Old habits died hard.
Thomas Riley parked his rental car a block from Abby Carlton’s house. Ambling, no more dangerous than a guy out for a walk, he reconnoitered the area. A middle class neighborhood, not shabby, not chic.
Cars swished past. Tree branches hung too low over the cracked sidewalks. Children had tossed their bikes and basketballs and Big Wheels into heaps on their front yards. One family’s oversized garbage cans wore a coat of rain and mud from a recent, obviously violent storm.
Thomas tracked the house numbers without looking directly at them. As he neared Abby’s home, a cracked, off-key voice cut the air. Despite being totally tone deaf, Abby Carlton just sang when she felt like it.
She’d left her front door open behind a glass storm door. Even more careless and inviting, all the open windows on the small house’s ground floor begged someone to rip off a screen and climb through.
Abby ramped up her volume, reaching a powerful point in a song Thomas had never heard. He spent too little time in the states to recognize Top Forty.
Her singing nearly drove him back to his car. Not because she stank, though she’d be wise to keep her job as a cop, but Thomas hated to ruin her good mood. He’d come to beg for help from the one woman on earth who might hate him too much to care.

Her Little Secret