Page 22 of King Among the Dead

“He trusts you, though,” Kay said, surprising her. “The way he looks at you…”

She trailed off, and Rose wanted to askwhat way?Because she’d met his gaze again and again, knew intimately the way it could chill or heat her, knew that she could drown in its intensity sometimes. But she didn’t understand it, not really. Not in any way she’d dare name.

“He’ll tell you eventually,” Kay continued with a resigned air. “When he does, I guess we’ll see.”

“See what?” If she bristled, it was only natural. Kay was being strange and distrustful, and Rose was more than a little hurt by it.

Kay glanced up and met her gaze, her own flat and cold as a shark’s behind her lenses. “If you can handle the truth,” she said, and went back to work.

EIGHT

Her tense conversation with Kay in Beck’s bedroom made her think that a crisis point was looming. It came sooner than expected, and not in the manner she’d predicted.

Even as she grew to love her new life, the specter of her old one never loomed too far in the back of her mind. She feared the day that the authorities would turn up on the doorstep wanting to ask Beck about Tabitha; that someone had seen them walking through the rain that evening, had seen the stippling of blood on Beck’s nose and known him for what he was. That Mr. Fisher would go by the old apartment, angry that she hadn’t shown up for work, and find the body, file some sort of report. Someone had to have found Tabitha’s body by now; if nothing else, the smell would have alerted the neighbors, eventually. The landlord would have come knocking, and found a horrible surprise.

All of Rose’s old Child Services paperwork had been doctored to make her seem younger than she was, but it had existed, locked up in Tabitha’s liquor cabinet. If Tabitha had been found, then someone would know to look for Rose. Someone might even thinkRosehad been the one to kill her.

The thought didn’t leave her shuddering like it should, but the prospect of being caught did.

Her social worker would have contacted the police, surely. And then what? APB? Fliers? Canvassing?

If they hadn’t been spotted, no one would know to look for her here. And she hadn’t left the townhouse but once, and that was their shopping trip to Steinman’s.

Had they been caught on a camera there? Beck had paid with a card, which would be attached to his address, and phone number. They could befound, if someone wanted to find them.

She lay awake some nights after she’d turned out the lamps, trying to convince herself that, in the scheme of all that was wrong in this city, one dead foster mother and a missing foster kid weren’t at the top of anyone’s worry list. There was the Castor family to worry about, after all: the city’s unthinkably powerful crime family, responsible for the murders of politicians, judges, and businessmen, clean crimes that splashed across the newspapers, but which never went to court; loopholes and a lack of evidence and payments made through handshakes. The city had a drug problem, and a random crime problem, and an energy problem, pollution problem – too many problems to name. Rose Greer wasn’t a problem by comparison.

Still. She worried. So when she waited for a crisis, she waited for the day that she would bring hell raining down on this house and the people she’d come to think of as her family.

But that wasn’t what happened at all.

The rain was mostly sleet at this point, hitting the window with the force of thrown pebbles, too unsettling to allow her to sleep. After an hour of tossing around in the dark, wondering about Beck, who’d gone off into that cold, miserable mess two hours before, she belted on her robe and went down to the library in her new shearling-lined slippers.

She was almost used to such finery by now; comfortable with it in a way she hadn’t been before.

She built up a roaring fire, picked up her current read – a meandering, literary doorstop coming-of-age story about a family’s small, petty dramas – and snuggled into her chair.

She’d read only four pages or so when she heard a loud crash from the kitchen.

Beck, she thought with a jolt. He always came in through the back door after he’d been…out.

She dropped the book and headed that way at a jog.

In the kitchen, the door that led out to the courtyard stood open, and there was enough glow from the security light outside to reveal the silver flash of sleet blowing in around the half-crumpled figure who clutched the doorjamb, other hand pressed to his side.

“Beck!” She hit the light switch and filled the room with a warm glow.

It was indeed Beck, soaked to the bone, head bowed, wet hair hiding his face. He was all bent arms and legs, wet leather, a wounded, feral thing on the doorstep, and she went straight to him without hesitation, pulse leaping as a cold blast of fear for him shot through her chest.

Up close, she could hear the unsteady rasp of his breathing; see his hair dance and flicker as he trembled. Sleet pelted her face and her feet as it fell in around him.

She laid a hand on his shoulder. “Beck? What’s wrong?”

He lifted his head, his face starkly pale, bloodless, his teeth bared in a grimace. “It’s fine,” he hissed. “Go back–” He pulled the hand from his side to wave her away, and there was no mistaking the slick, crimson shine of blood. It covered his whole palm, had pooled between each finger. The faint light picked out a glimmering patch along his torso: it was his blood. He was hurt.

“Oh my God.” She gripped the arm he held the doorframe with in both hands and tried to tug him inside.

He resisted, but only weakly. “Rose…no…you can’t…”

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