He was out there again. This time he started watching early and saw his painful approach as he limped down the sidewalk and finally dropped onto the park bench with evident relief.

                He had twitched the curtain aside just tiniest bit so that he didn’t have to hold it as he peered out, because he didn’t want him to know he was spying on him.

                And now, watching him, seeing the way he stared at his house as if nothing else on the street existed, made him feel like a creep himself. Was he losing his marbles or something? His house was locked. He had a shotgun upstairs, a hand-me-down from his father, which he could load with birdshot in no time at all. If the guy tried anything, he wouldn’t be able to get away with it. With birdshot he wouldn’t even need a good aim to plaster him painfully enough that he could escape.

                So what was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he just ignore it? What if it had been someone local, someone he knew by sight, doing the same thing? He wouldn’t be at all worried.

                But he wasn’t local, and that made him nervous.

                Okay, he told himself, try being rational. The guy obviously had suffered some kind of injury, which made him less than threatening to begin with. Maybe the injury had also affected his neck and he was having trouble turning his head.

                Possible, yeah. That stare might be nothing but a stiff neck.

                Maybe he just needed to cool it and stop acting and thinking like someone on the edge.

                Of course he did, but the realization didn’t help. At some level something was niggling at him and wouldn’t give up.

                He saw a police car pull up near the bench. The man didn’t move, so apparently he wasn’t disturbed by the approach of the police. Then Kai climbed out after training his spotlight on the man, who made no attempt to shield his face from the light.

                Man, he thought, Kai was working a long day. And all because of him. But his concern warmed him. He wasn’t treating his nervousness as if he thought he was simply a ditzy bachelor with too much time on his hands.

                He watched as Kai walked over to the bench. Apparently he said something, because the man pulled out his wallet from his hip pocket and passed something to Kai. Kai took it, spoke for a minute, then returned to his patrol car.

                No doubt running the guy’s ID. Finally Lu Han allowed relief to trump over his nerves. Kai would sort it out, and the stranger was on notice that he had been seen. Good.

                The man had the bench so that he was looking directly at the inspector’s car and away from him. So maybe he did find it difficult to turn his head.

                All right, he should just go to bed and forget it. Kai would let him know if anything should concern him.

                Except that he remained rooted. A sign, he decided, of having had too much time on his hands. He wasn’t the type to stand at his window and watch the goings-on outside, unlike some of his nosier neighbours.

                After a few minutes Kai climbed out of his car again, approached the man and handed him something – probably his ID or driver’s license. They chatted for a moment and then Kai got back in the car and drove off.

                Okay, so there was no immediate evidence that the guy was a threat. He glanced over at the digital clock on his DVD player and realized there were only minutes before the guy moved on again, assuming he followed his usual, almost compulsive, schedule.

                Driven by some impulse, maybe the need to put the matter to rest now, he hurried into his kitchen, poured two mugs of the coffee he’d made a couple of hours ago, still hot and rich-smelling. Then he slipped on his jacket and went out the front door with the two mugs.

                As he approached him, the man on the bench appeared startled in a way he hadn’t when Kai had stopped to speak with him. He guessed he hadn’t expected a homeowner to come out at this hour.

                Reaching him, he could finally make out his features. Nicely chiseled, fair and handsome. . What am I thinking? But he couldn’t tell the color of his eyes and could see only that his hair was dark and short. The rest of him, seated as he was,