is broken into pieces by chattering teeth.
Expression unreadable, Leo steps to my side and puts a hand on my arm. He guides me out of the alley, where a black SUV waits at the curb. Leo heads toward it. He didn’t even stop to turn off the headlights. He ran for me. Killed for me. Why?
“Leo?” He pulls open the passenger door of the SUV and pauses, looking down at me. Maybe his face isn’t blank. Maybe it’s concealing something. There’s a difference. “Did you kill those men?”
A huff. “Get in the fucking car.”
16
Haley
All the fight goes out of me in the passenger seat of Leo’s SUV. The adrenaline runs away like that last man he killed, only the heart-hammering rush makes a successful escape. Leo tosses something over me. The heavy wool of his overcoat. I steal a glance at him as he puts the car in drive and accelerates away from the alley.
I’ve seen him in a sweater. I’ve seen him in a dress shirt. I can imagine how he’d look in a full suit with a jacket. Leo doesn’t wear any of that now. An equally dark shirt clings to his arms and torso. Dark gloves. Dark hat. It looks natural on him. He’s at ease haunting people’s fears.
Those men in the alley will never dream again.
I wrap myself into Leo’s coat. It’s soft the way expensive things are soft. Solid the way expensive things are solid. It can’t stop my shivering.
Leo drives us down the road, buildings and alleys passing by in a haze, until he pulls to the curb. I peek at him over the collar of his coat. His eyes are so dark in the glow from the center console. So endless. He’s hidden the pain and rage again. Forced it back under a layer of something I can’t put a name to.
“Do you remember the strap, darling?”
My body convulses from another set of shivers. “Yes.”
“I’ll make it twice as bad if you step one foot outside.” Leo reaches over me and opens the glove box. Pulls something out. Slams it shut. For a brief second I think he might touch me, but he doesn’t. He gets out of the car and strides across the empty street to an alley. Inside that alley, a fire burns inside a trash can. The sight of it makes bile burn my throat. So many alleys. So many men. Dead men, now. I can’t think about their bodies falling or I’ll lose it.
There are a few men huddled around the metal garbage bin and Leo waves them away. They scatter like rats, backing up into the dark. Leo steps up to the fire and strips off his shirt and gloves and hat. All of it goes into the flames. He tugs another shirt on. Oh—the shirt from the glove box.
I’m not scared for him when he turns his back on those men. I’m not scared for me. He’s far more dangerous than I thought. He’s saved me twice. The contradiction doesn’t leave room for anything but the struggle to get warm.
“Why didn’t you shoot them?” I feel compelled to ask this. Conversation will pass the time, and I want to know. The more I think about Leo’s tall, hard body in that alley, the more I have to understand why.
He scoffs. “Those men didn’t deserve the mercy of a bullet through the head.” Leo’s a good driver, his hands steady on the wheel. I feel stupidly safe right now. “And guns are a coward’s way out. If you’re going to kill someone, do it with your eyes open.”
It happens on the way back to his house. The heat wraps around the coat, and I can’t keep my eyes open. I drift in and out and only wake up when a gust of cold wind hits me from the open door of the SUV.
Leo leans in over me, undoes my seat belt, and swings my legs out of the car. “Can you walk?”
“Yes.” A frisson of offense. “Of course I can.”
“When I found you tonight, you couldn’t run.” He wraps an arm around me and the coat and hurries me up the front steps. We go through the front door. I trip over the rubber toe of one of my boots, but with my hands in the overcoat I can’t catch myself. He catches me instead, bundling me up into his arms with an irritated sigh. “This time, so we’re clear, you’re staying where I put you. Not fucking