Welcome to the neighborhood?  Could she have said it with any less sincerity in her voice?  But this was the third move in five years.  He needed to make it work this time.<br/><br/>Closing the door, Darius gave a sigh of relief as he pulled the gun out of the belt in back.   It had been right up against a backbone that had surgery on it.  He wondered if he could expect a visit from the apartment manager tomorrow.  If so, perhaps he should give up on the paint job for the night and get to bed, expecting another knock on the door in the morning.  He'd been using the painting to avoid going to bed, though.  The nightmares of his last night as a cop had returned with a vengeance.  And usually those nightmares ended with him waking with a scream, sweating profusely.  Hopefully not tonight, because that would make his neighbor even angrier.<br/><br/>Then it occurred to him that it was now Sunday morning.  Which meant the apartment manager would probably hold off visiting him until Monday morning.  And rather than waking his neighbor at around 6 am with a scream from a nightmare, he could hold off sleeping until later in the morning and work on his novel tonight.  Crime novelist had become his new profession since going into witness protection, much to the dismay of the U.S. Marshall assigned to him.  It wasn't that Agent Garfield objected to Darius becoming a writer.  The problem was that he'd become a successful writer, thus giving him a higher profile than Garfield was comfortable with.  So far, he'd managed to keep his picture off the back cover of his novels, much to the dismay of his book publisher.  She was the one woman who had verified his new face was handsome and should be on that back cover to boost sales.  But he was making Marsha Clark and her publishing house a tidy profit, so they weren't going to complain too loudly.<br/><br/>The trick to writing crime novels for Darius was to not write about crimes related to his own career as a cop.  That was a recipe for disaster.  Someone would figure out that Officer Malone was still alive, and not dead as the Police Commissioner had told the press five years ago.  No, he took his writing from the experiences of everyone else except himself.  He had three successful novels to his credit, though his style had received mixed reviews.  His harshest critics called his writing "jerky and abrupt", while other critics praised his "terse style that goes straight to the point".  The bottom line, though, was that he was making a profit off his books.  Enough that he could have probably bought a house instead of renting an apartment.  But he had already withdrawn within himself too much.  A house would have only made him more isolated.  An apartment meant that he was forced to socialize.<br/><br/>The early morning hours was a bust for writing, though.  Sitting in front of his laptop, he was distracted by thoughts of the angry young woman who had called him out about the volume of his stereo.  She was cute, but clearly not happy with him as a neighbor.  He would have to go to an electronics store later in the day and get some wireless headphones.  Then he'd be able to move around while painting without being connected by a cord to his stereo.  And he could play his music as loud as he wanted without her hearing it.  He eventually dozed off in front of the computer about six in the morning.  Which meant that when he woke up screaming from his nightmare, it was 2 in the afternoon.  Surely she couldn't complain about noise at that time.