Page 65 of King Among the Dead

It turned out that getting hit in the face with snowburned, and Beck fought dirty.

Wet, shivering, laughing so hard her ribs ached, they finally sought the warmth of the fire when it began to grow dim, and by then the roast was ready to come out of the oven.

After, Kay put her foot down, and they all watchedIt’s a Wonderful Lifeon the big TV in the parlor, dark save the screen and the twinkling colored lights of the tree.

“Thank you,” Rose said, when they were getting ready for bed.

Beck was folding back the sheets and glanced up. “For what?” Light, casual, as if he didn’t know.

“This is the best Christmas I’ve ever had.”

His head tilted, expression sad for a brief flicker – a deeply sympathetic sort of sadness – before a slow smile warmed his face. He seemed to glow. “Me, too.”

They met on their knees in the center of the mattress, slow, sure touches, and warm, lingering kisses.

Later – days, weeks, years – she would look back on this moment; treasure it; carry it in her pocket and rub it like a talisman, until it was smooth and vague. One of the best moments, and one of the last, before everything went to hell.

Literally.

TWENTY

After New Year’s, hunting began again in earnest. Castor seemed to have dealers everywhere – and enforcers, too. The nightly news fixated on the violence in the streets, the bodies, the drug crisis. One ugly story after the next, and it was clear the crime families were running the city, rather than any sort of government official.

The rain slackened to a thin mist, and the security lights from the warehouse behind them glimmered on the surface of the river in front of them. Rose leaned her forearms on the metal rail at the water’s edge and fished a bit of clean cloth from inside her jacket. She wiped her knife clean with long, careful strokes, using her thumb nail to press the cloth right along the hilt where the blood had gone dry and gummy.

Beside her, Beck lit a cigarette and exhaled smoke in thick, gray plumes. “He knows his people are being killed,” he grumbled. “Why isn’t he changing the way he operates?”

Ithadbeen seeming too easy. Anyone who left their men out to dry like that was either stupidly uncaring…or he meant for this to happen.

The latter idea left her deeply unsettled, but she didn’t say anything. She slipped her knife back into its sheath, and bit back what she wanted to tell him.

Bit it back the next night, and the next. When her knife sank deep. When blood splattered up a wall. Rose kept holding, and holding, and holding her tongue, for three weeks. Until she couldn’t anymore.

They were in the basement, sparring on the mats in the center of the floor. He never truly sparred with her – didn’t grapple with her or throw punches beyond the sorts of slow, telegraphed blows he had to in order to show her an evasion or a block.

“Like this.” He pinched her wrist between his fingers, and with his other hand turned it, and showed her how to duck out of his grip. His hand felt like a steel band, but she managed to wrench free. Because it was really that simple? Or because he’d let her?

“Good.” He stepped off the mat and went for his water bottle, scraping sweat-damp hair off his face.

Rose took her own drink, and studied him: the tension across his shoulders, the harsh set of his jaw. He swished water around in his mouth and stared off unseeing into the middle distance.

He swallowed and said, “Tonight’s target used to box. A bare-knuckle underground ring. He’s handsy. Prefers pummeling people to death rather than using weapons – blunt, edged, or otherwise. He–”

“Beck.”

His head whipped around, as if startled. His brows went up.

She’d bitten it all back, but she realized she couldn’t anymore, and she wasn’t sorry about it. It needed saying. “I’ve been thinking,” she said, “that maybe we should keep a little lower profile.”

He frowned. “What?” It wasn’t a question he usually asked.

“We’ve been…visible…lately. And busy. Castor hasn’t reacted yet, but I have a bad feeling that he will. Maybe we should back off a little.”

“Back off?” He sounded dumbfounded.

“For a while, anyway.”

He stared at her, expressionless – save the tic of a muscle in his cheek. “Are you frightened?” he asked, finally, his voice flat.

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