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don’t get harder.”
     
    The almost-smile was gone. “See, though, that’s fucked up. I just did my job. You know how I found Tucker yesterday? Sitting naked in the middle of the filthy kitchen floor, smeared with his own poop and who knows what else, eating a Twinkie covered in ants. The whole place was overrun with filth and vermin. His mom answered the door and half her head was covered in oatmeal or puke or some kind of lumpy shit. I was supposed to leave that little boy there? So your friend wouldn’t get upset? Fuck you!”
     
    Muse was sickened. But they all knew Dakota was a junkie and a shit mom. “That’s not on my brother. That’s on the judge who gave a junkie custody. That’s on you people for not letting a father have his son.”
     
    Her righteous fury faded, and her eyes slid to the side. “It’s in the file. There’s nothing I can do about that.” She shivered, and Muse barely caught himself before he ran his hand up her arm to warm her.
     
    “How about that coffee…and maybe you want to put something warmer on?”
     
    She looked down at herself, and Muse understood that she’d had no idea how she’d come outside. “Oh, my fucking God. Oh God! Oh, shit!” She yanked her arm from him and ran to her porch. He followed, and when she threw open her door and ran in, leaving the door open, he took that as an invitation and went into her house.
     
    Her house was still dark, but there was enough light coming from the street through the uncurtained casement windows that Muse could make out a tidy, tasteful living room, small and cozy, leading off from the little round entryway. Leaving her gun on a small tiled table in the entry, he stepped into the living room and looked about for a light switch but didn’t find one. She—Sidonie—had run straight through and around a corner. So he just stood where he was and waited for her to remember he was here.
     
    With not much else to see in the dim space, his brain entertained itself with images of her leggy near-nakedness. Though he’d been too busy trying not to get shot, or get her shot, to have focused much on her lack of clothing at the time, his eyes had obviously been taking notes. She was slender and long-limbed, her hipbones and ribs showing just a little through smooth skin. Not much to speak of in the chest department.
     
    Just the way Muse liked his women. He liked to be able to take a girl’s full breast in his mouth. And small-chested women had such pretty little nipples, like little rosebuds at the tips of their tits. And she’d been cold—those little nips had been beaded right up, showing clearly through her bra.
     
    Fuck. Now he had a hard-on. Just as he grabbed himself in the dark and worked on putting his dick somewhere more comfortable in his jeans, the room flooded with light, and she was standing at the end of the hall with her hand on the switch, staring right at his hand, which was still grabbing his junk.
     
    For half a second, he stood there, frozen. Then he let his hand fall to his side. He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he didn’t. After a couple more beats’ worth of staring, her eyes came up to his.
     
    He gave her a sheepish smile and looked away.
     
    The room she’d illuminated was neat as a pin and decorated with a caring, feminine hand. The furniture was small and mismatched, like it had come from rummage sales or antique shops, are maybe were just hand-me-downs, but the room didn’t have a look like it had been carelessly thrown together. The walls were a warm crème, and brick fireplace had been painted pure, bright white with a glossy sheen—recently: he could still smell the paint. Travel photographs had been enlarged and framed in mixed black frames. Under his feet was a worn but pretty rug, of the kind his grandma had called a ‘turkey carpet,’ covering the oak parquet floors that these houses typically had.
     
    Muse almost laughed, thinking that there was probably more going on in