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name like Lawanda. I think somebody thought he was being funny.”
     
    I felt my own lips betray me, pulling into a faint smile. “And the other thing? I’m supposed to play house as your girlfriend?”
     
    He shrugged and took a long drink from his cup. “That might have been my idea,” he said calmly. When I realized he wasn’t going to elaborate further, I rolled my eyes and turned away.
     
    “Right. Well, I’ve got to go pack for our little vacation at the Peachtree Overlook.”
     
    “The Peachtree Overlook, huh?” Nathan called out behind me. “Sounds like a nice little place.”
     
    I could have corrected him, but I only smiled. Nathan had inflicted quite a few surprises on me today. It was only fair that I got to inflict one on him.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
     
    “You can’t be serious.”
     
    I couldn’t stop smiling as Nathan and I pulled into the parking lot of the Peachtree Overlook, which must have looked like a dump compared to the estates he’d lived in his whole life. His mansion just outside the city wasn’t his family home, and given that it was meant for only one person, I couldn’t begin to imagine what the house he’d grown up in had looked like.
     
    “This is it,” I told him, trying to keep the demented glee out of my tone as I parked the old sky blue Honda the department had lent me in one of the narrow spots. The car was an auction vehicle, a prize seized from a dealer or some other low-level criminal who couldn’t afford anything better.
     
    It was all part of the plan to make Nathan and I look like a couple just barely keeping our heads above the poverty line. Those were the kinds of people nobody saw, the ones who weren’t homeless, but who stood one small disaster away from losing everything. Nobody wanted to talk about those people, because that meant they’d have to acknowledge they existed and might need help. And nobody wanted to be inconvenienced enough to actually help them. It was easier just to forget about them and move on.
     
    Nathan was, quite clearly, one of those people. As I killed the engine and stepped out of the car, he kept staring at the apartments with a wrinkled nose and slack jaw. There was nothing but contempt in his eyes for the place. I couldn’t resist making a remark.
     
    “You know, some people would be damn grateful to live in a place like this.”
     
    I’d expected him to scoff and say something about how he wasn’t one of them , but instead, he only sighed and opened his door, muttering that it would have to do.
     
    We took our duffel bags stuffed with only our necessities out of the trunk and lugged them up the stairs to the second floor. Our room was 213, situated in the perfect spot in the middle of the hall where we had a view of the stairs, the lot, and partway around the corner from our living room window. It would make keeping an eye on the activity outside our apartment easy enough, and I immediately felt my nerves settle.
     
    If you need anything, just holler, Captain Pierce had said. As close together as these units were, I figured the other officers would have no problem hearing me.
     
    “Do you want to do the honors?” I asked Nathan, offering him the dirty bronze key to our new home.
     
    He smiled at me and plucked the key from my hand. “Sure, Lawanda, ” he answered, but his smug grin faded a moment later when we saw what lay in wait for us inside.
     
    Captain Pierce had failed to mention that this unit was an efficiency. The bedroom—if it could even be called that—was right on the other side of the living room and separated only by an old floor screen with tattered cloth panels. The kitchen had about six inches of counter space on either side of a Fifties-style stove beneath a microwave stained yellow from a previous tenant’s tobacco addiction.
     
    At least, I hoped it was a tobacco addiction. Anything harder could leave a place coated in the kind of nasty things you definitely didn’t want to