Close To The Edge (Westen #2) by Suzanne Ferrell

voyeur neighbor.
    The first morning he’d come home to stay with his dad, nearly two years ago, he’d gotten a rather rude reminder of small-town etiquette. If you didn’t want your neighbor, the widow Munroe, getting a bird’s eye view of you in the buff, you closed your shades at night before taking off your clothes. You didn’t open them again until at least your underwear was on in the morning.
    He smiled and shook his head at the memory. Dad had gotten quite a kick out of that, especially since every time he saw Mrs. Munroe from then on, the elderly lady blushed and gave him a sly smile.
    That was one thing he missed about living in the city—anonymity. Your neighbors didn’t try to get to know you, didn’t want to know you. And they certainly didn’t get a good look at you completely naked, unless you wanted them to.
    He stalked across to the bathroom and turned on the shower. He stood beneath the hot water, letting it run over his body. The hot-water heater in this old house gave out quick. Pretty soon the water temperature would turn cold, so he enjoyed the few minutes of near-scalding water pounding over his muscles.
    When he finished showering, he wiped the steam off the glass and studied himself a moment. The three round, puckered scars on his torso stuck out like neon lights. He fingered the one on his upper left chest. When he’d awakened in the ICU, the surgeon had told him that if that bullet had been just a fraction of an inch lower it would’ve hit his aorta, and there wouldn’t have been a chance in hell of saving him.
    He slid his finger lower to the one on his left abdomen. That one had cost him his spleen, but at least that was an organ you could live without, if you didn’t bleed to death before help got there. That was the only thing he’d managed to do right that winter night three years ago. The cold kept him from completely bleeding out.
    Finally, he slid his finger back up to the midsection of his right ribcage. That one had been the worst of the three. Broke three ribs while it bounced around inside his lung. He still had two thin scars from where the chest tubes sucked the blood out of his lung for nearly a week, trying to re-inflate his collapsed lung. Every time he got a cold and coughed, it still hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.
    He stared at all three wounds in the mirror. The betrayal that caused his injuries and his near death hurt worse than any of the bullets had. Most days he tried not to think about it and most nights he tried not to let a bottle of Jack drown out the pain.
    Opening the medicine cabinet, he looked for his shaving cream. As he lifted it out, he saw the small glass bottle behind it. He picked it up and stared at the contents. One mangled bullet and a plain gold wedding band—souvenirs to remind him of his own stupidity. He shoved the bottle back into the farthest corner of the cabinet. He couldn’t change what happened in the past, and it had little to do with hurrying Bobby Roberts out of his life and town today.
     
    After receiving Gage’s rude pounding on her door before dawn, Bobby decided to delay her meeting with him and pursue her case with a visit to the bank. Outside the brick building, she tugged her sweater shell and cardigan set down over the top of her slacks, moistened her lips, took a deep breath and entered as if in a hurry. She stepped past the line of patrons and tellers to the office nearest the door.
    “May I help you?” The platinum blonde—Geraldine Taylor, New Account Representative, her name plaque boldly proclaimed—looked up from her desk. Lips the color of Pepto Bismol, sky-blue eye shadow applied with a trowel and cheekbones sculpted from three shades of blush suggested she hadn’t had an updated look since the early seventies.
    Bobby schooled her attitude, plastered an embarrassed smile on her face and held out her hand. “Oh, I do hope you can. I have a bit of a problem.”
    The female bank officer, dressed in a navy