unit, was six feet tall and two hundred pounds of solid muscle. Jessie sometimes felt like she was dating her personal bodyguard, though it didn’t look that way right now.
“Comfortable?” she asked as he moved over to the couch and lay down on it with his bare feet on the arm.
“Very,” he said before teasing her. “You getting those dishes sudsy enough?”
“You’re about to find out how sudsy they are if you don’t take your smelly feet off the arm of my couch.”
He complied without a word, though he did stick his tongue out at her. She tried not to grin.
In addition to having the tough guy in the food coma around, it was also reassuring that her apartment was essentially a vault. It had been designed that way when she was being hunted by her own birth father, a serial killer named Xander Thurman, who had decided that she would either join the family business or be a victim of it.
So she’d gotten a place in a building with retired cops as security guards, a 24/7 monitored, gated parking lot, and security cameras in every hallway and public space. But that was just the beginning.
She was one of the few residents—all in high-profile jobs—who lived on the secret thirteenth floor, which was unknown to most people in the building. It could only be accessed via stairwells from the twelfth or fourteenth floors, hidden behind utility closets.
In addition to all that, Jessie had set up her own elaborate security system for the condo, including multiple locks and alarms. The one advantage of having been married to a murderous but wealthy and successful financial advisor was that when she divorced him, she became independently wealthy herself.
Despite all those precautions, she knew that Kyle, a sociopath who had fooled her for a decade, was wily and relentless. He had almost gotten away with murder. He had negotiated his way out of a long prison sentence. She wasn’t going to underestimate his ability to circumvent her security precautions.
“You up for dessert?” Hannah asked her from the dinner table, pulling Jessie back into the present as she rinsed off the last of the dishes. “I made pear tarts.”
Jessie was full but didn’t want to upset the tenuous good vibes of the evening.
“I’m about to burst but I could try a small one,” she said, getting a satisfied smile from her half-sister.
Any smile she could get was a win these days. Though everything in the apartment seemed pleasant on the surface there was definitely some tension simmering just below. Ryan had asked for Hannah’s permission first before broaching the idea of living together with Jessie. While the request was thoughtful, Jessie sensed that Hannah had consented more out of politeness than any genuine excitement.
It was clear that Hannah wanted her to be happy. But she also obviously didn’t love sharing a two-bedroom apartment with an affectionate couple, especially when both of them were law enforcement professionals.
As Jessie considered this, Hannah walked over, pulled the tarts out of the oven and, without a word, dropped the tiniest one, which was also a bit charred, on the wet counter next to Jessie.
“Enjoy,” she muttered.
“Thanks,” Jessie said, choosing to focus on the offer of dessert rather than the manner in which it was delivered.
Sometimes Hannah’s mild resentment came out in the form of passive-aggressive teenage jabs or, in this case, burned pear tarts. Sometimes it manifested through sullen silence. It wasn’t constant but it emerged often enough to be noticeable. Her green eyes would turn stormy, her tall frame would get slouchy, and her sandy blonde hair would suddenly be tied back in a severe, disdainful ponytail.
The circumstances weren’t ideal for Jessie and Ryan either, neither of whom felt they could really let loose romantically with a seventeen-year-old in a bedroom just across the living room. They’d been living together in this configuration for less than a month, but it was already becoming clear that a conversation about their future living situation was inevitable.
“With all the security you have here, maybe we could invest in some bedroom soundproofing,” was the only quip Ryan had made on the matter.
And then there was the other thing, the one that hung over everything. Was Hannah Dorsey stable? Jessie had recently assumed custody of the half-sister she previously didn’t know existed, having discovered her only after their shared serial killer father murdered Hannah’s adoptive parents, and then another killer named Bolton Crutchfield had slaughtered her foster parents, kidnapped Hannah, and tried to