is limited. No one was pissed off that my grandma decided to leave the house to me when she passed away. It was like she knew I needed a helping hand in the world as I was not made like my brother or my parents. I might just scrape by with my writing, but at least I don’t have a mortgage to pay for. I could always get a roommate if I needed help paying the bills.
“Anyway, he was holding this pry bar thing, which is pretty sinister-looking, and behind him, his whole room was coated in plastic.”
“Come again?”
“Yes. The entire living room, in plastic. It’s like—it’s like what criminals put up when they’re planning on getting rid of a body.”
“Okay, you are seriously going too far with this criminal thing,” Leanne interjects. “I keep telling you that when you fill your mind up with all that murder mystery garbage and true crime, you’re going to start seeing it everywhere. This isn’t research for your writing. The guy was probably just trying to work on a project.”
“By putting plastic up all over his living room?” I reply incredulously. I take another sip of coffee and wince at the bitterness. It could really use cream to cut it down, but I’m sure the carton in the fridge went bad a few days ago, and I still haven’t dumped it down the sink. The brew might be bad, but it would be worse if I added sour gloppy-looking yogurt-like stuff to it.