The memories sped up, becoming a blur of the weeks that followed and the growing pain that came, not from her healing injuries, but from the way Dez had changed, how he kept trying to call magic that didn’t exist, and how each failure had pushed him further over the line. His temper sharpened. He quit his job, then got pissed when she cornered him about it.
Show me, the inner voice said. And she did.
“Don’t you get it?” he snapped, boots thudding an angry staccato as he paced the apartment like a caged animal. “The ‘work your way up’ thing is a fucking pipe dream. The only way people like us can get what we deserve is by being creative.”
In the past few weeks he had gained a good thirty pounds of pure muscle, shaved his head, and gotten tattoos to cover the handcuff scars: twin bands of strange symbols done in dark blue-green ink. He was turning into a stranger, and a scary one, but that didn’t stop her from putting herself in his path, making him choose between stopping and mowing her down. He stopped very close to her. Glared at her.
She glared right back. “And by getting creative you mean working ‘security’”—she scorned the word with finger quotes—“for the highest bidder?”
“How did—” He bit it off. “Shit. You fucking patterned me.”
It was her uniquely odd skill, an almost savantlike ability to put together seemingly unrelated pieces of information into a pattern, and from there a prediction that Fallon’s gang task force could use, like where and when a drug drop was likely to be, whether a particular drive-by was random or part of a larger whole, or—and this was something she was keeping far away from the cops—that Dez was hiring himself out as muscle for the Smaldone wannabes.
The two-bit mobster types were trying to step into the vacuum left by the demise of Denver’s once-great crime family. They didn’t seem to get that there wasn’t any vacuum; the gangs had already filled the niche. But while the Smaldone Lites were figuring that out, they had a habit of getting messily dead. Thus the bodyguards.
She shook her head. “Jesus, Dez. How could you work for those guys after everything we’ve done to clean things up around here?”
His face settled into the impassive mask she had quickly come to hate, the one where shadows darkened his eyes to an unfathomable murk. “The money’s good.”
“It’s a shortcut,” she snapped, drilling a finger into his chest. It was like poking a building. “Your job—”
“Wouldn’t have gotten me what I need in time,” he interrupted.
It was the first she had heard of any deadline. Oh, shit. Now what had he gotten himself into? Or, she had to ask herself, was he trying to buy himself out of something?
“You’re getting a place of your own.” She made herself say it. She had known he didn’t like the way she had gone from practically throwing herself at him to “let’s wait until we’re getting along better,” but she hadn’t thought he would bail.
He looked offended. “Hell, no.”
The tightness in her chest went down by half. “Then what is it? Tell me what you need the money for. Did you lose a bet? Are you trying to do something? Buy something?”
Her mind, stupid optimist that it was, flashed on the ring he had caught her trying on the other day in the local pawnshop. Not girlie—far from it—it was a finely detailed snake that curled around her finger and knotted around a polished black stone. Obsidian, the guy behind the counter had called it. She hadn’t cared that it had probably belonged to one of the Cobras—to her it wasn’t a cobra, it was a snake, like his given name. She had cared, though, that the pawnbroker wanted close to four months′ rent for it.
“I need firepower,” Dez said flatly.
That was so far off the ring fantasy that she just stared at him for a few seconds. “We’ve got guns.”
“I don’t think they’ll be enough.” He hesitated, then reached for her. This time he made contact, tracing a finger down her cheek.
But instead of heat, the move brought a shiver of dread. “Tell me what’s wrong. Please.”
He stared down at her. Then he said, reluctantly, “Hood gets out the day after tomorrow. And the word on the street is that you’re going to be his first stop.”
“He . . .” She trailed off as her stomach knotted and adrenaline kicked through her bloodstream as she flashed on sharpened teeth, scary-dead eyes, and a nose piercing that flared out to wicked points. Rumor had it that the incarcerated cobra de rey was more superstitious than ever these days, and had decided that making her his bitch would give him the power to add the VW′s turf to his own.
They had known he’d be getting out soon. They just hadn’t known when.
Or at least she hadn’t.
“Why didn’t I hear about this?” She was the one with the informants, the one with her ear to the streets.
“I paid Jocko to squelch it.”
“You . . .” She stared at him, not understanding. “Why?” She could have been finding patterns, making plans. She could have been . . . oh, shit. Cold sluiced through her as she got it. She freaking got it. He hadn’t told her because he was planning on killing Hood and he didn’t want her trying to stop him. Or if things went bad, he didn’t want her charged as an accomplice. Sick dread washed through her, bringing a new film of tears. “You’re not a killer.”
It was what separated them from the gang. She and Dez wore guns and walked tough, but the weapons were strictly for defense, and they shot to scare, to wound. Not to kill. Never to kill.
He cupped her face in his scarred palms and looked down at her, staring like he was trying to memorize the moment. And in his eyes, she saw more darkness today than yesterday. “I couldn’t save my family,” he said softly. “I can save you.”
“You—” She broke off, knowing there was no point in arguing that one. It was why Dez had come to her rescue that first night, when Hood had cornered her, coveted her. And it was why he was willing to sacrifice himself now.
That, and because he was a stubborn ass who didn’t fucking listen.
She reached up and gripped his wrists, right over the new tattoos. “This isn’t the only way. We can deal with him legitimately. We did it before—we can do it again.”
His eyes burned into hers. “I’m not going to let him touch you.”
“I’m not arguing with you there. But there are other options.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s leave. Fallon said the offer is still open. The department will stake us to a move, help us get started somewhere else.”
For the past couple of years, Dez had wanted to bail and start over, but she had refused to be chased out of yet another home. Which she supposed made them a pair of stubborn asses, but if she had to give up on the neighborhood to save him from himself, she would do it.
He shook his head, expression bleak. “The Cobras aren’t just a street gang anymore, Reese. They’ve got a long reach. Moving to a new city won’t solve anything.”
She wanted to argue that they could change their names, build new lives—she had done it before, could do it again—but she had a feeling that was just an excuse. As far as Dez was concerned, he had let Keban beat him that night in the storm, so he wasn’t going to let Hood beat him now. Or, rather, he was going to be the one to do the beating.
Feeling suddenly sad, small, and desperate, she turned her face and pressed a kiss to his scarred palm. “Promise me you won’t kill him.”