Page 71 of Price of Angels

“What about that girl?” Jacob asked, scowling.

“An unfortunate statistic.” Ghost gave them both a curt nod and stepped away, headed for the clubhouse. “Now get off my lot, both of you.”

Mercy lingered a moment.

“That’s just how it is then?” Abraham asked him, bristling with hostility and frustration.

Mercy recalled what Michael had said about these men. In his gut, suspicion was hardening to assuredness. Michael wasn’t his favorite brother, but he was right on this count. He could smell the bad coming off these two in hot shimmers of acrid stink.

“Yeah,” he said, “that’s just how it is.”

Michael spent the day on his bike, the cold biting through jacket, cut, and leather gloves, flicking in around the rims of his Ray-Bans and blasting his eyes until they were dry and painful. He rode through all the rough parts of the city, venturing outside of it to check in with some of his usual rats and contacts. No one knew an Abraham or Jacob Jessup. No one knew where he might find them. His lunch was a gas station turkey club, with a Pepsi, that he ate on the sidewalk. A fresh pack of smokes. All afternoon the clouds piled in one after the other, until the sky was rounded and fleecy overhead. The promised snow, moving into place in time for Christmas.

By the time he gave up – not truly gave up, he reminded himself, just calling off the hunt for the day – he felt old, and stiff, and chilled. The faint glow of light behind the tinted windows of Bell Bar beckoned him off his Harley and through the doors, where the welcome heat blasted across him.

His hands were so cold he had trouble stripping off his gloves, and he didn’t unzip his cut right away, left it and the jacket on as he slid into his favorite back booth, where he could see and hear everything without being seen or heard. He didn’t have a book with him. He hadn’t even remembered one, in his preoccupation of the day.

The bar was full of people: last-minute shoppers, the usual drinkers, probably one or more of his brothers. He didn’t see any of it; it was all a multicolored blur. His eyes went straight to Holly, the luscious shape of her as she moved between tables in purple shorts and white tank top.

She noticed him, smiled, went back toward the bar. There was an unconscious, feminine swing to her hips as she came to his table. He knew what those hips felt like now, the hard points of the bones against his palms, the smooth skin.

She set a steaming white mug in front of him. Coffee. “There’s Jack in it,” she said. “You look cold.”

Her hand lingered on the table a moment, after she’d put down the drink. Michael laid his over it, running his fingers over the small bones of her knuckles in a silent greeting and thank you.

“Snack?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Nah. I can wait.”

That afternoon before work, Holly had browned the ground beef she’d bought at Leroy’s and cooked her pasta, layering up the lasagna in the pan and putting it in the fridge for that night. She’d cleaned her apartment from one side to the other. The rug was still worn, the sofa threadbare at the front edges, but the loft smelled of lemons and mint and fresh things when they walked into it at ten fifteen, and Holly was pleased to see the faint glimmer of the floorboards, the shiny white of the tile at her kitchenette backsplash.

“It’ll take about an hour,” she said, going to turn the oven on as Michael engaged all the locks on the door and hung up his jacket and cut. “But we could have the salad before, if you’re too hungry.” She frowned as she pulled the casserole dish from the fridge and lifted off the cling film. “If you eat salad, I mean. Maybe you don’t. Do bikers eat salad?” She was on the verge of babbling, a little nervous about getting this whole dinner-for-a-good-man thing right.

She laughed as she opened up the oven, slid the lasagna inside. “Is that part of your outlaw code? ‘Thou shalt not eat salad’?”

She turned to him, after the oven was shut, and got caught in the fall of his gaze from across the narrow counter of the kitchen island.

All that slumbering intensity that dwelt behind narrowed eyes and frosty, disinterested glances was now laid bare, unguarded and laser-focused on her. It was a mask, his expressionless stare, an unconscious one and not an act, but a mask all the same. And beneath it, he was perhaps more alive and vibrant than anyone she’d ever met, even if he never put voice to the radiant energy. Even if he was as precise and intentional as always. A fire, trapped in a man, trying to be a statue.

Holly took a breath that trembled just a little in her throat. “So is that a no on the salad?”

“We have an hour?” he asked.

She nodded, pulse fluttering at the thought of all that could take place in that hour. “Yeah.”

He dropped down out of sight, kneeling.

Surprised, Holly leaned over the island to see what he was doing.

He was scrunching up the leg of his jeans, reaching down into the top of his boot. When he stood, he held a long, glinting knife, the same one he’d run through Dewey’s ribs. It was clean now. He twirled it between two fingers and offered the brass-edged wooden handle to her. “Let’s see what you can do with this.”

This was ridiculous. “I’m not going to pretend to stab you with an actual knife,” Holly said, folding her arms as she faced off from Michael, careful to keep the wicked tip of the knife pointed safely to the side.

They were standing in an open patch of floor, between her living room and bathroom, the ten o’ clock news chattering to itself on the TV, the loft beginning to smell like dinner. She’d changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt, tied her hair up in a bun.

Michael was playing biker sensei as he stood with unfathomable calm, sinister in all black, hands giving an impression of relaxation at his sides. Holly knew better. She could see he was drawn tight as a bowstring.

“Just come at me,” he said. “Come at me like you want to stab me, and don’t hold back. Really go for it.”

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