Met stood in front of the open liquor cabinet and continued to contemplate the contents of the thing. He had no idea how long he’d been standing here. It felt like forever. His joints were creaking and he needed to sit down. Yet he could not seem to make a simple decision about what kind of liquor he was going to take out of the cabinet and pour into his glass.

The glass sat empty on top of the marble countertop before him. He cocked his head and stared at the beveled edge of the glass. It refracted and reflected the light spilling from the kitchen into the den. It was probably a good thing that Laredo kept the liquor cabinet in the den instead of the kitchen. If it were in the kitchen, then it would have been far too accessible for Met on a regular basis. Walking into the den involved going through a narrow sort of doorway leading from a corner of the living room.

The house was simply too large for one man. That was a problem. Met knew that Laredo had purchased the place at the request of his ex-wife. They’d lived here with their daughter, and Laredo had at one time entertained thoughts of having more children. Then Helena had run off with someone else, and Laredo had been living here in this cavernous and rather depressing space with his only daughter—Bella.

Met turned his back on the liquor cabinet and walked back out to the living room. The only light came from the kitchen, which was the next room over. Met contemplated the horrendous amount of knickknacks in this room. The place was absolutely full of them. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, and there were mirrors on practically every wall. It looked like something out of a magazine, and Met hated the pristine sort of snobbishness of the space.

“I need to get my own place,” he muttered.

Feeling claustrophobic, Met flung open the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the deck. The night sky was barely visible in a neighborhood full of floodlights, mood lighting, and twinkling Christmas lights used like outdoor party lighting. There were no stars visible in the sky, and Met wondered how the residents could stand being here all the time. He had only been here a week or two and it was driving him crazy.

Turning, Met suddenly spotted the hot tub sunken into the far right side of the deck. The deck itself had been built around the 330-gallon spa. Met stared at the thing for all of ten seconds before making his decision.

Marching toward the spa, he threw open the lid. It was on. Likely the cleaning and maintenance service that Laredo hired to take care of the place also took care of the cleaning and chemicals. Met recalled Laredo casually mentioning that the hot tub was there for Met’s use, but until now, Met had been happier with his alcohol consumption to loosen up his tight and painful muscles.

He studied the instrument panel for a few moments and then pushed a button. The jets flared up, and a mushroom cloud of steam lifted into the air around the hot tub. There was a light in the depths of the well in the center of the spa. It radiated a bluish sort of glow that did not go much past the lip of the hot tub’s edges.

In this dim light, Met began stripping down to his underwear right there on Laredo’s deck. If the neighbors wanted to complain, they could. Met needed some relief, and he needed it now. Once he was standing there in nothing but his briefs, he sat on the edge of the tub and swung his feet over. He plunged his legs into the hot water and hissed as the ninety-plus degree heat seeped into his sore and tired muscles.

Met eased himself the rest of the way into the water and sighed. It felt heavenly to sit here and let all of his pain just leach out of his joints and muscles. He could totally understand how people talked about this as being a luxury. It certainly felt like one. His shoulder stopped screaming at him, and the desire for an alcoholic haze went away completely.

His brain started to think in clear, concise patterns. Mostly it settled on how much he enjoyed being around Daphne. When he was not consumed by pain, it was pretty much the only thing he thought about. Daphne. Daphne. Daphne.

The flash of light came as a total surprise. Met struggled to an upright position and reached for the control panel. He turned off the jets, and then as an afterthought, he turned off the light. There had been a big flash. It had seemed almost bright as a lighting strike, but there was no storm.

He heard a rustling in the bushes just beside the deck. Was that the source of the light? Was someone hiding in there? Who? Who would want to spy on him? Was it some weird reporter type looking for dirt on the Hernandez family? What would the point of that be? You would get better stuff on their family from attending regular social events around Denver than from hanging out at their private homes.

“Who’s there?” Met demanded.

More rustling, but no answer. It wasn’t an animal. Met had spent far too many years listening to animals moving around in the brush to think that what he was hearing had its roots in the animal kingdom. It was human.

“Hey!” Met snapped. “Get up and show yourself, you damn coward!”

Silence. Not just silence, but the eerie kind that made you think you were being watched. Met moved a little in the water, but the light slapping noise of it hitting the edges of the tub seemed loud in the night.

The bushes where he suspected the Peeping Tom to be hiding were just on the other side of the railing surrounding the hot tub. It was only a few feet away. Met stooped low inside the spa. He spread his arms wide and used his entire body to create a tidal wave of water that exited the hot tub and soaked the bushes.

There was a yelp as the water cascaded over the edge of the deck and bypassed the railing. Met slapped the instrument panel to turn on the light. The deck was suddenly filled with that bluish glow. The suddenness of it seemed to dazzle his eyes, but not nearly as much as it bothered the intruder.

There was a man—Met was absolutely sure it was a man—stumbling around behind the railing as he tried to leave the bushes. The guy was tripping and cursing as he fumbled around in what was now mud and wet grass. Met caught an outline of a narrow sort of man of middling height. But the guy was carrying a Polaroid camera in his hand. He held it up above his head as he struggled to get traction in the wet grass and hurry out of there.

“Stop right there!” Met shouted. “I’ve got a gun right here, and I’ll shoot you where you stand for trespassing!”

That was a lie, but Met had a feeling there were enough evil Hernandez rumors flying around that Met could have claimed to have a rocket launcher and people would believe it.

Sure enough, the man stopped in his tracks and turned slowly. But in the process, he backed into the inky shadows on the side of the house, which prevented Met from seeing who it actually was.

“What do you want?” the man called out. “You can’t just murder me in your yard. There are laws against that. Even for a Hernandez.”

“I’m not going to murder you,” Met drawled. “I want to know why you’re here.”

“You need to stay away from her!” The man’s voice grew tight and strange. The pitch was raised, and he sounded crazy as a loon. “You’re going to ruin her! You’ve tainted her.” The man was actually moaning every single word out of his mouth. The sound raised the hair on the back of Met’s neck. “She’ll have to be cleansed! Do you understand? She has to be cleansed because of you!”

“You’re crazy,” Met said decisively. There was no doubt in his mind that this was true. He just didn’t quite know what to do about it. “Who are you talking about?”

Of course, Met had a bad feeling that he knew exactly who this guy was raving about. The man choked and made a noise like an animal gnashing its teeth. “You touched her! You touched her, and now she’s tainted.”

“Justin, right?” Met could not resist blurting that out just to see what the man would say.

There was an actual stammered curse, and the moaning and groaning stopped. “Stay away from her!”

Justin shouted the words before bolting away from the backyard. Met could have followed, but he was in his underwear with no shoes. There was little enough point in trying to make contact with a crazy man who seemed bent on scaring Met away from Daphne. There was probably more point in attempting to go inside and phone Daphne to make sure that she was safe.

Met levered himself up out of the hot tub. Slamming the lid closed, he headed back into the house. Careful of his wet feet on the tile floors, Met tried to find his phone. Where had he left it anyway? He never recalled. Then a mental image of the liquor cabinet came to mind.

There were chill bumps all over his body as he tiptoed on wet feet back through the living room and the den. Finally, he located his phone on the liquor cabinet’s marble-topped counter. That was when he realized that he had a missed phone call and two texts. They were all from Daphne.

Met read her text and cursed out loud. CRAZY EX LEFT ME A PACKAGE. POLICE TOOK IT AWAY. BE CAREFUL.

Apparently, Justin the loser had made a few stops before coming by Met’s place. That meant the guy really got around. Didn’t he have anything better to do? That was always the thing with criminals and crazy people. They seemed to have no lives other than their pointed harassment of perfectly normal individuals with better things to do than pander to weirdos.

Met ran upstairs to get dressed. He left a trail of wet spots and soaking wet underpants all over Laredo’s bedroom as he found clean clothes and pulled them on. Of course, he’d left his boots on the deck, which meant he had to run back downstairs and find them. His hair was sticking up at all angles, and he felt like he was running laps on a body not quite fit for service. But that didn’t matter.

Then he yanked the front door open and stopped short. Sitting in the center of Laredo’s oversized front porch with its Adirondack chairs and coordinating outdoor cushions and fake topiaries was a very plain cardboard box. It was square in shape and had absolutely no identifying marks on it.

Met exhaled a sigh and pulled his phone from his jeans pocket. He typed a quick text to Daphne letting her know that he had received a box too. Then he reluctantly called the police. If there was any sort of chance that the incidents this evening could help a case against Justin on behalf of Daphne, then Met just wanted to do it right.

“911 what’s your emergency?”

Were all 911 operators nasally? It seemed like a recording or something. Met went through the usual rigmarole about where he was and what he was doing. Then finally the operator dispatched someone to his address.

“Yeah, I’ll stay right here,” Met told the 911 operator. “I’m not going to move. And I’m not going to…”

“Sir?”

“There are flames…”

No sooner had Met spoken than he felt the heat of a bonfire hot on his face. He was flung backwards. He’d thrown a lit match on a barbeque grill full of charcoal and lighter fluid enough times in his life to know when he needed to hit the deck.

Turning, Met dove back into the house as a ball of flame belched up into the sky. He pulled Laredo’s plush entry rug up over his head as flaming bits of cardboard rained down on him. The scent of burning lighter fluid, gasoline, and something else he could not identify filled the air.

Spinning himself sideways on the floor, Met groped with his foot for the front door. He needed to close it. He needed to put a wall of solid metal between himself and that ball of flames. Finally, he felt the door. Kicking it closed, he heard a satisfying slam as it hit home and the front of the house shuddered with the force.

Sirens blared outside. He could hear them coming and knew at least that someone would be able to put out the flames before the front of the house was damaged beyond repair. Met rolled out of the carpet and glanced down. The plush nap was spotted with burn marks where the flames had burned holes in it. He had a few of those on his arms and chest as well. His T-shirt had more than a few holes in it. Reaching up, he felt his eyebrows and sighed when he realized they’d been singed too.

“Damn you, Justin,” Met muttered. “I’m going to rip your balls off and feed them to the coyotes out on the ranch. Just you wait.”